dec 23

Now I lay me down to sleep...

The Christmas carolers...

when Riddle came up to the door of the pink house, festooned with a single strand of lights around the gutter.

I'd be deposed and he was a traitor but we welcomed them forward and soon, looking at him standing amidst the players, I started wondering if there weren't more designs.

(I'm just reviewing el Christmas Miracle....how Ickie set it off with "I'd resign if I were you" and Garland, wearing brown beads around her neck, launched into a diatribe.)

And, as it turned out, there was.

Oops, can't lose the thread....Garland ganging up on me. Oh yes, now I remember. Looking at the Chapter 6, it was worse than I thought. "In his classroom 11 times and still I see no improvement." Etc. Well, there was more poignancy with Riddle and Straatmeyer: it was so new and fresh.

And then, I think about the first person to fire me back in the sticks: yes, it was Marci Moran, brushing an invisible crumb off her pant leg. I was going to treatment. That would save the day, or would it? To the night time gig because I had to be teaching during the day. And doing my administrative internship with Jim Deignan.

So it goes.

And now, we're up to Chapter 11. Pretty exciting, eh?

Chapter 11

OEA OFFICE
Mr. Hartnett’s teaching contract is not being renewed because of the unsatisfactory performance reflected in his last formal evaluation, and the lack of any reason to change that assessment in light of Mr. Hartnett’s subsequent performance during the school year.
letter to Tom Scates from Baird, et. al Law Offices


Despite assurances that my teaching contract might be favorably re-examined, I still had doubts. I found himself calling Mackiel direct.
The Asst. Supt.’s voice came on over the recording, a little distant, a little strained. Was it due to new chinks in the armor making so many tough decisions? of his collective conscious as he represented so many while making such a tumultuous decisions?
I did get a hold of Scates. however.
Maybe Tom Scates was reading my mind. Or sense my apprehension. He prob’ly knew I’d almost hurt myself and another ironworker on the job.
“Yeah, why don’t you come by the office tomorrow evening. Sue Fullerton’s driving down from Lincoln. You can bring Kathy if you want to.
“Sure,” I said. “That’d be great.”
“We need to go over some things before we see the district lawyer.”
“I’ll be anxious to meet Sue,” Kath said, as they drove to OEA headquarters in an old section of downtown the next day.
It was the second time I’d met Sue. Wearing short-cropped brown hair, with a splash of freckles, she is friendly and outgoing. Cute and fit, I thought how she bore a striking resemblance to a younger version of Mom.
After pleasantries were exchanged, we looked at the three binders. It was the first time I’d seen Scates without his dark blue suit coat on yet, somehow, it looked as if he was still wearing one.
We all looked at one another. “It’s gonna be an uphill battle,” Sue said.
“That’s all about me?” I said, dumbfounded that anyone could even care too hoots whether or not I was a teacher.
Tom Scates replied, “Yeah, that’s all of your record.”
“Man,” Kath said. “They sure do have a lot of stuff on Ronnie. All he’s doin’ is tryin’ to improve his teaching.”
“Yep," Sue said. “They missed an opportunity."
“Well, it’s good we have you guys on our side.”
Sue continued. “Like I told them, all those observations, that’s just a description of someone with a head injury.”
“I know it,” Kath said. “He’s worked so hard.”
“Yes,” Sue said. “It’s not a result of poor teaching. If you’re not aware of his accident, you can’t judge his ability. The case is for brain injury; what we see is brain injury.”
“Graphically, we don’t understand.”
I jumped in. “Yeah, I tried to tell ‘em that right after I saw Korn. That maybe my forgetting things or not having things in proper order is due to my accident. I told ‘em I fell three stories way back in February of my firs year. It’s just like they didn’t believe me.”
“Well,” Kathy said, “because he looks so normal, they think he’s making it up. But,” she said, her blue eyes beginning to sparkle, “believe me, I know. I’ve lived with him.”
“And,” Sue said, “it seems that he made attempts to get out of teaching special ed. He requested two transfers.”
“Yep,” I said. “I’ve always wanted to teach English.”
“And what surprised me,” Sue said. “And that’s what we argued about, Pedersen said we couldn’t bring up ADA.” He said, ‘It’s poor teaching.’ I said, ‘It’s brain injury.’”
Sue continued. “We finally got to where they agreed to have a meeting.”
*********
But it was good to get into the mindless edge-of-envelope diversions. I had to get his mind off yesterday’s sentence: I’d still be under contract but I’d have to teach Special Ed.
The meeting with the district lawyer Pedersen, Mackiel and Heck the next day should turn out to be a dandy.
Kath and I were there at TAC pretty early. I noted a blond-haired, tall, slightly heavy, bright blowzy-looking woman walking the second floor hallway. Like most people in the building, she gave me the TAC look: a little on the quizzical, a little on the scolding, a little on the measuring side.
Now, my second summer working iron after my second summer teaching, I like to think it’s how people were beginning to look at me. That, even though I’m not quite making it, not quite measuring up, there's something that befell, something that happened, some battle scar I might have suffered.
Some WW II pilot kind of stuff that; while the guy’s on wheel chair, there's definitely a reason for it.
At least I like to think so. It gives everything a romantic twist, doesn't it?
And like Sue said, my injury wasn’t sexy. I walked around just like everybody else.
The photo gallery of past superintendents in the waiting room outside the offices was not looked at very long before Dr. Mackiel and Dr. Heck came rolling down the hallway. It was 12:50 or so. Dr. Mackiel immediately came over. I stood; I shook his hand. I remembered to apply a strong grip because Mackiel, even though he's somewhat slight of build, has a strong firm grasp.
"Well, good to see you,” Mackiel said, smiling pleasantly, nodding to Kathy. “We'll get this done in a real short time and we'll be on our way," he said. He bent over and shook the hand of a very pregnant woman who also rose to her feet.
Dr. Heck was almost colliding with Mackiel. He smiled and nodded and also stuck out his hand.
"We're ready to go anytime you are, Ron," Mackiel said cheerily.
"Oh, ok," I said.
Tom Scates and Sue Fullerton had yet to make an appearance.
I turned to Kath. "Do you think we should go in right now or do you think we'd better wait?" I partially answered my own question, as I often do, a sure sign of brain-injured malady.
"Yeah, we can wait," Kath said, thumbing through dated reading material.
Dark suited Larry Heck popped back out of the personnel office like a jack in the box and strode over. He's even of a slighter build than Dr. Mackiel and a double golf ball bald spot on the crown of his head.
He also came quickly over, in like fashion to Mackiel. It's almost like he cloned on over.
For years Id heard doors slam shut. In my fourth public school district in Nebraska, they'd been pried opened a crack.
Tom and Sue come up the stairway and greeted them. Tom, like Heck, always wears a dark blue suit. Sue, wearing a bright dress, has more of the Lincoln-casual attire.
Tom has a black satchel and Sue is carrying a manila folder.
“How are you doing, Ron? How are you doing Kathy?” Sue’s smile is warm.
Tom his jacket unbuttoned, follow his colleague’s lead.
“How are you doing?” He smiles warmly.
“Good,” Kath and I reply.
“Well,” Mackiel said. “Let’s go on in here.”
I note that we walk down the same room as before: the Christmas debacle when I listened to the barrage from Mitchell and Co—the ponderous old Saxon, full of indigestion as Joyce would say—except this time instead of turning left and opening that door they turn right and enter into another room.
This conference room is much larger. There are large windows and hung curtains, ¾ full coffee pot and a flag and a picture on the wall.
Mackiel said, after we’d sat down, "We'll get things working and squared away."
I thought suddenly of a short story I’d read in junior high, "The Iron Lung," where the boy spent the rest of his life looking up at the ceiling, paralyzed from the neck down.
Mackiel deferred to Pedersen who got the meeting started after intro’s and light banter, his bald head with a shine to it, almost like chrome.
"Do we have vita for Korn?" Pedersen asked, off hand, looking at the pages before him. Again, all ears were attuning to the Korn report. The shinny dome surveyed the room. The lawyer’s lips moved slightly as he looked at the pages.
The OPS lawyer has a larger mound of exposed scalp, even more so than Heck. I couldn’t get over how the top of his head seems to shine. His A+ pin on the lapel of a blue well-tailored coat glimmers.
He turns to Fullerton, "I'm gonna let you open the meeting.”
Pedersen continued, "As we look out over the lay of the land we have an issue. Whether we have a person with a disability or not. If that's the case certain legal things need to happen. We need to find a doctor of some sort—
we don't even know what kind are possible—is the first essential function."
Sue was ready. She charged right in. "Linda Burkey would make available a list of physicians of a specific specialty, a list of these. Our best resource is the Nebraska Head Injury Foundation.”
It was hard to imagine the feisty young gal going up against the legal beagle for two hours, yelling at him, as she reported to us she’d done. “It’s not poor teaching,” she’d said, “it’s a head injury!”
She cautioned Kath and me it’d be an uphill battle.
I noted they were all looking at the 20-year report from the hospital, the typewritten pages beginning to fade from age. Never in my wildest dreams did I think it'd travel this far and wind up there.
"We need to get an examination done. We'll do some independent looking as well," Pedersen said.
Dr. Mackiel did not look up but kept busy writing notes on a yellow legal pad. Heck, silent, to his left, was also taking notes. The intern legal assistant, a female he did not recognize, looked on. He heard her introduced as an intern. After the meeting started, I wasn’t very much aware of her.
My focus was over across the row to the district attorney—like weeds in the Korn field.
Mackiel stopped writing. He took his hand from his face and looked over at me..
“Rivendell and the other places. How come we didn’t know and how come know we’re just starting to find this out?”
Through Sue, I knew they were thinking of putting me back in Special Ed. The back of my head starts hurting.
“Well, like I said, it’s something I really wasn’t aware of.”
I went on. “And, based on the Korn report, my record keeping and management and all, I’d be better off with, like, one lesson plan instead of a lot of lesson plans for students at varying degrees of ability.”
“Yes, Ron, that’s true,” Mackiel replied. Doubt was in his eyes. “But we don’t know how you’d handle the load.” He looked about the room. “Three to five students in the classroom with two paras and it wasn’t successful, how could it be with teaching five classes, 20 students in each class?”
It was a sticking point for what Scates liked to refer to as “the district.” The facts spoke for themselves. How would I handle a heavy load of paper work and students? Well, to me, it didn’t matter. I knew I could do it.
“Now,” Pedersen asked, turning to Fullerton, “who’s this Dr. Korn? Is he a licensed physician or just what is he?”
Sue, taking the hand-off from me quickly replied.
“Yes, he’s a neuropsychologist that saw Ron last year. Ron and Kath really didn’t know if there was anything that might’ve lead to Ron’s difficulty teaching.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I really hadn’t thought of it or anything. I thought it was because I wasn’t working hard enough or something.
“But I’m always there super early and leave late. I mean, I put quite a few hours in it.” I looked across the room, my jury.
“Yep,” Kathy said. “We just want to improve the quality of our life. We don’t wanna hassle anybody or cause problems.” Tears began to well up in wide blue eyes.
“We just wanna improve the quality of our lives.”
These please elicited a response.
“Well, now,” Pedersen said, “we’ll see to it that we find a doctor who can give Ron an exam.”
“Well,” I said. For some reason, I was so caught up in working iron as a summer gig like before but I probably should’ve kept my mouth shut. “I really can’t be leaving work.”
Pedersen saw an opening.
“What kind of job do you?”
I realized I may have shown my cards.
“Ironwork,” I blurted out. But I quickly added, “I haven’t started working yet. You know, got to support a family.”
Sue fell in with a balmy effect, squeezing cold drops of water on my temples.
“That’s all right, Ron,” Sue said. You just have to give me the number and I’ll talk to the employer and smooth everything out.”
We’ll be okay,” Dr. Mackiel said, extending his hand and seeing us out the door. “We’ll be in touch.”
So that's how we've left it. Sue Fullerton was info'd that I'd be seeing a Dr. Rankin in a couple weeks but OPS would be contacting me directly. She said that she'd had several horn conversations with Pederson and they agreed on Rankin.
Rankin file.
That evening when Kath and I went to the OEA office, I remember how Sue put her hands on her hips. Concern had stolen across her face. We all looked at the three thick white folders in front of us on the table. “It was a knock down, drag out with Pederson, especially over the ADA.”
We looked at the closed and silent-bound copies of evidence.
"He said 'Let me talk to your lawyers.' I really lost it then.” Sue said, her eyes flashing.
"'You don't talk to any of the lawyers, you're talking to me.' Oh that really burned me up," Sue exclaimed. "I stood up and I let him have it. Everybody in the office looked at me like I was half-crazy, but I didn't care."
The good Sue went on. "Who did he think he was talking to? Pedersen kept saying it wasn't ADA and I kept saying that it was ADA," she said, her short bobbing hair cut back like a fighter ready to step into the ring. She was almost like a real life fairy so instrumental in guiding Peter Pan through my education battlefield.
She took a breath. We were spellbound by her version of trying to keep a brain damaged teacher in the classroom. “So that’s why Peterson said we could have the meeting. We’ll just see what comes up.”
So that's how we left it. I would go before Pederson and Mackiel and Heck and see if we couldn’t work something out.
******m
Meanwhile, I kept working iron, acutely aware of the August 15th meeting dead ahead. It was simple; just building beams and putting walls together for the carpenters. I also learned that when we pull out the iron sawhorses and set iron on top of it, and bend a piece around to make a circle, this is what’s called a beam: it’s set on the concrete on the ground and becomes the circular interior supports of the buildings.
So basically, I was just building mats and building beams. A few ironworkers came and went, especially on Saturday when it was time and a half. But mostly it was just the crew of Screamin’ Rodney, Bailey, Scrubs, and me. Because there was a “giddy-up” on the project, we were working 10 hour days and sometimes on Saturday.
Meanwhile, while I was waiting for the other shoe to drop like it always did, I now I felt I had at least a fighting chance.
Finally, a few weeks later, OEA and “the District” came to an agreement about which neuropsychologist I had to see.
Tom Scates was called by TAC and, in turn, informed Sue Fullerton I’d be seeing a one Dr. Rankin. They told me OPS would be contacting me directly.
“I’ve had several conversations over the phone with Pedersen, Sue Fullerton said. “We agreed on a Dr. Rankin.”
Rank-in-file.
“Great,” I said. “That sounds good.”
So, then, is how it sits: Rankin file visit. A visit to see if the head injury has anything to do with teaching difficulties and whether or not accommodations can be made.
Kath and I assessed the case.
"Boy, I really like Sue," Kath said, rubbing her large tummy. Already, she was six months pregnant. It would be child number four in our young family. No question. I had to keep working, Fates be dammed.
“I know. I do too.”
"I can tell she's going to fight for us."
"Yeah, she's pretty much the fire ball."
Kath elaborated. “Finally, somebody’s going to help us.”
“Yeah,” I said. “It sure takes them awhile. Maybe they’re all slow learners.
In addition, we could wax prophetic. We allowed themselves some unheard of luxuries.
The evening sun threw shadows on her tan face. Her blue eyes sparkled in the soft light. Kath continued. "There's no way they've done anything to help you. No accommodations had been made or ever were made. All they did was brow beat someone with a head injury."
"Yeah, she was able to present the case well."
"And Ronnie, she's so right. She said you have twenty-five observations that first semester when you were on formal intervention all year, all of them telling you something different. Like Sue said, it'd be difficult for anybody to dig through that mess, let alone someone with a serious head injury."
"I couldn't follow it," Sue had said. "Everybody was telling you to do something different."
Kath is excited to have Sue on board.
“She has a brother who had an injury and so she has personal experience. Linda Burkey, that’s with the Head Injured Association, she wants to come to the hearing.” She is the one who was able to bring forth the list of doctors. At one time during the meeting, we thought it would have to be someone from outside the state of Nebraska.
“Yeah, Kath, can you believe it. I finally might get to teach English.”
*****N
Well, this wasn’t entirely the case. Still a hurdle.
“OPS is so rigid,” Sue said. We had all met in a large office I didn’t even know existed, somewhere in the back of the OEA building. Kath and I had joined a well-dressed Tom Scates and Sue Fullerton. The three large binders lay unopened on the table, a teaching life chronology, a head injured time line.
And now Sue had greeted them warmly with a bright smile, telling us to sit down. She then expressed her reservations. She looked at Kath and I, giving us the good news after a long hard-fought battle.
“’Course, when I took on this case, I thought ‘This poor guy doesn’t have a chance.’”
Kath was happy to hear the news. For the first time, since she’d realized my head injury was linked to not being able to hold down a steady job, an employer would have to address this issue.
“Oh really,” Kath said, looking at Sue and Tom. Neither of us knew how deadly the firing disease had become. “How come?”
Sue looked at her. “Well, you see these binders? That’s all the stuff on Ron. There are 134 pieces of evidence they were going to present.”
“Man oh man,” Kath said, looking at the material, shaking her head. She laughed. “All they had to do was talk to me. I could’ve given them suggestions. I should’ve been at some of those meetings Ronnie’d always come home so devastated from.”
“Yes,” Tom threw the cautionary flag. “But OPS doesn’t like to have the wife or the husband give too much help. I mean, it’s the teacher’s responsibility. He or she’s the one, after all, who signed the contract.”
“And,” I said, throwing my two cents in, “in my letter that I wasn’t ‘sposed to send I mentioned Al Marchisio of Midlands Rehab. He’s definitely worked with people who’ve gotten back to work. I’m sure he could’ve given them some input. He would’ve been very helpful.”
And really, it was one of those things I couldn’t figure out. Why no one from rehab, no one from getting back to work after rehab was there to help out was hard to understand.
“Yes,” Tom said, “that may be but this is the way they want to handle it.”
“He’s a resource they should use,” I repeated. “It could make it a lot easier for all of us. I don’t think they’ll follow suggestions unless they’re absolutely forced to.”
Sue, however, wanted to get to the point. She looked at Kath and me. “But, at any rate, I think they’re willing to work with us.
“Great. Like I said, I’d be happy just to teach regular English. That’s where I got, after all, my first MA from, Teachers College Columbia University. I’ve never ever really had a chance to teach English.”
All the years spent at NYU and Teachers College Columbia University, majoring in English. Why I could never teach it was always something I could never figure out.
“Yes,” Kath said. “My hands have been shaking ever since we found out we’re gonna have that meeting.”
Sue replied. “Well, it wasn’t easy. I called Pedersen when I got a hold of the hospital reports. That’s when we decided to go to bat for you,” Sue said, her eyes beginning to flash, standing over the volumes of evidence—three black closed binders, input over the two years, from more than a dozen kind folks.
“Well, like I told ‘em,” Kath said. “I didn’t know there was anything wrong with Ronnie all these years, why he kept losing jobs, misplacing things, forgetting other things. I thought maybe it was the drinking. But, he’s been sober all the time he was at Lincoln and now the two years in Omaha and still the same problem keeping a job.”
“Yep,” Sue said. “That’s why I had the knock-down drag-out with Pedersen. He kept saying ‘poor teaching’ and I kept sayin’ ‘disability.’ All those observations, I told him, “are just descriptions of someone with a head injury.”
Kath concurred. “Well, I didn’t know anything at all until that agency from Washington, D.C. sent us information about the head injured, the TBI. Up to that point, I thought it was the drinking.”
Sue had rolled up her sleeves.
“Yeah. They don’t have any idea. When Pedersen said ‘Let me talk to Steve—he’s our lawyer—I just lost it. Sue, young and attractive, recounted. “I got up and started screaming at him into the phone. ‘ADA is the issue. I represent Steve. You’re talking to me.’”
She caught her breath. “It was a knock-down, drag-out.”
Kath related this to my younger brother Danny, also a lawyer, “Sue said that when she looked at the case, 132 pieces of evidence against Ronnie, she thought there’d be no way. But then when she saw the hospital report she knew then what she was dealing with. I think she said her brother, tho’ he wasn’t head injured, had something really wrong with him. And she decided to go to bat for us.”
“That’s good,” Danny replied. He echoed family sentiments. “A light at the end of a tunnel.”
“Quite a long TBI tunnel,” Kath replied.
I thought, echoing Joyce, My limited perception, my limited ineluctable modality of the visual.
Sue continued, “The girls in the office thought I’d lost it. We talked for three hours. I finally got him to see that it was a disability issue.”
“That’s great,” Kath said. “We just didn’t know what to do. We’d get settled in a town, Kaitlin starting school and now Alison and pretty soon Dylan and up we go again. This family needs some stability.”
“You bet it does,” Sue said. “And we’re gonna get it for ya.”
Tom added, stepping out on the limb, “We’ll take it as far as we have to.”
I remember how Danny had wondered, “What was the turning point?”
Kath replied. “Sue said that when she looked at the case, 132 pieces of evidence against Ronnie, she thought there was no way. But then she saw the hospital report, she knew then what she was dealing with. “
“Oh, “ Danny said. “I see.”
“That’s when she decided to go to bat for us.”

Late Summer Ironwork
But the next day I almost got hurt, a close call coming on a Monday. It was a Monday, the day after Father’s Day, that I went flying. I’d gone in the hole right when the ironworkers were going on morning break.
Which is why, I now realized, there were so many ironworkers around to lift the ambulance out of the sand when it got stuck.
Which is why, decades later, I still have to battle.
Lester, a near-retired ironworker from Cargill, had laid it out the year before in the shack before we headed out for the day.
“That’s when you’re most likely to get hurt,” Lester, whom I watched coon the iron up on the third floor stickin’ bolts, said, nodding sagely, always sat next to Red in the shack. “Before breaks and right before you leave. Mondays and Fridays are also good accident days.”
That Friday after the meeting with Sue and Tom, I thought how I had five or six 34-foot pieces of rod on my shoulder. Three guys were punkin’. I wasn’t’ sure who was in the lead, but there I was, stumbling, dancing between all the piles of rebar, barely able to keep my balance.
The next Monday, I started to copy another permit hand who’d just come on the job—Ed. Ed was throwin’ 10 foot No. 6’s off the bank onto the yellow dirt where we’d get them ready to tie footings.
So, instead of safely landing them, walking down the small hill and setting them on the pile, also began to throw ‘em down. This was okay a couple times but the third time, the rebar stuck like a spear in the clay. The other end of it came whistling back up the bank—every force having an equal and opposite force. The end whipped back. It hit the top of my hardhat, nearly knocking it off my head, slapping my safety glasses. Three inches lower and it would tore up my face.

*******v
Job Site Romance
And now, there’s a cute female on the job, helping the carpenters. Jamming the vibrator into the freshly poured cement of the walls she looked down at me. I caught her glance and we smile. Was it at all the inevitability of all this work before us that had to be done?
Later, I got a tease when I went for water from the yellow 20-gallon jug.
Later afternoon, I grabbed a small white cylinder and put it under the water. Nothing came out. A small crowd of carpenters and the gal stood around it.
“Is this the watering hole?”
“No, there’s no water.”
“Really?” I felt a look of disappointment cross my face. I then tipped it forward. The water came pouring out.
The group laughed.
“Truth or consequences,” I said and filled my cup.
“We got it laced,” the blond said, her breasts protruding such that I didn’t want to be disrespectful but had trouble keeping my eyes up to her blue ones.
“Booze, insects.…” She reeled off numerous things; her small audience of warblers listening in.
“I knew it had to be somethin’.”
“We got sperm in there,” she then said, with something of a laugh, to top things off and already the group of men began to move away.
“Really,” I said. “Great.”
Rodney, at day’s end, looked at me. “You comin’ tomorrow?”
“Oh yeah.”
But I thought how easy it was to forget about the OPS clusterfuck within an hour of ironwork. The building’s walls of the communication center Kiewitt would sell a few years later for $15 billon was steadily going up. All of us could’ve been easily paid a $100 bucks an hour and Kiewitt would still be in Fat City.
The carpenters set the forms behind the mats. The rebar was tied at right angles on the ground. It would then go air-borne.
For support, we grabbed a 15-foot 2 X 6 and slapped it on the face of the mat and tied it to the rod. A choker’d be slipped carefully beneath the board and rebar on either end so the mat would raise up straight. Spreaders—thick cables—dangled lazily from the crane’s headache ball were grabbed, the crane’s line coming down, and hooked to the chokers.
I liked to hear the snap of the iron when you slapped a spreader on the headache ball. It’s what the lawyer said when Dad and I went to see what we could get after I fell. I remember how he just said the best the widow could get was $28,000 if the ironworker “was hit by a headache ball and it killed him.” So I always knew where the headache ball was a danglin’ or a swingin’. So I scrambled out of the way. Either Bailey or Scrubs would start signaling Slim on the Manitowoc to begin lifting the load. I watched as the mat went air-borne as was suspended a few feet above the ground then signaled over to the footings. The ironworkers raced to tie the rod to the rebar sticking a foot or so above the concrete.
Rebar ties, or snaps, that used double wire was okay but snaps with a double wire and a wrap—one more trip around the rebar with the wire—was even better.
I felt like I was slowly getting better, slowly doing the double wire faster. Unlike the bridge deck, when the rebar stayed horizontal, these mats were vertical, with heavier rebar. A single snap probably wouldn’t do the trick. Double ties were the order of the day.
But the objective, “ties that look like a weld” I didn’t quite have it there yet.
Rodney got some long two by’s and stuck it three-quarter up the iron on each side. Bailey would scoot up the iron and tie the props.
We could now back the crane away.
Just behind us, the carpenters slapped the plywood on, laborers poured. Julie, her yellow hardhat and blond curls sticking out, ran the vibrator. A day later the carpenters pulled the plywood off. White-grayish walls began to appear on either side of us; the large rectangle below the ground nearly had four sides, the last wall slowly closing in.
One morning, I heard Julie complain, “My vibrator’s broke.”
Quickly a voice came from the pile of carpenters, “Her vibrator’s broke and she can’t fix it.”
John, the ironworker who just came on and whom I’d worked with at the airport job, the last one before the second year of school started, a week before the meeting at the TAC building to review the formal intervention and plans for the coming school year, let out “Whoohoop” guffaw.
Soon, a new group of blades and bulldozers appeared just outside the walls and began moving dirt on the outside of the building. A memo from Kiewitt info’d us that we’d have to start parking on the other side of the street, away from the three contractor’s trailers on the outskirts of the lot.
A year later, what would’ve been my 3rd year “in the District” I was a rodbuster. And this day after the mid August tangle with TAC, it was carpenters vs. ironworkers. I stood near the gang box. I’d just got my rod belt on and suddenly what rolls forward but a large front-end loader, a CAT 950, waiting to pick up the plywood pile the carpenters had stripped from the cement.
Bob, one of the taller and younger carpenters, starts in on ironworker pusher Rodney, half a foot shorter.
They’re yelling at each other so it’s hard to make out over the noise of the loader nearby. Jerry Bailey and I were throwing pieces of rebar into the load bucket to go up the hill where we’d build the beams for walls that would be outside the main structure.
Bob advances towards Rodney.
“I’m gonna be around here for along time,” I heard him say. “So we might as well work together,” Bob began.
Looking at the carpenter I though maybe I had too much
literature over the years. Say carpenter and I’m inclined to think of the Miller’s Tale. Rodney, like a small Bantam rooster, like Sue the day before, was on.
Can you imagine them drinkin’ shots in a bar together, I thought.
“Listen,” Rodney said, blue print in his hand, coming after Bob, “if you don’t like the fucking iron then you change, not us.” Rodney’s blue prints didn’t jibe with Kiewit’s print. It seems Bob, the carpenter foreman, wanted Rodney to change his iron.
Bob, looked down at the fury below him. “You’re not the only one out here,” Bob said. “We’ve got to learn to work together.”
Rod held fast.
“Well, you’re the one’s always changing it.” He waved the folded-up blue print at the carpenter. “I’m going off the blueprint.” It was something I heard Rodney say a few times since the walls and wall problems started cropping up in the middle of the large sloping hill, “Iron doesn’t lie.”
Later, Rodney said to me, after Bob had walked away, “Lucky there wasn’t a two-by-four nearby or I would’ve hit him with it,” he said, laughing. He turned and looked at me.
“Would ya’ve backed me up?”
“Sure,” I said, caught up in inclusion classroom plans, when BD students were to work with the “normal” kids, “anytime.”
Jerry Bailey didn’t know how successful I’d be up against the carpenter who stands over 6 foot and carries himself around somewhat menacingly.
“I don’t know,” Bailey said. “He’s pretty crazy.”
I walked off the job at the end of the day, reviewing the next chapter as the District turns: so, then, is how it sits: Rankin file visit. A visit to see if the head injury has anything to do with teaching difficulties and whether or not accommodations can be made.
And we had to get a wrap on the MFS communication center garage.











Chapter