First day on site

Casey's first day on the building site.

'Do you have any experience?' asked the site foreman.

'No,' remarked Casey. 'But bedad I'm strong in the back.'

'Good,' said the gaffer. 'You can start by carrying up bricks. It's hard work but I'm sure you're used to that.'

'I certainly am,' said Casey. Till just hang me jacket in that shed over yonder.'

'That's not a shed,' said the foreman. 'That's your hod!'

'My God, 'tis a fearsome sight to be sure,' Casey gasped. 'But I can manage it if you'll help me tie a sack of cement to each of my boots so that I don't break into a run when I'm climbing the ladder.'

Off our hero duly sped with dozens of bricks in his hod, 20 feet up a ladder to the first level and then across a narrow plankway. The foreman suddenly realised that Casey was hopping along on one foot.

'Hey, why are you hopping?' he called.

'I don't think this plank will take me full weight,' cried Casey, just as the trouble started. Answering the boss's shout had made him look down, and suddenly vertigo set in.

'Begod, I'm going dizzy, sor!' he called.

'Well, come down then.'

'But how will I get down, sor?'

'The same way you went up.'

'But I came up head first,' screamed Casey, just as he slipped and fell.

Twenty feet down he dropped into a pile of sand which broke most of his fall.

'Are you all right?' shouted the anxious foreman.

'I think so, sor,' said Casey.

'Bring him a glass of water,' ordered the foreman.

'In the name of God,' said Casey, 'how far do you have to fall to get whiskey?'