Graham's Legendary Briefcase

On one of my commercial projects with an international construction company, my boss told me that they were sending a Superstar Supervisor to run the site. He warned me though, Graham is from Tennessee, an Irish good ole’ boy and we’re not sure if he’s going to work well with a female Project Manager. I expected trouble.

For the next couple of weeks, I heard all about Graham, some of his incredible projects, some of his amazing feats and successes. I also got a detailed description of his legendary briefcase. Apparently, even though Graham was married with two toddlers, he traveled a lot for work and liked to stop in topless bars along the way. To document his travels, he had photos of himself with numerous topless dancers spanning the U.S. He kept these photos locked up, taped to the upper lid of his briefcase, so when he opened it, he could re-live his glory.

A year earlier, someone had stolen his briefcase off the jobsite. Ever since that night, he lived in mortal fear of that briefcase with all it’s photographic evidence, finding it’s way back to Tennessee where his wife was home with the kids while he worked all over the country.

When he arrived on site, he fit his description with one exception. Indeed he was a big strong good ole’ boy from Tennessee who looked as if he’d worked in construction his entire life. The exception, fortunately for me, he did work well with women. We forged a tremendous team.

One day I was on site taking photographs to document our progress. At one angle, Graham was in the photo and he scurried off to the side. Jokingly I said, “Aw come on, don’t you want to be in a photograph for my briefcase?” He came unglued at my comment and started raging around the room asking where I heard about his briefcase and denying it’s existence. You mean to tell me that the Briefcase was just another construction legend?

In the end we built a fantastic project, pleasing our difficult and demanding client and making a hefty profit for the company we worked for. It’s been almost eight years since we worked together and I last saw Graham and I still think of him often.