Cheech & Chong - Part 1

After briefly working in a local deli, my friend Mike and I found what seemed like the perfect way to put ourselves through seminary. We met a contractor at church who needed some help, and he hired us for double what we had been paid to make sandwiches. More money, a Christian boss, and the chance to learn some new skills—what could be better?

Unfortunately, our enthusiasm was quickly dampened by a hard dose of reality. Our contractor friend was renovating a house on a steep hillside that was inaccessible to trucks. Getting building materials to the work sites was difficult, and Mike and I were envisioned as the “human mule” solution. Our jobs consisted almost entirely of carrying lumber up the hill, then carrying down buckets of debris from demolition work.

To make matters worse, our only coworkers were a pair of ex-hippies who worked slowly and enjoyed smoking marijuana on their frequent rest breaks. Each day, “Cheech and Chong” (as we dubbed them) delighted in assigning us all gruesome tasks they had been carefully avoiding.

“Hmm . . . let’s have Mike and Steve break up that back patio with a jackhammer, then carry the broken concrete down a steep incline to the dumpster, shall we?”

Mike and I didn’t trouble ourselves too much over Cheech and Chong’s salvation, as it was pretty obvious that they were going straight to hell no matter what we did. Case in point: one day Mike and I noticed that the dumpster we were (as usual) filling with dirt and concrete was labeled “Organic Waste Only.” Mike suggested to Cheech and Chong that this container was meant for branches and leaves, not heavy materials.

“Nonsense,” Cheech murmured dismissively, “they couldn’t care less what you throw in there.”

But when it came time for the disposal company to pick up the dumpster, Cheech and Chong jumped into their pickup, shouted, “I’d throw a little brush on top of all that dirt if I were you,” and drove off laughing.

We took their advice, but our frantic attempt at concealment didn’t help any. When the flatbed truck from the disposal company arrived and began winching the dumpster up onto its bed, the massive weight caused the vehicle’s front wheels to pop up into the air alarmingly. Its red-faced driver leaned out the window and screamed, “What did you assholes put in that thing?!”

For the next 20 minutes, we took cold comfort in Cheech and Chong’s increasingly grim eternal fate, as the driver struggled to load the dumpster and continued to fill the air with curses. “Don’t bother calling us for another one,” was the nicest thing he shouted, as the truck inched away with its sagging load.