All this steel talk sent me down memory lane. Sorry.
While all my high school friends went straight off to University, I took a detour. I worked in a steel mill in the byproduct department, where they capture and ship stuff like caustic soda, benzene, toluene, and anhydrous ammonia from the coke making process. Fun stuff. The closest I got to the actual steel making was when I'd sneak through a gap in the chain link fence to walk across the railyards to a little factory canteen. They made the best toasted bacon-egg sandwich this side of heaven. I'd take it and the coffee several stories up to a cat-walk above my corner of the factory world and survey my domain. Especially good view at night! Best place for an atmospheric read of Lord of the Rings. You could actually feel like you were in Mordor with the leaking steam lines, ghostly lamps, fiery heaps of burning coke tumbling out of the ovens, and a distant orange glow of the hot mills...
Later on I went to a foundry job. That foundry was probably the worst place for it's total lack of worker safety anywhere. Harrowing stuff we did. But there were fun times too. I got to wash the boss's Cadillac! It was a sunny spring day, and all the guys were livid that I was being taken advantage of by the big rich boss man, but I loved getting out of the black and cindery Dickensian hole into the bright sunshine. I stretched that lunch hour as long as humanly possible. The guys stepped out and were immediately embarrassed for me, poor me. I put on a stupid show of goofing off with the boss's car. We had a good laugh until Mr Big came out. I held out my hand for a tip and got a stern sneer instead. Ha!! They were good guys. One evening after a gritty dirty shift my young wife came in with our baby (our first). Being Christmas I insisted on introducing my young family to my long suffering foundry fellows. I was covered totally in gritty soot, the only "me" you could see were my eyes. By then I knew every one by name, so could introduce them all. Serge, Ti-Jean, Maurice, Claude...They swept me and my young family off to the tiny lunch room where they produced from nowhere a case of beer, and we spent the next hour toasting each other and the coming year. Good times.
While all my high school friends went straight off to University, I took a detour. I worked in a steel mill in the byproduct department, where they capture and ship stuff like caustic soda, benzene, toluene, and anhydrous ammonia from the coke making process. Fun stuff. The closest I got to the actual steel making was when I'd sneak through a gap in the chain link fence to walk across the railyards to a little factory canteen. They made the best toasted bacon-egg sandwich this side of heaven. I'd take it and the coffee several stories up to a cat-walk above my corner of the factory world and survey my domain. Especially good view at night! Best place for an atmospheric read of Lord of the Rings. You could actually feel like you were in Mordor with the leaking steam lines, ghostly lamps, fiery heaps of burning coke tumbling out of the ovens, and a distant orange glow of the hot mills...
Later on I went to a foundry job. That foundry was probably the worst place for it's total lack of worker safety anywhere. Harrowing stuff we did. But there were fun times too. I got to wash the boss's Cadillac! It was a sunny spring day, and all the guys were livid that I was being taken advantage of by the big rich boss man, but I loved getting out of the black and cindery Dickensian hole into the bright sunshine. I stretched that lunch hour as long as humanly possible. The guys stepped out and were immediately embarrassed for me, poor me. I put on a stupid show of goofing off with the boss's car. We had a good laugh until Mr Big came out. I held out my hand for a tip and got a stern sneer instead. Ha!! They were good guys. One evening after a gritty dirty shift my young wife came in with our baby (our first). Being Christmas I insisted on introducing my young family to my long suffering foundry fellows. I was covered totally in gritty soot, the only "me" you could see were my eyes. By then I knew every one by name, so could introduce them all. Serge, Ti-Jean, Maurice, Claude...They swept me and my young family off to the tiny lunch room where they produced from nowhere a case of beer, and we spent the next hour toasting each other and the coming year. Good times.
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