Hey reformy,
If you ever worked on a construction site, you’d get his humor, or you’d be shunned and mocked by your coworkers, and have your lunch box hidden (or worse...) That’s just the way it is on a construction site.
That’s what I’ve heard. And he made his boys work on site, starting at the bottom.
I was a kid in the 1950s. No one was especially kind. You learned to give it back or you were just out of the loop with a target on your back and things would get worse. Kids from big families always knew how to handle it best.
And I’m a girl....the crap and bullying from the girls was just as bad, if not meaner.