Monkeyshines
chapter five

Work was plentiful in Chicago in those days. We applied at the South Works of United States Steel, and I got hired. Frank had asthma and was advised not to work in a steel mill. He flew back to his family and girlfriend in California. I set out to make some quick money the hard way.
I became the Hi-line clerk and a stock un-loader. I worked on a railroad track fifty feet in the air that ran alongside the blast furnaces and ended at the lakefront where barges and cranes hung out. The blast furnaces ran 24 hours a day. They weren't allowed to cool, because starting up a furnace ruined 80% of its firebrick through the tremendous temperature change. It was important to have the proper materials going into the furnace in a timely fashion. That's where I came in.
After the train cars were spotted along the Hi-line, I read their labels to certify the contents. We unloaded them by opening the doors underneath the cars. The material, usually coke, scrap iron or iron ore, fell into holding bins below. From these bins, material was scooped up by automatic trolleys, hoisted to the top of a blast furnace, high above the Hi-line, and dumped into the furnace. A fairly simple job in good weather. There was a slight statistical hazard in the occasional cloud of poisonous gas that formed around blast furnaces which, if concentrated sufficiently, would kill a worker who walked into it.
The job was a bear in winter. The temperature dropped to 20 degrees below zero Fahrenheit, not considering the wind that always blew off Lake Michigan, and material froze solid in the cars. When the doors underneath the cars were opened, the material stayed in the car. Our crew went from car to car with picks and sledge hammers. We pounded on the car's hopper doors until the material in the doorway fell out, then we pounded on the side of the car from bottom to top clearing a shaft, like a chimney, from the doors to the top of the load. Then, tied by a safety line, one of us climbed into this chimney and picked at the surrounding tons of material. The trick, obviously, was to get the material to fall out of the car and not on the picker.
Working in the shadow of the blast furnaces in the windy, freezing cold wasn't heavily applied for at the time, so I got all the overtime I wanted. I worked 70 to 80 hours a week. The supervisors called me Tiger. There was only one man in the plant who worked more hours than I. He was a Polish foreman who looked like Happy the dwarf. He was putting three daughters through college.
For three months all I did was work, walk the three miles to and from work, and sleep. Un-cashed paychecks accumulated in my wallet. And I started to really LIKE the mills. Of course, I never admitted this. The guys I worked with seemed to hate the place. Some of them were pretty hard to find when there was work to do. I didn't think about it. I knew we were in different situations. I worked to save a little money. The others, generally family men older than I, worked for their lives and their family's futures. The mills were the end of the line for many of them, and not a much honored end of the line. I wasn't thinking in those terms.
To me, the mills were an enormous machine. I'd grown up enjoying the warm hum and vibrations of machinery. I loved taking naps at my dad's shop when I was a kid. I closed my eyes and was lullabied by the whirr of the 5 horse power motor turning the grinding wheel and buffer, massaged by the rumble of the big wheel. The raspy sound of metal on stone was a song that screamed out each time a knife blade pressed against the wheel. The mills were just a big shop. A rhythm and beat was choreographed by the various machinery of steel making. There weren't anomalous sounds as a visitor might think they heard. Every sound fit. Every sight fit.
And what a sight it was. On dark winter nights, when we tapped the furnace, tons of molten iron gushed out in a milky white hot cascade. Exploding sparks by the millions showered the workers in a spectacular light and heat show. A bright yellow glare lit up the cast house floor and sent crazy shadows cavorting into the night. As I faced the discharging furnace, its heat made the front of my wool clothes smolder, and almost peeled the skin off my face. Behind me, bitter cold made shivers ripple from my calves to my shoulders.
One day in February, I checked my wallet. I had $1,500. I took a day off to celebrate with my old grammar school pal, Sam Ross. We went to a bar on Chicago's north side to hear a band play. Sam had once been their drummer. On the way home we got hit by a blizzard. Our car was forced into a snowdrift where we spent the night. In the morning a garbage truck pulled us into an open lane. After three cold snowy months, I'd had it. Sam and I flew to Miami.
It was hot and humid in Miami Beach and we didn't know anyone there. We divided our time between the dog racing track and Trixie's Bar. Trixie's was a wonderful place. Trixie was a retired stripper. Her husband, Fred, the bartender, was a retired M.P. Fred had been a military policeman not a member of parliament. They had songs on the jukebox like Dusty Rhodes' version of "Bounce Your Boobies."
Bounce your boobies, bounce em all around.
Knock your knockers, knock em up and down.
I met a waitress at Trixie's. Her name was Judy, and she was from upstate New York. She took me to her apartment. She wouldn't screw or say why not, but she showed me alternatives I'd never imagined. They seemed endless. I guessed she avoided pregnancy by making sure no penis got inside her. She also avoided a variety of diseases this way. I'd never met such a low key person. Every time she spoke, it was smooth and from her heart. She seemed to know exactly what she was doing.
At this time, I had few clear ideas about my purpose in life. I was floating. Meeting people. Becoming the people I met. From time to time I remembered my interest in getting to the bottom of things, but I'd come to believe this would take many years.
It felt good to be outside my old cocoon, but sometimes it was scary. Sometimes I worried that I might still be wandering around looking for clues to the meaning of life when I got old. I might end up poor, friendless, powerless and confused.
It helped to remember Vespa Ted, the old man from Canada who'd been traveling around the world on a Vespa. We met in Istanbul. Ted was 67, and I was 19. I didn't think I had any chance at all of reaching 67. Ted said he'd worked all his life, and it had been mostly a boring experience. He'd decided to see what he could of the world before he kicked off.
"My heart's so bad," he said, "that anymore, I don't even buy a whole dozen eggs all at once. What's left for me to be afraid of? I'm a dead man." He'd loaded up his pack and taken off. By the time he reached Istanbul, his Vespa was so loaded, there was barely room for him to squeeze in between the boxes. He'd been on the road for a year and a half when I met him. He said, "I'm having the time of my life." Thanks Ted.