My first exposure to the iron and steel industry was at a Kelsey-Hayes plant in Detroit. I worked as an electrician when I got out of the Navy. We had built controls at our shop in Pontiac. One project was for a shaker conveyor to separate iron brake drums from the sand castings. My boss wanted me to come along for startup, should there be any problems. I was awe struck by heavy industry. There were so many people, so much machinery and equipment functioning in the biggest building I had ever been in, to produce iron castings. A huge cantilever dumped the mold pallets of sand and red hot castings on to our system intended to separate the two. The shaker conveyor was not breaking things up as planned so they summoned a big black dude with a twenty pound sludge hammer to strike the stubborn pieces. This was long before OSHA and our only safety gear was a hard hat. The dust made breathing a challenge while the noise battered you senseless. To speak with someone you plugged his ear with your thumb and screamed out the words two inches away. Most of the Kelsey people were black because the high pay compensated for the hazardous environment or so they thought. After one day there, it took two weeks for my sinus mucus to clear.
During my eight year tenure as a customer service rep for the material handling company, I had several steel mill and foundry projects. My first was at the Ford Flat Rock foundry. Ten years since the Kelsey episode, this modern facility lessened the dangers to man, I thought. A Roll-abrattor machine with an enclosed chamber propelled steel balls to clean castings inside. Somehow it got turned on while a man was inside.
A rolling mill is where steel rod is made. Beginning with a red hot ingot, rollers gradually form small rod from an ingot three feet in diameter. As the diameter decreases, the speed of the rod increases. The red glowing rod becomes propelled through this mile long building at over sixty miles per hour. Out of the hundreds made in a day, at least one would escape the rollers and become a twisted mess atop the mills. At the end of the line, the rod was coiled onto a bobbin forming a six foot spool weighing a ton. Our project was to convey the spool to a compactor-bander, making a form so that it could be shipped. There is no way that I can explain to the reader my predicament and near-miss. I had only a bruised hand instead of losing my forearm to a ton of steel inside the compactor-bander. I consciously gripped my forearm for several years thankful it was there.
One cool two weeks in May, I was assigned to a foundry project for Kohler in Wisconsin. Rather than bunk at a local motel, I took my tent and lived at a State park on Lake Michigan, a great way to clear cast iron dust from your lungs.
Iron workers are a unique breed. Hardy, hard working, and heavy drinkers they were always good for a laugh or head-shaking grin. Typically they partied late into the night, always got to work on time; were blurry-eyed all morning. They saved the tough work for the afternoon when a shot and a beer at lunch got them back on an even keel. The supervisor on a project in Pennsylvania promised to show a new iron worker a good time in town that night. The next morning the new recruit was holding his chest and all laughed at his misadventure. He had kept drinking with the boss at the bar till midnight. Then the boss looked over and he was gone. He bellowed, “Where is that light-weight?” After finishing his beer, he jumped off his bar stool and landed both feet on the recruit’s chest that had fallen to the floor.
At a steel plant in Lackawanna New York, one tough iron man was nursing a swollen jaw, not from brawling but his abscessed tooth. Whiskey was the only painkiller he knew. I doubt if he lived very long in that condition.
On my first day at a small casting plant in Connecticut, I asked an old maintenance guy where I could get a sandwich for lunch. He said to follow him. He walked with a bad limp. By the street where we walked were signs of a canal that drove paddle wheels extending into industrial buildings to drive machinery before electric motors existed. A block away was a dingy basement pub where I ate a beef of rye and he had a beer. I asked of his limp. He knocked on his hollow wooden leg and smiled. He said, “You will see a large dairy farm on the north end of town? My brother runs that now. When I was four years old my mother sent me to fetch my father for supper who was scything wheat in the field. I ran through the tall wheat. Sure enough the scythe took off my right leg. I go the farm on weekends and tinker but I was never able to work the farm.”
During my eight year tenure as a customer service rep for the material handling company, I had several steel mill and foundry projects. My first was at the Ford Flat Rock foundry. Ten years since the Kelsey episode, this modern facility lessened the dangers to man, I thought. A Roll-abrattor machine with an enclosed chamber propelled steel balls to clean castings inside. Somehow it got turned on while a man was inside.
A rolling mill is where steel rod is made. Beginning with a red hot ingot, rollers gradually form small rod from an ingot three feet in diameter. As the diameter decreases, the speed of the rod increases. The red glowing rod becomes propelled through this mile long building at over sixty miles per hour. Out of the hundreds made in a day, at least one would escape the rollers and become a twisted mess atop the mills. At the end of the line, the rod was coiled onto a bobbin forming a six foot spool weighing a ton. Our project was to convey the spool to a compactor-bander, making a form so that it could be shipped. There is no way that I can explain to the reader my predicament and near-miss. I had only a bruised hand instead of losing my forearm to a ton of steel inside the compactor-bander. I consciously gripped my forearm for several years thankful it was there.One cool two weeks in May, I was assigned to a foundry project for Kohler in Wisconsin. Rather than bunk at a local motel, I took my tent and lived at a State park on Lake Michigan, a great way to clear cast iron dust from your lungs.
Iron workers are a unique breed. Hardy, hard working, and heavy drinkers they were always good for a laugh or head-shaking grin. Typically they partied late into the night, always got to work on time; were blurry-eyed all morning. They saved the tough work for the afternoon when a shot and a beer at lunch got them back on an even keel. The supervisor on a project in Pennsylvania promised to show a new iron worker a good time in town that night. The next morning the new recruit was holding his chest and all laughed at his misadventure. He had kept drinking with the boss at the bar till midnight. Then the boss looked over and he was gone. He bellowed, “Where is that light-weight?” After finishing his beer, he jumped off his bar stool and landed both feet on the recruit’s chest that had fallen to the floor.
At a steel plant in Lackawanna New York, one tough iron man was nursing a swollen jaw, not from brawling but his abscessed tooth. Whiskey was the only painkiller he knew. I doubt if he lived very long in that condition.
On my first day at a small casting plant in Connecticut, I asked an old maintenance guy where I could get a sandwich for lunch. He said to follow him. He walked with a bad limp. By the street where we walked were signs of a canal that drove paddle wheels extending into industrial buildings to drive machinery before electric motors existed. A block away was a dingy basement pub where I ate a beef of rye and he had a beer. I asked of his limp. He knocked on his hollow wooden leg and smiled. He said, “You will see a large dairy farm on the north end of town? My brother runs that now. When I was four years old my mother sent me to fetch my father for supper who was scything wheat in the field. I ran through the tall wheat. Sure enough the scythe took off my right leg. I go the farm on weekends and tinker but I was never able to work the farm.”
No comments:
Post a Comment