Posted on September 27, 2014 under Storytelling with no comments yet

Keeping my distance from the sawmill

 

 

I became so proficient at the green chain that I got a promotion. From time to time businesses and government offer incentives in order to retain promising employees.  How anyone can determine that a worker on the green chain has potential boggles the mind.  Like the Jeffersons, I was “Movin’ on Up”.  They offered me more money and the chance to work on the celebrated construction crew at the mill.  The guys on the green chain didn’t have a going away party for me, although we visited The Colony for a few pints when I got the good news.  More like a “good riddance” celebration.

You’re all familiar with industrial vehicles that have a beacon on the roof and make a beeping sound when they are going in reverse? They may as well have put one of these ornaments on my construction helmet that lit up with the words “rookie” flashing on it.  Construction guys, I have learned, love to play games with greenhorns.

Being a very large mill, there were always construction projects on the books. The mill was installing a new piece of equipment and our job was to build a concrete pad for the apparatus to sit on.  The old equipment was dismantled and carted away.  The base for the new pad had to be reconstructed, which required removal of the old concrete. This required a jackhammer.  You know who gets this job on a construction crew?  The rookie, of course.

I had studied Shakespeare and Chaucer and I understood democracy and Pavlov’s dog from my years at university. Nowhere did I ever learn about the art of the jackhammer.

There are a few things you need to know about this tool. First, it is heavy.  Back then I was a 155 pound weakling.  Today I am a 180 pound weakling.  The only major difference in the ensuing 41 years is that I have far less hair now.

I began the task at hand.   I pressed the button to activate the device and instantaneously I felt every fibre of my being convulsing.  Shards of concrete blew up towards my face (protected by goggles) and dust filled my nose and lungs.  All of this happened in the first thirty seconds, and this was an eight hour shift.  Ten minutes later, my arms trembled from the vibrations and I was already anticipating the first coffee break.  I thought I saw a few guys on the crew grinning.  I spilled the first mouthful of coffee.

When I crawled into bed after my first shift on the jackhammer, every muscle in my body ached and the bed felt like there was an earthquake percolating directly beneath it.

They say that you can get used to anything, and eventually I got the hang of it. I decided quickly that I didn’t want to become good at this job.

Once the forms were put in place, it was time to pour the cement. As the pad covered a very large surface area and the cement mixer could only get so close, the wet and heavy sludge had to be wheeled across a narrow plank to get to some of the more remote areas.

There is a real knack to transporting cement in a wheelbarrow. Unfortunately, the History of Western Civilization course that I had taken in university made no mention of this ancient skill.  Once again, the experienced members of the construction crew gathered around to watch my maiden voyage across the slender bridge with a fully loaded wheelbarrow.  Another form of “walking the plank”.  I learned that you can’t manhandle cement.  You have to use the laws of physics … but I hadn’t majored in science.

I managed to get the barrow moving forward, but in a matter of seconds its entire contents, along with me, were splayed on the ground.

Right then and there I started to contemplate a new line of work. I needed to come up with a concrete plan that didn’t involve concrete.  Wet or dry.

Posted on September 25, 2014 under Thursday Tidbits with one comment

FREE TICKETS

 

 

I hope the picture above has garnered your attention. By now that you are aware of the fundraiser that’s coming up on October 26^th. at the Rev. H.J. MacDonald elementary school in Heatherton. It will be an evening of story telling and music featuring Len and Phil ( stories….no music! ) and the MacDonald family. ( Peter, Betsy, Ellie and Margaret ).

So here’s the deal. I am prepared to donate two pairs of tickets to the show. All you have to do is contribute some stories about dieting. They don’t have to be your stories and they don’t have to be true. I want to write the definitive piece on the subject and I plan to call it , “Lost and Found.” Private message me on Facebook, send me an e-mail ( len.macdonald@eastlink.ca ) or stop me on the street. I will put your name in for a draw and will name the winners once I have enough material for the story. Put down that bag of chips right this minute and send me your tale of woe.

I saw this excellent quote the other day. “ As long as everything is exactly the way I want, I am totally flexible.” I got a kick out of it but the sad truth is that there are a lot of people like this. I am very flexible. I just do what I’m told.

I’m on a roll. I plan to unveil three brand new stories at the fundraiser. I already have two of them written and the third is well along. It will be fun to do some material that no one has seen or heard before.

Next week I will be publishing my story about playing football at St.F.X. in 1972. I had no right whatsoever ( or talent! ) to be playing on that team , with zero football experience but a funny sequence of events had me punting a football for the blue and white.

The other evening, I went over to the university to take a picture to go with the story. The football team was practicing and when I mentioned that I wanted an action shot of the punter, one of the assistant coaches piped up that the starting punter was injured. He looked at me just to see if I might still have a little leg left in me. Before I got any ideas, he said that there were age restrictions for playing university football. I guess that does not include people collecting their CPP.

“Run For Your Life will appear here next Wednesday which is also Casket day.

I am putting the finishing touches on my story about provincial examinations. Are you old enough to remember them? Easily one of the most pressure packed and stressful experiences of my life. Your entire grade 12 year was riding on one set of examinations. I didn’t matter how well you did all year or whether your teachers loved or hated you, you either passed or failed provincials. My palms start to sweat just thinking about them. Coming soon, “All or Nothing.”

Have a great weekend.

 

Posted on September 23, 2014 under Storytelling with one comment

Thrills at the mill

 

 

What does a freshly minted university graduate do, with degrees in English and Political Science, to utilize these newfound skills? With the ink barely dry on the diploma, he gets a one way ticket to Victoria and starts his new life and real education working in the forestry industry.

I was travelling with a friend the other day and we passed a sawmill. I saw a mountain of sawdust and I was instantaneously transported back in time.  Fresh out of school, it was time to start earning a living and dealing with the weighty issues of life, like repaying student loans.  Unlike some of my classmates who had embarked upon their career path in grade 4, I had no idea what a person did with a piece of parchment that said “Bachelor of Arts”. I knew what bachelor meant, and managed to maintain that lofty status until the age of 31.

Back in the early 1970’s, the forestry industry was the linchpin of the economy in British Columbia. There were massive mills dotted around the province churning out millions of board feet of lumber, much of it shipped to our neighbors to the south.  All I knew about sawmills was that they paid wages that were better than average.

To this day, I’m not sure why they hired me and I am equally uncertain how I managed to last one day, let alone six months.

One thing you need to know about sawmills is that they are incredibly loud places to work. It takes a lot of machinery to run this type of operation.  If you think listening to Aerosmith live is an eardrum splitting exercise, belly up on top some of the gigantic saws in a mill to get some perspective.

The green chain. According to Wikipedia, “The green chain’s purpose is to collect the final product of the mill and move it at a controlled rate, to be graded and sorted.”  My first job at the mill was working on this line.  It is a massive conveyor belt where freshly cut pieces of lumber spill out by the thousands to be sorted and stacked.  On either side of the conveyor, workers are spaced about 20 feet apart, sixteen workers in total.  Each man (it was strictly a male domain back then) was responsible for pulling different lengths and grades of lumber off of the fast moving conveyor belt and stacking them in neat piles to be picked up by a fork lift.

Sounds simple enough. The good news is that I knew what a 2×4 was before starting my career in the forestry business. The bad news is that I didn’t recognize any of the other million pieces spewing out of the giant maw of the equipment at the head of the belt.

Did I mention the chemicals in a sawmill? Virtually all of the wood goes through a chemical bath as part of the process.  When you work on the green chain, you are issued a heavy leather apron and matching gloves.  A lovely ensemble.  At the end of a ten hour shift, you can feel the poison oozing through your pores.  You can actually taste it.  Luckily, the Colony pub was a mere five minute walk from the mill and the taste of chemicals could quickly be eradicated with a few cold draft.

I’m virtually certain that the mill preys on new workers, especially those with university degrees. There is inherent sadism when they take a rookie and put him at the very head of the green chain.  I was given my position and told that I would be responsible for two grades and length of lumber.  After shift changeover, the conveyor belt started up.  Like a speeding, out of control locomotive, a gazillion pieces of wet, smelly lumber charged down the conveyor belt.  It took about 14 seconds to overwhelm me.

Do you remember the definition of a green chain? There was some mention of “controlled rate”. What they should have said was “out of control rate”.

The green chain does not lie, and exposes weaknesses quickly and mercilessly. When everything is firing on all cylinders, every man on “the chain” pulls out his pieces and neatly stacks them.  There shouldn’t be any wood left at the end of the belt.  Unless you didn’t read “Green Chain for Dummies”.  If everyone doesn’t do their job, the unclaimed lumber piles up on the ground and it doesn’t take anytime at all to identify the culprit.

I’m not sure if it was the combination of the screeching of the giant saws a hundred yards away and the near nauseating smell of the chemicals, but I quickly fell behind as “my” pieces of wood drifted down the conveyor belt and piled up in a heap at the far end.

The foreman only shows up every hour or so. It didn’t take him too long to realize that I needed some schooling.  But long before this, a fellow worker did his level best to set me straight.  He had worked on the green chain for nearly 40 years!  Above the din, he squawked at me and flailed with his arms as if warning me of an impending missile strike.  I couldn’t understand anything he did or said.  After half an hour, I was fully prepared to throttle him before handing in my resignation.

I staggered into the coffee room amid snickers from my fellow workers. They quickly found out that I was a university grad, which compounded the abuse.  One guy, obviously feeling a small tinge of pity, gave me words of encouragement.  He told me that the pub was open until 1:00 in the morning.

I also discovered that the arm flailing, screaming banshee working beside me was a poor soul who was deaf and mute.

I survived the first shift and many more.

And even got a promotion.