I was in my fancy duds. From the Hitchin' Post and Wooden Nickel, right there in downtown Sioux City. Not too far away from McCluhen attorney and the cigar store. These were later acquaintances.
I was all duded up. Ready to make some impression, trying to reclaim.
I think Donny Taylor from Ponca showed with Gary Davis's exwife Lana Evers. I think that was her name. The blowing of the fake horns and the confetti just drove me nuts and then I exited stage right. All the night long, I was looking at the door, waiting for her eminence to show up.
Wellll, she was with her prince charming. And Barb had one in oven. And now that's all part of the pix that is JJ.
Well we got as far as Chp. 5. This Daily Blog means I'll have it all posted before you know it.
Chapter 7 I’m Gonna Send You On A Mission
Hurt Russell, Part II
August 19th I had to be in some sort of sort of a trance yesterday. Twice I almost killed Russell. And then there’s ol' Rod LeGrand, our Master Builder, after a wall of drywall, studs, and plywood had come crashing down, almost on top of Russell, sticking his head in.
“I see ya got that down,” he said, looking at the knee-high pile of debris Neither Russ or I said anything. About it all nearly falling on Russell’s head yet knocking him backward so that he wound up flat on his back. Quickly, he picked himself up and looked at me, his mouth ajar, his dark brown eyes open wide. “Thank God for hardhats,” he’d said.
After all, we thought, neither of us saying anything, that it was such a freak thing. Just out of nowhere, the wall, like the song says, comes a-tumblin’ down. Trying to correct, yet maybe overcorrect, like a driver will do if he or she veering right or left suddenly cranks the steering wheel hard, maybe flips the car. I felt the same. I start throwing wall and false ceiling wreckage in a pile, flinging it wildly outside atrium proper. I grab a factory broom and almost maniacally shove rock and studs to the entryway, working for hallway clearance. We knew, once the all this temp stuff was gone, we’d start on the atrium, the bottom lip 30-feet above us.
We’d start, the $3 million Copper Wall project—ten floors of dull, different-colored copper to, I heard, connote the railroad’s early days, back to the lore of driving the golden spike at Promontory Point, Utah. Early American days, when the iron horse galloped country wide, sending settlers westerin’.
Union Pacific was one of the few left standing.
The Wall
Working back from the rock rain, I got more than a 100 feet of clearance in a fairly short time. Russell, no longer shaken, now looked up at the chunks of plywood and rock on the other side of the atrium, also a temp ceiling-wall that had to go. Of course, 30 feet up, stud and drywall and plywood still hung languid, lazy, all with a touch of menace, like the curling ends of a lovely white snowdrift that had buried a car with your classmate’s girlfriend in it one winter night so many innocent years ago.
“How’re we gonna get up there,” Russ wondered aloud.
I wondered the same thing. The huge scaffold that stretched all the way to the 20th Floor was a good 10 feet shy of where we needed to be. A baker was way too short to do the trick, even at full extension. What we really needed was a JLG. However, there was none around at the bottom, all of them scooting around on the upper floors above. No way we could get one down.
Yet demo was our duty, the Copper Wall our assignment. We had to get going on the atrium. We had to find a way.
“There’s a ladder over the by the electricians,” I offered, almost apologetically, noting rock dust still on Russell’s shoulders. Yes, hadn’t I seen one on my stud journeys? Never did it seem like it was that much in use, always pretty much in reach. I’d tell a phantom Sparky, I’ll bring it right back.
And sure enough, there it was, in the wide corridor just outside the atrium, a 14-foot dark red extension ladder that said Capital Electric in white letters on the side. I knew they were the Sparky outfit out of Kansas City, Mo. setting up power grids, running wire, setting up UP’s electrical source. Can we borrow it? I felt like I had to ask somebody. Yet, there was no one in sight.
So I went and grabbed it. However, this was easier said than done. It was a bulky heavy thing that balked at transport. I wasn’t sure how I could grapple it but Russ, watching my struggle, came over. We got it down and took it back to where we needed it.
We hoped that would do the trick. Going to full extension, we leaned it as close as to the corner as we could. If we leaned, we could get at the nails holding the plywood sheets.
A determined Russell scaled the rungs with his gun—power cord dragging like a long tail, resolve returning—to the top. He took his gun and, extending with his left hand, began to free plywood, sticking the gun at a near right angle to the long screws. The first full sheet popped out with little difficulty; he went quickly to the 2nd and 3rd sheets while I, standing on the bottom rung to add weight and stability, found myself having trouble standing and watching. I began to tear away at the huge swath of thick black tarp that draped over the wall, now nearly in free-fall, freed up with the plywood gone. I thought How easy is this? As I pulled and ripped from top to bottom, I watched happily as the black tarp tore in a nice straight line.
Suddenly, Russ’s ladder began to turn, its left upper lip twisting towards me—the ladder’s edge was on the piece of black tarp that I was oh-so-firmly-pulling. The dull red ladder looked like it was magically spinning, as if it heard a question but wasn’t quite sure what it was. Indeed, it was like a building collapsing in front of you, in slow mo, fascinating yet terrifying as the most unpredictable sections come apart, freed molecules moving in unregulated fashion. And this ladder, this black tarp, were moving so slowly, almost in freeze-frame. This turned out to be in the opposite direction of Russ, who was leaning and stretching and sticking his gun to the screws the other way. Capital Electrics extension ladder began to spin away from the wall, as if it had decided to turn and answer the question.
“Hey, what’s happening.”
Russ dropped the gun and grabbed onto the plywood. As the ladder turned away from him, he held on for dear life, his right boot dangling helplessly outside the ladder. I dropped the tarp I was yanking and immediately climbed the ladder and stuck my left hand beneath a soft brown sole. I steadied him back. The ladder after I quit jerking on it, fell back against the wall.
Visibly shaken, Russ climbed quickly down. Building demo had taken a nasty turn.
“Boy, ya,” Russ said, his eyes widening for the second time, stepping off the ladder, “that’s enough working on that for a while.”
And just then, down the hallway, a dull white hardhat poked into the atrium. Coming closer, we saw it was Rod, riding a bright red JLG like a frisky pony.
Pulling swiftly up to a pair of stunned workers—twice removed, twice beaten—then idling ‘er down, Rod, almost breathless, launched into his own morning drama—all the places he had to go to get the machine.
“Man, I had to go everywhere to get this thing. I finally got Greg and Jack’s. They’re up on the 5th Floor. They bitched of course but I said, ‘Hey, I gotta have this, we gotta get that stuff down.’ Shit, they can just use a ladder.”
We stared at him blankly, brains frozen, our minds still replaying the scene from just seconds before.
The JLG lift, of course, proved to be manna from heaven. While we still couldn’t get to the farther reaches of the plywood/drywall/tarp mix, entrance wall blocked by rolls of tarp and a stacks of insulation all over the place, we finally managed to demo enough wall. We could now start on The Real McCoy, building the Copper Wall.
Punching the Up/Down control button, I lifted while Russ unscrewed. The plywood again fell in large chunks to the slab below, landing with a huge thunk. I hauled heavy half sheets and wood splinters on out to stack outside the courtyard on which sat the country’s biggest scaffold, shooting all the way up to the 20th Floor. I then grabbed scraps of rock and threw it in another pile. It all managed to pretty much tucker me out before noon. I felt like I needed a breather and I was dripping with sweat.
Tire Repair
August 19 Yesterday, I couldn’t quite get over myself. Rolling down a dark Cummings Street, past TAC where I wonder if Dr. Mackiel is stirring, his mental synapses firing (midst a broke school district he surveys the onslaught of Somalian refugee kids that need education, speak a different language, wondering what he can possibly do about it all), past Creighton University that prides itself on its stalwart Jesuit tradition (secretly shuddering and creaking at the thought of a pedophile priest in their midst) and now a few blocks further where early city as river bottom is felt by an almost smooth terrain at river level, I look over at this guy—as I always do—that sits on his old cushioned chair in front of a run down shop’s huge bay door, opened to the early morning dark that is beat back by artificial light. Today he’s really leaning back, not quite far enough to tip completely backwards, and I look over, wondering if he’s finally going to do it when I hear—like a big slash against the right rear wheel—a tire implode. A few blocks later, the right rear of the truck lowers. I hear and feel rubber meeting the road.
I didn’t know what to do; so I just keep driving, a few blocks before Sol’s and I know I can’t go much further before I’ll be driving on the rim and ruining it. So I park in the dark, a block from the parking lot behind Sol’s, grab my lunch bucket and thermos and head to the unlit parking lot where we all meet and then Bob or Jon take us a few short blocks to the job site, where we dismount.
I’m of course virtually consumed with worry throughout the early morning because the truck is on a fairly busy street, bordering North O—with a flat tire to boot. I’m hoping I’ve got the stuff to change it. I hope my truck is legally parked. I hope it’s not towed away. I hope it’s not broken into.
And despite predictions to the contrary, we do make it through the day. And Russell is kind enough to lend me a hand. Suddenly—crouched down looking at Russell as he steadies the universal jack he brought from his truck—I see a pair of old tennis shoes walking towards us on the sidewalk. A tall thin black man stops and stares.
“Let me jump on it for ya,” he says, almost automatically, looking down at us. I glance up and this was from a 30-something black dude carrying a light brown “gitar” on his shoulder. It looked like it had a few of strings missing. His dark short-sleeved shirt, open to a thin frame almost to the navel, wasn’t tucked in.
My heart leaped to my throat. I thought he was going to hop on the back of the Dakota and crush Russell, who was toiling like Job beneath the Dodge.
“No, man,” I said, standing up and facing him, trying to sound street legal, trying to ignore him. As precaution, I stood between him and the truck. I thought of the time a burly young student waved a pair of sharp scissors at me, threatening to use them. I was fairly tense in the classroom until I put my hand on a metal chair. Suddenly, the young 15-year-old, who saw it was suddenly, advantage teacher, relaxed—a crisis was avoided. We calmly waited until the police arrived. This time, while there was not a chair in sight, I didn’t think we were really threatened.
I just looked at him. “I don’t have anything.”
“C’mon on man, ain’t you got any money?”
And then, I went ahead like an idiot and pulled out the quarters I received from a cinnamon roll and a Sunkist I’d purchased for Rodney mid-morning: For some reason, I started thinking that I didn’t lock up. Knowing that it’s a down in the mouth fringes of a North O neighborhood, I couldn’t get the thought that something would might happen to it out of my mind. Of course, I knew I was being paranoid, no reason to think anything would happen, especially in broad daylight. But I just couldn’t quit thinking about it. I explained my dilemma to Rod. Sure, he said, go ahead. Hey, you wouldn’t mind picking me up an orange juice and a roll?
Sure.
He gave me a couple dollar bills.
So I practically ran back to my truck, running away from UP Center in the brilliant mid-morning sunlight. Oh yeah, I’d locked ‘er up, no problem. And now there were a couple of other cars parked behind me so really, I was safer than I thought. Still, I didn’t like the fact that there was lane closure and that my blue Dodge Dakota might get scraped or something. And still, there was a flat tire—somehow looking flatter even than before.
A load off, I went into Petro’s, the downtown donut shop that had been on the North corner for who knows how long. I guess what I can remember from days of yore there was a bookstore I liked going into, where I bought my first copy of James Joyce’s Ulysses. But then the place years later moved across the street from a strip joint (more downtown central) that is also now closed. I went in there only a couple times, the bookstore about the same amount.
But Petro’s is still there, a short square rather homely building that sits pretty much unruffled on the corner. This morning was my first entry into the establishment. Owing to the invitation for employment I’d get later in the day from Mr. Gitar Man, I’m sure this sweet spot gets hit a lot from people who never tire of the possibility of getting something for free.
But no, at this 8:30 hour, but one customer was ahead of me; a few older looking white ladies in back look like they were preparing donuts and pastries for the millennium. I was unsure if Rod wanted orange juice or Sunkist; so an orange can of Sunkist was chosen and, judging from yesterday, when there was a cold bottle of Pepsi on the slab and then a huge container of Pepsi today, sitting half-drank on a pile of rock, I thought of Rod’s various liquid imbibing: ½ or ¾’s drank bottles of Pepsi seemingly every where.
The Master Builder drinks a lot of pop.
And gets his meals at the Brandies Building—at small walk-in deli’s or restaurants on the first or second floor. Sometimes Rod goes to the corner and checks out the hotdog stand—where midmorning you can get a breakfast burrito that is really warm and delicious. And today Russell and I came across Rod as he was just finishing up this morning sup.
I declined Russell’s burrito invite, having had one Monday or so and, thinking of shelling out a couple bucks for this and an orange juice, I thought bordered on the excessive.
But now I see written with black magic marker on the hood of Faithful Old Yeller chop saw, that it’s the Copper Wall. And Rod is in charge of the Copper Wall.
A Man on a Mission
August 20 Things were a little more settled down today. I didn’t fall too far off the mark as I did on Monday, nearly killing Russ twice and when Rod said, “I’m gonna send you on a mission” I got lost for most of the afternoon. Russ and Rod were beginning to mark out the Copper Wall’s first 20 feet for channel stud—The Wall, per architect’s design, begins at a 71-degree slant before it goes straight up.
So while they were doing that, my mission was to find the 20-foot studs. I told Rod I thought I knew where they were. He nodded. I hustled down one floor to the basement to see a host of pipe fitters and electricians going about their tasks. Yet, the growing square slate-animal of a building had, in three weeks time, changed again. Former entryways were blocked off or non-existent; new fissures sprout up where none before had existed. More and more, it was a new world of artificial light and sudden noise behind walls or off in far corners. You’d be walking along, drawn to voices and light beam movement and suddenly, you’d run into a group of men who looked like they knew exactly what they were doing, listening and performing to some far off orchestra could weren’t tuned into. And, if you watched them too closely, day in, day out, it looked like they were doing the same thing they’d done yesterday, playing the same notes as they had before, the same thing and same notes the day before that.
Which is so peculiar about big construction projects. Like you’re just spinning your wheels, running in place. Suddenly, you’d framed out and rocked a room and watch, in almost sheer amazement, as the finish carpenters come in and put in panel and desks, carpet and partitions; meanwhile, everything is in sync with the electricians and plumbers, topped off with interior design specialists—and suddenly, here a clean well-lit room.
And the crew down in the basement, maybe three different outfits, three different trades, were all pretty comfortable, pretty much at ease. I watched as a Sparky, eyes on the ceiling, move his 6-foot ladder, move up his 6-foot ladder, pull a long screwdriver from out of his side pocket and begin fastening a fixture. He looked, in a way, like a surgeon, readying his blade for suture. I watched as he stuck what I found out later was a torpedo leveled on the fixture then finished; he climbed back down. He moved the ladder to another section. He repeated the process.
Electricians, I thought, how lucky. Just run wire and screw in light bulbs. How tough could that be? A trade with a five-year apprenticeship for journeyman—and then you had to pass the state exam to be licensed. But once you’re in and there’s a big job like this, you can pretty much come and go as you please. You’re not, like Ironworker Roger said, so beat up at the end of the day.
Which is why, for some reason, I think I’m also a little on the specialty track. Framing and rocking the Copper Wall, with our 3-R crew, it was almost artistic, a creation that was forever spiraling upward. Other carpenters, I could see, were stuck framing bathrooms or offices. Fairly mundane, fairly repetitive. Working in tight close quarters. Away from the view and the light that grew and grew as we inched our way up The Wall. Each day was a new look at the rooftops of the old buildings of an old city. Some stood noble and erect---through ebbs of wildcat speculation and precipitous decline—standing on corners the city hopes to invigorate. The UP Project, to be the railroad’s national headquarter, will be a strong shot in the arm.
Yet, opening doors and peering down hallways with not a 20-foot pile of studs in sight, I grow frantic. Finally, looking behind a trade’s gang box, against the wall, I find a fairly small pile of nearly buried studs. The stack of dark gray metal was coated ever so lightly with what looked like a fine dust film. Could that be from months ago—a windy day, dirt blowing in from the South O stockyards, before the building was closed in, when iron and flanges and material was boomed down in large chunks, tied off with thick nylon chokers and then coming over the roof? Parallel to the wall, the studs looked like they’d largely been forgotten. Now behind gang boxes and conduit, kicked to the curb by ladders and hand tools and power tools as the building, basically a live animal, feeling the red skeleton of iron getting daily injections, its face transformed like the season, I almost didn’t see them.
OK. Now I got the 20-foot studs. But like the dog that catches the car, now what to do? Moving these studs in close quarters required a new set of strategies. (Like a few months later with Journeyman Electrician Bob, a JLG had to be worked out the building before it was permanently closed in—and it turned out to be a fairly long all morning moving affair—gang boxes and welders and work benches and material had to be moved; a temporary wall had to be partially opened to allow passage. Finally, we had to clear out debris and kick open a sheet of plywood that blocked the entrance of an underground walkway from the parking garage to the UP building that was still a work in progress.)
Thus, my JLG escape hatch was predated by this studs logistics glitch. I also thought how large materials could also be closed in. for example, until the day I left, for months a huge 30-foot I-beam stayed in place, flat on the ground, staring like a dead weight at the building’s north entrance. Was it an extra one? Was it a huge piece that wasn’t needed? It didn’t’ matter: it had to be stepped and worked around in one way or another. There was no way a group of men could budge it, looking like it weighed close to a ton. So it laid there like a huge quiet dinosaur, nobody knowing for sure how to get it out. I remember one time, just starting with the electricians, how a handful of ironworkers, along with Roger, looked at the beam. One could tell they were thinking about ways to get it out. The older ironworker with the gray hardhat that had the black emblem across the top of his hardhat with the phrase “Fuck Bush” in white letters summed up the feelings of his brothers: “Fuck this” and proceeded to walk away from it; the rest of his buddies followed, Roger looking at it with a plaintive expression on his face. an air of resignation.
Thus getting the 20-foot studs out was an sudden hiccup. I thought, I got ‘em; now how do I get ‘em out?
As usual, as is my wont, with yeoman effort, I grab the bundle and lift and turn and pivot. A few “you need some help with that” lifted me away from huge piles of ducts and conduit, got me through a few doors—pretty much crashing and banging all the way up a wide stairway—and over to the atrium.
Breathless, successful, I slammed the load down before Russ and Rod, a bang midst the cacophony of noises and voices that filter continuously through the open building. Rod turned to me, as if I hadn’t left—still patiently standing before him, waiting for directions. He said he was “still pissed” about the run-in with Krugger.
“Yeah, that Krugger, didcha hear him?”
No, I said I didn’t.
The Master Builder shook his head. The white hard hat, almost looking like he’d been born with it, was dull yet ready. “Yeah when he said ‘Whenever the framin' 's done.’ And hey,” Rod said, his hands on his hips, looking at Russ and me, glancing at the great expanse before him. “I’m doin’ the best I can ya know?”
Rod, for sure, thought he should get a few more dollars on the check. From what I could gather, he was unofficially “running” the Copper Wall job, lining out the work, setting it up, studying blueprints, looking over what the next step should be, operation’s quarterback. Thus, because it was such a huge endeavor, a veritable showcase of carpentry talents, should not this creation be supported with financial remuneration? “And if that raise ain’t on my next check,” Rod announced to the studs and scaffold before him, “I’m quittin’.”
Russ and I, we’d heard it all before; while sympathetic, there wasn’t much we could do about it.
Meanwhile, framing had got us past the first 20-foot or so where the wall runs in at a 71 before shooting straight up. At 10th Floor or so, it runs out at the same 71 degrees. Per Rod’s instruction, Russ and I had the track upon which the studs will sit, mitered and cantilevered. Which means, standing on say, the third floor, you could look straight up a stud and follow it all the way to the top—a straight vertical line. The dull gray light gauge metal, we discovered, plumbed perfect. The skeleton wall took on a look of majestic, almost shimmering. Suddenly, like the building around it, The Wall—at the heart of this epicenter—was taking life, like it was pulsating, like it was going to start moving. What had been a wide-open mouth was now a straight line of dark metal.
But still, questions and problems remained. While everything was perfectly straight and symmetrical, a murmur of discontent arose like rock dust as we stuck studs and slapped on rock.
Russ and I, of course, marking and checking, checking and marking, laying out the track on the slab on which the studs would rest, sending me up to chip away at the white foam that covered the iron where the track would be shot into the beam and thus have a final resting home for the studs, were impervious to the discussion: we just basically did what we were told to do. Russ, a perfectionist, would not let a line go without double-checking. Thus, the first stud nailed to the track for the first couple floors was at a perfect 90, falling right on the laser’s red beams that shot out at right angles.
We were doing our fair share. We more than convinced we were getting it right.
And yesterday Rod again reported that the line was straight all the way up and all the way down.
“Rod (Rodney’s carpenter brother who was helping us carry rock) and I looked at it all the way up and down and its tits.”
And did I not hear the Holder guy, young Mike, tall and good looking, with closely cropped hair beneath a blue hardhat, wearing a blue windbreaker, always looking clean and presentable, say to Rod, looking closely at him and smiling, “Whatever you need, whenever you need for us to get out of the way, we’ll get it done for you?”
We looked at what we’d done—framing now up almost three floors. We knew we had to be on the right track. We’d go forward—confident we were doing a darn good job.
We had the Master Builder guiding us like a beacon in the night.
Last Safety Meeting
August 19th But Tuesday turns out to be the last day all the hardhats would gather ‘round the campfire. It’s where I’d see Jerry Ellis again. Looking for an existential ironworker moment midst the men and a few women, waiting for the Tuesday safety meeting to start, I sat down next to him on an uneven pile of concrete blocks. Ellis was sitting next to his ironworker buddies, most of whom I didn’t recognize. I thought again how I’d bumped into him at Holder’s orientation, Julio the man in charge, at the Brandies Building. “Hartnett, what’s going on. What’s goin’ on Hartnett.” He’d looked at me with wide blue eyes, an air of expectancy stealing across his tan face.
Safety meetings, of course, for 21st Century building construction, are a must. Ours at the UP Center took place every Tuesday morning. Work was suspended at 7 am sharp and entire crews met outside the building, filling the block-long south side, sitting or standing, a few workers with their heads poking out of the building, their hands leaning on the drywall. Meanwhile, a handful of Holder employees, easily recognizable with bright blue hardhats, standing in a tight circle near Holder’s superintendent who was overall man in charge.
But this was the last time—and it was the first time I did not go upstairs but just simply took my lunch kit and sat on it and waited for the meeting—we met as a group.
Traffic sped by and everyone pretty much fell silent when the Holder boss looked down at a row of clipboards on top of a stack of concrete blocks. I liked the special gathering—it was like the hundreds of school assemblies I’d been to when everyone marches to the auditorium to listen to some inspirational speaker or watch a clown twirl batons or do magic tricks save this crowd was mostly a burly crew of hardhats—some sitting, some standing—no one paying that much attention. On Tuesday, I remember thinking how pleasant this all was. I could look downtown through all the trees and nearby Gene Leahy Park and, while I couldn’t see it, knew the Missouri River was just by, gurgling and pulsating ever southward. I thought back 200 years and I could almost see Lewis & Clark slowly moving upstream, not a few days away from when they’d meet the Omaha Indians who lived near present day Macy and who would exchange trinkets and drink fire water. In fact, this one time on the way to the safety meeting, abreast with workers I didn’t know, didn’t recognize, all working, all building, I thought of the title of this book: It’s Monday and I’m Working.
I had my own existential moment.
The Holder men, having set down long clipboards on which had circulated amongst the crew for signatures, stood at attention.
No, there’ll be no safety awards this time, the Holder boss said, a light southern accent lifting above the crowd.
I thought of the clipboard that had been passed to me but a few minutes earlier. I noticed that one of the guys working on the job had a most unusual first and last name—“fuck holder.”
I signed it and passed it to Russell. I pointed it out. He said, “People are so immature.”
I looked out on over the sea of uneven heads and uneven contours of barrels and trucks and scaffold piles and various construction site material before me to the brightening day. I knew that one block diagonal, looking southeast, there is a pond through which dirty water flows and bums sit to hangout and ask for spare chain—our “gitar” man might well be one of them. I also knew the next block after that is the three-story brick building, the third floor of which, in the far southeast corner, is the Voc Rehab office where Pramila and Julie were no doubt in their office, planning out their day, pushing huge manila envelopes of new case loads before them, knowing that the well of state moneys was runnin’ dry, never enough to go around.
No, I thought. Wait a minute. It’s just a little after 7 am The Rehab office was dark and silent and doors closed. Computers turned off. Lights out. The gals might still be counting sheep.
I thought how the Voc Rehab symbolized a changing downtown—helping folks like me who’ve taken a fairly hard spill and are trying to get back on their feet. It sits on the other side of a fairly unhealthy chunk of downtown symbolized by the park where those who’ve been hit hard and taken a spill and, for some reason or another, haven’t been able climb back up.
And this is where they hang out. So what I mean is, this is part of downtown where, in the warm weather, people on the down and out tend to congregate, where the homeless tend to congregate. It’s not the tonier section of downtown, a fairly depressing park squeezed between a building whose Copper Walls would feed all of them forever and a high-rise condominium whose rent none of them could afford. Indeed, the Leahy Park is but a block away from a fancy Penthouse for the UP that the big wigs will be in, or the railroad worker bees will go in and out each and every day, controlling, mostly coal shipments from the nation’s largest railroad. No, nearby the UP Center it’s an oasis of humanity that forms a moving and non-tethered amoeba that bounces off the concrete, glances against the wall, tries to eat the copper. City fathers, on one hand, have set out to change this—millions of tax breaks and lease agreements thrown into the mix so the soup of humanity will not be bitter or foul tasting, no longer a dying downtown near its last breath. On the other hand, there are shelters for some of the homeless and meals during the holidays, not necessarily the same fare served to the UP worker bees. A curious ambivalence that no one seems to mind, no one says very much about.
No, we were told, there’d be no more awards, no more chances for the lucky individual to have his name drawn and be given a $200 cash bonus if, by chance, there was a week of work that was injury free.
Well, for some reason, no names could be drawn; there’d been a few minor injuries reported. In fact, none of the four weeks that I’d worked was injury free—I never saw anyone draw. And this time, the gathering had taken on a different hue.
Holder’s General Superintendent, Bill Thompson, his southern accent now lifting melodiously above the traffic said, instead of a report on those injured on the job and a general progress summary, that there’d be no more safety awards given out because there’d be no more meetings. With a look of disgust stealing over his face, he looked over the crowd and held up a 32-ounce bottle of light yellowish/orange of Gator Aide beneath the skies blue canopy for all to see.
“Somebody filled this full of urine,” Thompson said, surveying the silent blue-collar crowd. “I know this isn’t most of you, but there’s always a couple people who like to ruin it for everybody one.” He set the bottle down.
“We’re not gonna have these company-wide safety meetings anymore. You can just get with your own group and the foreman’s can decide how they wanna handle it.”
As usual, no one said anything, most as usual, not paying that much attention, glad they had a break from the noise and grind and sweat and, if but for a few moments, were getting paid for it. The superintendent watched as the Holder crew circling him looked out at the crowd with an air of delicate reproach.
This comment elicited no response, not even a mumble, from the throng gathered before him.
Thompson’s tone softened a notch. “I know most of you are workin’ hard and doin’ a good job. It’s just too bad one or two gotta ruin it for the rest of you.”
This urine swap for Gatorade, of course, was the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back. This sentiment no doubt was ushered in by signatures on the clipboard that said “Fuck Holder,” adding to the list of hand-written insults hurled at Holder that filled the eight yellow porta-potties that stood shoulder to shoulder in silent formation outside the building with wild scrawls that almost unintelligible.
While the graffiti on the johns, stationed in the NW corner of the odd-numbered floors, was dutifully blacked out by the small crew of Holder Helpers (looking like a glum Santa crew who never ever got any presents). American graffiti in the handful of jakes outside the southwest corner of the building—braced from single lane traffic by a Cyclone fence—were not blacked out and, the ones that were legible, were filled with a running and generally unfocused diatribe against Things in General, Holder in the Specific, the small private yellow stalls a set of feral insurgencies.
This ended the projected mini-celebrations of a week marked by safety and therefore hoped-for good feeling between management and workers and hastened diplomacies demise.
Thompson surveyed the crowd, ignoring the pile of signature-filled clipboards before him, his glum Holder Helpers moving away from him. “Well,” he said, “you might as well get on back to work.”
I walked back up the wide stairs with the madding crowd, feeling sweat erupt from my chest, the high humidity from a balmy August morning having a decided impact. Always, I was surprised at how much trouble I had navigating the stairs. Always I wanted to stop and catch my breath. Not realizing my arteries were narrowing, constricting like a kinked garden hose, I thought I just wasn’t in shape for stairs. Nevertheless, I made the daily climb to the shack. Then I’d go into Jon’s “No Smoking” side of the shack and grab the chop saw, carrying Faithful Old Yeller—up the eastern flight of stairs, on up to where we were working, carrying a yellow DeWalt chop saw—and wearing my tool belt, determined always to take the stairs rather than hop on the lift.
I’d join Russell, more than 10 years my junior, who, after the 8th Floor, decided he’d take the buckhoist. Russell, medium-built, punctiliousness almost to an unusual degree, was a carpenter journeyman. After a few weeks, he brought pictures of log cabins in Idaho and Arizona he’d built, table and chairs he fashioned out of oak. Russ said he was now back home to stay.
Chapter 8 Iron Worker Redux
Power House
August 21 So I’m reminded today how much of a feature this project is. All I really have to say, in response to what I’m doing, where am I working, is “Copper Wall.”
“What is it, what is it for.” Lincoln’s Bullet Bob hit me with a bevy of questions as I grabbed the brand new saw, just out of the box, the miter saw . It’s a portable saw that will cut through the studs with aplomb, at any angle, at any degree.
Sometimes Russ and I, in our Copper Wall journey, our journey upward, we’d run into Roger, the ironworker pusher, coming out of the nearby ironworker shack. I ask him about the huge powerhouse addition across the river, start-up slated for any day now. It will be the first coal-burning power station built in 30 years. Wouldn’t they be hiring a lot of ironworkers?
“Our business agent says there’ll be 200 ironworkers working’ for 37 months,” Roger said. Russ and I nod as he moves deliberately about the building, trouble-shooting, checking on his men. This is comforting for me to know that there’ll be a lot of work for the next several years. Maybe I’d get past carpenter apprenticeship and become a journeyman carpenter.
For some reason, despite all the education, all the years in the classroom, becoming a journeyman carpenter was something that somehow excited me. Maybe it was the past few years of sub teaching had pounded out any lingering ed remorse.
Finally, I can say to Voc Rehab’s Pramila, and now Julie Johnson, “We have a plan.”
And today we’re but a few feet away from a couple ironworkers. Russ and I are on the west end of the atrium, settin’ up. We first had to get rid of the guardrails—2 inch angle iron cut in 3 foot chunks, eye sockets cut near the top and the bottom to run cable through—that the ironworkers had put up. Getting rid of the iron and the cable so we could snap lines and run track was always the first order of demo business on each and every floor.
While expedient when the iron was going up, guardrail an OSHA requirement, there was no place for it now. The UP Center had evolved into Phase II, the building now almost all closed in, the rough carpentry of rock and framing slapped onto the iron nearly blocking it out, hiding the skeletal support. The guardrails, meanwhile, were on every floor, on every corner had to go. After awhile, instead of tracking down an ironworker, Russ and I figure we can just grab a torch and lop the weld off ourselves.
Meanwhile, I stand and watch the coterie of workers across the courtyard, watching different colors and sized hardhats walk purposely or carry deliberately select objects for the task at hand: standing on the slab right where the wall will be, it’s like I’m in my own skybox, high above this Midwest madding crowd, watching them toil and tug, moving molecules, pounding and grappling the material into place.
Russ is off to grab a cuttin’ torch. I listen and watch the two ironworkers on the atrium’s eastern corner.
Fire blanket. Firewall. “Ya ready for me to hit it?” “Yeah, go ahead and hit it.” It was early in the morning and the ironworkers went on with their own project, ignoring ours. In no time, faster than Russ or I, the anchor was free, the cables cut lose, #6 rebar that acted as supports was now rolling free, useless to anyone anymore.
I just move in around the rod with aplomb. It’s not too hard for me to think back into the heavy liftin’ days. When you just pick up the rebar and march on out to the section where you have to land it. The work is what you might call yeoman: punkin’ a load of rod maybe half the day, tying rebar the other half. Like I did with Foreman Gary Frahme on my first bridge deck job, carrying with him seven or eight #5 rebar at a time. And then, with Foreman Joe Lyons running the job, a few summers later, I thought how I’d worked on an overpass with a red haired, journeyman boilermaker from Kansas City, Mo. No, there wasn’t much work goin’ down with his local so he just jumped over to ours and became, for a time, a permit ironworker. I remember punkin’ the rebar with him on the two-lane bridge deck. It was a hot day and the KC brother didn’t feel like carrying more than four or five at a time. I remember how ol' Joe Lyons, seeing our duties, predicting our struggle, suggested we load on more. “That way,” Joe reasoned hopefully, his hands on his hips, “you’ll cut down on your trips across the iron.”
I was all for it. Heck, load on seven or eight. Git ‘er done. Then we could jump back, tie the templates, then fly through it. Once, I even saw one of the bigger journeyman on the job grab five by himself, hoist it on his shoulders, carry it out to the bridge deck, as for example, and throw ‘er down. But no, Red was havin’ none of it. He was in no particular hurry. He’d just stick with five at a time, thank you very much. Finally, after I’d grab seven on my end, have to change to match up with his five, I think we did finally settle on six. Well, whatever, it was no job for the faint of heart or the faltering of spirit.
Russ and I laid track, floor by floor, steady as she goes. Now we’re on the 8th Floor but yesterday we ran into a snag. For some reason, the concrete slab jutted out more than six inches too far on the west end; two feet of six-inch I-beam stuck out of that. So when we left last night, there was a huge concrete saw cutting the slab, a stream of water drip dripping out of the blade. Now, in the morning, there was like an iron gutter left.
So now, this morning, the two ironworkers quickly cut this off and were on their way. But, when we went back, behind the black tarp draped over a fairly large section of the west wall, there was still a chunk of slab left; ten inches of rebar was still sticking out of it.
Well, Russ and I said heck, we’re not going to bother anybody. We can take care of it ourselves. Track down Holder Mike. He’ll get us anything we need. Well, how about a small jackhammer?
Sure, I’ll see what I can find. And sure enough, in a fairly short time, Mike came back with a small jackhammer. That’ll work.
An old hammer man from way back, I got right to it, lining it up on the slab and pulling the trigger. I remember runnin’ a much heavier and bigger jackhammer at the Nucor Steel plant in Norfolk. A good chunk of wall had to be knocked out. This, of course, wasn’t so bad except it was filled with thick rebar and old concrete: this turned out to be an almost deadly combination, suspended in the air like I was trying to chip ice off of the side of a mountain. This saw me jackhammer all day morning and hardly get much more than a small car-sized chunk out. It took every ounce of strength to knock any part of the slab lose— small pieces finally broke free like shrapnel; the concrete stuck to the rebar ribs like a weld.
Plus, the jackhammer I finally had to resort to was so heavy I could barely lift it with both hands. Thus, this little thing that Holder gave me was easy to handle, easy to navigate—the slab pieces dropped off in cantaloupe-sized chunks. And really, there was nothing to it. I think maybe Russell was a little surprised to see me jump right in and knock the mud off, done in less than ten minutes.
“We got one on the other end,” said Russell, pulling his ear plugs out, motioning with his dull yellow hardhat head. Following this lead, I hammered out a few chunks of slab, the noise echoing throughout the building.
And then Russell got the hair brain idea to move the cut saw down from where I usually work to between the banks of two elevators that flanked one another on the atrium’s west side that today I notice has some gray doors slapped on them, partially open, as if they were awaiting a passenger to step in and take a virgin ride up or down the twenty story building.
Yes, I’d thought of doing the same thing, moving Chop Saw right next to me so I could cut studs and hand them over. But I knew there were men-at-work below or above, a wooden guardrail on either side—it was hard to remember the shafts were being used, were being worked on—don’t dare let anything fall down there. Plus Ole Yeller, for all its faithfulness, was nevertheless a noisy beast, a sound both penetrating and piercing that required I stick plugs in my ears. (I hated when I forgot them or one had somehow drop out somewhere when not sawing—my ears would ring at day’s end.) I just took it all back down to the far hallway; heck, let’s just cut the studs right then and there. I can carry them.
But Russ thought he had a better id.
“Are you sure?”
”Yeah, it’ll be closer, ‘stead of carrying that stuff,” Russ said, offhandedly, shrugging his shoulders.
Okay. After all, Russ was an experienced carpenter. So I loaded up and got Yeller, along with a pile of studs and the power cords, to its new digs. Rod, however, came on the scene and gave the order.
“Too much goin’ on here” and we went back to our usual place.
Power House
“Been all over the place.”
“Oh yeah?”
This was an ironworker who had stood over what looked to be an older gentleman and his young apprentice who held up the fire blanket while they’d cut away with the torch.
“We need to clean that torch out.” I see the young apprentice doing exactly that. I see myself eight years before being told exactly that. It was the job Stu and Scrubs were on, rodbustin’ in a wide yellow-dirt basketball-court-sized section that would wind up being the garage of a successful call center, the days when Dr. Mackiel and OPS said I was nothing but a marginal teacher. I tied rod until they made up their mind what to do with me. The young apprentice finished cleaning the torch, the flame flaring out in a straight pretty stream.
“Who’s this for?”
“For Davis.”
”Yeah, you guys got much work?”
“Oh, we got a Kohl’s and a couple department stores.” He looked away from his torch and looked at me.
Because I was now one with the trades, now I could, hardhat buddy to hardhat buddy, brother to brother, ask the usual questions. Where you from, who’re you workin’ for, you got much work, any big jobs coming up?
I swear ironworkers know more than anyone if a powerhouse, a coal-burning power plant, is goin’ up. They can smell it in the air, feel it in their blood. There’s a tingle in their toes through their boots. As a matter of fact, my last trip to the hall, when I bs’d with Business Agent Bill Beaddie, who said that day all the boomers were gone, wouldn’t be back until things started shakin’ at the powerhouse; then there’d be work for five years.
Roger, with whom I didn’t mention my ironworker foray in the ‘90’s, confirmed this. “Yeah,” Roger said, moving away from us, “Our BA said there’ll be 200 ironworkers working 39 months on the powerhouse.”
Is that right. When are they gonna start?
They still haven’t let out the contract yet.
I thought, So what’s where the delay stem from?
Oh really.
I heard it might be somebody from out east.
Oh yes, of course, out east. I think, Is it the same contractor that built the powerhouse from which I fell?
I of course can’t remember the name. Then I do.
Ebasco?
No, Roger said. That doesn’t sound right.
I don’t know, I heard they were from Pennsylvania.
Uh huh.
And so ended our day and now the atrium…code name Copper
Wall…is really starting to take shape, framing nearly complete.
Rock On
August 22 It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.
We started puttin’ up the rock in earnest. Maybe it’s because
Krugger put a bug in Rodney’s ear. “Whenever the framing gets done.”
This comment was made a couple days a go. We revisited it again today. And Rodney said he was so mad he had to walk away.
“Yeah Krugger’s tried to call me on my cell phone twice but I ain’t gonna talk to him. They’re talkin’ about gettin’ me a raise. But I didn’t say anything, I just walked off.”
And now, Rod Hartman, also a North Bend native, also, I think, having worked with Rod before on various jobs in and around over the years, came on the crew. It was more or less a given that the three R’s could get the studs up but it’d take four R’s to get the rock out.
“Yeah Rodney’s moody at times but he’s one of the best at it,” said Rod2, his long dark black shoulder-length nodding approval. And now I can’t quite remember just exactly what Rod’s best at, something to do with getting the picture of how the structure is going to go, what it’s final out- come should be.
I for one don’t have the slightest notion of what should happen or what is going down. Like I told daughter Allison a couple days ago (and Kaitlin’s starting to fall back in the groove of getting in shape and handling the cross country—“my butt and legs are so sore” she commented to me just the other day), I hold the dummy end of the tape. I don’t think she really gets it, what it exactly means to be pointed to and gestured at and told to move to a point at the end and hold the tape. But, I figure, I’m but a first term, first year apprentice. Despite the fact that it seems that its been that way longer than what many would deem necessary, a work purgatory that goes on unabated, I at least know I’m now in the union, that I’d gradually gain a skill set, something I can put to good use.
And when Russell gets a complicated set of instructions from Rod that he was easily able to register, that I can’t follow or understand, I’m not sure which end is up. Russ gets the chalk line out there and snaps it then cuts. See, I told myself, This is how you learn.
All in good time, I guess you should call it.
Sol Brother
“James Ron, how’s it goin’?
“Goin’ real good.”
I walked with Illinois Dan back to the vehicles, past the bakery, cut down the alley before Sol’s that has used kids’ bikes locked on either side of the street on display and ready to ride before most Big O folks have rolled out of bed. I found out later that, no, the store wasn’t yet open. It doesn’t open until 8 am They have to get the bikes out there for inventory. You go in the store and the display cases are loaded with pistols and rifles and shotguns. These items, however, are not brought out on the sidewalk at 7 am for inventory.
America’s down trodden, past that small glimmer of hope that flickered in front of them but now was gone (but who can say when? A divorce, an addiction, an accident?), now are on this nervous if slightly desperate corridor of life, hustlin’ for chump change, things a little more black than usual. Could some have their kids walking now to school, instead of riding their bikes?
We were in the nether part of the day. Climbin’ in my truck, I kept thinkin’ how Rodney said I should drink milk to guard against the galvanizing. It’s like I felt I could taste the metal shavings in my mouth, looking at the bucket-sized pile before me that I sweep and dispose of at day’s end.
Russell, meanwhile, didn’t want to start rocking very bad, the corners of his mouth turning down slightly, but Rodney whipped through the ¾ section of dull white sheetrock all the way across with his knife, give it a nudge and then cut a little behind him and presto I watched as he slapped the sheet of his shoulder and spirited it to the opening, what I learned later was called a cavity, between the studs. I watched as him walk quickly past elevators that now have dark gray doors. I noticed the number “3” placed upon one of them.
And you still could hear the elevator crews’ voices rise and fall up throughout the day, other trades also going to their respective areas, a green shade of hats here, a red shade of hats there, taking, like the songs says, “care business everyday.”
Saturday In the Park
But we didn’t have as much of a noontime audience outside on the street as the day before when Rod sat next to a guy that had a little too much to drink and was wearing his feeder cap at an awkward angle and mumbled on about something from days of yore. Sometimes, Russ and I’ll go down there to the park’s corner and grab a bite. Sometimes we will have a few of the more permanent denizens of the street corner folk inveigle us with a few tales from the crypt, sometimes entertaining us with useless junk you don’t know whether they want to horde or sell. Sometimes we’ll see a few younger UP guys jogging by in shorts and tank tops for a causal noon run, talking to one another in quiet low and confident tones, ignoring the sea of humanity weaving spasmodically about them.
I thought how the other day when I went with Rod1 and Rod2 and Russ to Brandies: I had to stick out like a sore thumb because I wore my safety harness. But no one said anything. No one paid any attention.
And, Saturday employ, downtown just pretty much rolls up. No one’s around. Nothing’s open. I just sat in the carpenter shack on some picnic tables and ate with the men. But now it’s little past noon on a warm day and there’s a bit of bustling of people of all walks and talks who congregate at various points on the street corner.
Latrine Duty
August 23 “Yeah, it’s about 50-50.”
I was in stride with Foreman Jon as we moved ourselves towards our vehicles. We’d finished out a special Saturday of work. Jon told us yesterday, that if we were going to come in to work Saturday, we couldn’t fool around. “We’ll have to,” Jon said, looking at the crew of visibly tired carpenters at day’s end, discussing the need to do a little catch up on Saturday, “blow and go.”
Well, we did make it through most of the day. Jon even gave me another rock demonstration—how to cut it, how to rip it. Then use a rasp to shave the end off so it’s smooth. I thought about telling Jon about all the times when I was learning how to tie rebar, the number of times people showed me through almost four summers how to tie faster faster until finally, after awhile, they left me alone. I thought of telling him but I thought, Nah, what’s the use. Repetition, Jon, for me a tbi, is what really works. But, what would be the use?
Slowly but surely, I was maybe getting the hang of it. But, in the afternoon, Jon didn’t have to carry that many sheets of rock before he just said, “Ah, the heck with it, that’s enough. We got a lot done today.”
For some reason, I didn’t think we got all that much accomplished.
Of course, the burning question: would Allied get the finish carpentry contract—the placing of walls and doors and windows rather than the huge mule work of lugging 12 x 4 foot drywall, i.e. rough carpentry? Moreover, Allied carpenters would stay in the same digs for at least another year or better. Like a teaching contract, it was job security.
Jon said Midwest and another contractor were bidding feverishly for the interior portion of the monolithic structure.
Well, I don’t know how feverishly. But Jon said, “They’re comin’ in lower than us. Holder wants us to do it butcha gotta satisfy the Big Boy.”
Now, I wasn’t sure who or what he meant by the “Big Boy.” Or who was the they “comin’ in.”
But we did almost make it through the day before a respite. “Okay, time for a water break.” So Jon and I went on downstairs and to my discovery, there was water, like a small lake, all over the place from the stools and troughs inside the five plywood latrines that are slightly elevated and mounted on plywood.
No, I had to piss first and then get a water break. But, no, I couldn’t use the any of the latrines on the floor—they were all nailed shut. Sometimes, a guy would have to try to head for Floor 5 or Floor 7or Floor 9 in hopes that he could find one that was usable. The latrines became increasingly precious as the week wore on, some floors totally canceled out with large black X over the door.
But, I thought, heading for a floor that had at least one stall that was open, I’m glad I’m working Saturday because Jon took the time to give me tips on how to cut, how to break, how to rip.
Of course this was all well and good because previously I’d just stare at an immobile piece of drywall, not really knowing what to do or exactly how to proceed. Yes, I’d worked with Jack about six weeks ago and learned how to cut and rip and all but basically had forgot all the instruction. And then I’d watched Rod1. I’d watched Ron. I’d watched Russ. I was, of course, their student.
Rock on!
And then Jon showed me how to carry the stuff rock, a 12 X 4 dull gray sheet. Actually, he showed both Russ and I—I’m not sure how a guy that built log cabins in Idaho and Arizona felt about this instruction. But we pretty much just followed Jon around, listening and watching and doing. So we then were able to stack it how he wanted it, leaning ten sheets against the 2 X 4 guardrails that kept workers people from falling onto or dropping things onto the elevator crew below.
But as we were leaving I pointed out, and now this was past noon and we were about to leave so we could join our fellow carpenters and begin to rock rock rock on 4th floor, how there was a stud dangling from a ceiling.
It was up pretty high. I’d have to grab a ladder.
Jon looked at me and smiled. He was confident I’d have her down in no time.
Me, I wasn’t so sure.
Latrines Redux
And it was really almost amazing how sometimes, the latrines would be nailed shut, off limits. Besides the lifts, all workers shared communal bathrooms—stacked five in a row (thin plywood with metal doors). The rest rooms were stationed on odd-numbered floors until the 13th Floor (Holder not giving into building superstition, i.e. having a 13th Floor, I’ve heard, is not in some buildings because the reputation of it being an unlucky number).
So, if you were working above 13, you had to either drop down or journey up to the Penthouse, i.e. the 19th Floor. There you’d have to walk to the southwest edge, climb a small flight of stairs, push through a mock door, then step out onto a gravel-covered deck, the roof of the building. And there would be an ignominious yellow porta-potti, facing southwest, looking forlorn and slightly bewildered befuddled. Meanwhile, a view looking over the expanse of South O, turned west, looking over tops of trees and old buildings, many of them with the beautiful masonry around the windows and around it’s face, the gargoyles and curving masonry is both pleasant and calming and you thought about your ancestor’s who worked so hard and were such fine craftsmen.
This single stall, atop the building, could be used by either sex. It was filled with graffiti that didn’t get erased, paper rolls that didn’t get replaced, a door that wasn’t all that secure on its hinges. Unlike latrines on the lower floors that had American graffiti covered, that were sprayed out by Holder Helpers armed with black spray paint so much so that job’s end, when they had to go to the Great Latrine in the Sky, the plywood walls would be covered with black, this one had the look of Egyptian hieroglyphics. Red scrawls were on top of black scrawls and vice versa so that much of text was unreadable, punctuated in a few places like the huge letter F and then it didn’t take a guy very long to determine what this particular word was.
Lavatories on floors three and seven had the two end doors marked “Women Only”—Holder’s salute to the women’s movement—and were padlocked. The few women on the job were, presumably, the only ones with keys.
These latrines no doubt could tell their own piss stories, caked with bathos. Holder was subject to incessant scorn and derision by these anonymous authors as to how they were “running” the job. This scorn was shown by the indicated via black scrawls on shit-house walls. Julio, a square-shouldered Hispanic who took his job seriously, bore the brunt of criticism for trying to keep them safe. He made sure, among other things, that everyone wore their hardhat, their safety glasses, were working safe. Julio, nonetheless, was subject to written harassment. Messages on most bathroom walls—and sometimes on the drywall on the floors—told him where he should go back to (Mexico); what he should do with it (stick it); what “they” were going to do if he didn’t (“kick his ass”).
The day-laborers, meanwhile, who cleaned the latrines, could be seen un-nailing doors nailed shut or, giving up on a stall beyond repair, finally putting a padlock on a latrine that had been, for some reason, singled out as a place for supreme defilement, stuffed with toilet paper, feces on top of toilet paper, water oozing out of the stall. Some floors took on the look of a particularly forlorn refugee camp as small puddles seeped through to the plywood and out onto the slab. In dire straits, there would be a gigantic black X drawn across the door with a thick permanent marker—this stall was no longer in service.
Johns that were beyond immediate repair were nailed shut until the weekend until they could be, as it were, debriefed. Sometimes, entire floors would have all the stalls padlocked requiring a journey to a more “sane-i-tary” latrines above or below. I said, working with journeyman electrician Bob, how it reminded me of a book by Jonathon Swift, Gulliver’s Travels, how there was an island where there was a race of people, the Yahoos, that lived in trees and defecated on people and Gulliver was amazed that the ones with any intelligence on the island were the horses.
No, Bob hadn’t read the book, nor, that when I think about it, that much interested in doing so. Actually, I really don’t know how much he believed me but I told him that’s what the wanton latrine destruction reminded me of—the work of Yahoo’s; the Holder cleaners with the bright blue hardhats were the Hoynihims.
And today I notice a diminutive gal in glasses who, after I’d used an un-nailed one in the morning, saw her darting almost furtively into the last wooden stall door that has a female icon. It is the last one on the row of seven, the first two stalls are urinals, the middle three of either variety, and then, of course, the last stall for the few women on the job.
I didn’t know if this one particular one on the end had a padlock but on closer inspection revealed that it did.
What’s New Pussy Cat?
August 26 And then, one early morning, on our way to our destination, two ironworkers are talkin’ about a fairly common on-the-job subject, “pussy.”
“Yeah,” said one of the ironworkers, “there’s pussy all over. Sometimes bad pussy.”
His partner grunted a reply.
It reminds me of a refrain I’ve seen on various shithouse walls on various job sites, including this one, i.e., “No muff too tuff.”
“”Puuussy, puuusssy.” It was from Greg, Rod1’s brother, cajoling his older brother from some distant wing of the building. Sometimes, in the middle of the afternoon, out of nowhere would come, almost like a siren call, the infamous words. “Puuussy….puuussy…pusssy. Pussy, pussy, pussy.” Russ and I would stop. I would laugh at the sheer banality of it. Never, in my working days anywhere, have I heard anything so crazy. Russ would grimace and shake his head. “He is so immature.”
While Jack seemed to work ok with Greg, some workers I think, tried to avoid him. I know one young black apprentice I worked briefly with, Antony, hated his guts.
Buckhoist
Like a traffic jam, especially at start up and quitting time, the vertical cages are packed tight with men/women and material going up; they’re packed tight with women/men and trash going down. A smoker or two might finish his cigarette on the way up or, at the end of the day, start one for the journey down. Although it was a both a clear violation of job site rules plus an obvious affront to fellow brothers and sisters, no one really ever said anything—the puffer was allowed his own taste of freedom.
Building in American circa 21st Century took shape: one minute a dull yellow tower crane swung huge beams high in the air, the next minute studs are fastened beneath the iron then drywall attached. Wire and cable is run, water pumped. At UP raised computer floors are leveled and inserted; thick carpet is laid. Daily, trucks back onto a loading dock. Heavy loads of office furniture and computer terminals in square brown boxes were carried through the main entryway, carted up to a holding area, filling an empty room until they’re moved to the right place. Meanwhile, various crafts—ironworkers, electricians, carpenters, tinsmiths—frequently bump into one another; they jostle back and forth with what could best described as material acquisition and position.
Throughout the day, men and women—sometimes six deep—wait patiently on the dock. Small groups like molecules form for no apparent reason then break away. What many were waiting for were the temporary elevators, buckhoists, which take on the look of moving cages—bolted near the corners of the south and west sides of the building—filled with men and materials. At 7 am sharp, Monday through Friday, a pair of dull blue buck hoists on each end lifted a sea of different–colored hardhats to their respective floors.
I really wish I would’ve bought a camera because now there’s almost seven floors of sheetrock.
More Muscle
August 26 And Jason came on today.
“He’ll be the muscle,” Rod1 announced to our small rock group. Actually, it was something along the line of Rod2 who said he had to “get his lazy stepson’s butt out of bed and go to work.” What better way to start a career in carpentry than with the Master Builder?
Black-haired, stout, looking a few notches size-wise from being mistaken for a starting defensive end or weak-side linebacker, with clear features that can best be described as All-American, Jason is prob’ly by far the youngest one of the group—twenty-somethings into the trades a vanishing species across America.
One had to wonder how long he would last.
In fact, The Wall Gang had mushroomed to five as Ron Hartman, also a North Bend native, Rod2’s younger brother, came on board Monday or was it late last week? I don’t remember when he started but he was able to get the JLG worked down to what I now know is second floor and where, in the space of two hours (the morning wildness that seemed like months ago), Russ was pummeled by falling mortar then nearly pulled off the ladder less than an hour later.
Today I was leaving that area, remembering how crazy it was that morning that seemed so long ago. I dutifully retrieved Ole Yeller from Illinois Dan—whose wife has joined him from Illinois and thus makes a couple, of sorts—because I also had to reclaim my speed square that managed once again to fall out of my ironworker bolt bag.
“RONALD” is what Rod1 said to me in kind of a horse voice as, a little later, the gun slipped out of my hands and the cord attachment dropped a couple stories and because I had it draped around the scaffold, only went down 20 or so feet then commenced to swing—somewhat lazily—back and forth like a hang man’s noose. Rod1, and now Rod2, I notice, does the same thing: bind the gun’s cord with the blue power cord using electrical tape. Russell’s gun, the day before yesterday, went down from 5th to 2nd and slammed on the slab but wasn’t broken.
Retrieving Rod’s gun on the 2nd Floor, which took off a short time later and which I offered to grab, I came across my 50-foot power cord that had been left there it seemed like eons ago, now nearly buried from falling rock and debris and dirt, almost like a light dusting of building snow. I saw that it had my initials on it, made sometime ago with a black magic marker, RH. And I picked up Rod2’s safety glasses and a watch and, of course the cord. So I came upstairs with a mother load.
But the rock is going up so fast The Wall is now almost unrecognizable from the week before in the sense that it was a small army of metal studs standing stiffly at attention, row-by-row, column-by-column, higher and higher. I fit in sort of okay, a little awkward, perhaps, and I’m again surprised how fast Rod1 can measure out what the cut should be, cut it, score it, have it in place on his shoulders and then hook it through the cavity to Russell and me who stand at the ready, guns loaded. We steady it, make sure it’s square on the preceding rock below, and on either side, and then nail it.
Rod1, in many ways, becomes a man possessed. He does this rock climbing while thinking of The Wall depiction. Today there was some idiot Holder engineer who had a knock down drag out with Rod1. They were off in the corner screaming at one another. Who will battle tooth and nail and has a great picture of how The Wall has to shape up, how it has to be done. I could hear his voice screaming from down below, explaining how it had to be done, what changes he had to make with allowances, able to point out the inconsistencies in the Holder man’s reasoning.
I personally know how we’d measured it with plumb bob and laser, we knew “it was tits.” How could they be so ignorant?
Of course, a few weeks later, after we rocked the entire Copper Wall, the bottom section had to be redone. Seems like Rod1 didn’t account for the 16” difference between the sub floor, the slab, and the computer floor. Or something like that. But, in a rather marvelous sleight of hand, while Russ and I made our way upwards on the wing walls, 20-feet or so of drywall on either side of the Copper Wall, Rod1 and Rod2 and Ron and Josh were able to, somehow, change it out and correct it in less than half a day.
I basically thought, Hey, they’re going to have to take all the plywood out, take out the rock, the studs, start from scratch. But it seems like they must’ve simply taken the studs out and replaced them. I thought for sure that would change the angle but apparently, they were able to use enough sleight of hand to change it so you wouldn’t know the difference.
The Canadians
August 27 And then I saw, cutting channel studs with Ole Yeller, a bright white hard hat outside the glass…it was Steve, Local 444 Carpenter BA. “How do you get in this place?”
I pointed to a man-made entryway between the stairwells he could squeeze through.
I was happy to see Steve. I remember the last time was at the Carpenter’s 4th of July bash, how I said I didn’t have a steady job. And now, I’d been working two months straight. Got my first carpenter class out of the way. Had my CPR. My activated tools certification.
The blond-haired man with the big hands regarded me coolly, with an air of shared satisfaction. He gave me some union stickers, a couple handfuls. Steve wanted to know if the LeGrands were around. I said they were.
“Yeah,” he said. “I guess I know where I can find ‘em.” I remember how Russell and I were excited to go to the carpenter meeting. Greg LeGrand would have nothing to do with it. “Nah,” he said, waving me away, like I’d said perhaps the most outlandish thing in the world. Rod went on an elaborate discussion of how he was able to cut Bob Frank to the quick about some carpenter question, about some building procedure or something. And how Bob’s answer was so far off the mark as to not warrant further discourse.
Oh, no, they assured me.
They weren’t gonna pay any dues to this union. They didn’t give a rat’s ass what the union thought about it.
I watched Steve as he walked off carrying, instead of drywall, the union load, balancing unruly carpenters on broad shoulders. I knew the carpenters were a union that was having trouble keeping itself afloat. I thought of the journeyman carpenter George on the Patent job. He was the union’s treasurer. He’d been in it through thick and thin, had elevated himself in his brother’s eyes to be voted in as a treasurer. And now, here he was, working the night shift building scaffolds, looking not too much older than me.
I remember how George and I listened as old men workers to a young apprentice who had started six months before, thought he could, at any time now, “run the job.” It wasn’t too much longer, six floors in the air, that this young Zack let go of a piece of plywood, not leaning it squarely enough against the pile and a light gust of wind came up and pushed it over on top of George, bent over in his worn denim coveralls nailing a toe board.
“Whoa, sorry about that, dude,” Zack said, pulling the plywood back off. George and I looked at one another. Well, the young blood, full of energy, hot blood coursing through his veins, might have to learn to take his time a little bit. Oh yes, I could understand my position. I was starting from the ground up. But then to have put some time in and then be given shit work, I was both surprised and glad to see George at the carpenter meeting I went to, collecting dues, setting up for the drawing. I was surprised and glad to see him there as the treasurer. Of course, I didn’t see him at the next month’s carpenter meeting as Steve, his face wind-burnt, his shirt open, simply said to the group the treasurer office was vacant.
Will’s Return
I came across Jack looking to mark out a column. Greg and he go about on their splendid small journeys, column by column, in sequence, up the building, speeding their JLG around the floors. Meanwhile, the atrium wall is now well above them so I don’t see the pair of framers anymore nor have to run into Greg whose moods can be almost as unpredictable as his brothers.
And it’s just as well. Because if Greg sees his brother across the way, he’ll inevitably start screaming, “Puuussy, Puussy” throughout, it seems the greater part of the afternoon.
“Are you dreaming columns?” This I said to Jack one day as we were heading for our trucks.
“No, I’ve been dreaming steak and sweet corn,” he said with a slight smile.
And today was the return of Will. I thought I noticed who it was yesterday looking at the new group of guys below me, one with a bright yellow hardhat, the other with a bright white one, who had come down, they said, bringing bright smiles and a neat “eh” accent, from Canada.
These carpenters slap the plywood over rock. The Copper, I’m told, will then be attached onto the plywood by the tinner’s local. The Copper Wall picture is slowly brought together, it’s hue changing both rapidly and daily.
“I know where I can get some of that, ” I said to Russ. It was 4 feet of rock needed at the atrium’s end corner—where the scaffold didn’t reach—all the way up. I thought I’d seen the baker just a floor above. Hell, I thought, I can just grab the baker.
Russ also said he knew how to get it up there.
No, I said, I know where it’s at and took off. I went up a floor, then another floor; not a baker in site. Then, I saw a guy I knew worked for Safeway, who did the scaffolding for the job. He listened to my predicament and said the extensions we’d need were all the way up on 12—he might be going up that way. He’d bring some down.
He said same thing a little later when he came to our corner. No, he wasn’t about to go to 12 and get some. Russell came up with a plank that would let us reach across, me handing up the rock, Russell nailing it.
We went down to Floor 3 in the afternoon. Russell had brought his trouble lights. I squeezed myself into the corner where cripple studs had to be nailed against the rock and Russ shone the light. The former open slab was now covered with stud and rock and plywood and was now pitch black. I squeezed in and nailed it. I couldn’t believe this was the same place only the week before was open and airy and I could look everywhere. The only thing that showed we worked there was a pile of bent studs and other rock debris the cleaning crew would get at later.
Russ and I were doing a little trouble-shooting ourselves.
We went back to Rod and the gang, mission accomplished.
How about the extension to get the rock out to the far corners?
“No, he wasn’t going to furnish us anything,” I said to Rod when we got back up and he wondered how we got the sheetrock put up there. We gave him a brief rundown.
“This scaffold sucks,” is what Rodney said, but it’s something he always says. I for one, as first-term, first-year, don’t really know why the “scaffold sucks” or, basically what is wrong with it. It sure seems okay to me.
Rod again had it out today, this time with the guys from Canada, the respective measurements not squaring. Rod2, in league with his North Bend brother, said he’d go ahead and rock it all. That way, they wouldn’t have any easy access handing the plywood through the cavities.
And that’s how Will got on board, on The Wall Gang. “Krugger fired me,” he said, shrugging his shoulders and looking away. This I couldn’t believe. There at the HyVee job, I was the slowest and lowest. How could Will get canned?
“But I got on with these guys,” Will said, gesturing to two Canadians with bright yellow and bright white hardhats.
“So you doin’ some rock?”
I ruefully admitted I was. My rock skills have so much to be desired. After framing the atrium, cutting studs, even having trouble making a notch on the correct side if the stud bumped into the iron, I forgot even how to pick the dull white 4 x 12 sheet up. And today, picking up just a half sheet or so I have trouble handling it. This is after I posed and flexed at the gym last night but am the first to admit, even after I felt there was a couple of vainglorious looks from two older ladies, at least one of them, anyway, (the clown, “how his hair is growing thin!”), I can’t even hardly grab a hold of this white inanimate object without struggling. It’s like I have a wrasslin’ match with the rock.
And I lose.
But Rod and Canada are arguing about the measurements—that it’s a half-inch off. And now Mike, our Holder friend, does not recollect that he ever gave approval to the changes Rodney said he was making. And so now the one guy for Holder we thought we could reason with, an ally, was now turning against us.
Et tu, Brute!
But, down below, I could hear Will down below saying things like “Bring it over a little bit my way.” I could see how square 4 x 12 plywood sheets were on the white face, changing the Copper Wall landscape once again.
With the wood, it seems that things are falling a little bit better together now. At least there seems to be a little more work done, overall. Like almost mysteriously and imperceptibly, the pace picked up. Maybe it’s the Canadians working below. Maybe it’s the Copper Wall. I like to think it is. That is, they can look over and out and see Rodney’s creation advancing ever skyward. They can see the Master Builder at work and are thus inspired.
Like I’ve said in the past, it’s a bit of the Michelangelo, Sistine Chapel.
Get Here On Time, Don’t Leave Early
But Lincoln Bob said, in a confessional tone, looking at me resignedly in the parking lot, “Yeah Krugger caught us being out there four minutes early and yelled at us.”
This means that people are aware of the wrath of Krugger, a medium-build, salt and pepper-haired man my senior, perhaps, by a decade. He’s the overall superintendent for Allied. Thinking, back, it was him that walked around and watched Will and I at the HyVee job, had seen me sweeping, had perhaps determined somehow Will was working too slow. Was I sweeping fast enough? I didn’t know who the guy with the white hardhat was, walking around. I guess I did cut the mustard that day because there was a shop broom in my hands and I was pushing dirt. And now, at the Allied job in Downtown O, Kruger was coming down hard because people were taking off early.
All I know is, it’s so insufferably hot I’m glad I only have one more day to make it through.
Everyone Loves a Parade
But Local 444 Carpenter’s BA Steve showed us up. There Russ and I were, ready to cut and carry some rock. “Are we going to the parade?” Steve wanted to know.
I said, Sure, I’ll go.
I was looking forward to it. I mean, why not. The Labor Day Parade is when Big O closes a few downtown streets and lets workers put on a show. And hey (and I love how my life is so riddled with ironies), just six years before, I was Omaha Public Schools teacher, the school’s union rep. I got to walk ahead of the OEA (Omaha Educations Association) float with my two daughters Kaitlin and Allison sitting in old-fashioned desks, waving at the crowd. Never in my wildest dreams did I think that, six years hence, I’d be asked to walk in the parade as an apprentice carpenter. I’ve learned, as brain injured, never to look very far into the future.
No, not asked, really, if I was going to go to the parade, but, as first-year apprentice, it was required. I even had promised at the last union meeting to work on the float that the carpenters were working on at a high school parking lot that the carpenter’s truck would then pull down Douglas Street, a few blocks west of the courthouse, but I never quite made it up there.
And now Russ said Sure, he’d go to the parade
But won’t go on any of the rides. That’s for kids, Russ said.
But today OSHA (Occupation Safety and Health Administration) was there. Everybody was supposed to make sure they were tied off. But then I did one of my loops from the scaffold to the platform without tying on or off and it was so quick but I thought throughout the day, grabbing a scaffold bar and swinging myself up to the slab ahead of the west bank of elevators what were the possibilities that somebody was watching me? And it’s really silly and it’s really show off. I pretend it’s like I’m a trapeze act. But I have all my tools and what’s to say a hammer won’t go sliding out of my pouch? What’s to say Julio won’t catch me in those antics? Well, of course, the other strategy is to climb up one rung up the scaffold and work your way out and over. But this takes ever so much time. But that’s what Russ does. He just takes his time and just climbs up and out.
And I though how Russ awhile back couldn’t get the drywall off the JLG, didn’t have enough upper body strength to push it off. So I clambered up there and worked it right off. Which doesn’t necessarily mean I can carry a full sheet of rock.
“You’re stronger than me in your upper body,” Russ said, looking at me through his round glasses. “I just couldn’t get that thing worked off.”
Well, I was glad I had some positives. But then I thought how ridiculous it was to be climbing around like that. The chance someone is watching me, that Julio saw me. I’d get run right off the job. I told myself I had to quit horsin’ around, no matter how monotonous cutting channel studs, cripple studs, or screwing rock can be.
We go forward.
Chapter 9 The Master Builder
Building Mastery
August 28 Well now it was like I almost uttered the words Master Builder.
But that wasn’t able to enter in as Rod1 kept on the conversation with Rod1.
”I went down with Rod (Rod2) and we checked it with the plumb bob and it was tits. So I owe you an apology.”
Now Russ and I stared at him. We didn’t know where he was coming from. What was he talking about? Nobody had said anything to either Russ or to me. This is what he’d also said when we were on lower floors. But, as usual, we let him continue. What’s so interesting for me is I never knew what he was going to say or what mood I’ll find him in.
“Yeah, it’s tits. Me and Rodney went down and measured and it’s perfect. I’m gonna throw those laser’s away.”
Rod1 continued. “And if I don’t get a $2 an hour job, I’m quittin’.” Rod looked at the huge yellow scaffold standing erect before us. “It’s at 7 am in the morning I’m listening to all this abuse. ‘Maybe it’s over my head’ that Holder guy said. I took Rod’s son-in-law and grabbed him by the shirt, I was so pissed.”
He continued, like a speeding car with no brakes. “I haven’t been that mad since my wife said we lost the house. And I hugged her.” Rod1 came up for air. “It was that tall Dan who said ‘Maybe this is over your head.’ I had to go in a room and cool down for an hour.”
He paused and reflected. “It’s just that somehow Dan from Holder got things off on the wrong track. Said the measurements were wrong. But the mullion is off because it’s not true to the world so we just have to, floor by floor, move the track one way or another every time.”
And sure enough, this was true. If you looked straight up the molding that brought the eastern edge to where the atrium wall starts, you could see that it didn’t run perfectly straight all the way up. There’s a slight abutment here, a slight inward dent there. Mostly less than a ½ inch off, but, you could see the vert didn’t run straight up. But, there was no correcting it. It was already up, from Floor 1 to Floor 20.
But really, it was almost inconceivable. Would the lower part of the Copper Wall have to be redone? I mean, can’t Rod1 read a blueprint with the best of ‘em? Of course he could. He took every care and precise measurement to make sure that the wall was going up straight and true. And then perfectionist Russell. Heck you couldn’t even have a screw out of place before he’d start hollering.
Yet arguments continued. Were some of measurements wrong?
“I just blew up at the meeting,” Rod said, returning to The Gang of Four. “I just told ‘em, ‘I’m not takin’ that fuckin’ wall down.’”
We all nodded in a mixture of support and adoration. We knew he was doing it right.
Like I said, our crew had grown from Rod, Russ, and myself to the end of July. Then Rod Hartman. Then Rod’s brother Ron—was it a half brother? I’m not sure—the two looked nothing alike in manner or appearance—soon joined us. I’m thinking how they all hailed from North Bend. And then Rod’s adopted son Josh—who was suddenly in the trades and hooked up right quickly with Rod1. We now were the Gang of Six: Five R’s and a J.
So we all pretty much did the middle section, the atrium, all together, like one happy family. The rock seemed to fly and before you knew it, we were nearing the 12th Floor. Then, Floors 13 to 20, the big rock done, we split up. Russ and I were pretty much teamed up. That first day, Russ, lolly-gagging on getting the drywall over to hang on the sidewall, the wing wall, and here’s Ron Hartman, cutting, scoring and leveling drywall in one quick motion, carrying it over fast and true and sure, sticking it between the narrow crease of mullion and elevator wall at us, waiting for us to grab on.
Ron said he’d come from another job further downtown, the Hilton.
How come?
He shrugged his shoulders and said he hadn’t been getting along with the foreman. He’d been a schoolteacher, PE and History, like so many would-be jocks usually wind up doing, who first start at a juco then finish out at a four-year college. But Ron was quite strong and tall and young and skilled such that he never really had to be told what to do. And so suddenly it was quite a crew. And this crew had the Copper Wall done in no time.
We rocked.
Russ and I, conjoined to rock the sides, what they called the east wing wall, knew we had to pick up the pace. However, Russ couldn’t help but getting past the perfectionist kick. So, while it was beautifully plumb and level, rock at perfect 90’s, the crew of Ron and Jason, even though they had more rock to carry, the west wing a good 12 feet wider, were more than a floor ahead of us.
Looking back, I could see what they were trying to do with Russell, the Navy Seal, perfect work but pretty slow and me, the old man: quoting the general foreman Greg Krugger’s quick succinct saying, “less talk, more rock.” We really couldn’t help it, but we were going the wrong way. Ole Ron came over to our side one day and just started shoving the drywall through the cavities at us, picking it easily up and flying it through, like there was really nothing to it, like it was no problem at all.
He managed to just about catch us up.
Russ and I, well, we liked to deliberate about it a little bit maybe. At least, because I was the newest apprentice on the job, had so much to do before I could begin to understand the general nature only by following the ex-Navy seal’s ship. He turned out to be such a perfectionist, I was amazed to see him lean over my shoulder to check on my screws I was nailing into the drywall. Russ made sure, not only that I’d hit the studs, but they were lined up. Yes, it may have been a fairly slow wall, slappin’ on the drywall so precisely but you can bet it was not only straight, it was fastened to the studs so strong, I figured, it would last a good part of forever. And then, finally, we were left alone. We could work the smaller eastern wing of the Copper Wall, taking it to the 20th Floor, at our own pace.
And I still remember the day Ron came in with all purposeful intent. He looked impatient, almost fidgety. Like he wanted to holler at us and tell us to hurry the hell up. We had to get the rock up. We had to get going. Always, we had to be careful that we didn’t work too closely to the elevator guys slamming studs and rock around, that were working on either side of the wall, where it was going to go up. They had a makeshift wooden barrier to protect them but that, in turn, didn’t exactly prevent tools from being dropped on their heads. However, it was a fairly handy place to leave various pieces of needed equipment, the small hall between the two elevators a good place to store the metal studs that would be needed, a good place to have tools like Ole Yeller Chop Saw laying about to be pressed into service.
And this was pretty much repeated throughout the floors from 3rd to 13th, be wary of the elevator crew. And yes, I do remember one time where some metal studs had to be handed to Russ maybe and I let them lean briefly on the scaffold—that was rumored to be the 2nd highest in the country, extending from ground floor to the Penthouse on 20th floor—and off it went, spilling all the way down to the bottom. Fortunately, there was no work being done in the section and it fell harmlessly in the empty courtyard below.
Rockin’ in the Wing World
August 28 “Do you want to go out there today? I was out there yesterday and, after all, fair is fair.”
Russ looked at me as we girded our loins with tools and safety harness for the day ahead.
“Sure, I’ll go out there.” Of course, I’m shakin’ in my shoes, full of apprehension: I mean, it was but a fortnight ago I’m fallin’ off the iron. Of course they don’t read the paper because I have my tome to the world, i.e. how difficult is to keep steady work after a serious mishap. No nobody read it. At least, anybody that did read it certainly didn’t recognize the first-term, first-year apprentice author trying to cut studs and trying to carrying drywall with the best of ‘em.
Of course, I’m thinking, I’ll do something dramatis personae. I’ll post the essay in the shack. And they’ll see it midst all the other notices on the bulletin board. All kinds of questions answered. Why I who couldn’t keep a job. Why I became a carpenter. Why I quit teaching?” There, there’s the answer. Then all kinds of praise and congratulations. But, no, maybe not.. Maybe just bragging. Too many times, in one way or another, they’ve all heard the Song of Myself, driving down the road drinking beer, downing shots in the bar, watching the ol' lady head out for good with the kids. Plus they’d see that maybe there was no real way I’d ever make I, I could ever do it Nah, forget it. Stop trying’ to always call attention to yourself.
And here I am: I’m up on 14th Floor. Russ devised something he can stand on—then I hand up a sliver of rock. This means there was scaffold there but nothing to stand on. Just a couple planks. So he was able to get the sheets that I handed up to him, put into play. Now, 15th Floor, we reverse. Now Russ hands the rock to me. and I’d step out on the planks and plunk the rock on top of the rock below and nail it. No, there was nothing to stop my fall. The heads of the men below us on the ground floor now smaller and smaller. No, no way I’d do this if I wasn’t tied off, if I didn’t have my safety harness on, my lanyard slapped onto the scaffold. Still, I didn’t like the idea none of falling.
I thought of how, working iron, after I showed I couldn’t tie rebar on my first job back on the iron after a 20 year layoff I was doing structural. Even though it was an 8-inch beam I could walk across, it was still a good 40 feet above the second floor. I looked down. I’d drop on the slab. Concrete, I remember Dad saying one time, is so unforgiving. I remember how Woody, the ironworker who was also checking bolts asked, “Are you scared?” I said that I was.
That was ten years ago. A few days later, I was run off the job.
But this was late afternoon. Today would be like the day I’d be climbin’ down and Foreman Neal ’d said, “I’m takin’ you off the iron.’”
Plus, I had dropsy today. I have my new keyhole saw. But I dropped it before I used it. See, I’m not comfortable where it’s sitting in my pouch. I get the bright idea to toss it through the studs and onto the floor. I take care to not hit Russell’s heavy leather bag that I lug up. It is so heavy. But I’m able at least to carry it up a flight of stairs without stopping.
At any rate, I aim to miss this bag but the bright little yellow keyhole saw hits the stud with a clang and falls all the way to the slab 14 floors below. to the ground. Man, and I’m tryin’ to be careful. Then Rod pokes his head through the partition a floor below me a few seconds later. He looks up through the end of the studs up at me and I’m all sprawled out, suspended. Or was that later? I expect him any minute to come up and replace me with someone else.
But I managed to drop a few more things—hammer, speed square. Because I have to tie off and crawl through the ends of the scaffold to nail at the drywalls very edge, my body going from vertical to horizontal back to vertical, like I’m squeezing through a gate. I’m amazed that I look down 14 floors and it doesn’t bother me in the slightest. But I do a lot of dropping and supremely slow work still Rod1 hasn’t come up to replace me. What gives? So, I guess I’ll just stay on.
But I did get a few shakes when I had to go out and nail this rock that was slid through by Russell. There was no place where I could hold. But no one seems like they’re going to give me any exceptions to the rule. I tell myself I either shit or get off the pot. I didn’t know whether to shit or go blind. So I pretty much found a way I could brace myself by holding onto the scaffold with the crook of my good left arm. Then I’m able to stick it. Right through the rock, right in the stud.
So we were able to wrestle with it and argue it around and I’m on so much more of a higher plane than when I was doin’ clean up with the ironworkers at Ameristar with Willie and Steve and George Macht. In fact, I’m working higher now than at any time in my life.
In fact, when it comes to the ironworkers, I was coming back from retrieving my cone—the second thing that managed to drop out of three—I said to the tall rangy and older ironworker who said, at one time, he was six months from retirement. He had a “Fuck Bush” sticker on the top of his dull white hardhat. He was one of the ironworkers that was none too friendly.
“How’s it goin’?”
“Not worth a fuck.”
“How come,” I said, looking at him hopefully, optimistically, like there’s something I could do to lift his spirits or but this query got no reply.
I could see later a couple ironworkers putting up some more iron along the back ends of the panel that looks out into the atrium.
And one was cussin’ because the tip was plugged and when I went by them at noon I saw one was prone on the few sheets of plywood while the other is cleaning the tip and it looks like must be an apprentice standing over him near the gang box that says “Davis.”
As does the water cooler. (And now I’m existential ironwork. I’m back to the West Corporation garage, tying rebar with Stu and Scrubs. Screamin’ Rodney tells me to “Get the fuck out of the way” and I want to cream him. I watch him at noon in his Davis truck just munching on his sandwich. And I was so mad. I couldn’t even eat. It was all I could do to not walk off the job. But I took all my tools with me than night. ‘Course, I did have an interview with a hospital CEO as I was trying to freelance write for a weekly newspaper. So, this took a couple days and by that time they didn’t need me anymore. And I never saw Screamin’ Rodney again. But word got around because ol' Jerry Bailey, he told me, a few years later, Screamin’ Rodney wanted me to “come and work for him.” No, the job super from Davis had asked me if anything was wrong. “No, I said. “No problem.” One thing I’m not, I’m not a snitch.
Another ironworker who saw that I was having trouble lining up a 8 inch rebar said something like “we’re gonna shove it up your ass” and I said, “Yeah, go ahead and try” and I was glad I was leaving early that day.)
I saw some OSHA folks around. Beneath hardhats are a pair of spiffy black shoes; the men and women are so well dressed and well-pressed it doesn’t look like they were going to crawl down anytime soon and extend a hand to help nail some rock.
And I hope the mess with Holder is erased because Rod knows what the heck he’s doin’—the Master Builder.
There’s Not a GD Thing I Could Do Today
August 29th After Monday, when we threw it all together, I was in constant dread of how much higher, how much faster we’d have to work. I can handle the height, it’s carrying the load high up that gets to me.
One of the Mexicans—and just the other day there was seven or eight that stood by the carpenter shack, not talking but amongst themselves, staying in their own small group—came up to me and gave me a broad smile. Like I knew his language or something. I just said “Si no comprende.” And then he just started talking to his compatriots, which have come out of the hall in a good purple and orange handful, all with dark hair and tan skin, smiling and excited.
Illinois Dan didn’t like it. “What’s all these wetbacks coming on the job for, I’m thinkin’ of movin’ on. I called a couple of BA’s and I said ‘We need some workers. They should send some people down.’” Dan ever and always was advancing the Dan cause. It was tough, of course, to drive a long ways and not make enough money to cover.
Dan said he’d just about quit the other day when Krugger said something like, “I like it when carpenters have their tools with them.” This pissed Dan off. “What’s he mean, he’s glad I got my tools on. Why, I just about ready to walk off the job, right then and there,” his hands on his hips. Of course, Danny, a traveling journeyman, had more than enough tools with him. I thought of how Krugger’s comment to Rod1 “whenever the framin’s done.” This got him “pissed off.” I know I wasn’t a journeyman, didn’t perhaps really know at the implied insult but I just thought they were being a little crazy about it.
But things seem to be falling into place. Yesterday, Russ and I went from Floor 3 to Floor 6 or so, rocking the wing walls.. Rod2 and Josh are rocking the larger wing wall on the western side. In fact, they were pretty much always just below us, it seemed.
In fact, when we were putting in out last sheet, a 12-foot long rock cut to about 14 inches, and we had to steady it, there was Rod1 and Rod2 right below us. Whatever were they doing? If we let it go, it’d have clear sailing to 8 floors below, decapitate an arm.
“Should we drop a screw down there?”
“Nah.”
But Russ wanted to alert them. We didn’t but then when it came time to hie all the tools back down to 3rd Floor from 6th, where we’d started that day, there was no way, Russ said, he was going to lug all those tools down to third floor, all the trips we’d have to make. So, out of nowhere, Russ took off and came back a short time later commandeering a JLG that he began to ride blissfully around, a big grin on his face. He backed it up to where all the tools were—the three guns, the ladder, the lights, four pairs of extension cords, his bucket, his bag and we were able to quickly load ‘er up.
But then we had to wait a long time for the cage and finally the gal stopped; all the hard hats looked at who was coming along for the ride with a what-the-fuck-is-this attitude when they saw the new passengers. But really, since this wasn’t all that unusual, the JLG riding between floors—it nevertheless sent waves of worry down Jon Lipincott’s spine; he always wondered if the buckhoist could hold the load. He’d shake his head, always admonishing his men not to ride along if it was jam packed full.
Russ, then, quickly backed the JLG onto the elevator. We had to push it to get it up over the small hump between buckhoist door and building slab and then the chain suddenly jumped off the rear wheel’s track and a red haired guy with a pony tail re-attached it. It was a quick trip to Floor 3, tools loaded, but then more than one person had to get behind it and push it off, like a pushing a stubborn cow off the truck and out onto the pasture.
So now we were safe and it was a good idea but then Russ decided to back it into the other JLG and down to 2nd floor where, as day ended, we had it parked in the corner.
Tell Time
September 4 “What time is it partner?”
“I got 1:25.”
“1:25?”
“No, Ron, it’s 2:30.”
“Hey, my watch broke, wise guy.”
My only flame up this particular juncture. Of course Ron knows everything and he’s very good and he’d worked at Midwest for a number of years and was “a teach.”
And Rod1 wasn’t there today. We got part of the skivvy from brother Greg who was, as usual, standing up there on the JLG hollering down to Jack.
Jack looked at Russ and I, his eyes rolling. “See what I gotta put up with?”
Greg continued. “We went bowling together and I think he got horny (I’m not sure if that’s the word he used but it seems that Rod went out after the bowling. He met up with new flame Barb.) “Yeah, I got the kids dropped off and he just said ‘give me 15 more minutes.’ And then I didn’t hear the rest of it but seems he feel right back to sleep.” I thought of the morning when Russ and I came up to the 15th Floor and there was Rod1, sprawled out on the plywood, his hardhat still on, like he’d drank all night and just came to work. This lent credibility to Greg’s story.
Young Greg had an audience.
“This 6 am stuff, I’m not doin’ this 6:30 stuff.” He stretched, his arms making a wide arch. Gregg was telling Jack specifically, Russell and I generally. I don’t think he’d made it to work until after 9 am, Jack a lone gunner on the column-framing job. “But Jon said he made me for 8 hours.”
This Russell and I guffawed about the rest of the day. “Yeah, come in at 2, get a full day.”
I wouldn’t have said anything. I wondered why Greg was letting us in on it.
But, later, worker absent or no, Chief Inspector Julio wanted to know who took the boards down. I of course didn’t know but Russell admitted later he’d taken them down, tired of walking through them and between them and all, going from vert to horizontal, like climbing through a fence.
But the Canadians, a personable, friendly bunch with a wonderful endearing “eh” accent, and the 36 year old black guy sayin’ he was a few minutes away from “skinnin’ and grinnin’” as he was pulling off his tools made, along with another black guy that, if Jason was a weak-side linebacker, he was the strong side one—maybe 15 pounds and three inches more mass, and really did look, like Will, muscle on the job, for a New Crew on the Copper Wall.
But now, now that I’m on the 7th or 8th floor and I just don’t even look down at the floor below…it’s just so unlike the first days workin’ iron in Norfolk; I wouldn’t even go out on the scaffold which was but 8 feet above the ground. I was just so timid about the whole thing.
But Krugger ran the show today. Jon had a call that his daughter had had a baby in the hospital in Des Moines, so Greg came up to our general area. He caught me carrying up the bucket and bag of Russell up the stairs which are so heavy and hard to even hardly lift but I always challenge myself and see if I can’t get it up to the next resting place without stopping. And I do but then I get there and there’s a medium-height, slightly heavy built man wearing a shiny white hardhat and I recognize it as the infamous and insufferable Greg Krugger who gives a slight smile to me.
Keys to the City
September 5th And there were bit no more smiles from Krugger but Keys to the City.
Now, why did John give me the key? We’re the only ones coming back tomorrow. Illinois Dan asked me Was anyone going to work Saturday?
I told him to ask the guys workin’ on the Copper Wall and see if they needed any help.
I have to admit this is a surprise because Danny doesn’t want to work on Saturdays. And other people don’t want to work on Saturdays because they don’t pay overtime unless you’re up to 40 hours. I thought of it as another union slight—for the ironworkers, it’s always OT after 8 hours, no matter what the day, always time and ½ on Saturday, double time on Sunday.
”I’ll try to get it for you,” said Rod, full of confidence, a look in his eye. “It usually takes a month or so.” Rod had told me about a special blade on the saw that would cut the studs a lot faster. Sure, why not, I could use one of those. Also, the cone for my gun I usually had in my pouch. Somehow I’d lost it. And now there was no way I could set the trigger. This didn’t matter all that much but it just made the job that much easier.
Later, Rod1 was handing out checks today, Friday. Of course, some companies, even though the checks are there on Thursday, don’t give them out. The workers, it was feared and, was shown, will cash their checks at the bar and not show up Friday.
Another slight.
He seemed much more content, it seemed, though he did miss yesterday. He looked a little haggard, and, as Russell pointed out, with the new flame in town, he wasn’t talking about his kids anymore. Which means that some of the concomitant handicaps that come with fresh and new divorce is abated somewhat.
The heart is a lonely hunter.
Nor is Rod1 being near so direct in his conversations about this new babe Barb. But she got off work and they drank on the bowling night and so Rod didn’t make it into work yesterday.
But later in the day, Russ and I thought we had all sorts of eyes trained on us. “Leave that and come and help me with the sheet; we’re holding onto it.”
So I had to scramble down the scaffold and lend a hand. There’s two Holder guys there; Jon was there; Krugger was there; Rod1 was there.
“Don’t set it there on the track.
So Russ kept sitting the screws into this quite large piece of rock what we had to spirit around other portions of the scaffold and Greg says, “I thought I said not to screw it there.” So we pulled the screws out and took it above the track a foot or so.
Other Constraints
I watch as other carpenters that our journeymen caulk the portion along the walls. And then other ones have to. A whole lot of caulking going on. I do my level best to avoid it, perfectly content on cutting or notching my channel studs, cutting up a cripple for a quick brace.
We Got a Fire in the Hole
Yes, that’s what it came to yesterday. It was so early in the morning. I was working by myself. The ironworker wasn’t there and so I just grabbed on to the torch and started cutting a little piece of the iron. I should’ve had enough sense to put a little partition below me but I didn’t just a little piece of rock would’ve caught it. And I was lucky, the first big piece went right through five stories to the ground and there was no problem…just straight down. So then there was this little dollar-sized piece that I nipped off just as easily, even in shorter time.
However it bounced off a stud and instead of hitting the slab, fell on the purple cloth that the Canadians used to cover the plywood Rod1 said was used for sound protection.
But this is when the fire started. I noticed how it fell right onto the dark purple sheet. It made an immediate dark spot and then all of a sudden, a flame started to flicker, almost like you had a dual-purpose cigarette lighter. And then it went the size of basketball, and then, as I began to call, “Help, help” through the rock, through the tarp I was amazed at how my voice didn’t carry very far. Immediately I scrambled down, almost falling down from the scaffold I tried to go down so fast.
Finally, I was at the flame that, by the time I got on the slab, had amazingly flickered out. So it meant, I thought, the purple cloth was flame retardant. Nevertheless, I felt so amazed that I’d been that careless and burn the whole thing down.
Well, I can’t believe it was a Saturday and I got to park near the site. I also took my new camera.
I thought how I was able to stop a potential hazard. I was seeing whether or not the oxygen was off and I noticed I guess an electrician on a JLG hitting the upper part of the iron with a grinder. Sparks were flying through the air descending, I noticed, on the propane tank. I went up and waved. This got his attention. He shut the grinder off. The yellow shower of sparks stopped flying. I said, “You got sparks falling on the propane.” He looked down and, like for the first time, saw the torch.
He clambered off the JLG and looked at the blue oxygen and the white propane and turned and said, “Thanks” after I said, “you gotta be careful, I’ll move it away from ya.”
This I reported to Russell. He said, “Propane? You mean the oxyacetylene?”
Yeah,” I said, “that’s what I meant.”
I couldn’t even remember the name of the oxyacetylene. I was calling it propane. How many years have I been working union construction and I still can’t remember what it’s called? Oh well, I guess it’s something that comes with uneven tbi territory.
But Russ and I knew it was Rodney’s dilemma in that he’s getting calls from his wife in Ogallala on why he’s not been contacting the kids.
I noticed yesterday his voice had a deeper range to it that is quite sexy and I guess is on the appealing side to the new gal named Barb.
The tart is a lonely hunter.
But not only did I decide to buy a camera and take some shots of the scaffolders above me, expanding and slamming, and those on the outside and way down to where the dark purple paper is I think I’ll take it with me Monday because as we get higher.
It’s getting so high, I’m going to pee my pants. The hardhats on the ground floor are but a small speck.
Because just yesterday, we scramble to the 12th floor. It’s like a different world, now looking down at the city’s rooftops, the three-story library a mere speck. Even the conversation is different.
“That’s gonna make me start drinkin’ whiskey early.”
“I’ll be drunk by 6 o’clock.”
“That’s where I’m headed,” when I made the comment that it’d be a good time for something cold.
Of course, we’d made it through the greater share of the morning. It was pushing onto 10:45. I rolled my eyes when I looked at my watch and saw that there were only a few hours since we’d started—we still had more than a couple hours to go.
Zero Tolerance
May 3rd I thought, six months later, when I was an apprentice electrician, quickly nearing the end of my Sparky days as first-year, first-term apprentice, how I’d heard Jon Lipincott, months before, said, “There’s zero tolerance on this job” and quickly walk away, his head down.
And, almost like déjà vu all over again, they’re doing a night shift for the carpenters—could that be the burly carpenter that got run off the job?
See, basically I was following second-in-command Matt’s orders. He said, almost in annoyance, “Everything, get it all down, get it all out.” So here I was, listening to Matt, watching him point and move his arms in a sweeping motion at all the conduits and pipes and wires and like materials that had to be gotten down off the coming-to-life floor, the sparkling addition of Harrah’s Casino, but days from opening, I looked and saw the Allied carpenter that had been run off the job, falling prey to Jon Lipincott’s zero tolerance policy: no sexual harassment on the job.
The matter, so to speak, came to a head when this particular early 30’s, fairly-burly looking carpenter supposedly had asked the comely if slightly overbite tooth-gapped young female elevator operator Jesse for a blow job. Whether this was in jest or not, as he asserted it was, whether or not it was not unlike similar diatribes launched form the male gender at the young lady who bent down, day after day, hour after hour and reached high in the air and pulled the buckhoist door shut and then spirited those upward or downward, per request of the passengers, all day long, this carpenter and his apprentice friend Fred could no longer ride the elevators: she wouldn’t give them a ride.
Somehow Foreman Lipincott got wind of this clash and there, one warming fall morning, when it seemed like we’d never get the job done, never meet the deadline, the building looking almost exactly the same as it had the day before, and the day before that, Jon said, before all the carpenters gathered ‘round to receive the day’s sound bite.
“You’re fired.”
Local 444 Journeyman Carpenter Mark’s face colored slightly. “Well, other guys say the same thing.”
“That don’t matter,” Jon Lipincott said, lowering his head, staring at the ground and moving quickly forward to where there was a 5 foot pile or rock and upon which many of the men leaned on and set their lunch pales, “there’s zero tolerance on this job.”
At any rate, I remember coming to work at 6 am(Kath couldn’t believe that first thing after rehab I was working 12’s. “They just wanted you to quit,” she said later, after my Sparky career short-circuited.). Mark and his night shift carpenter crew were just leaving.
Of course, I didn’t have my Hiller hardhat on. Ironically, I had the same hardhat on when I was working for Allied. I looked at him and he looked at me and I think we both drew a faint bead of recognition. But we more or less shrugged our shoulders and went our separate ways.
Zero tolerance is a new term in the construction world: both of us were trying to get used to.
The tart is a lonely hunter.
****,
That's what prompts me forward: a stimulus. Even though I haven't heard from her in so long, I do remember how she made me pull the dissonant pieces together.
