update

No, I didn't finish my TACKIE story. In the sense that I tried to have it polished enough to send it off. Not to say that I didn't work long enough on it. But then I started pulling some diffident strands together--my head injury, niece Meg's head injury. I wanted to say that she will be taking her nursing exam for the third time in the fairly near future. I did talk with a gal from the agency that gives the test and gave me some good info--which I managed to stick somewhere in my office area--how she did take it twice, how it's a little tougher each time and how she did request, and was granted, accommodation.

In the sense that she got more time to take the test. I also was told that, in scoring, there's a means whereby too many wrong answers and they don't correct further. Something along the lines that you either know it or you don't know it.

But Hey, this means I get to insert the next chapter below:


Chapter Six

Summer Ironworker
Patient admitted to the hospital with severe head injury, subdural hematoma was evacuated. Mentally, he was slow for a quite long period of time, would become somewhat cognizant of his surroundings, would use foul language involuntarily. He has trouble remembering words, the word he wants to say; he can write some, has very much difficulty reading.
P. A. Fee, M.D.

Meanwhile, it was a mid-June trip to the Local 21 Ironworker’s Hall. Looking back, it was surprising how it all started—away from ironwork for almost 20 years. I remember how I’d worked but four days at the end of the summer last year, calling just for the heck of it, and now wondered what might be in store after another unsatisfactory year of teaching. I had a contract after my first year of teaching at Omaha Public Schools but I was on something they called “Formal Intervention.”
Out of a whim, I’d called the hall. While I only had worked four days for them, somehow they remembered me, my name got put on some list. The business agent acted like there might be some work.
"I got more tools up in Sioux City," I told Local 21 BA George Mattice. I was surprised he was even talking to me. I went on, "I can go get 'em and bring 'em back down by this afternoon."
"Well, call me when you got your tools."
I fired up to Sioux City. Always, driving up I-29, I looked over at the Powerhouse Unit 3, the largest of them all, the steady light atop the smokestack gleaming day and night, night and day. It was the last time I’d seen Joe Reed; we both worked on Unit 3 together. Joe was one of the many guys who stood behind me. Later, when I was able to get around, I went and saw Joe in the hospital, undergoing chemo. I couldn’t get into intensive care but I remember talking to his wife and her girlfriend in the cafeteria.
It was doubtful Joe would ever work iron again but one day, I heard, Joe just said, “Well, I’m not getting’ any better in here,” Joe said. He left the hospital and went back to the Powerhouse.
Reed’s specialty was smokestacks—spiraling to 800 feet above the ground, slip-form rebar all the way up. But then work got slow and he boomed to Detroit but fell 300 feet when he slipped off a wet scaffold just as they were finishing up for the day.
“I fucked up,” Joe said, then went down 40 stories with the wet plank in his hands.
The ironworkers still remember all about Joe Reed.
Junior Hughes, pusher of the bolt up gang the day I went in the hole, told me he had some tools. Junior, now retired, was runnin' a bar and a filling station in town. He answered the phone.
“You mi’s well buy ‘em instead of rent,” Junior said. I latched onto a couple spud wrenches adding to the spud wrench collection I still had from my accident 20 years before.
“Okay. I’ll be right up.”
Red irony of red ironies, Junior saw the whole thing, watched me fall and glance off the iron on the way down. Junior told partner Francis and me to tighten up bolts at a lower section because supposedly it was going to be inspected.
I remembered how I saw it as a meaningless, time-consuming inspection. It meant we had to scramble down from fourth floor. I liked workin’ the high iron and told Junior and Bob Irby, a bolt-up gang pusher from Jackson, how I wanted to be a connector: ride up in the air on the load and connect in thin air like some kind of acrobat.
“Yeah, I was just right there, talking with the Superintendent Red, not more ‘n 20 feet from ya when you went off.”
Ironworkers call these guys, the connectors, “sky walkers.”
This let's-get-this-over-with attitude prevailed. Hence, caution was thrown to the warm winds coming over the Mizzou.
I walked across the iron with an impact wrench over my shoulder. It quickly ran out of slack. However, because I was green, I didn't realize the danger. Francis, my partner, with even less time on the iron, was feedin’ the hose to Malloy who’d come over to help. Malloy had his arms straddled across the column holding the hose.
"Ron, I can't hold this anymore," Malloy yelled over.
I looked down, the hose on my shoulder. I was walking fast, I’d just brace myself for the tension. "That's ok, I got it."
“You were always a step ahead of everybody else,” Junior said. “Nobody could keep up with ya.”
Malley let go. The tension was fast and furious. Like whipcord it yanked me off.
Why’d I go down? Down deep, I knew it was because I’d lost respect of the iron. Junior said I could just run across that iron but now I wasn’t so sure.
Then, driving up to get tools from Junior, I thought, Are you ready to start walking across red beams again? But then I thought I couldn’t depend on having a steady job, no matter what, it seemed, I did. Well, if this teaching thing doesn’t fly, I need something to fall back on.
I walked into the Local 21 Ironworker Hall. Like Sioux City, there’s a half door upon which you lean over and the BA fills out the work order.
BA George Mattice, tall and strapping with his full head of dark wavy hair combed back, nodded an introduction.
“Can you tie rod?” George wanted to know.
Junior said he didn’t have his pliers anymore so I had to go to the local hardware store. I didn’t know what I needed. I picked up a pair of needle-nose pliers hoping that would do the trick. I’d only been on the bolt-up gang, never tied rod. But it couldn’t be that tough, could it? I mean, I put up fence line on the farm, what could be the difference?
"Yeah," I told George, "I can tie rod." I also thought of the little twisters I used to hook up mats with when pouring basements and driveways that first year of marriage with Kerry, workin’ with a local contractor before I started workin’ iron.
Could that be the same thing? I didn't tell George I didn’t have twisters, figurin' maybe it'd be supplied on the job.
The work order, a small yellow copy, said Blair, Nebraska. Sent up on a rainy day.
“They’re puttin’ up a cornmeal plant outside of town,” Mattice said. “You’ll see some sticks in the air. Just take this to one of the shacks and they’ll tell you who to talk to. Now, hurry up.”
My first work order in twenty years to go work iron. It’s like I’d stepped into a dream world of the past.
The job site, on the edge of town, had a large clearing. On either side of a wide gravel road were buildings going up. There were huge circular tanks around which rectangles of gray iron were slowing going up. Large cranes with huge booms lowered over the tanks stood silently in the rain like they were bent over in prayer.
The corn mill plant, even in its early stages, had the markings of large operation. A trailer was stationed near a gate, which could not be entered without special clearance. There were trailers and cranes and heavy equipment all over, two huge bins where the corn would be held were nearly complete, the plant itself on either side about four stories high.
I stopped at the security gate. I walked a small flight of hand-fashioned wooden stairs in the trailer.
“I got sent out by Local 21,” I explained to the one of the ladies manning the trailer. “I’m an ironworker.”
She looked at the work order.
Friendly, she said, “C’mon on out here.”
Raining though it was, the gal at the guard shack pointed.
“There’s a bunch workin’ over there.”
In the distance, I could see four floors of gray iron sitting on either side of the road that went between ‘em.
“If you go over there, you’ll prob’ly find out where you gotta be.”
“Okay, sure, thanks.”
I hopped back in my pick up and went towards the skeletons of the buildings. Driving down the wet surface of the dirt road to get a closer look, I promptly got stuck, my little red truck sliding off the newly made road along newly made railroad tracks. Luckily, one of the security trucks saw my plight, got a log chain out, pulled me out in a jiffy.
Another truck pulled up behind me.
“Hey, why don’t you follow us to town. We’ll go over the paper work.”
“Sure,” I said. “That’d be fine.”
These must be the guys I’ll be workin’ with. First day’s a rain day.
At the job site, the guy I gave the work order to wanted to meet me in town. I followed. I swerved to miss a pile of water, not knowing someone was right behind me, tryin’ to pass.
A motorist whipped his camper pickup over to the small lot. He leaned out the window and yelled, "Why don't you watch where the fuck you're going?" He had his fist clenched, waving. A red scarf around his long blond locks, sleeveless denim shirt, he looked like a swashbuckling pirate ready to do battle.
This all happened in the space of a couple seconds; using my typical BD teacher reaction to anger, I got out of my truck, feeling my face getting pale, breath shortening. I walked over in the other driver’s direction.
I didn't know what I'd do if the pirate jumped out of the truck.
I began, "I'm sorry, I didn't know" or something like that. My tone was almost pleading. Blue eyes twenty feet away flashed at me. A voice beneath a thick blond moustache, yelled "Watch where the fuck where you're goin'!" and drove off.
I walked over to the two guys from the Minneapolis Local I’d be working with as the pirate drove off, cursing.
They'd watched the exchange but shrugged their shoulders. They didn't know what was going on, either.
“What was wrong with that guy?”
“Who knows? He sure was mad about somethin’.”
The driver of this full-sized1/2 ton truck (the pirates and mine were 1/4 ton) and whose name was Tony, shrugged his shoulders.
At the lot, leaning out of his dark blue pickup, he explained the order of business. A light spring rain began to fall.
"There's water a foot deep where we gotta work." Tony reported. "Maybe we'll try again tomorrow." We looked at the gray sky and the rain coming down.
"O.k., sounds good." Anyway, I was collecting my thoughts from a flash of anger by a passing motorist with Wyoming plates.
And, the next day, even though humid, it was okay to work; the water had been pumped out of the hole near the four-story skeleton—the future home of a cornmeal plant—where the rebar had to be set and tied. However, like a kid who doesn't come to school with pencil or paper, Tony—who's runnin' the rebar job—quickly finds out I wasn’t up to the job, not even close.
The needle-nose pliers were not the specialty tool needed. I gamely pulled them outta my pocket for the young foreman’s inspection.
“What are those for?” Tony said, demandingly, handing me a white hard hat. “Where's your Klines?"
“Tie rebar?” I asked hopefully.
“Those won’t work,” Tony pronounced. “Try these.”
Tony handed me a pair of curve-handled pliers and a roll of thin wire.
I stood frozen to the ground a few seconds and watched Tony's partner quickly pull wire from his belt and tie sections of rod they called rebar running at right angles, filling out a 20 by 30' rectangle with ease and precision. I made a feeble attempt to emulate. It felt like I was tryin’ to tie my shoelace with my toe.
Another question from Tony, as direct as the first.
“Where's your reel?" Tony asked. He had a spool on his belt from which he and his partner—also hailing from the Minnesota local-- pulled out the thin wire like fishing line.
I looked at him dumfounded.
"You mean you don't have a reel?" Tony asked.
He watched skeptically as I held out the pliers.
“I thought you knew how to tie," Tony demanded, his blue eyes taking the low measure of a man who not only was intimidated less than 24 hours ago but also didn't know how to tie rebar.
"I did it with twisters," I said, thinking back on a day when I stood over a thin mat with my little twisters tying the sections of rebar together some twenty years ago.
"That's rat," Tony pronounced, and walked away towards the structure. I continued with a feeble attempt to tie rod. I watched my partner: how he did it so fast, so easily? Tony came back a short time later. He handed me a reel for the roll of tie-wire.
"I borrowed these from a carpenter," Tony said, handing it over. The final stage in job prep, of course, was to put all this on the belt.
The twenty-year memory bank didn’t withdraw belt tools.
"Here, let me get them for ya," Tony said, grabbing my belt, mumbling to himself, handing over my pair of pliers. I stood silent. My face was flushed. I felt so incompetent. I handed Tony Junior's old belt, many sizes too big for me. He fastened on the Klines on the right side, the reel on the left. A short time late, I was ready to do battle with the rebar.
Again I watched Tony's partner tie, tie, tie. He did it almost effortlessly, spinning the wire over the motionless bars like Arachnid of the Greek tales at the loom.
"How'd you ever get so fast?" I asked at one point, not believing that he could wind the tie-wire around the 1’ by 1’ sections so quickly, so effortlessly.
"Oh, I've been doing it for about twenty years," the Ironworker informed me with a smile, his hardhat, like other Ironworkers, on backwards.
Again, I watched carefully. I imitated each step. However, I couldn’t even come close.
Tony watched, hands on his hips.
“Why don’t you take your gloves off?”
“Yeah, I guess I could try that.”
I threw off new gloves bought from the same local hardware I’d purchased my now useless needle-nose pliers.
However, this began to cut my hands, wire ends tearing into my fingers like dull razors.
Filled with instruction, both Tony and his partner showed how I should hold the Klines—the pliers they tie with.
"You have three fingers out," Tony said, holding his pliers out, demonstrating, "and then one finger in."
Despite the help, gloveless, I wasn't picking it up. The Klines felt like dead weight.
The comedy of errors continued. I was more or less getting in their way.
“Why don’t you go below the mat and tie up that corner?” Tony suggested, pointing below them.
“Oh, okay.” I tried to weave the wire through the iron without success. But at least I was out of Tony’s view. I could labor alone in silence.
Above and to the right, the carpenters set up the wooden forms behind the iron. Concrete is poured and it becomes a wall.
Tony and a carpenter he knew—also hailing from Minneapolis—
were gabbing away.
"That goddamn son-of-bitch. Come on you motherfucker, get in there," he heard a medium-sized carpenter wearing jogging shorts order a piece of wood he'd cut and was then trying to wedge in place. The man was singing lightly and humming to himself and chiding his fellow workers. "Jesus Christ, what the hell you call that?" and suddenly, almost from out of nowhere, it was fun. I felt like I was part and parcel of some gigantic enterprise. The sound of boards being cut, hammers and drills and torches, laced with profanity, the spirit of working men putting buildings together. A sense of goodwill and good fortune pervaded the air.
Tony and the carpenter and were in the exchange of information stage while working—one of the advantages of trades in that you can get to know someone pretty fast, doing a brief bio snapshot—when Tony asked, innocently enough, it seemed, "When did you decide to go rat?"
This, of course, represents the pivotal decision in a man's life: for tradesmen, it's almost like asking "Do you support our flag or don't you?" “Do you drive an American car or a Jap car? C’mon, tell us, we wanna know. Are with us or are you again’ us?”
All union members know, therefore, who was part of the brethren, in the trades, but now is no longer with them. The union flag had taken several hits over the years and there wasn’t much that could be done about it. They watched helplessly their livelihood vanish before their eyes.
This kinship is extended to a most outward symbol—the vehicles they drive. Anything foreign, particularly if it's Japanese, is looked on with disdain sometimes to the point of fistfights.
The carpenter didn't respond. Suddenly, all that could be heard the rest of the morning was the sawing, men's feet moving, other sounds now dissonant, no longer filled with the thread of human voices; the ironworkers kept their comments to themselves and their rod business, the carpenters to themselves and their non-school board business.
While I’d not been “in the trades” for awhile, it was surprising to see 90’s tension prevalent in the 70's. And, for that matter, throughout American history, an undercurrent. The union tradition of good wages for a decent living, the non-union need to run a business
The debate continued during sit-down. The portable shithouse at the Cargill job site was a war-zone of graffiti: large poorly drawn rats eating pieces of cheese were scrawled all around the shithouse walls.
Other scrawls that depicted union men as assholes and/or motherfuckers countered these. Although there was no overt hostility, there nonetheless was more or less some tension, neither craft of carpenters or laborers talking to the union ironworkers or union operators.
They also had separate parking lots.
I, being a teacher, was polite to them all.
Later, some dirt had to be taken out of the hole and Tony yelled at a tall young man with a shovel in his hand. "Digger, get some dirt out of those corners."
And, I heard in the shack later how Tony got his: climbing on a Bobcat and pushing dirt around. One of the operators who shared the shack with us for coffee break and show-up time had to let Tony know in no uncertain terms who the operators where and Tony had stepped over the line.
The young man—who may well have been a college student picking up some dough working construction—fixed him with a steady gaze but went at Tony's bidding.
Meanwhile, below the rectangle of rebar, I kept at my business, panting and puffing, trying to get the wire up over the gnarled bars at right angles; I kept hitting the wire with my hands and they started bleeding; plus, there was hardly enough room to work as I tried to hold the bars together with wire. Leaning over some right angles of rod to tie, reaching in the far corner, I felt a tap on my shoulder. It was Tony.
"You can leave at noon," Tony curtly info'd me. "I've got to get this done this week because they want to pour. I don't have time to teach you how to do it. They said to call the hall when you get back," Tony wore a sleeveless shirt, his brown muscles ready to tear through the iron and seemingly, anything that stood in its way. He didn't look down at my bleeding hands or commend my effort.
I watched as Tony and his two partners—another ironworker had been sent from the hall or from another job site midmorning, also turned out to be from Minneapolis and, like Tony, he could bust rod, easily fastening rods together, his blue Klines swinging and singing and flashing.
As directed, I called the hall, expecting the worst. I’d have try to get on with some other outfit, possibly needing to make the same choice as did the carpenter—work non-union.
"Come by in the morning," Bill, Ironworker President, said.
But then, the next day, the Local 21 Hall sent me again back to Cargill.
George asked me, when I came by at 6:30, "I thought you could tie rod?"
I went on the twister theory. “I used the tool that ties the mats together.”
"Can you do structural?" George wanted to know.
My trust account was diminishing, I knew.
“Yeah,” I said, leaning my elbow on the counter, tryin’ to appear relaxed. “I did at the Powerhouse.”
“O.k.,” Mattice said, handing out the yellow slip. “Don’t waste anytime gettin’ there.”
I got in my red pickup and sped down the highway. I picked up the little yellow copy and looked at it. The work order again was for the Cargill plant in Blair.
Security had me follow them to a parking lot. The young man pointed where the union people parked and where the non-union people parked. They had separate squares of ground, bordered by logs.
Redemption was now possible. After filling out the necessary paperwork in one of the trailers that stood in a straight row of nearly undistinguishable trailers, I was told, “Go with Red.”
We left the trailer park and onto the job site where the ironworkers worked in a small construction city of men wearing all colors and shapes of hardhats. I noted, unlike before, a couple females on the job, breasts protruding outside the hardhat brim.
I heard they worked with the electricians or the pipe fitters, I wasn’t sure which.
It was construction in the 90’s: like nonunion, wearing a safety harness, under-going a pee test, the female gender on the job was something that to be accommodated and assimilated.
Like me, the ironworkers and others weren't sure how the young women should be approached, how they should be talked to. "They pee in the same place we do," reasoned one. "Well, what the fuck then."
The feeling was they should be treated more like fellow compatriots rather than afforded the usual etiquette.

*********m
For the good of the cause, as teacher leader Lou Lou would say at the end of their weekly meeting in Sally’s classroom. “Now, anything for the good of the cause?” she would always ask. No one, teachers and para-professionals, said much of anything, dying for the Wednesday meeting to be over so they could get out of the building.
This time, strappin’ on a thick work belt ironworkers call a structural belt, I felt closer to being ready tool-wise for the job ahead. I’d never tied rebar before. But structural I had.
Nevertheless, I was scared, steeling myself for the possibility that I might have to go high up on the iron. Wearing my safety harness over my structural belt, which Red had to show me how to put on, I finally had it all together after some tugging and towing and adjusting. And here I was, first time in twenty years: spud wrenches and beater, bolt bag and tape, gloves and striker. I tried to walk like I knew what I was doing. I tried to keep the fear from climbing up into my throat.
As I walked out of the trailer where there's a square table on which the ironworkers put their lunch boxes, a plywood wall with hooks to hang belts and harness dressed and ready to go, I tried to get in step with the crowd as we all walked to the structure.
For the first time in twenty years, I found myself—hardhat and safety glasses—climbing to the top of the structure. The contractor at Port Neal wouldn’t hardly let me out of the yard after I fell.
Gradually, however, as I climbed, never having worn a structural belt, the whole affair—the structural belt wrapped around the harness—began sliding down my jeans as I followed Local 21 Ironworker Red up several flights of stairs. I could hear the spud wrenches clang against one another, the tips now banging on the stairway as I climbed as the belt fell from my waste.
What did Dr. Heck say? That my demeanor was unsatisfactory and I had to appear more confident?
I could definitely show a lack of confidence when getting up on the iron.
Red looked back a few times. He probably wondered why I was going so slow.
We moved up past where there was a floor I later learned was decking. The next floor up, however, guardrails on the stairway abruptly ended. There was nothing but beams shooting up, red iron at right angles vertical and horizontal. We were now were in the sun, columns shooting straight ahead, pointing at the sky, the ceiling bright blue and infinite.
Eye-level with beams firing like straight red stars in all directions, I took a deep breath. I knew what I now was called on to do. Red climbed up out of the stairway and stepped onto the iron and began walking purposefully across the 6” I=beam. He was already a good 30 feet ahead of me, effortlessly strolling across the iron.
There was a small bucket of stove bolts near the top of the stairs. I managed to stumble over these. I put my hand on the rail-less stair ahead of me and steadied myself.
I didn’t think Red saw this bit of clumsiness inherited from my fall, my balance, I knew, wasn’t too good, but he turned and looked.
Immediately he picked up the hesitation. "Hey, be careful up here. We don't want any fooling around."
Of course, I thought I'd prepared myself for the moment when I might have to walk the iron, four stories off the ground. I'd been looking up at the top for a good while, willing myself to do it. The small deck on my house had a wood rail. I practiced. It was about 6” width; it seemed both easy and effortless. Thus prepared, I didn't think I'd have any problem.
Yet, high off the ground, I wasn't ready. Stumbling on the bucket of bolts didn't help. I just couldn't bring myself to come off the stairway and step up onto the iron and begin walking.
Red had turned. He immediately picked up the hesitation. "Hey, be careful up here. We don't want any fooling around."
The I pulled up the belt that nearly fallen down off my pants.
"If you don't want to walk it, you can just coon it," Red called, looking back. Cooning means straddle across the iron to the destination point.
According to ironworker lore, I’d three strikes in not quite two days at being a man. Backed down from a fight, couldn't tie rebar, couldn't walk the iron.
Perhaps I’d get put on formal intervention.
I heeded Red's bidding—I’d been following a lot of directions the last few months anyway. Cooning the iron, however, took me quite awhile. After stopping and turning a few times, I really hadn't made much progress. My tools seemed like they wanted to pull me off. My pants were about to fall off. It was the first time I'd strapped on a structural belt in two decades. Red noted the plight and consternation
"Go on back down," Red said. "We'll just walk across the other way."
Red easily retraced his steps on the iron. We went down to the floor with decking below them and walked to the other end.
There I hooked up with two young ironworkers—one guy they called Chief, the other they called Scrubs—who I did my best to help out, not quite knowing what I was supposed to be doing before Neal, overall pusher on the job, put me with Pete, another ironworker from the Minneapolis local Tony hailed from. Pete had even more of an accent then did Tony, was even more easy-going.
And Pete was a good match. He didn't jump all over me, the little mistakes I made, didn't seem to mind leading me through a learning process—how to grind the weld, what the names of the some of the tools were: choker, torch, come-along, sleever bar, chain fall, slings.
I’d pretty much forgotten all the trade talk.
Therefore, I was able to help Pete put up railing; I steadied it while the welded the toe plate to the grating. Although it required working up above the ground floor and you had to watch so you didn't go off the cliff of the decking and down onto the bottom, forty feet below, it beat hell out of walking out on the iron three stories above us. Holding the rail was like holding it on the edge of a diving board.
Meanwhile, I did according to Pete's bidding; Neal—pusher on the job—looked on with careful steady eyes, leaning on the railing below, watching. I almost felt like saying “Hey, this is the first time I’ve been up on the iron in twenty years” but figured the less I said, the better off I was.
Heck, I was happy I could go to the hall and get sent out. This, after years of graduate school, what I usually did in the summer, was hard for me to believe I was actually doing it.
But J & J, the structural firm’s Neal kept a close eye on me. He pretty much knew exactly how much work he'd be able to get out of me, the range of abilities I brought on the job. That was ok with me. I was happy just to be working.
But then the next day the mad driver gets on the bus. He immediately looks over at me and informs the silent bus, "There's the little asshole that tried to run me off the road."
I didn't say anything. The motorist sat down in the seat right in front of me.
"Who you workin' for?" he demanded.
"J & J," I said. I fully expected him to turn around and take a swipe at me. I could feel his heart racing. If he wanted to rumble then he'd be in a fight but I never was one to take the first or even second shot. In fact, what I did the past 8 years at the Acute Care Facility and in the BD classrooms is practice peace making as well as safe takedowns. Challenged by students, first response is to use calm down techniques, walk away, if possible.
"You shouldn't be drivin' that here," he further informed me, pointing at my red Nissan pick up.
I felt like extending my hand and saying, "Hi, I'm Ron Hartnett, teacher ironworker" but thought better of it. His long hair cascaded about his shoulders and he looked to be every inch the pirate from days of yore.
That must’ve been the satisfactory answer because the guy changed the subject to something more immediate.
“Man,” the pirate said, “have I got me a hangover.
"I'm down to $16 in my pocket," he said to the company at large, possibly half-explaining his verbal explosion to the morning crowd, the shuttle bus quickly filling with tools and ironworkers.
A guy they called Woody, whom I noticed partnered with Red, leaned over and gently gave motions to just simply ignore the outburst.
But after this mini-crisis, for the most part, I worked with Pete successfully even though he had to show me a little bit more than he reckoned. "Choker," "come along," 'gang box" "sleever bar" "torch" “chain fall” were terms I needed, like Pete said, to know.
Pete was surprised he had to tell me so much—my tools looked used. And, why I was so slow.
"Your tools look like they've been used a lot," Pete observed.
"Oh,” I said, “I bought these from the pusher I used to have at Port Neal Unit 3."
Pete shrugged his shoulders and more or less patiently showed me again how I could best grind his welds he frequently cussed at, how to best help him carry the decking and the railing from the pile dropped down over the roof by the rig. Pete and I would pick up the grating and push it out, straddling, on the beams 4 or 10 feet apart, slowly making our way around the perimeter of that section of the building.
Everything worked okay until I didn't have bearing on a large piece of grating. It slid off the iron, crashing down about 8 feet’. No one was underneath, but suddenly there were a number of pairs of eyes looking up at me. It made a solid crease in the concrete, big enough to split a head clean open.
I thought for sure I’d be run off the job.
Apprentice Ironworker Danny—whom they call Scrubs—grabbed it and carried it up the small flight of stairs and set it back down without comment.
Summer ironworking days had started out wonderfully, if not flawlessly.

******m
all i want to say is, i dropped some donuts off at the Hall and talked to Rojo who gave me a Xmas card and I shook hands with the vp who remem working with "the teacher." I didn't catch his name. And off he went.

"Yeah," Rojo said, "you see people dropping things off." there was a few boxes of where cookies that it looked someone had dropped a few goodies off. But not much more. I was glad to make the small contribution. And then I kept looking at this five gallon bucket where there were a the bottom end of the spud wrenches sticking out at me.

"Yeah, we coulda used you," Rojo said. So, when I was jumping into the carp trade, I shoulda just went back to the hall....well, I was trying to tell Rojo about the second book I wrote.