I could walk to work. I cut through the woods behind my parents’ house to the railroad tracks. Right led to my trout stream. Left led to the plant. I wrote about that summer here when I turned left.
On my first day I had to buy a pair of steel-toed boots. The plant required them. We also had to wear safety glasses with side shields. The glasses were free.
The first week they put me on days with Smitty, who trained me.
Smitty was in his early forties with forearms like fence posts. He had come to the plant right out of high school and had never worked anywhere else. He did not talk much. He took a stock from the cart and held it up so I could see the grain.
“Belt first,” he said. “Then the block. Then the fine paper. Use your thumb.”
He ran his thumb along the wrist and the comb and handed the stock to me. I did it. My thumb caught on a ridge by the comb and I sanded it down and he nodded.
They paid for what you finished. Nobody told me how many I should do. I counted my own. The first day I did thirty. Smitty did eighty and never seemed to hurry. On Friday he watched me work for a minute.
“You hold it too tight,” he said. “Let it go where it wants.”
Then he went back to his bench.
The next Monday I moved to second shift. Smitty stayed on days, so I did not see him after that, except once in the lot when he was leaving and I was coming in. He always raised a single finger off the steering wheel with a big smile on his face. I always reciprocated with my own single finger reply
The shift started at three. By three-fifteen the shop was loud and the air was brown with sawdust. I had a section near the back. I took a stock from the cart and put it to the belt. Then the block. Then the fine paper.
By July I did sixty a night and averaged twelve dollars an hour. The minimum wage was two sixty-five. At twelve an hour, a night came to ninety-six dollars and a week to close to five hundred. I had never held that much money. I did the arithmetic on the walk home and thought about what it would buy. Dust sat in the creases of my clothes, in the seams of my steel-toed boots, under my fingernails, in my hair.
In July Smitty took two weeks of vacation and they put me on first shift. I walked to work in the morning and home in the afternoon, in daylight for once. On one of those afternoons I came home with sawdust in my clothes and told my mother I was quitting college to sand gunstocks full time. She said no.
Donnie’s work was louder than mine. He fed blanks to the bandsaw all night and the blade ran with a high steady whine. One Tuesday in July, at break, he came over with sawdust on his shoulders and his ears ringing, and he shouted until his hearing came back.
“Come on,” he said.
We went out the back door past the loading dock. The air was cool after the shop. Behind the building stood the water tower, and past the tower ran the Massachusetts Turnpike. We heard the trucks and cars before we saw them.
The ladder started high enough that Donnie had to jump for the first rung. I went second. The rungs were cold and the paint came off on my palms. We climbed without talking. If anyone had looked up from the dock we would have been fired. Nobody looked up.
At the top a narrow catwalk ran around the tank. We sat with our legs over the edge. Below us the plant was a long low building with yellow light in the windows. You could hear the machines through the walls, but quieter from there. The Turnpike ran east and west, and the trucks went by with their running lights on, one after another, going to Albany or going to Boston.
Donnie lit a cigarette and cupped it in his hand so the light did not show. I never smoked.
“Sixty,” he said.
“Sixty.”
“Smitty does eighty.”
“Smitty’s been doing it since high school.”
Donnie thought about that. He looked at the road.
“Twenty-four years,” he said.
Neither of us said anything after that. We sat until the bell.
Going down was worse. Going up I had watched the next rung and the next. Going down I could not see my feet. The tank blocked the light from the plant and the ground was somewhere below in the dark. I felt for each rung with my steel-toed boot and held the rail until I was sure of it. Donnie went first. I could hear his steel-toed boots on the iron and then I could not tell how far below he was. I did not look down. I counted rungs.
At the bottom my hands shook. I wiped them on my pants. Donnie said nothing about it. We walked back across the gravel with the dust still in our clothes. Inside, the belts were already running. I took a stock off the cart and put it to the sander. I held it loose.
After the shift I walked home on the tracks in my steel-toed boots. The rails ran straight in the dark. The tower stood against the sky behind me until the trees closed over it.
We climbed about once a week that summer, on the Tuesdays and Wednesdays when the nights felt long. Going down never got easier. Nobody ever caught us.
The tower was demolished over 20 years ago. I'm trying to find a picture of it. I'll post one here if I do. If you ever drove the Massachusetts Turnpike back then I'm thinking you remember it.
Donnie earned his degree at Springfield Tech and became an electrical engineer. He rode a Harley. He cooked with his daughter and watched his grandchildren on the weekends. Years later I ran a center at the school he attended. He died on a Friday in January of 2017. It was his heart. He was fifty-nine. I never told anyone about the tower. Don't think Donnie did either.
