Blue Sky Mine
Certain events define you.
Often in ways you never fully understand at the time, and until the event is viewed from another person's perspective.
This is such an event for aboynamedstu.
A working steel mill is hot, dirty, noisy and dangerous. In fact aboynamedstu v19 imagined that the steel mill probably looked a hell of a lot like the hell all the preachers of my youth said I was going to if I didn't stop jerking off and/or listening to AC/DC records and get myself saved.
Money is a key motivator though, which is why I donned a yellow hat and worked in that hot, dirty, noisy and dangerous hell hole the summer of 1987.
A Yellow Hat could get a lot of shifts during the Summer. Many of the regular workers would call in sick to go fishing which allowed us Yellow Hats (especially on graveyard shifts when it was hard to get anyone who wasn't already at the mill to come in for work) to work doubles. Your second shift was time and a half. Big money for a college kid in 1987.
Steel mills for the most part, try and run non-stop. The goal is to make as much steel as possible and minimize down time. Which is why the Steel Mill ran in three shifts.
Days: 7am-3pm.
Evenings: 3-11pm (the best shift in my opinion.)
Graveyard: 11pm-7am.
The only time the steel mill would go down—stop producing steel—was if there was mechanical failure or when it was time to patch the furnaces which they did every two weeks or so, always on a Saturday evening shift. They would shut the furnaces down at the end of the Friday evening shift (11pm,) and then the brick gang would come in on Saturday at 4pm to do the patch job. It was a brick gang because a furnace is lined with refractory brick and masons do that type of work in a steel mill. Having their own union, the brick gang was actually separate from the other steel mill employees who had their own union. The brick gang had their own team, foreman, and spell shack (where they took their breaks.)
I preferred the brick gang. Because the guys weren't like the guys I wrote about in this story who were in the other union. But, man, even though I enjoyed working brick gang, when they patched the furnace was (and still is) the hardest work I've ever done.
The first thing you must consider is this. When you start your shift at 4pm on Saturday the furnace in which you are working had been making steel less than 24 hours before. To be clear. You are literally inside the furnace that had molten steel in it 24 hours in the rear view. Often they'd put a wooden pallet onto the metal platform we stood on in the furnace so the thick rubber soles on our heavy duty work boots would not melt. On more than one occasion, I've seen the wood pallet catch fire because of the residual heat. You'd think the heat would be the worst part, but what really got me was the amount of soot or dust that was kicked up by us Yellow Hats who had the fun job of jackhammering the brick that needed replaced out of the sides of the furnace. Which isn't easy considering you are having to hold the heavy jackhammer at chest level—or higher—to get the brick out of the sides of the furnace. In a matter of minutes, any expose skin, which was covered in sweat because of the oppressive heat, was caked with the soot and dust making the person, regardless of color, look black. Minstrel show black too. The filth was such that when I'd come home from one of these shifts I'd take up to three showers to try and get clean. The first was always what the steel mill guys called a yard shower or bath. You'd try and clean up In your yard, with a water hose, so you wouldn't bring the worst of the filth into the house and bathroom. Even after three showers I often had the look of having worked the brick gang because of the black soot that was around my eyes which made me look like I was wearing black eyeliner.
One of the coolest things about working the brick gang on those shifts was that the steel mill, for the most part, was silent. The brick gang shift usually left before 7am on Sunday when the plant started production again. This is a very rare thing if you've ever seen or been in a working steel mill.
It is also the only reason I heard the tiny cries that night. Even though at first I thought it was tinnitus from all the jackhammering.
"Do you hear that?" I asked one of my co-workers as we walked through the plant on the way to our cars.
"Hear what?" He asked.
"That." I said turning my head to try and source the sound.
"Sounds like a cat." He said in a breezy matter-of-fact manner.
"Why would a cat be in the plant?" I asked.
"Guys bring 'em here to get rid of 'em." He said.
"It's coming from that pour stand." I said.
"Maybe," he said walking off.
"What should we do?" I asked.
"I don't care what you do. I'm tired. I'm going to the house." He said.
I stood there, in the middle of the quiet steel mill, as dawn broke, looking up at the pour stand, wondering what I should do. A pour stand (what they sit ladles on—which are like a big bowl they pour the molten steel from the furnace into) is what it sounds like. A big metal stand that looks a little like a mini version of a helicopter pad. There's not really any point for a person to get onto a pour stand platform, therefore, getting up there was going to be no easy feat. I'd have to scale up the side and try and pull myself over the rim edge to get whatever was making the crying noise. A daunting task after working 10+ hard hours in a hot furnace.
Fuck it. I thought. Walking a few paces toward the parking lot and my car.
But I couldn't. Fuck it. Whatever was up there was crying, such a pitiful cry, I had to at least try and help.
Which is what I did. Black from all the soot, bone weary tired, I climbed up the side of the pour stand, eventually pulling myself over the edge where I came face to face with a bony little kitten who couldn't have been more than 6 weeks old.
You there reading this BLOG now are probably much faster than me in real time. And if I have done a worthy job of explaining how the steel mill works and what a pour stand is have arrived at the same heinous conclusion that I never really got until a few weeks ago when I retold this story to a person at a Youth Retreat. I understood that the cat was in the plant because someone was wanting to get rid of it. What I failed to grasp though was this: getting rid was tantamount to kill. And not just kill kill. We're talking kill by throwing that baby kitten up onto the ladle stand platform where the person knew a ladle, that weighed tons, and would be filled with red hot steel would eventually be placed upon that stand by a crane operator, crushing that poor kitten.
I put Elsa (what my Mom, a Born Free fan, named her) inside my flame retardant green (which was actually black post furnace patch) steel mill jacket and buttoned it up so she couldn't escape as I scaled down the side of the pour stand.
As I walked to my car I unbuttoned the coat and let Elsa poke her tiny head out.
The morning shift was streaming into work at this point and some guy going to the furnace jokingly asked me, "You bring a cat to work Yellow Hat!?"
"It was on the pour stand." I said.
"Someone was trying to get rid of it." He said like it was common knowledge that would be the only reason for a kitten being in the plant.
"Why you climb up there and get the damn thing for?" He asked me.
"I don't know." I answered because I really didn't. "I just did."
"Fucking Yellow Hats..." He said shaking his head as he walked toward the furnace.
My Mom nursed Elsa back to health and eventually gave her to my friend Matt. He took her to college where she ended up living in a big house of guys from my hometown. Eventually Matt and I lost touch, but eventually half ass reconnected via Facebook where he told me that Elsa had went with him after he graduated college and started his life. And family. That she had lived to be nearly 20 years old.
"Why you climb up there and get the damn thing for?"
I know the answer now. Not that it's any great revelation.
I did it because it was the right thing to do.
And it is who I am—even if at that time—I didn't yet fully understand the am I was meant to be.
As I Until I BLOG again...Who's gonna save me?
Often in ways you never fully understand at the time, and until the event is viewed from another person's perspective.
This is such an event for aboynamedstu.
A working steel mill is hot, dirty, noisy and dangerous. In fact aboynamedstu v19 imagined that the steel mill probably looked a hell of a lot like the hell all the preachers of my youth said I was going to if I didn't stop jerking off and/or listening to AC/DC records and get myself saved.
Money is a key motivator though, which is why I donned a yellow hat and worked in that hot, dirty, noisy and dangerous hell hole the summer of 1987.
A Yellow Hat could get a lot of shifts during the Summer. Many of the regular workers would call in sick to go fishing which allowed us Yellow Hats (especially on graveyard shifts when it was hard to get anyone who wasn't already at the mill to come in for work) to work doubles. Your second shift was time and a half. Big money for a college kid in 1987.
Steel mills for the most part, try and run non-stop. The goal is to make as much steel as possible and minimize down time. Which is why the Steel Mill ran in three shifts.
Days: 7am-3pm.
Evenings: 3-11pm (the best shift in my opinion.)
Graveyard: 11pm-7am.
The only time the steel mill would go down—stop producing steel—was if there was mechanical failure or when it was time to patch the furnaces which they did every two weeks or so, always on a Saturday evening shift. They would shut the furnaces down at the end of the Friday evening shift (11pm,) and then the brick gang would come in on Saturday at 4pm to do the patch job. It was a brick gang because a furnace is lined with refractory brick and masons do that type of work in a steel mill. Having their own union, the brick gang was actually separate from the other steel mill employees who had their own union. The brick gang had their own team, foreman, and spell shack (where they took their breaks.)
I preferred the brick gang. Because the guys weren't like the guys I wrote about in this story who were in the other union. But, man, even though I enjoyed working brick gang, when they patched the furnace was (and still is) the hardest work I've ever done.
The first thing you must consider is this. When you start your shift at 4pm on Saturday the furnace in which you are working had been making steel less than 24 hours before. To be clear. You are literally inside the furnace that had molten steel in it 24 hours in the rear view. Often they'd put a wooden pallet onto the metal platform we stood on in the furnace so the thick rubber soles on our heavy duty work boots would not melt. On more than one occasion, I've seen the wood pallet catch fire because of the residual heat. You'd think the heat would be the worst part, but what really got me was the amount of soot or dust that was kicked up by us Yellow Hats who had the fun job of jackhammering the brick that needed replaced out of the sides of the furnace. Which isn't easy considering you are having to hold the heavy jackhammer at chest level—or higher—to get the brick out of the sides of the furnace. In a matter of minutes, any expose skin, which was covered in sweat because of the oppressive heat, was caked with the soot and dust making the person, regardless of color, look black. Minstrel show black too. The filth was such that when I'd come home from one of these shifts I'd take up to three showers to try and get clean. The first was always what the steel mill guys called a yard shower or bath. You'd try and clean up In your yard, with a water hose, so you wouldn't bring the worst of the filth into the house and bathroom. Even after three showers I often had the look of having worked the brick gang because of the black soot that was around my eyes which made me look like I was wearing black eyeliner.
One of the coolest things about working the brick gang on those shifts was that the steel mill, for the most part, was silent. The brick gang shift usually left before 7am on Sunday when the plant started production again. This is a very rare thing if you've ever seen or been in a working steel mill.
It is also the only reason I heard the tiny cries that night. Even though at first I thought it was tinnitus from all the jackhammering.
"Do you hear that?" I asked one of my co-workers as we walked through the plant on the way to our cars.
"Hear what?" He asked.
"That." I said turning my head to try and source the sound.
"Sounds like a cat." He said in a breezy matter-of-fact manner.
"Why would a cat be in the plant?" I asked.
"Guys bring 'em here to get rid of 'em." He said.
"It's coming from that pour stand." I said.
"Maybe," he said walking off.
"What should we do?" I asked.
"I don't care what you do. I'm tired. I'm going to the house." He said.
I stood there, in the middle of the quiet steel mill, as dawn broke, looking up at the pour stand, wondering what I should do. A pour stand (what they sit ladles on—which are like a big bowl they pour the molten steel from the furnace into) is what it sounds like. A big metal stand that looks a little like a mini version of a helicopter pad. There's not really any point for a person to get onto a pour stand platform, therefore, getting up there was going to be no easy feat. I'd have to scale up the side and try and pull myself over the rim edge to get whatever was making the crying noise. A daunting task after working 10+ hard hours in a hot furnace.
Fuck it. I thought. Walking a few paces toward the parking lot and my car.
But I couldn't. Fuck it. Whatever was up there was crying, such a pitiful cry, I had to at least try and help.
Which is what I did. Black from all the soot, bone weary tired, I climbed up the side of the pour stand, eventually pulling myself over the edge where I came face to face with a bony little kitten who couldn't have been more than 6 weeks old.
You there reading this BLOG now are probably much faster than me in real time. And if I have done a worthy job of explaining how the steel mill works and what a pour stand is have arrived at the same heinous conclusion that I never really got until a few weeks ago when I retold this story to a person at a Youth Retreat. I understood that the cat was in the plant because someone was wanting to get rid of it. What I failed to grasp though was this: getting rid was tantamount to kill. And not just kill kill. We're talking kill by throwing that baby kitten up onto the ladle stand platform where the person knew a ladle, that weighed tons, and would be filled with red hot steel would eventually be placed upon that stand by a crane operator, crushing that poor kitten.
I put Elsa (what my Mom, a Born Free fan, named her) inside my flame retardant green (which was actually black post furnace patch) steel mill jacket and buttoned it up so she couldn't escape as I scaled down the side of the pour stand.
As I walked to my car I unbuttoned the coat and let Elsa poke her tiny head out.
The morning shift was streaming into work at this point and some guy going to the furnace jokingly asked me, "You bring a cat to work Yellow Hat!?"
"It was on the pour stand." I said.
"Someone was trying to get rid of it." He said like it was common knowledge that would be the only reason for a kitten being in the plant.
"Why you climb up there and get the damn thing for?" He asked me.
"I don't know." I answered because I really didn't. "I just did."
"Fucking Yellow Hats..." He said shaking his head as he walked toward the furnace.
My Mom nursed Elsa back to health and eventually gave her to my friend Matt. He took her to college where she ended up living in a big house of guys from my hometown. Eventually Matt and I lost touch, but eventually half ass reconnected via Facebook where he told me that Elsa had went with him after he graduated college and started his life. And family. That she had lived to be nearly 20 years old.
"Why you climb up there and get the damn thing for?"
I know the answer now. Not that it's any great revelation.
I did it because it was the right thing to do.
And it is who I am—even if at that time—I didn't yet fully understand the am I was meant to be.
As I Until I BLOG again...Who's gonna save me?
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