Hard Hat Swagger

He showed up at the site before the foreman had his coffee hot,
Twenty years of concrete and he wore it like a lot,
He knew the load capacity of every crane by weight,
He had the calculations in his head by eight.

Hard hat swagger, earned it in the mud,
Hard hat swagger, built it with his blood,
You want to talk to me about the thing I wear with pride,
Try carrying forty years of doing it inside.

He trained the new ones coming in, he taught them what he knew,
He did not charge for education,
just passed the knowledge through,
He had a code: the work speaks and the worker stays behind,
That kind of pride is the purest kind.

He took the buyout at sixty-two and sat down for a week,
Then called the foreman at the new site, said: I have to seek,
Something more productive than the fishing and the chair,
Hard hat swagger does not disappear.