Loose Laces

Part Seven...

Got up next morning and spent a quarter for a cup of coffee at the motel restaurant, and ate a sweet roll from the 7-Eleven on the way to work. Being a complete rookie, I had never dropped brass before. They had given me a number when I hired in, and I had to go by the guard shacks and pick up a piece of brass about the size of a quarter, carry it in my pocket all day, and drop it in a collection box at quitting time. That's how they knew who was at work and who wasn't.

I located my foreman, got squared away with a shiny new white hardhat, and he said we were working the fourth floor that day. This is when I had my first encounter with a man-lift. The lift is a vertical and continuous conveyor belt with a double-sided step about a foot wide and big enough for one person to stand and with a small cupped steel handhold at chest height. It was constantly moving at a pretty good clip, with one side carrying men up to higher floors, and the other carrying them down. It went almost to the top of the building, which was pretty darned tall because of the big boiler it housed. Foreman motioned for me to follow him up on a platform where he stepped on a foot stand, and off he went. He again motioned me to follow on the next step that came by. I sucked it up and stepped out of the real world onto something very frightening for a hillbilly. Man, I got my scrawny body so close to that belt it probably looked like I was making love to it, and held on in a way that only terror can make me do. That was another time where a hat pin couldn't have been driven into any part of me; I was tight. After what seemed like an hour of riding--actually only a few seconds--I felt a tap on my shoulder. It was the foreman on one knee at our getting-off place letting me know we had arrived and I should part ways with the belt. Happily, I did so without falling flat on my face. Getting on and off the lift is just a matter of timing. The foreman had a big grin on, and slapped me on the back and told me that about half the newbies either wouldn't get on or were so scared, they couldn't turn loose to get off. If you don't get off, you continue to rise all the way to the top of the framework where the belt goes over a roller and descends. Fortunately for the frozen rider, there is a cut-off emergency stop bar he has to hit before going over the top and descending head first. There are also stairs that one can use to go up and down, but the belt was more popular.

I was introduced to my working partner, a guy from Local 26 and of Swedish descent who was used to working asshole-and-elbow jobs all his life, and he was having a difficult time adjusting to the more laid back and no-one-gets-in-a-hurry industrial construction.

The job was working an odd arrangemnt of hours; four ten hour days, eight hours on Friday and Sunday, and nine hours on Saturday. The eight hour Friday was so we could have time to get our checks cashed at local banks. At double-time for all overtime, that came to just over $600 each week.

I got paid on the first Friday for two hours hiring-in time on Monday, 10 hours each on Tuesday and Wednesday. I made more than I was getting at home for 40 hours.

The following Monday morning the used battery I bought for the Bird died. I took needed funds across the street and bought an new one at an Esso station and barely got to work before the brass shacks closed.

Next, company comes...