Chapter 13 March Madness Begins in Earnest
March Madness Begins
March 3 I can’t believe we are now in March Madness era…
Today was spent slogging through the mud. Jeremy, I note, as I carry a bundle of 2-inch conduit to an air exchange that butts up to one of the stairwells and upon which I lean in the corner of the small room where there looks to be a powerful electrical box into which conduit runs, is up on the lift, fairly high in the air, stringing wire. Jeremy, or is it Zack, I for the life of me can’t tell the difference, He looks blithe and totally nonplussed as I struggle past him with a fairly heavy load I’ve yanked out of the buckhoist, pushing my workcart past and through fellow workers who part like a small wave and exit the pulled out of the buckhoist.
I think, He and Zack aren’t even in the union yet they got me carrying pipe and caulking and doing a tool list. Oh yes, did I forget to mention? Paul one morning hands me a small manila folder in which are inventory sheets—a list of tools from the Hiller shop—that have been, heretofore, every Thursday, completed by Jeremy and Zack. Or Zack and Jeremy. I can see from previous weeks how the items are checked off, what crew has them, where they are at. Besides benders and and ladders, there’s small motors and vices. and go check on the tools. and other miscellaneous items.
Here, you can see how Jeremy was doing it.
And there before me, the three-page list of Hiller’s tools .
. Of course, three Hilti guns came but, well before Christmas, one of the Hilti’s has come up missing, only the bright new metal case remained. has shown up missing.
Now, this is no big deal at all, checking tools. But And, let’s of course forget that this is a “laborer” task—for the underlings. That is, those at the bottom tier usually pick up the sweeping and clean-up tasks. Let’s forget, because I was in the union and the J and Z boys weren’t, that I really wasn’t on the bottom run yet it was something I was nonetheless consigned to do. Just go to the shack on the ground floor and check on the tools, right? And if they are there, just simply mark them off.
Simple. Fine. No problem. Except that there are more sections of UP where the Hiller boys are working where the materials and what not are at.
Where are they working? Well, I have no idea. They could be scattered all over the place. I have enough trouble keeping track of what my journeyman Bob needs. Bob likes the cart organized, have the right screws and connectors and couplings and metal boxes, deep and otherwise, and extensions to be screwed onto the boxes for the pulling stations (fire alarm, card swipe), and connectors and couplings which, to this day, I can’t distinguish. Bob would ask for a connector and I’d give him a coupling. A vice verse. I’d make a mistake and pretty much correct myself f through the day. But then usually have to start up again on the next day.
And, of course, ½ inch conduit. Along with the 8-foot ladder we found we had to hide, these were the essential ingredients to get the job done.
Tad likes pretty much the same thing but a pack of sunflower seeds has to be worked into the deal. So, I don’t really bother myself with what the other crews are doing, how they are going about tackling their job. I’ve got tests ahead and I’ve got to get through my lessons.
Enough on my plate, thank you very much.
I tell myself, You’ll just have to check in with Tim or Paul. You know, while the men are opening the big wooden door with a sprrriinggyeeeorwrr, push through, and it quickly slams back by the thick spring, wearing gray Hiller hardhats and safety glasses, headed off to for their own individual projects on the ground floor, the second floor, the atrium, the third floor and then on up to the Penthouse, to the floor above the Penthouse where huge generators and air conditioners sit. Check with Paul. He’s tied up. Tim knows. Stand next to him. Clear your throat. Uhhmmm. Yeah, you begin. He can turn and look at you and know immediately what you are about because you have the black manila folder in front of you, for Chrissake and it’s Thursday and or Tool Check time. Excuse me but you just wanna know where they’re working.
Doug on 3rd Floor. Vick and John (and see, the thing slot has to be, by unwritten rule, a journeyman with an apprentice. Moreover, an apprentice can’t work with live wire until he or she is past their first year). Hunter and Matt on 17. And then, Hank and the low-voltage guys on 15. Tom by himself on 2. Tad and Bob were up in the penthouse area. And just check their work carts, just go through the gang boxes, make sure everything’s accounted for.
well, go to them, see what tools they have in their possession. Have they come across seen, by any chance, the Hilti gun?
Finally, where are all the ladders? The extension ladders. The step ladders. The 6 footers, the 8 footers, the 13 footers. And there’s two mechanical lifts Hiller has on the job, where the hell are they at.
Usually, working up and down for two hours in the day or so, I could come across 95% of the materials. A few benders unaccounted for, a few ladders.
Then, when you get that done, could you go to the air exchanges and see that the smokes (fire alarms) have caps over them? And if they don’t, here’s a box. Just stick this plastic cap over them.
Sparky Blues
March 8th But really, this isn’t work I should be doing. Fourth-year apprentice Steve Oliver has pointed this out to me a couple times (“Someday,” he said, as I moved with my eight foot step ladder out of the shack to begin my caulking duties, “you’re going to stop wearing a skirt and ask Paul what he’s got in mind for you. I mean this is a big job where you can learn a lot. And he’s got guys running wire that aren’t even in the union.”)
So this did grate on me. it grated on me even more when I’d see one of the Bobbsie twins runnin’ the jlg, pretty as you please, me playin’ pack mule..
We’d finished out the day. We were walking away from the job and Bob was heading in a direct line to his hot black Mustang parked in front of the old UP building one block north.
Hey, Bob, got a minute
Sure, what’s up?
I told him about my concerns, what couple of the other brothers had said to me. “I know where you’re comin’ from,” Bob said looking at me, his curly black hair above a blue windbreaker he’d buttoned to the collar, sticking his leg into the car. “Just do what they tell you to do.” It was almost like he was, at some point, expecting this question and had prepared the answer.
Still, I wasn’t completely sure. I carried my concern with me to electrician’s class where, it seemed like an eon ago, but was ont quite a year, I’d taken the electrician’s exam to get into the apprenticeship program.
Instructor Clyde, who pumps iron at Gold’s on a regular basis and is pretty stout, more or less mentally waved me away when I sought a fourth opinion that evening after class.
”This is what happens when you get in the union, you do what they tell ya.”
Plus I think we are getting so close to the end: it’s like a bathtub filling full of water, the trades attacking the structure at either end, seeming to go from the middle of the building down than up, the upper floors and bottom floors filled with workers and activity.
Tad, my partner in the floor above the Penthouse, who won’t let me do anything when it comes to bending pipe, was pulled down to where Tom from Kansas City was working on the bottom floors and who was sent to the Fremont job, Pig Palace—the Hormel plant is expanding; the material finally came in. Now there’s “a call to the hall for two workers.” They’d join Pig Palace regulars Tony and Doug.
Suddenly, I wasn’t helping anybody anymore Sparky-wise: I was pressed into the service of inventory, pulling all the materials from the respective floors that was no longer needed—basically blue Hiller work carts, a gang box or two, various odds n’ ends that were no longer needed. I’d pile them in a corner of the shack that I’d already swept a couple times, he first time dousing the slab with a light red powder that kept the dust from rising as I pushed my heavy industrial broom over it. The second sweeping job, figurin’ I was closer and closer to being a sweep man expert, I again pouring the contents on the slab but Tim quickly waved me away.
“You don’t need that. It just makes a mess.”
I continued my sweep-up duties sans solution.
But now, with carts and materials arriving like an awkward pony express, the shack was getting increasingly crowded, the carts and benders and boxes of material that was no longer needed on the job commanding a space of its own the live load being transferred from the above floors to the bottom, being replaced by the covered and fancy new furniture that began to fill rooms of the Up Center—the body fully grown, the polishing just needed to being filled out.
But I bumped ACROSS BOB ON 17 kind of redoing the air exchange area as a long ranger while I brought up 2-inch duct and leaned it up against the corner of a small room.
(This duct work, of course, had represented something of a logistics feat: it turns out that I not only had to carry them, I had to clean them! Yet, it was at the UP Center, I thought of bringing up 20-foot studs from the basement to the Atrium on a hot August morning, predating the Copper Wall. I thought of late, late fall, a bright November morning. With Bob, we freed up an imprisoned JLG—the building growing and pulsating in all directions—lodged forlornly in the corner. No, you couldn’t start putting up walls or lowering ceilings with a huge machine in the corner, now could you? It’s just that somebody—and all the trades could use it, so, it really was just a rental that had many uses by many of the different trades and thus had no real ownership.
It was pretty much forgotten about, left in the basement. Well, we better get it out if we’re going to go any further. This required Bob and me to don our rescue caps and move workbenches and tool boxes and gang boxes and pipes and conduits, scaffolds and ladders out of the way, clearing a small path for the machine to be drive through. Finally, full sheets of plywood that stood patient guard over what would eventually be the block long underground walkway to the Center, shielding UP employees from the outside elements had to be hammered out of the way.
I watched happily as Bob drove the JLG out of the building. We both watched as an ironworker signaled a crane, hooked on the chokers and the JLG was, as they say, free at last.
So, getting the 20 pieces of 2 inch, 10 foot conduit, nestled on the building’s southwest corner, dropped off maybe seasons ago, and now had to be hustled to its permanent home wasn’t my first rodeo.)
Clean Conduit
March 8 I’ll just do the south buck hoist. I throw the pile of conduit on the cart. I’m thinking how it’s been unceremoniously dropped off there maybe months ago, largely forgotten. A pile of conduit outside the UP building’s south face. Lonely, forgotten. Until now. With the softening earth, a harbinger of spring, the dull white ducts were buried in the mud.
Frost rising up from same, much of ten or so bottom portion was buried in the mud. So I’m big and BAD ENOUGH TO THE BONES to forget about these small slights, these small slings and marshal my respective mental and physical forces to not only get it all up there, expeditiously, you know, but have it cleaned up. I grab fistfuls of snow and try to wash them down. There, that doesn’t look too bad. Point the cart right to where it needed to go.
No, I won’t. A truck’s in the way; it looks like it has no intention of moving. My path to the small dock, four feet off the ground, maybe, and down to which the buckhoists descend, and upon which the men and women and material and tools await to be transported to their respective floors, is blocked. So I rekindle my forces, get up a head of steam, and push the contraption wagon sturdy metal handcart through the crunchy gravel and sand to the west buck hoist—only to be intercepted by Paul and Tim carrying a 13-foot stepladder. “Boy, that got pretty muddy” Paul observed. “You can’t take in up there like that,” Tim said. “Can you get a bucket of water and clean it off?”
So, now clean it up with a bucket
I think of the Bobbsie Twins spiriting the JLG around, advancing towards listening to Hank’s tutelage, a light filter cigarette in their mouths, listening to his melodious bs cant. They look, and smile, and pull out wire from the reels of on the spool below them, guide the line forward through the conduit.
Taking a deep breath, I watch Paul and Tim and the large ladder walk away; I examine the patient before me. So I’m big and bad enough to the bones to forget about these small slights, these small slings these many indiscretions and marshal my respective mental and physical forces to not only get the conduit up there, expeditiously, you know, but get them cleaned up.
But this required a bucket of water; a hose and some soap, now, that’d be real handy. But this took some doin’—I had to go back down where the Capital electricians—with their bright red hardhats, their easy grace—are working, bending I’m to find later, 1 inch rigid conduit with a mechanical bender, pushing wire through the 1 inch conduit and then on to the huge main breakers, ignoring all but the job—in the small cramped rooms that seem to turn in and out on one another in maize formation—in front of them.
Like a hawk in the night honing in on its prey, I point down a long hallway and to my left I find a clean backroom. In there are some buckets of paint, rags and a couple plastic buckets. I immediately abscond the rag and bucket. Now onto my water supply. And, after a few query, I’m pointed to another hallway down between rooms where there’s men at work and come across another backroom where I see a faucet with a small green garden hose attached to it.
I fill my stolen bucket with a water; already, there is a soap film at the bottom. I figured it all belonged to the Holder Helpers; I we’re all in this together.
Just don’t ask me to start cleaning out latrines.
Quickly, I hustle outside and wash off splotches of mud, dousing it like it was ablaze. I then grabbed the rag from the bottom of the plastic bucket—the water equal parts sudsy and foamy—and did the same with the dull white duct’s underbelly, like I was washing the belly of a white floppy-eared sow I planned to show at the country fair.
(They don’t call me Charley Gordon for nothing. Better yet, how about Chance Gardner? Well, the brain damaged in the working world can certainly where, I’m convinced at this point, not a few costumes.)
So this all gets done; I stand like a veritable scrub bucket mopeteer, trucks backing in and out, workers digging a hole and leveling out a section for a slab against the buildings stone foundation. As usual, the nw buckhoist is traveling up and down, down and up, carrying men and materials. As usual, it’s a veritable flurry of concentrated activity.
Me, as bucket man, form but a small cog of the giant construction wheel grinding the railroad’s headquarters to completion.
Now, just get the ducts to the upper floors. Where’d Tim say they had to go? Didn’t he say 15th Floor on up? Or was it 12th? The small room next to air exchange. Well, I’ll just get on up to 12, pulling and pushing the cart along through the almost moving building maize. I looked at my clean quarry. I thought of ascension duties. As mule-in-chief, not my go around: Back in Joseph the Carpenter days, I thought of the stacks of 12 and 14-foot track and metal studs hauled to the upper floors. Even only eight months ago, I think I had more zest, more energy—that it didn’t matter one bit if I hauled all day, so glad was I to be working a steady job. See, come Monday, I’d be working. I even thought of one afternoon when I tore open a large gash in my index finger, sticking the studs through the lift’s hatch. Jim Frank’s daughter, with whom I was muling the track, was immediately alarmed, watching blood drip all over the floor of the hoist.
No, I said, waving her away. I do this all the time. I’m always getting cut.
Oh, no, you need a band-aid. I know where there’s some in the shack.
Like a concerned sister, she took care of me, finding some gauze and splint and managed to bandage it up for me. We then went right back to pulling track and studs off the pallet. The dead load outside now became the live load on the northwest corner on the 13th Floor.
Now, eighth months later, the conduit presented a different labor challenge I did not greet with as much enthusiasm. While there was a sense of joi de vivre with the carpenters, the novelty, I knew as Sparky I was being pushed down to the brain warped lowest common denominator. I was relegated to simple tasks; meanwhile, the Bobbsie Twins went about the low-voltage wiring of the smokes with Hank and the gang.
Plus, there was more of a predicament. It wasn’t really a bundle of studs that could be slung on the shoulder and bulled forward; it was 2-inch conduit, 10-foot sections; it wasn’t like a guy could easily throw it around. In fact, each piece had to be handled individually, each conduit an entity in and of unto itself.
I’m happy I get the job done. Yet, the next day, instead of hooking up with new partner Tad and work at getting rolls of 1 inch conduit around where the transformers are stationed on one end, the building’s heating and air conditioning on the other room.
I plan on working with tall Tad, who, even though he won’t let me bend the 1-inch conduit because it has to loop over an one foot obstruction—that, behind the drywall, looks like one of the huge I-beams on the building’s eastern face—and then come back into the wall again can make the day a long one. Of course, Tad is using the large bender: I’ve only worked with the smaller ones that are suitable for ½ inch conduit. This 1 inch conduit bending, turn, then bend again: because Tad is so tall, he is able to stand over the conduit and get the proper angle on the bend. I’m sure I would have trouble using the larger bender, require even more torque to get the conduit to the 90 degree angle.
But no, it doesn’t matter one bit that I got a good share of the conduit in the building: there’s a call to get more the pipe up there. In the pouring drizzle I pull out the mud 2” conduit: I’m glad I got ‘em all washed off. So, I’ll just load the work cart up and pile them on. I’ll head for the south buckhoist.
No, I won’t. A truck’s in the way; it looks like it has no intention of moving. My path to the small dock, four feet off the ground, maybe, and down to which the buckhoists descend, and upon which the men and women and material and tools await to be transported to their respective floors, is blocked. So I rekindle my forces, get up a head of steam get a head of steam up, and push the contraption wagon sturdy metal handcart to the west buck hoist—only to be intercepted by Paul and Tim carrying a 13-foot stepladder. “Boy, that got pretty muddy” Paul observed. “You can’t take in up there like that,” Tim said. “Can you get a bucket of water and clean it off?”
The dull white conduit, on cart the make shift dolly, not only had to be re-routed, it had to be cleaned off!
I stopped for a moment, northbound traffic easing by me, outside the cyclone fence. I had to consider my options. I scanned the building. No, it wasn’t like there was a hydrant nearby where I could just go and grab a garden hose and hook on to it.
So I tried to think where I could get a water faucet. Oh sure. Now I klnow. The third floor where the carpenter shack used to be. That’s where the Holder Bunnies would go to fill up their scrub buckets and wash down, clean up any of the dirt tracked in by the work.
This required travel travail to 3rd floor where, in the initial Phase II proceedings back in August, there was a row of porta-potties but going up there, I saw that where they’d stood, behind which had laid huge rolls of insulation, there was now fresh light-colored carpet that had yet to be walked on.
(I remember one time, as the way the building was changed, the way there was more and more injection, sometimes, seemingly at a faster pace than others, was most apparent, when, for example, shacks were torn down and carpet took their place, when shit houses were moved, the piss-soaked plywood carted off and fresh linoleum and carpet took their place. From the muck and grind came clarity and light. Well, that’s what happened on the 17th Floor, the last station where there was a small make-shift shack the men could gather round for coffee break, for lunch. It was just visqueen that was looped around the joists. Well, Paul said that had to be all taken down. As one job was done, another had to take it’s ple. That is, if the iron is up, then get out the way for the drywall then the elevate floors, then the wiring then the finish carpentry of carpet and permanent lighting and tables and chairs. (I remember how I was one-stumblin’ critter: I was on the northstairwell with a 6 foot ladder on m shoulder, carrying a bucket of tools on the other hand. This is when the computer floors were now being put in, 16 inches off the slab. But there was still some wire to be run so that there were small fissures in which an electrician could get down there to say, run conduit then eventually wire. Well, I managed to have to not see it but I promptly went down, the ladder and the bucket collapsing in front of me with a loud noise. And sure enough there was a group of people nearby. 12/27/2006 6:51:36 AM the stopped and looked at me with alarm:
“Are you okay, did you hurt yourself?”
“Nah, I’m okay.”
“Well, you better go fill out an accident report.”
“Nah, that’s okay.”
Bob, who had walked ahead of me, turned and saw my difficulties but didn’t say anything when I got there. Like me, we just wanted to shake it off, and get on with things. We were putting up the conduits and then hooking it up to the box. He was already at the east stairwell. We had to keep going steady. Tim showed up a little later, to see how we were doing.
The outhouses have been removed. It’s hard to tell where they go anymore. One minute they’re there, the next minute gone. I mean, for awhile, it was porta on every odd number floor to 12 which hadn’t been closed in yet. By March, the porta were above the penthouse, out on a ledge, or a makeshift one in a room on 17 and 15. and then they brought ones that required an unloosening of the appendage practically in broad daylight. The reason I was looking for the shit houses was that I knew that’s where the clean up folks had faucet and a sink. Grapping a five-gallon bucket of water, to wash down the dull white content, the 10 foot 2 inch conduits, scarred with mud and gravel and assorted outdoors-unprotected grime, I thought would be a task which I could easily expedite. Yet, a trip to third floor via stairs found no latrines or faucets available. Nor did the fifth. Or the seventh. No, not only were no potties around, there were no faucets.
Still, I had to get some water from somewhere. I had the bucket. I just had to fill it. From the extent of the grime caked on the conduit. So I just find manage to find this scrub bucket with a little bit of soap in it, take that, run out then manage to get downstairs where the downstairs electrician’s break rooom is and after some help from a young man whose blue jacket said CSB on it, tracing the hose and then finding the water, I was able to find water where I could fill but then used some dish soap so the third bucket (a blue trash can I took from our shanty) didn’t work because there was the film of suds all over the place.
I’M RUNNIN SHORT AS I HAVE TO STUDY AND I BROUGHT THIS NOTEBOOK HOME WHICH I WAS ABLE TO PROFER SOME NOTES
Because it’s March madness, that means we can scribe whatever we see or happen to come across
---2/10—Ron tells me about Russell, you how he got laid off. Why?
--he was workin’ on 8 and he said to Fred “You finish this, it’s too noisy in here for me.” They got rid of him.
--his habits: yeah at 8 o’clock he’s got his micro out then his knapkins for luch at 10:30 he’d start getting’ ready
“there’s too many people here. I’m goin’ up you can finish this. Jon Lipincott ran him off.”
I thought of trying to help Bob, one of the last times I'd worked with him before I got to Tall Tad. We were up in the Penthouse.
--well calm down. What am I ‘sposed to do, stick my hands in my ass?
--yeah
--Randy walked away
12/26/2006 9:20:10 PM
Bob always said, today I’m gonna get two checks. 11/18/2006 6:51:54 AM
Today WAS A BUSY CRAZY DAY. PAUL inputs to me after I inputted to him that there’d be some caulking that needed to be done. Fine, we’ll go do that. Then Tad laced me aside and said I had to help him get down to 1 with the ladder and his tools. Because he was going down to work where Tom from K.C. was working and, I heard, Tom was heading off to Pig Palace.
The caulking was put on hold. Yesterday, I HAD TO GIT UP AND GIT STUFF FOR JOHN AND VIC. They were working on the upper floors, running fire-alarm conduit in small openings that were about the same size as the air-exchanges but had different kind of logistics. I wish I would’ve written down what exactly it was I had to get for them: I’m thinking now it may have been something so simple as a ladder.
No, I was pretty much expendable. What did Paul Lueke say when he was queried by the EEOC people? Yes, he admitted that yes, he was having me do clean up and pick up tasks; he let me down a little easier than the Thompson gang who said, almost in unison, that they told me how to do something repeatedly, that, finally, they had to do it. That I didn’t comprehend, that I wasn’t getting it.
Well, did I have proper demeanor? This is what ole Dr. Larry Heck would hang me on when I was trying to surmount the U’s for unsatisfactory in the teaching profession. Something like I had to display a hidden confidence that was readily apparent for all who, especially the wild and wooly Behavior Disordered students, would deign look upon my bearing.
I don’t know why they just don’t send third year apprentice Vic and get down and get it but that’s more economically feasible to have me do it. Meanwhile Jeremy spiriting away with 4th year apprentice Steve Oliver on the lift, running wire. And I don’t know how to do a thing about it. IT SOMEHOW MUST GRATE young chain-smoking Jeremy, with the light pull over sweatshirt and the light filter cigarette HIM that he’s not in the union. It grates me that I am but he’s doing my work.
So I’m big and BAD ENOUGH TO THE BONES to find out that Steve Oliver had already taken some pipe up there. Yeah, maybe that’s what I had get up to John and Vic—some 2-inch conduit. Meanwhile I get all my caulking stuff together—oh, we have quite an operation, do we ever. It just requires a large caulk gun and some fillers and a rag and a puddy knife and a ladder. And the holes we cut through the drywall to put our ½ inch conduit through for the smokes, the door, the fire has to be caulked. At day’s end, I just put it all in a bucket and hide my 8 foot ladder I use to move around to get on both sides of the stairwell, and then move onto the the other two stairwell per each floor and then, when I finish, a floor, move the ladder up the stairs, my little five-gallon bucket carrying all the materials I need.
then it’s a call to get more the pipe up there and in the pouring drizzle I pull out the mud 2” conduit: do go south buck hoist. Yes I do. It’d been unceremoniously dropped off there maybe months ago, largely forgotten. A pile of conduit outside the UP building’s south face. With the softening earth, frost rising up from same, much of ten or so bottom portion was buried in the mud. So I’m big and BAD ENOUGH TO THE BONES to forget about these small slights, these small slings and marshal my respective mental and physical forces to not only get it all up there, expeditiously, you know, but have it cleaned up. Right to where it needed to go.
No, I don’t. A truck’s in the way. My path to the small dock, four feet off the ground maybe, and down to which the buckhoists descend, and upon which the men and women and material and tools await to be transported to their respective floors, is blocked. So I rekindle my forces, get up a head of steam get a head of steam up, and push the contraption wagon sturdy metal handcart to the west buck hoist—only to be intercepted by Paul and Tim carrying a 13-foot stepladder. “Boy, that got pretty muddy” Paul observed. “You can’t take in up there like that,” Tim said. “Can you get a bucket of water and clean it off?”
The dull white conduit, on cart the make shift dolly, not only had to be re-routed, it had to be cleaned off!
I stopped for a moment, northbound traffic easing by me, outside the cyclone fence. I had to consider my options. I scanned the building. No, it wasn’t like there was a hydrant nearby where I could just go and grab a garden hose and hook on to it.
So I tried to think where I could get a water faucet. Oh sure. Now I klnow. The third floor where the carpenter shack used to be. That’s where the Holder Bunnies would go to fill up their scrub buckets and wash down, clean up any of the dirt tracked in by the work.
This required travel travail to 3rd floor where, in the initial Phase II proceedings back in August, there was a row of porta-potties but going up there, I saw that where they’d stood, behind which had laid huge rolls of insulation, there was now fresh light-colored carpet that had yet to be walked on.
(I remember one time, as the way the building was changed, the way there was more and more injection, sometimes, seemingly at a faster pace than others, was most apparent, when, for example, shacks were torn down and carpet took their place, when shit houses were moved, the piss-soaked plywood carted off and fresh linoleum and carpet took their place. From the muck and grind came clarity and light. Well, that’s what happened on the 17th Floor, the last station where there was a small make-shift shack the men could gather round for coffee break, for lunch. It was just visqueen that was looped around the joists. Well, Paul said that had to be all taken down. As one job was done, another had to take it’s ple. That is, if the iron is up, then get out the way for the drywall then the elevate floors, then the wiring then the finish carpentry of carpet and permanent lighting and tables and chairs. (I remember how I was one-stumblin’ critter: I was on the northstairwell with a 6 foot ladder on m shoulder, carrying a bucket of tools on the other hand. This is when the computer floors were now being put in, 16 inches off the slab. But there was still some wire to be run so that there were small fissures in which an electrician could get down there to say, run conduit then eventually wire. Well, I managed to have to not see it but I promptly went down, the ladder and the bucket collapsing in front of me with a loud noise. And sure enough there was a group of people nearby. 12/27/2006 6:51:36 AM the stopped and looked at me with alarm:
“Are you okay, did you hurt yourself?”
“Nah, I’m okay.”
“Well, you better go fill out an accident report.”
“Nah, that’s okay.”
Bob, who had walked ahead of me, turned and saw my difficulties but didn’t say anything when I got there. Like me, we just wanted to shake it off, and get on with things. We were putting up the conduits and then hooking it up to the box. He was already at the east stairwell. We had to keep going steady. Tim showed up a little later, to see how we were doing.
the outhouses have been removed. It’s hard to tell where they go anymore. One minute they’re there, the next minute gone. I mean, for awhile, it was porta on every odd number floor to 12 which hadn’t been closed in yet. By March, the porta were above the penthouse, out on a ledge, or a makeshift one in a room on 17 and 15. and then they brought ones that required an unloosening of the appendage practically in broad daylight. The reason I was looking for the shit houses was that I knew that’s where the clean up folks had faucet and a sink. Grapping a five-gallon bucket of water, to wash down the dull white content, the 10 foot 2 inch conduits, scarred with mud and gravel and assorted outdoors-unprotected grime, I thought would be a task which I could easily expedite. Yet, a trip to third floor via stairs found no latrines or faucets available. Nor did the fifth. Or the seventh. No, not only were no potties around, there were no faucets.
Still, I had to get some water from somewhere. I had the bucket. I just had to fill it. From the extent of the grime caked on the conduit. So I just find manage to find this scrub bucket with a little bit of soap in it, take that, run out then manage to get downstairs where the downstairs electrician’s break rooom is and after some help from a young man whose blue jacket said CSB on it, tracing the hose and then finding the water, I was able to find water where I could fill but then used some dish soap so the third bucket (a blue trash can I took from our shanty) didn’t work because there was the film of suds all over the place.
I’M RUNNIN SHORT AS I HAVE TO STUDY AND I BROUGHT THIS NOTEBOOK HOME WHICH I WAS ABLE TO PROFER SOME NOTES
Because it’s March madness, that means we can scribe whatever we see or happen to come across
---2/10—Ron tells me about Russell, you how he got laid off. Why
--he was workin’ on 8 and he said to Fred “You finish this, it’s too noisy in here for me.” They got rid of him.
--his habits: yeah at 8 o’clock he’s got his micro out then his knapkins for luch at 10:30 he’d start getting’ ready
“there’s too many people here. I’m goin’ up you can finish this. Jon Lipincott ran him off.”
--well calm down. What am I ‘sposed to do, stick my hands in my ass?
--yeah
--Randy walked away
3/3/04
I was nearing the end of completing my assignment of getting the pipe in the building.
“bet you miss the carpenters.” It’s roger, with just a half finger on one index finger of his right hand has been runnin’ the job for Davis. Puttin’ up the structure. Ellis and Darrell and Charley are there for another subcontractor. And Roger has been there since at least July when I was initirally there and was told by him “our BA said there’s gonna be 200 IW for the powerhouse in March’
well, it’s March and the newsletter from the electricians say “the powerhouse won’t save us.” Which means it’s being pushed back to July is the latest thing I heard from Dallas who snarled at me when I swept things on him. Later I dumped water on him and his partner. I said sorry, “I’m just clumbsy. “ my middle finger of my left hand hurt for a couple weeks, at least.
”well, I’m missin’ aspects of it but the labor,” I said.
“Don’t get so beat up.”
I grew excited. “that’s it exactly, I found myself almost exclaiming.”
“beat up like an old ironworker.”
“no, you’re lookin’ great.
--electrician talking…another case where the guy that designed the system werent’ here.”
Bathroom scrawls”
Greg’s the greatest.
Just ask me.
I’m the greatest cocksucher there ever was!!!
Dave O.
Hey Rob Shelly, why are you always wearing girls’ jeans? He likes queers to look at his chick pants.
3/6/2004 5:50 AM
WE CONTINUE THE MARCHMADNESS AS I WAS ABLE TO AS I ALWAYS DO (like the cut through the bank drive-in through on the way to work—it’s a walk, very unlike Joyce’s tour of Dublin on Bloomsday: always, I say, as I park the pickup then cut behind Sol’s pawn shop where I bought youngest son Brendan a bright yellow bike and over the alleyway where now I can smell the morning air is mingled with the smell of rich pastry and there is usually a square delivery truck in the alleyway which I skirt and dodge between the wall and the truck not too far from the overpass from which traffic is heard but not seen; always, as I walk, I tell myself to remember the names of the streets and quiz myself each and every morning yet fail-- and now I take the other side of the street like a cow following the path up the hill) when I walk to work how I always point at the electrician’s door with my left hand, my gloved left hand this winter months (I remember today how I left my leather-type gloves that the Holder folks wear in the bucket upon 18th floor where we’ve had our staging area these past 6 weeks or so, having moved up from 16th floor and they were going to have me caulk. But then the order came to get the 2 inch conduit pipe ready for the floors from 11 to 19. and this required me to go out and pull it out of the South side of the building .
THIS WAS TUESDAY AND IT WAS A RAINY WEEK, THIS LAST ONE WAS. TUFTS OF snow spitting from the skies.
But at any rate, back to moving the now cleaned like with the ragman on the Bowery who would try to come up to your car window at the red light and, with a dirty rag, begin to wipe your windshield, a beard and wild eyes, and look at you with their hand out. and so it was with a similar rag I wiped the conduit down, as best I could and then loaded them on the cart.
And thus it was completed and all loaded on. Yet, I couldn’t decide where to push my cart to. There was maybe 14 or so sticks on there. And this would be through the mud and uneven gravel and concrete and so there was harder than heck to move through. So before I decided to go south I checked it out. Yet, as I said above, there as an 18-wheeler parked there. I thought of pushing it downhill on the other side of the 18-wheeler but realized there was not a forklift that could wing it up on the dock. The forklift was up on the other side.
The other ploy, of course, was to unload all the pieces and set them on the dock then pull the cart up the stairway. But the dock was wet and this would go against my having to get them more clean.
And I’d seen them how muddy there were and let them fall and slam against the red metal scaffold leg that was prone on the edge of road that the 18 wheeler was backed up against.
It was crudded with mud and gravel mixture and I pulled it vertical and let it fall horizontal with a bang (and now I’m thinking all the tin tracks that clang and bang so much like tin upon tin and because they’re so thin they fall into a discordant pile like they’re easily twisted and so straight and level they are twisted only a step or two above aluminum foil). It was the only way to do it. Just hand it up to the temporary ledge that circled about the platform where the hardhatted men and a few women sat ready to get on the one of two buckhoists and go to their respective floors, a good share of the work now taking placer on the high floors. In fact, the left buck hoist was, by this time, for material purposes only. Such that one might have to wait for a good halfhour before he or she could wait for the buck hoist to come down, discharge its passengers, some of them pushing work carts or sometimes even, a JLG driven onto one and taken to another floor. And I was able to now qualify, after I managed to pull the cart up the stairway and then simply load the conduit which I had unloaded on the ground. It was really and inordinate amount of work, more than a few man hours for simply spiriting the conduit to the respective floors yet really, because I wasn’t running wire, wasn’t setting and bending conduits in the control room, was the Last of the Mohicans, as it were, I just resigned myself to the task ahead of me.
Chris Sullivan listened to me talk about how you get in the electrician’s union. He was looking up to the JLG that was stood upon by a sticker-plasted hardhat that was atop an Allied worker whom I didn’t’ recognize
I told Chris how he had to take the test and “you ouuta do that” “I thought about doing it, about getting into that union” Chris said. He said this to me almost four months ago when he first came on the job and I was just finishing up my electrical prep—I mean the last few days of the two-week notice. And Rod Legrand was still there.
FIGHT
Did I talk about how pissed I was when greg called me “fucking screwball or fuckin’ clown or something like that. I envisioned the next couple days how I’d walk up to him and say “you know, you got a big fucking mouth” and then maybe he’d say something like “what, what are you talking about” and I’d have my fists clenched and smack him in the mouth.=--a grandpa hitting him with a hard sharp left. And then legrand would turn fury and start fighting back and we’d grapple and fall in the mud and he’d realized I wouldn’t give up that I was probly just as strong if not stronger than he.
And then we’d be broken up by a few of the electricians and I’d have welts in my face and Greg would have a black eye. I replayed this a couple times but said hullo to him this week late and so it was all okay because he has a lot more to lose in that his life is near shambles a day or two away from insanity and so even though it would be more psych damaging than physicl how would he ever live it down so I’m glad
Vertigo
Proviso
Assignation
I didn’t punch him in the face and hurt him. I mean, I can take a shot and it really doesn’t hurt that much unless you’re a big man with a big fist. But I know I hit hard with my left so, better be careful
THEN THERE WAS THE IRONWORKER WHO stepped on my ego at the Cargill plant maybe 10 years ago. He’s still with the long hair and the forest ranger hardhat but is now (and because I was moving material and lookin’ for same—two ladders in the basement, a 12 foot one on the 2nd floor where I IRONWORKER CHARLEY WHO SAID ‘HELLO Mr. Hartnett” and I’m surprised not only he knew my last name but that he would greet me as such. I don’t know how he knew my last name. He was the Charley Ironworker who could walk the high iron with aplomb. My first job back ever, on the fourth floor, standing on the corner of the iron, waiting for the crane to lift a basket into which he could step into and head down, I was truly amazed. And then, in other jobs, I’d seen him do this more than once.
“I gotta piece in today’s paper.”
“oh really,” he kept doing what he was doing, bolding up a section on the stairwell, his eyes on the work before him and not at me, “I’ll have to read it.”
And then I bumped into Ellis comin’ up the stairs after I’d run into Bryan with whom I’d talked to coming up that west stairwell I so many months ago had traversed the first time that seemed a lifetime away. With high expectations, not realized, a little on the doggone it side in that I’d lose overtime and thus a dent in the pocket book.
BUT IT WAS DOWNTOWN AND I didn’t much know where to park but after awhile began my trek from Sol’s where they have the bikes out at 6:30 in the morning
AND HOW JOE JUST WAVED ME AWAY WHEN I SAID I DIDN’T WANT TO RUN FOR OFFICE BECAUSE I HAD TO WRITE (I don’t know what Joe. Was it apprentice office? Carpenter office?) , he was pushing through the door of the break room and more or less waved me away and so NOW BECAUSE I WAS PUBLISHED March 6 I HAVE ALITTLE MORE SUBSTANCE A LITTLEMORE REVIEW. But it spurs me to keep writing….
But that’s where I CAME ACROSS IW BRIAN. “hey brian,” I was going down, he was coming up. “how’re ya doin’?”
“good” I explained myself. “yeah I worked iron for awhile then I got into the electricians.” This is a v. big step. This is an important step. While on face it doesn’t look like any big deal, from when I was working iron, to get in the electricians was a nearly impossible task.
“how long you been with the electricians?” “oh, I just started in October.”
Then Ellis joined us. “you know this guy?” “yeah, we did a bridge deck together. We left at 2:30 everyday. We went to the bar in Schyler and had beers.”
Ellis looked at me and stuck his thumb out at me, “did he go with you?”
I said, “oh yeah,”
“Yeah,” brian said.
Ellis said, “we worked down at the Powerhouse in NebraskaCity. Wasn’t that the best job you ever had?”
I was suddenly kinda in the throws. Of a dilemma.”
“yep.”
No, his best job was the bridge decks.” The inspectors said it was good and we left everyday at 2:30. we didn’t have to do anything twice.” Brian recounted this history. I do remember him how he said that to me, almost a refrain. In fact, it was a refrain. I do remember there was apiece that we had to redo and brian cussed voluminously but it wasn’t my fault or my call so we just cut some of the wires off and were happy doing same.
Instead I said, “yeah, he said to use a saddle instead of a figure 8.” “yep, because then it won’t walk on ya.
“yeah, he had an article in today’s paper” said Ellis. I don’t know how he found out. Maybe Charley whom I’d seen earlier in the day passed it on. But I certainly didn’t tell Ellis. Or maybe I did.
A couple people read it and then when I came across Ron Hartman, he read it in its’ entirety. Then I traveled to the penthouse area and Jeff, who dad I heard from Bob Jensen is pretty much caught up strong in the militia, also read it in it’s entirety.
“what’s it ‘sposed to mean?”
“you know, tradition.”
Then Mike, Jeff’s partner, came over. “he wrote this, ”and he put his hand where my name was pointing.
I tried to stand there and wait for it but could tell he was going to ready the whole thing and thought of Jeremy and vic down below tryin’ to get things ready to go for the move to the proceeds down to the bottom floor.
So I just left it with them and thought what the hell turn it over the electricians, that’s the union I’m in.
THEN JOHN Barry who misses nary a trick came across me and made sure I had my monthly card signed and then had me signa petition and I told him about my publication and he said “they were lookin’ for a writer of the newsletter three months ago but nobody wanted to do it.”
I’ll call ‘em.”
So I dutifully called the hall after looking up the number. I tried to explain to the lady who answered the phone. Despite my name dropping, it really didn’t elicit much of a response. “Okay,” she said, sounding matter-of-fact-and-why-are-you-bothering-me-with-such-trivial-nonsense, “I’ll tell the guys and they’ll get back to ya.”
From the sound of her tone, it didn’t sound like anyone would get back to me. and no one ever did.
I thought of the seeming The subservience of the secretary with the elec. Ole Barb with carp has more power, more of a jolt. Which means if she would’ve taken the message, someone would’ve gotten back to me.
And they make a lot less money. Not so hard to get into.
3/6/2004 10:11 AM
3/6/2004 3:27 PM
AND THEN SPEAKIN’ of the ole tuff guy IW I see the dude who called me “little asshole.” He also pulled over and threatened me “hey watch wur your goin’” now he’d be another one to challenge but Friday I saw him walking around with his mounty hard hat and was protruding a wee bit was the ole belly button and I think it’s more incentive to keep me workin’ out.
NO, I WOULDN’T WANT TO embarrass him either. I could take a shot or two but I wouldn’t want to get hit by one of mine. He was carrying a crock pot and perhaps he brought some chilly his ole lady brought.
BROTHER FUCKER is what Tad is because he spaced out on my monthly report. “Yeah, I’ll get to it, bring it to me later.” He waits until the v. last minute then he begins to engage. He does put me aside; I’m the last guy on the list. Of course, he’s tryin’ to be nice. Any of the categories, 20 different checks on various t hings delaing with wiring, electrician’s work, I fit in nary a one of them. No, there’s no category for caulking.
But, levity levity. How Doug, Tony’s partner when they spirit down from Fremont because the material been delayed for the vacant room of the plant that was going to be a cooler to alleviate the pressure from the present crowded freezer, responding, in part, to America’s higher demand for pork, and thus were speeding up the line, responding to demand, they couldn’t get the pork cold, frozen. So a new freezer was in order.
But Doug was there, ready to go about his business. Like Hank, he looked over at me and said, “I heard you were pretty good with the caulk.”
“Caulking,” I said, correcting him somewhat obvious and fairly droll reference.
And then the kidding went from first floor shack to top floor penthouse. ALL DAY WEDNESDAY Capital Electric’s MIKE was givin’ me a hard time how I had to wear underwear with flowers. Presuming I was to perform some sexual acts but my usual retort and refrain is “You’ve got to show me how; I need a demonstration.”
It seems to work and they pretty much quit egging me on.
BUT THEN THERE WAS THOSE WHO LEFT US:
Crystal—she got into it with a floor woman or someone from Holder. There’d been a screaming match from sometime before and she was gone. Maybe another one, yes, I think there was, another one had occurred fairly recently. For this she was dismissed.
And the cute little perky gal, Diane, an apprentice electrician, who was working on the lower floors when I was with the carpenters, was dismissed for constantly showing up late. she was petite and cute. It seemed there was some quite revealing pictures she had about the shack of her in a bathing suit. She smoked long white filtered cigarettes and looked quite demur in a hard hat, long black hair in pigtails cascading below her shoulders. I’d catch her on one of the floors, like me, holding up a step ladder while her partner Steve’s blond hair would push out from the back of his hardhat and he’d attach the device. She’d also started working nights in a bar to cover the drop in pay from when Avaya folded and she jumped into the trades. I’d see her, along with Tim Bauer, working on the crossword puzzle and her, on a couple occasions, going over to Tim, kneeling before him, examing her response to some of the ones she did not get and soliciting his advise. But the constant late for work didn’t carry the day and suddenly, just after Christmas, when it was fun to come in the mornig and see a slim and petite form march about the room, was no more. Young single-mom bathing suit cute Dianne was fired.
The tart is a lonely hunter.
WHICH IS WHY I SAW THE OTHER female operator who’d been runnin the west buck hoist on board that day. I can’t remember her name but she was there almost everyday during the summer.
But THEY SAY THIS SOUTH BUCKHOIST WILL COME DOWN.
3/25/2004 7:34:12 AM
“YOU’RE REAL MAN.” 3/24/2006 8:13:51 AM this is what Bob said to me when he called the house. Was I just coming out of treatment from the hospital? I know it wasn’t too much removed from that. The reason I got to write today, almost distancing self to an extent from the wafting snow falling away from the hills, me as a young soldier, pining for those days when the snow would begin to slowly but surely depart from the hills when the sun would come out clear and strong and small streams of melting snow would pick up into eddies and form small pools that expanded as the day grew stronger and the wind picked up a notch or two.
“well, what are you gonna do about your classes?”
I don’t know. I’ll probly try to go to class tomorrow night.”
“no,” bob said “fuck that. You got your daughters to take care of.”
He forgot my sons. Lyndsie, who I saw at the gym, that was the first question she asked: how are your girl’s doing in track?
“Oh, real good. My freshman was fourth in the state last year in class A.”
“Oh, she was?”
No, I’m not there anymore.” Lyndsie had all the apples and best teacher cards favorite teacher letter pasted on the walls of the classroom she was often stationed at. She was doomed to have the Ichabod Crane look and so was pummled unnecessarily by the bouncer at the Ice House. And so her shoulder was torn and thrown and it hurt her to the extent that she was till suffering pain even though she’d seen a chiropracter and dr. visits and ways to get it worked out of her system. This is nice because it does tie back to chp. 1 at Uta Halee.
I WAS CALLED BY THE carpenters: I was down to the end, low man on the totem pole but called to the training center, given a slip of paper and sent to the hall. I was going to be working down at the convenstion center. So I had to go over to council bluffs and check in at a scaffold place, Patent Scaffold.
3/25/2004 8:46:58 AM
“you don’t have to call again, you’re off the list.”
Ok, thanks.
Bye.
IT’S WHAT CONCLUDED THE CARPENTERS.
LET ME LOOK you up.
I was responding to a voice mail in that I was 6 months in arrears. Then I’d be out of the union, or put on suspension. The LEGRANDS, THEY HAVE NO ATTENTION OF PAYIN’ EVER.
OH GREG, I WAS IMAGININ’HOW I’D KICK his ass. Well really, when he scoffed and called me a goof ball or clown or something, I was close to confronting that. That’s really the only thing that CAN PISS ME OFF. WHEN I GET EMBARRASED. THEN I WANTO COME UNGLUED. LIKE WHEN DAN hertzl, God Bless his wonderful soul, at Russ and Beht/s house I shot out “don’t be an asshole.” Or something like that. It just flared out of nowhere.
I hate bein’ ridiculed.
BUT THEN I TOOK CARE OF THE FIRST CALL FROM diane MOORE SO I COULD KEEP SUBBING.
“I took you off the list.” Is what Dianne Moore said to me. I had called last night. I was told that there were “no jobs available.”
We concluded that I would swing by there tomorrow. “what are you doing today?” “I don’t have trans today?” this was a lie. Actually Kath said I could not drive, that I had to wait a day.
THIS IS ALL IN RESPONSE TO HOW LAST Wednesday, St. Pat’s day. It was slushy when I climbed the steps out of the building and skipped past where the plumbers have their restroom which I sequester myself to in the morning and usually had a pang in my chest.
PANGS IN MY CHEST REALLY reached the fore one morning and finally I admitted to Tony at one point that I had had pains in my chest and went to doctor and couldn’t find nothin’ but
3/26/2004 4:57:08 PM
THE PHONE RANG A COUPLE TIMES AND I’M IN THE ATTICK. I FINALLY MAKE it down second time but it has stopped ringing and I don’t know the #, think it’s maybe the daughters.
So I’m walkin’ around and I see a man with a white shirt steadily walking to the back of the house. I don’t know who it is and feel slightly annoyed that Megan has another visitor and I notice he flicks a white cigarette on the ground. Like an invasion of privacy.
So I go to the front door and step outside, thinking it’s a salesman or someone who wants to ask a question or something AND I SEE IT’S PAUL LUEKe.
“hey, I tried to get a hold of ya but then I thought I’d just drive by.”
“hey, how are ya doin’?
“I wanted to bring this by. This is a card from the guys. They had up at Hormell then they brought it down to us.
I looked at a card he had in his hand.
It was open and it was white. It was also thick.
“Hey, thank you I said.
“Open it,” Paul said. “we thought it’d be kinda a tough for you and your family so we took up a little collection, first at Hormell then at UP. I think there’s about $400 there.
I COULDN’T BELIEVE IT. 3/27/2004 7:21:20 AM THEY’D pulled together almost $400. I was just about speechless. Parted of me wanted to hug Paul. But I feel I didn’t give thanks enough.
SO LET’S REWIND IT BACK.
I HAVE trouble making it up the stairs.
I mention it Tuesday to Tony that I had an apt. with cardioloigist.
March 18th, the day after St. Pat’s, I’m tired and quite sleepy I can’t wait to get home and take a shower and go to bed.
Why did you come to the hospital? I don’t remember, but Kath said that was the question everyone was asking
So, it was Thursday cardio apt., March 18th, I get there so early. I’m ahead of a guy that doesn’t show up. So they injected me with a drug and there was some elevation, I was to find out later.
March 11th is the day I think I just went ahead and went to the doctor. “I just got to see someone,” I said. “I don’t have an appt.” then a physician’s asst. looked me over. I had blood drawn, I had a chest x-ray, I had an ekg. They found nothing only kath saw that there was an appt. to see a cardio.
When can I see the cardio,’ I said. “can I see them on Saturday or Sunday? I have to work.” No, they told me. The cardiologist testing is only M-F 8 ‘til 4.
So Kath said I’d better take care of it. So it was set up for March 18th.
The pain: I woke up one night three times. I’d have to sit up. I’d wait a little while then I got a chance to lay back down..
Kath said maybe mid March madness after I woke up feelin’ terrible how she’d take me to emergency. I laid back down and felt better after awhile. SHE SAID I LOOKED GRAY…
I KEPT THINKIN’, wearin’ my IBEW stocking cap, that I looked old and tired. There were wrinkles on my face and sometimes I’d splash my face with cold water, hoping to chase them away. EVEN KATH SAID I WAS LOOKIN’ like I was goin’ down hill fast.
3/27/2004 10:15:12 AM
4/3/2004 8:11:28 AM
4/3/2004 8:40:50 AM
k’s getting’ ready for track, allie of the new spikes is still sleepig
ben delay was by, with a full ride to Kansas State. I hope he’s mature enough to handle all the pressure but Kath says he’s been invited internationally, been invited to NYC, and therefore takes off on a great career
BACK TO CLASS
As usual I’m a week behind shy, a couple bricks shy of a full load. That means that I don’t have the lesson we’re working on, lesson 59, a quite important one in that there’s some difficult times making the loads equal, equivalent resistance.
And then I saw Clyde’s procedure, moving chalk quickly about the blackbord, for parceling out the loads. But for me it takes time and it’s hard to match up where they go. I have trouble paying attention, wondering where I’ll be sent when I go back to work, dreading the thought of returning to Pig Palace, despite a curious affinity I’d attained with the greasy dull basement walls, the slow gurling of the hog remains as it descended in a dull yellow swirl into the gutter such that, when the day’s kill was done, the smell of burnt carcass in the air, that, as I mentioned before, you do grow used to, but once you were away, it was a dull purgatory you cared not to belong to, or very much cared to return to.
12/28/2006 6:22:05 AM I also notice I got a note from a teacher—please cover:
2nd hr. 315 please cover.This is stapled on og, 402 of 453 page manual that is broken down from Section 1 to Section 11.
Millard North
March 24th
This is in yellow sticky notes that’s pasted on pg. 402 of the NJATC (National Joint Apprenticeship Training Committee) 2nd hr. 315 please cover.
Now I’m thinkin’ what school this could be? Well, I think it’s just a study hall in the upper floor of Millard North Mustangs. Here’s what I wrote:
I missed you this morning Sue in large black thing that was almost a folder
Well, now I see the name is Sue. She’s the head secretary at Millard West. I always think she’s phony. Full of pretense and, like the blonds of Millard Area, filled with pretense like a stuffed balloon. Like half athletic, very blond, half good looking such that they’ve been looked at over the years. And so have learned to vote repelican and evoke a phony smile.
So it was Millard West I was at that day:
The drama in the classroom. She didn’t know I was watching her watching them. And then finally asked for a prom date like what she should say
No anything better than going stag
“I mean I’m gonna be an attendant.”
So they grabbed a pass from library three of them rushed to do their bidding: and then he came in the door.
Wow, now I remember. It was at a high school. The girl, fairly attractive, if slightly edging more towards homely, was so perplexed. Here was prom coming up and she didn’t have a date. And, to top things off, she was an attendant. So, stewed and worried she had to have a date. I mean, come on.
So now I see that it maybe wasn’t secretary Sue. Sue Secretary. Well, maybe it was. And these were two different comminques between adults and teeny boppers.
What is all the way neat and striking is that this on page 402, ilke I said, of the NJACTC . these are, for me, complicated questions. This book was set up by Jim Paladino. Clyde, our fearless instructor who will say, from time to time “You guys are electrical geniuses.” Half mocking, half jest but I for sure know that there are a couple of the folks really getting it. They might’ve had a little background in electricity. Let’s look at the first question on the page, below the title above p. 402 NJATC First Year Inside Apprenticeship
Let’s go then, you and I, to question one. Of course, through this time, I’m thinking how many folks said I was close to expiration date. And, like always, if perhaps now a bit more pronounced, a little bit of a look at mortality. Which, indeed, I’d pretty much forgotten about. So blissfull am I in my selfsame consideration of my toil with the weights with the climbing, at work, the stairways at the UP building. Well, let’s stop at 13, shall we? And then I’d carry on, higher and higher to the lightening building, to the lightening day. So, while I didn’t want to admit it, and had to restrain myself, I was getting older. What did Deshler Ironworker say, “Too slow for his dough.”
Okay, question #2. of course, when I look at my notes, I see that they are everywhere. I always had a little crib sheet that I’d stick in my pocket and go over. I remember when the shack for the IBEW was on the 3rd floor, Tim, who’d I’d inevitably sit next to, one time said, “so are you studying your notes?” I informed him that, since I started six weeks behind the other apprentices, there were three tests I had to make up. as well as keep up with the regular course work. Well, clyde said that Jim Paladino, at the national conference, commanded a lot of respect. The manuals and texts, Clyde said, some of the other locals never had any of it. Such that electricians out of other halls could not do some of the necessary work. Whereas ours was form a larger spectrum.
2. In the diagram below, show the direction of electron flow through the load and give the polarity markings for the load.
SO I’M PRETTY WEAK IN THAT
TELL US A STORY, I’M ORDERED. It’s my day back in class. I look over in the middle section of the room and see female apprentice Brooke. She always gets high marks in the test but I heard she had to go before the committee as her production was low. (At the time, sitting next to Ryan, I merely shrugged my shoulders. I didn’t know what that meant. It wasn’t until a few weeks I came back after back that I had to see the committee.) I cleared my throat. I know she’s had some college, seemed literate enough, so it was my careful explantion I more or less was addressing to her.
SO I tell about my Sunday when things were going untoward and went to emergency and kept me overnight then operated the next day. The brothers and sisters’ faces, chapped from a cold March day, looked at me patiently. A mild degree of interest, like an electric light, flickering over their counteance. 12/28/2006 12:13 PM
There was not much concern, not much comment but then I told how Paul Leuke came down and there was this huge donation from the electrician’s in Fremont, the electrician’s downtown. And the carpenters and the ironworkers. I can’t believe all the cards I got, a gift certificate to Barnes N Noble, a family meal at Applebe’s, Mary coming by and dropping off some balloons, hopping I’ll soon get better.
I hastily scribbled and scrambled notes, tryin’ to remember how it all should be applied.
I was just glad to make it through class though I still am remiss in how to do the work and am not helped in the least because I don’t have the answers to apply to the lesson and thus am even further behind and down.. of course, I was making an excuse why I was late on my assignments. Why I couldn’t carry the load with the class, this their failing circuit, this their weakest link.
Clyde said “you should’ve been here Thursday because that’s the day they really went over it with a fine-toothed comb. I thought of Bullet Bob’s advice that I should stay with my daughters.
BUT, FOR ALL IN ALL, I’M GLAD we made it through March madness:
And I JUMP BACK INTO SUB LAND.
4/3/2004 9:04:14 AM
4/13/2004 6:39:32 AM
AND NOW WE’RE IN THE SUB LAND AGAIN.
It’s really the best job—I can work on my notes and study for my class and print out a couple pages of my book.
EPIPHANY doesn’t have the same thrust as it did last year: I guess because I was published in the w-h.
I KEPT THINKIN’ HOW I NEEDED to call JAMES JEREMY BUT FORGOT to get the number from mom: it’s a great an fabulous celebration, the resurrection. I guess I just wanted him to know that dear old dad dodged another bullet.
And I THINK OF THE QUIP I SHOULD’VE inserted when they were all saying grace and Mom gave the final attachment, “and happy Ronnie is here with us.” Following our family trek to church. I thought a little bit later it would’ve been a great in join by saying “he has risen.”
I DIDN’T WALK THRU Hubbard confines but saw their was a John “Jack” Heeney park. Ever since the folks donated their money to the Parish Center and had dedication to Grandpa Cahill/Grandma Cahill…Grandpa Hartnett/Grandma Hartnett there’s been a flurry of dedications. Well, actually, there’s one—to Joe McKivergan that’s on Calvary Cemetary.
REHAB HAS started with all it’s respective bells and whistles. I was intro to Paul but after a couple exchanges Friday, he and I didn’t exchange any yesterday because he’s pretty caught up in his situation—some other surgery he has to undergo in a short time. But he’s not liking to talk much to anyone there’s mostly a lot of old people around.
IT FELT GOOD MONDAY to see Paul Saunders, Mwest track coach and talk a little bit about Allie’s running.
I said how she was prob’ly the fastest 800 runner in the state. This I said to the folks and the others and they were glad and happy for Alie, for the family.
“she has such raw talent” is what Dad said at the kitchen table. “Mollies had about 200 games I don’t know what that coach didn’t know what she was doing but kept running the same plays.”
It was the Central gal’s first time coaching. She didn’t know what was up.
DOCTOR WON’T LET ME GO BACK TO WORK. I SAID, WELL, THAT MEANS I HAVE TO KEEP WRITING.
4/25/2004 10:25:04 AM
well, not really. Now my chief concern was that I was almost summoned from the grave. That is the small device that is a small shunt was almost blocked and so nurse Mary said I was darn close.
And then A TRIP TO HARRAH’S SHOWS ME THAT THERE WERE THREE HILLER VANS THERE.
AFFIXES DID SHE WITH A SERIOUS DEMENOUR: THAT IS get your monthly report in. I’m shy am I not, of a few hours to get my first raise. It’ll be interesting to see September who is in the new class. And if they’ll surpass me in the number of hours.
YOU GOT YOUR ANGELS WORKING OT.
WITHOUT PAY WITHOUT BENEFITS.
It was my saints up there, the two Mikes, Grandparents, Jack Heeney who pulled me through.
5/29/2004 9:32:11 AM
this is such an update.
“Hold him by the hand” is what I think Matt was saying. He was addressing Hunter. Who had expressed a tad bit of reservations about the young dude who just got past his 5 years of apprenticeship and then took a trip to Chicago to participate in his fiance’s up and coming graduation from Med School. He said he didn’t’pass the test. He took it again in march in Norfolk. “I worked for four hours and didn’t think I made it, just walked away and said ‘whatever.’ But then I found out I gotta 92.
So he’s on the verge of being sworn into the union.
It was his last day, this first day in May 3. Yes, I think the next day would be my last day, too. I see Rick got taken off the Harrah’s job and then, that next Friday, I could stand it no longer. I think Rick, the very first journeyman I’d worked with, way back back in October, at Gold’s Gym, was sent to Pig Palace.
BENEFITS AND PICNICS AND SOFTBALL GAMES, 30 years revisited: this is the benefit softball game they had for me. And yes, this was all documented and recorded. That issue of the South Sioux City Star, it was a post game pix of the comely wife and me.
So I sped up to Fremont. You are first in notice of the smell.
“yeah, they’ll be in later. You’re too early. I see the place where I park caution taped off. So I parked in a slightly different place. First it was Jeff Elsasser. He quickly turned on the lights. Here I was just standing in the light that was above where Tony has his desk. It’s not really a desk, but just an area where he figures and calculates stuff.
Like a dummy, I didn’t now how to turn the switch on. Overhead, you could year the low rumbling of pig’s heads coming down the shoot.
EVENTUALLY, THEY ALL STARTED SHOWING UP. And I saw Rick, formerly displaced from Harrah, as I was the day later after last Monday, May 4, 2004. which means it was Tuesday and Dan Cox said ‘we couldn’t find a home for ya.” And then he presented me with two checks. And, of course, I received the ceremonial ride back to my pickup truck—with two other electricians whom I think were from Lincoln—crowded in the material-crowded section of the industrial van, leaning, I was, on a roll of wire.
ANDNOW WE HAVE IT ALL—THE two checks from the ironworkers, the two checks 30 years later from the electricians…and a ride to my vehicle after the benefit softball game, the pig roast on the other.
On the day no pigs would die.
3/24/2006 8:12:20 AM
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