Friendship and loss on the job

As I continue the saga of my welding career, I'll begin with the guy I mentioned in a previous article, Kelly. He was one of the craziest, funniest, friendliest, most bad-assed guys I've ever met. I met him on my first job as an apprentice in the Ironworkers Union. Even though I'd been in the Army and had worked three years in an oilfield repair shop and black iron plant, I gotta say I was pretty danged intimidated walking onto that job site.

I'd joined the Ironworkers after seeing my buddy's paycheck, which was about three times more than I was making at the plant. That first job was at a big fiberglass factory and was a shutdown job. Turnarounds and shutdowns are where the big bucks are in the field. A turnaround occurs when the factory or plant is still running while you're working among the employees there.

A shutdown is just what the word says: The place is shut down with only a skeleton crew, usually maintenance workers. In this situation, we usually worked seven days a week, 10 or 12 hours a day (7/10s, 7/12s). Overtime kicked in after eight hours; Saturday was overtime all day, and Sunday was double-time. I'd always long for a shutdown until I got it, then I longed for regular hours again. Get up early, work 12 hours, go home bone-tired, wake up and do it again. Half the time, I didn't even know what day it was except for the two days that made it all worthwhile, Sunday (double-time) and Friday (payday)! About the time you thought you couldn't take anymore, you'd get that check and be re-energized.

Happy-go-lucky Kelly

I met Kelly at the same time that I heard someone screaming, "Headache!"We were on about the 10th floor of a 20-story building at the plant, and someone dropped an oxygen bottle in the "hole"from the top.  The "hole"is the vast abyss that you can fall or drop something into when working up high. (I went in the hole once, falling three stories, but that's for a later article.) "Headache"means something is falling, and you'd better get your ass outta there. Don't look up to see what's falling, just run and hope you're running somewhere the object isn't falling.

The bottle went bouncing by us and, thank God, crashed to the ground without hurting anyone. I looked over at Kelly and instead of seeing a scared look on his face, I saw a half-crazy smile, a smile that looked like someone had just gotten away with something. I was as green as a greenhorn could be and was pretty much in shock, but his happy-go-lucky attitude immediately rubbed off on me. It wasn't that he didn't care, it was just a kind of "hey, stuff happens on these jobs, and I'm glad it didn't happen to me"attitude.  I don't know why, but it kind of comforted me.
 
Being a newbie meant I got treated like crap by a lot of the journeymen, but not Kelly. I tell my students they're gonna catch hell as newbies, but there is almost always someone who will take them under their wing and look after them. Kelly did that for me, and there couldn't have been a better guy to do it. He was as good as they come and a respected connector. Connectors are the guys who climb up tall columns waving in the breeze and connect the beams to the columns they're sitting on. After slapping a couple of bolts in them, they then walk on the beams and unhook them from the crane. It's a rough, tough job climbing up a column with 40 lbs. of tools on your belt, and there ain't no room for mistakes.

A few months after that job ended, I went with some buddies to play pool and saw Kelly having a beer at the bar. I went up and him if he remembered me, and before I could finish, he gave me a bear hug that about crushed my ribs and we had a beer together. There were a lot of old-hand ironworkers there, and the interaction with Kelly immediately gave me credibility, a great feeling indeed.  

Larry and the Crickets

I'd later work with Kelly on a big two-unit, coal-fired powerhouse. Once we got the structure (skeleton) up quite a few floors, one of the ironworker gangs (crews) put a big freight elevator on the outside of the building. Larry, the operator, was a nice guy, but he took his job a little too seriously. One day I got on his elevator and he asked if I had heard of anyone eating his sandwich. I told him no, and he said he was gonna put a reward out. As I tried not to laugh at his sandwich reward, I saw Kelly with that "just got away with something"smile and sandwich crumbs around his mouth.

I played a joke on Larry and felt bad, so I fessed up and got an earful from him. I can make a whistling noise that sounds just like a cricket. In the Army I did it on a snowy rifle range and had a bunch of dummies looking all over for the "snow cricket."One day, as Larry and I were on the elevator, I made my cricket sound. "Did you hear that?"he asked. "Hear what?"I answered. We picked up some more ironworkers who immediately saw what I was doing. Larry checked every part of the elevator that he could as we all stood there trying not to laugh.

I did it again on several more elevator trips, and then at quitting time I said, "Hey, Larry!"and made the whistle. He went ballistic and explained to me that he was not happy and did not think it was funny. Speaking of funny, he never cussed me out, and as a matter of fact, I don't remember hearing him swear the whole two and a half years I worked there. I later told him I was sorry and we shook hands, but he never did see the humor.

Kim

That job would be the first where I'd see death on the job. Two men fell, one right in front of my eyes. I'd seen it happen in the Army but never expected it working in the field. It's something you shut out of your mind. You don't want to think about it, and you sure don't want to think of it happening to you. It was a horrible experience that has haunted me ever since.

I had worked with Kim for two years. He was the kind of guy who would give you the shirt off his back if you asked him for it. He worked hard and usually got more welding production than anyone else on all the welding gangs.

Kim had been married only two weeks, and his wife was on the way to the job to tell him she was pregnant the day he fell. There was a 15-story gap in one side of the building to give cranes access to the center of the plant. Some guys were working on beams in the middle of the floor and had pulled up the grating, leaving a 4- by 8-ft. hole. At lunch, instead of putting perimeter wires around the hole with flags on it, they put wire around the columns leading into the floor.

Without thinking, Kim ducked under the wire, and as he was walking, yelled at a buddy of mine to "get your hood down,"making a gesture with his hand to push down an imaginary welding hood. We do it all the time; it means get your butt to work, insinuating the other guy is goofing off, very fun to do to your buddies.

I was on the side of the building one floor below and saw something go by from the corner of my eye. I thought someone had dropped some dunnage, wood boards used for stacking iron on the floors so that we could easily hook a choker to them by running it underneath. This can't be done if the load is lying directly on the floor.

I climbed the column and walked out onto the beam where he had fallen and saw a guy roll him over. It was a sight that will haunt me my whole life, seeing my buddy's lifeless body. There was an old guy about to retire making up bolts not 2 ft. away from where he hit. I can only imagine the nightmares he had because I danged sure had mine.

When someone is killed on the job, we all go home and donate money to the family. The next day was one dark and gloomy workday at the plant. A couple of weeks later, I was working up high when a car pulled up and a girl got out. She looked up to where Kim had fallen and immediately collapsed. It was his wife. She wanted to see the place and was overwhelmed by the sight. I got to see her later and tell her what a good man her husband was.

A lot of good men have been killed in falls and other accidents on the job. Whether you're a newbie just starting out or an old hand, please be very careful.