Showerthought: My detour to an old factory town reshaped how I think about our work
We took a family trip to the Midwest and ended up driving through this rust belt city that was all but empty. I saw the shell of a power plant, with its boilers just sitting there rusting in the open. It struck me that those things ran entire towns for decades, and now they're just scrap. Back on a job this week, tightening bolts on a new unit, I kept picturing those old giants. It made the daily grind feel bigger, like we're not just fixing metal, we're keeping history alive. That random stop gave me a whole new respect for the bones of this trade.