Working on Labor Day

 Daniel Porras

   The mercury level in his thermometer doesn’t always match how it feels in the back of the shop at J&J Steel and Supply Co. where Daniel Porras, 43, works as a flame cutter.
   “It doesn’t seem like it, but it’s hot here,” he said.
   He tries not to let it bother him, though.
   While he waits for his programmed machine to cut patterns out of a piece of 6-inch steel, Porras turns his thoughts elsewhere.
   “When the machine’s running I’m praying … meditating,” he said.
   Porras said he started at the company as a grinder soon after he gave up drinking. A few years later he moved up to the position he has held for the last five years.
   Sober for nine years after almost two decades as an alcoholic, Porras said he relies on the strength he receives from God day by day through his prayers and those of others around him.
   He added that he and friends exchange text messages full of prayer requests and encouraging notes throughout the day. All the while a picture of the Virgin of Guadalupe looks down on him from a calendar in his workspace.
   Even though he works with heavy steel plates and concentrated jets of flame that easily top 2,000 degrees, he claims that in the long run he has a simple job.
   “It’s just cutting.”

   Laddan Ledbetter

   When Laddan Ledbetter is working with horses he goes into a different world.
   “It takes a lot of stuff away from the burdens of the day,” he said.
   Most mornings, the 26-year-old Midlander is training horses at Toya Bolton’s ranch in north Ector County where he’s been lending a hand for about two years.
   And even though it’s always a horse, each new animal presents a unique challenge.
   “Each situation with each horse is different,” Ledbetter said, adding that they see all kinds of horses.
   Whether working with “problem horses” or fresh colts, Ledbetter said they usually have little training when they arrive at the ranch.
   “Most of the time we’re starting from the ground and working our way up,” he said.
   He helps with other duties around the property too, including rounding up and sorting cattle when necessary.
   It’s a job he said that is fulfilling and that he can imagine pursuing down the line.
   “You get the job done, and you know you gave it everything you got,” he said. “It feels good.”
   And when he’s not on the ranch or hitting the gym, Ledbetter might be at a rodeo with Toya’s son Bonner as he readies to bust out of the chutes on top of a bull.
   His work on the ranch has its similarities to the rodeo arena — and he said it helps in his pursuit of the eight-second ride.
   “You gotta have balance to be able to ride a horse that’s bucking,” he said. “It sure helps to have balance to ride a bull.”

   Faustino Baeza

   Faustino Baeza, 41, doesn’t fit the image you might have in your head of a gravedigger.
   Baeza, the grounds supervisor at Sunset Memorial Gardens & Funeral Home, walks without a limp, doesn’t wear an eye patch and doesn’t fit any of the other clichï¿©s of horror films. In fact, he sees nothing macabre or distressing about his job.
   “I work at a cemetery, but I look at this place like a park,” he said.
   He has 17 years under his belt at the cemetery where he started on a bottom rung.
   “(I) basically just started weed-eating and moved myself up through the years,” he said.
   As those years accumulated he acquired new skills, learning on the job. Now he leads a crew of seven — plus two part-timers — as they keep the roughly 45-acre site up to standard.
   “It’s about seven different jobs you do around here,” he said.
   Besides digging graves, Baeza and his crew are responsible for mowing, trimming hedges, placing markers and fixing the plumbing — usually, he said, they do some of each task every day.
   “By the time you’re ready to go you’re tired — that sun gets to you,” he said.
   He’ll be back again the next day, though, working on one of the roughly 500 graves he said he digs each year.
   “It keeps you busy year round,” he said.

   Susie Lopez

   If Susie Lopez had her way, she would leave the cooking to someone else.
   “I really don’t like to cook,” she said. “I got to survive, so I cook.”
   This 53-year-old head cook at Odessa Regional Medical Center has made her living in the kitchen for some time now. She said she has six years chalked up at the hospital and before that worked in the kitchens at Medical Center Hospital, the MCM Elegantï¿© and a nursing home.
   She may not like it, especially the meatloaf, but that doesn’t stop her from doing her job. “If I have to cook it, I have to cook it,” she said.
   Lopez has plenty to cook, too. She prepares food for the hospital patients, for the cafeteria and for any number of events that are scheduled at the hospital during the day. She said that means starting early and staying on top of her work. “I don’t wait until the last minute. I don’t like working at the last minute,” she said. “I don’t sit down until I get all my work done.”
   On a recent Tuesday morning, after finishing the breakfast menu around 6 a.m., she started on a lunch that included Cajun-style catfish.
   Lopez said the dish is popular at the hospital, and she also said she dreaded all the fish she had to make.
   “They eats a lot of it,” she said. “Even when it’s fried they eats a lot of it.”
   When she finally finishes up the day’s menu and heads out the door by 12:30 p.m. you won’t find her in the kitchen at home.
   “I go by and buy me something to eat — or I won’t eat nothing.”

   Daniel Chavez

   Daniel Chavez, 39, has built up a substantial collection of tools during the 15 years he’s been an auto mechanic at D&J Automotive.
   Or was that 16 years? Or 17? He doesn’t keep track. He does remember starting with a mop and broom in hand before an impact wrench.
   “I actually mopped and swept floors for them when I didn’t have anything to do,” Chavez said of the time earlier in his career when he had been hired to do detailing at the shop.
   But the detailing didn’t last forever.
   “They were just so busy and didn’t have enough help,” he said. So he offered to lend a hand.
   After picking up the trade gradually he worked his way up to directing the shop as the foreman. But that doesn’t put him in a corner office.
   “I still gotta get my hands dirty,” Chavez said, showing off his grease-stained palms.
   He likes the work — and said it stays varied depending on which cars come in and what the problem turns out to be.
   Despite the collection of power tools he uses to help fix those problems, it still takes a little elbow grease to get most jobs done. And that puts his blackened hands at risk.
   “Even if you cut one, you still gotta work with it,” he said.