Blaine Little - Cement Finisher

Like his father, my father was sentenced to a life of hard labor as he was a cement mason, commonly known as a ‘cement finisher’. One of the most labor intensive jobs in construction, a cement finisher had to do many steps to finish the job. 

 Not one of the steps could be left out or delayed, or done ‘half complete’. That meant he leveled the ground; made the cement forms that held the wet cement mud out of 2x4’s or other sized wood at the right slope for rain runoff; secured steel rebar throughout the project to give it strength; calculated the cubic yards of ‘mud’ needed; ordered the mix ratios (cement, sand, gravel, coloration) and scheduled delivery of the cement truck with the large rotating drum. 

 When the truck arrived he worked the heavy mud with a round shovel when it came down the chute out of the cement truck; then spread the mud with a flat end shovel and leveled it by moving, from side to side, a long 2x4 that was using the form as a guide. Then dad really got to work before it ‘set up’ on him. While tromping in the gray wet glop with rubber boots he then pounded the flat wet cement with a large tamping device (can’t remember the name, I think he called it a “bolo”) that settled the gravel and brought to the surface a fine slurry that could be smoothed out with a large flat trowel called a ‘float’. Some floats are hand held and others are on a long pole to reach long distances or across the driveway. 

He then hand troweled the entire slab on his hands and knees moving around using two flat boards. He finished off the corners and edges of the sidewalk with different curved trowels. He took pride in his work and insisted on finishing the project with a very smooth surface unless the job required a rougher brushed surface. This is why a cement mason is usually called a ‘cement finisher’. He made sure all of the tools were rinsed off and cleaned and when the cement had ‘set’ hard he would take off the wood forms and smooth out any rough spots the forms left. 

 All of these steps had to be done at the right time and cement sometimes wanted to set-up or dry faster or slower, depending on the composition, water amounts used, humidity and outside temperature, etc. 

He took a lot of care with each job and he got very upset when anyone would scratch their initials or comments in the drying concrete. 

More later! Please have a great day!

Our Ancestor, through Ruth Webster, served in the Revolutionary War

From the Life Sketch of Enoch Bartlett Tripp, we find the following: 

"Enoch Bartlett Tripp was born in Bethel, Oxford, Maine on May 29, 1823. He was the oldest child of William Tripp Jr. and Naamah Hall Bartlett. They had eight children, all but one living to adulthood. Enoch’s father had fought in the War of 1812 and his grandfather William Tripp Sr. had served in the Revolutionary War. He was a corporal in Captain Jonathan Nowell’s Company of Colonel Scammon’s 30th Regiment of Foot, the first organized body of troops to leave the District of Maine in the War for Independence. Josiah Bartlett one of the first to sign the Declaration of Independence was a relative on his mother’s side of the family. His father was a Methodist preacher. Enoch grew up in a very patriotic and religious family who were well respected and looked up to as leaders in the community and the state."

This is fascinating for our family. Most assuredly we have ancestors who served and fought to preserve our freedoms, but this gives us real information for further research!

At the time of the American Revolutionary War, Maine was not a state but a District in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.  

I am sure we will find out more soon, Michael