Workingmans Dead. Who here has been chipping up rocks for the Great HWY?

The real heroes of this country are the ones who risk death, being maimed and disabled, risking their lives daily building bridges, skyscrapers or simply climbing a ladder to paint a two story house on a daily basis.
 
Prior to completion , being how there weren't working bathrooms for several floors people would pee in the shaft and the brass rails corroded. So they hung me in the shaft in a harness with an electric sander (IIRC it had what appeared to be a scotch green pad.)
I'd dangle from floor to floor polishing the rails.

OMG! How did you draw that lucky straw??!

Using more brain than brawn now. Good thing, I'm not getting any younger.

As an apprentice I was at Prudhoe Bay oil fields on the Arctic ocean a lot during the big construction heyday and there were about 1200 electricians up there at any one time for upwards of 5 years. Mostly there were the apprentices like me, and the tramps (travelers from other locals in other parts of the country) as not that many "local pukes" were up in that misery. A fair number of the tramps were basically washouts from their own locals, blackballed for whatever reason, mischief, or just plain "lack of production". But there were also a lot of tramps with great skill sets who were great to be tooled up with! I learned so much from them that I may never have otherwise.. The biggest lesson iwas the many variations of "work smarter not harder". It has served me well!
 
The real heroes of this country are the ones who risk death, being maimed and disabled, risking their lives daily building bridges, skyscrapers or simply climbing a ladder to paint a two story house on a daily basis.

I'm certainly no "hero" by any stretch of the imagination but working inches away from speeding semi's (they're the worst offenders) separated only by traffic cones during a 12 hour overnight shift on a busy interstate highway can give you a different perspective on life to. That being said though I do respect the high steel workers as I get a case of the queasies just by looking at some of their pics online. I need both feet on the ground
 
Prior to completion , being how there weren't working bathrooms for several floors people would pee in the shaft and the brass rails corroded.

Along a similar thought, there were a fair number of these sorts of jobs that came up out of the blue for electricians.. Out in the bush or even on the slope they would have those incinerators, electric toilet "shit burners" and occasionally one would F-up and totaly back up and need an electrician to fix it. Because they were electric we fought like hell with the pipefitters over "jurisdiction" and we mostly won.. Then there were those gawd awful sewage lift tanks and having to go down in there and dick with the float switches.. Of the 3 worst things, that being extreme heat, heights above 80 feet or so, and the stink of those sewage tanks, I think the sewage was the worst for me.
 
I don't think we're heroes
I'm a little bothered that many people today can do nothing (mechanical) but give little credit or respect to those that do.
Also generally I'm shocked by how much stuff AKers can do. Really a diverse bunch!
 
Last edited:
I'm certainly no "hero" by any stretch of the imagination but working inches away from speeding semi's (they're the worst offenders) separated only by traffic cones during a 12 hour overnight shift on a busy interstate highway can give you a different perspective on life to. That being said though I do respect the high steel workers as I get a case of the queasies just by looking at some of their pics online. I need both feet on the ground
How true that is.. I have not worked on an interstate hwy, but have worked on busy thoroughfares doing street lighting, signal and whatnot. Always just one wrong step from being knocked into the next life. And that's not even taking into account some idiot not paying attention, or slowing down in the zones.. I frickin hate that!

When I was still driving trucks for a living I had a near miss in a gravel pit where a rock crusher was running and a Cat 988 loader was feeding it rocks, taking away the crushed material and loading it into our belly dump trucks. Some forman told me to park in a new place to get loaded and while I was waiting I got out of the truck to clean the taillights and check for flats. Well I never heard that 988 coming and I was cleaning the tail lights and then wham! He hit the push ram (stinger) on the back of the truck at full speed in reverse! Holy shit, ALL my lucky stars were out that day is all I can say. The loader weighs about 80K lbs and the truck empty about 30K and fortunately that push ram lined up perfectly with the counterweight on the loader or I would have been flattened into the back of the truck. As it was the truck was knocked some distance (with the brakes set!) and the loader went over the top of me, knocking me hard to the ground. I bit my tongue from the blow and had a wicked concussion, but the 6' diameter tire missed me completely by probably 18 inches or less or I would not be here. I never heard it coming, with a V12 screamin Jimmy generator running nearby I guess I couldn't.. All I remember was something hit the back of my head and I was on the ground looking up at an oil pan.

Anyway a full throttle ride in an ambulance and by the time I got to the hospital I knew I was okay, but shook up to this day from heavy equipment. Anyone speeding around people in a truck or other heavy equipment will catch a piece of my mind! I knew from that day I had to get a new line of work..
 
I imagine you're all but invisible to the back side of a loader.
You think he'd see the dump truck though.
 
Man just the words Prudhoe bay and Artic ocean give me shivers.
I can dress pretty comfortable to a little under 0F. Once you hit double - digits I'm out:confused:
 
Last edited:
I imagine you're all but invisible to the back side of a loader.
You think he'd see the dump truck though.

It is surprising how little those loader drivers look back. They have mirrors that they glance at, but they are just going forward and backwards full throttle feeding this and loading that and they have a track where nobody had better be. For my part I was young and dumb and should not have gotten out of the truck in that spot until I got eye contact with the loader operator. I assumed he knew we were being told to park there to wait but he didn't get the memo..

Man just the words Prudhoe bay and attic ocean give me shivers.
I can dress pretty comfortable to a little under 0F. Once you hit double - digits I'm out:confused:

Yeah it is pretty daunting at first. I had a leg up being born and raised in Fairbanks. I had been through -50F there all my life but wasn't prepared at first for -40 with a 40 mph wind! It really takes it out of you. I worked over Christmas there once, outside every day (in the dark at noon) and every day the sign at the camp said -100 chill factor! We warmed up quite a bit but still, -100 is really wicked. Have to hand it to those Eskimos who dealt with that stuff for centuries! They didn't have the modern clothing and boots and warm up shacks we had.

At the airport the FAA had a rule for the airliners sitting on the ground in those sorts of chill factors. If they couldn't get them back in the air within 90 minutes they had to be warmed up somehow. The airlines (mostly Alaska Air) developed something everyone called the "727 jump start" where they would back another plane up to the nose of one that needed to be warmed up and pour some throttle to it with the brakes set for about 5 minutes to warm it before leaving.

4 inches of clothes and 2 inches of dick is a problem when you use the satellite.

It never fails, once you get all that Arctic gear on and just get outside you realized you had to take a dump!
 
I'm certainly no "hero" by any stretch of the imagination but working inches away from speeding semi's (they're the worst offenders) separated only by traffic cones during a 12 hour overnight shift on a busy interstate highway can give you a different perspective on life to. That being said though I do respect the high steel workers as I get a case of the queasies just by looking at some of their pics online. I need both feet on the ground
With my post I certainly wasn't alluding to just the high wire acts.
Deep sea divers, tunnel diggers, other subterranean jobbers and all others in between levels included.
It seems the media hand out heroic accolades to two main career types only.
 
How true that is.. I have not worked on an interstate hwy, but have worked on busy thoroughfares doing street lighting, signal and whatnot. Always just one wrong step from being knocked into the next life. And that's not even taking into account some idiot not paying attention, or slowing down in the zones.. I frickin hate that!

When I was still driving trucks for a living I had a near miss in a gravel pit where a rock crusher was running and a Cat 988 loader was feeding it rocks, taking away the crushed material and loading it into our belly dump trucks. Some forman told me to park in a new place to get loaded and while I was waiting I got out of the truck to clean the taillights and check for flats. Well I never heard that 988 coming and I was cleaning the tail lights and then wham! He hit the push ram (stinger) on the back of the truck at full speed in reverse! Holy shit, ALL my lucky stars were out that day is all I can say. The loader weighs about 80K lbs and the truck empty about 30K and fortunately that push ram lined up perfectly with the counterweight on the loader or I would have been flattened into the back of the truck. As it was the truck was knocked some distance (with the brakes set!) and the loader went over the top of me, knocking me hard to the ground. I bit my tongue from the blow and had a wicked concussion, but the 6' diameter tire missed me completely by probably 18 inches or less or I would not be here. I never heard it coming, with a V12 screamin Jimmy generator running nearby I guess I couldn't.. All I remember was something hit the back of my head and I was on the ground looking up at an oil pan.

Anyway a full throttle ride in an ambulance and by the time I got to the hospital I knew I was okay, but shook up to this day from heavy equipment. Anyone speeding around people in a truck or other heavy equipment will catch a piece of my mind! I knew from that day I had to get a new line of work..

Damn............. now that's one very very scary accident and I'm glad to hear you survived your brush with a 988!!!. If someone outside the industry doesn't know the 988 is one hell of a gigantic loader and yes lucky for you the man upstairs wasn't ready for you that particular day.
 
General contractor/glorified handyman here. Only thing I have ever done since leaving the Army in 92. Minus a few years of very poor college attendance. One day crawling under houses, next day installing custom shower doors, then a day of window repairs and on it goes. This week has been long days getting a rotted flat roof repaired so the roofers can get rubber on it.

Not as exciting or well paying as you big time guys, but it's a living, usually, sometimes...
 
One other pearl:D
This was more a dirty jobs thing (Mike Rowe would be proud) than harsh or dangerous.
I worked for a contractor who had an in with the major newspapers in N.Y.
So again as luck would have it we did work inside the offset presses.
Now if they're on you wouldn't want to be near one.
A disgruntled pressman dropped a 3' breaker bar in one, one night and it came out looking like foil.
So they are lock out, tagged out, with the fuses pulled when we go inside:thumbsup:.
In white tyvek suites you come out black
(Ink and hydraulic oil)
Super dark because light doesn t reflect from black. Also except for some hoses and cables, everything is harder than you, so you move slow and deliberately.
 
Last edited:
Oddball note on the presses.
A million safeties and EStops.
When a press is unable to run, all the lights are green (safe).
When a press can run all the lights are red (dangerous).
Kind of counterintuitive but rules to live by!
 
Back
Top Bottom