their lives make them men of steel.
Alan Jackson knows the true meaning of work, as he started working at the age of 12. He started working in a shoe store sweeping up floors for 75 cents an hour. Since then he has had many jobs, he drove a forklift in a Kmart warehouse for two years. Loved the job, but nearly went crazy being locked up in the warehouse all night. He has repaired shoes, worked as a contractor, sold furniture and Fords. He loves to rebuilt and work on cars.
John Anderson worked at odd jobs after moving to Nashville in 1970. There is one that he is still reminded of today; roofer on the Grand Ole Opry House. "The first winter was a shock to a Flordia boy," says John, a native of Apopka. One hundred and thirty feet up on a roof and he had never heard of insulated work shirts. It inspired him to write a song: "Long Cold Winter." John said " I turned 18 up there on that roof, but I always knew that where I needed to be was on the floor below." About nine years later he made it to the floor when he debuted on the Opry singing "I'm Just an Old Chunk of Coal."
Now Joe Diffie's problem wasn't the cold it was the heat. Joe worked for 9 years in a foundry. Joe said "some of the worst years of his life was spent there. I recieved some nice burns, and I had a friend who almost lost his foot.
Welding was one of the jobs Sammy Kershaw tackled to keep food on the table as he persued his country music dream. He was a welders assistant in the shipyards. "It's hot, dirty, sweaty work. What makes it tough is the 'flash-burn' you can get in your eyes from the arc welding rod's blue flame. It feels like somone put sand or glass in your eye and then rubbed it in. It's some of the worse pain I've ever felt."
Toby Keith, who grew up on a farm in Okla. worked weekends as a bull tester during high school. "The owner would bring in a load of bulls, but he would have no idea if they would buck. So we would get on 'em and find out. That is how we tested them." After high school he went to work in the oil fields. The pay was better but the job was dangerous. On the weekends he played defensive lineman on the Oklahoma City Drillers, a semipro football team that was the farm club for USFL.
George Strait grew up working on the family's South Texas ranch. When he began his music career, he kept afloat by doing what he already knew. "I got a job managing the Hart Ranch in Texas," he says. "We had 1,000 head of cattle on it, and I was responsible for everything." For six years he worked the ranch by days and played music at night.
The common thread among these men of steel is the respect they give hard work and the values it taught them.
