The whole project was run by a big construction company out of Atlanta. Geo-tech was awarded the contract to build the new paper machine. GT is so big it has different region branches in the states and divisions all other the world. The new mill will be the biggest in the Piney Woods region of Texas; actually, the only one too! Paper Machine Number five or the number five as the guys called it. It took hundreds of carpenters, cement people, steel workers to build huge forms of cement floors, the steel skeleton to hold the huge paper machine and the control rooms that will power it up.
First the heavy construction crews came in and cleared the land, leveled the ground, brought in more dirt in and built the ground up to the engineer’s specs. Got to get it above sea level, ‘because they’re only about fifty miles from the Gulf of Mexico. Every town within a hundred miles of the Gulf Coast along the Texas and Louisiana coast is only about 20 feet above sea level, which means everything must be built up. This is due to the hurricanes and floods that will back up the rivers, streams, and drainage ditches to the Gulf and flood everyone out of the homes and jobs. Sometimes nothing is built up enough. Then the next group built the forms for the cement, poured it and finally the huge slabs that would hold the machine, like the block we took our breaks on. And lastly the steel workers, welders, electricians, and instrument crews are the trade crafts who put the great paper machine together piece by piece.
The construction site was huge. It was the length of three football fields and the width of two football fields and five stories high. Pretty big. Loaded down with men, lots of men, everywhere I look. There were three worktables that everyone used on the first floor. And they were huge too. Made from four by fours and four sheets of plywood, two sheets laid long ways and two more laying on to the first two. Shaped like a rectangle. On each table sat two industrial cast iron vices. The vices were to be used to hold something longer than the table down while you are cutting it or just to clap something down for leverage on both ends of the tables. Generally, the idea is, you’d vice down both ends of whatever you are cutting so it doesn’t cart-wheel from the table and hurt someone bad. Safety! Keen huh?
There was only a total of eleven women working on this job. Most of them are secretaries or time clerks who sat in cool air-conditioned portable buildings or were working in the tool sheds for the different trade crafts. Most of the women working the tool sheds were usually married to one of the foremen and traveled with their husbands to different jobs all over the country or looking for their next victim. The crews called them tool lizards or crew whores behind their backs. They looked like “they were rode hard and put up wet”. That’s a Texas saying for tired, hard, dried up, old and pissed off women.
Three single women worked on the “slabs” on this job, supporting themselves and their kids. Just Gus, two others and the rest were tool lizards. The second single mom swept all day, keeping the red clay mud off of the newly poured cement slabs that they walked back and forth on all day. Poor thing she was real overweight. Sometimes Gus thought she was going to fall over by the end of the afternoon. Not only because of her weight but because she was basically in the sun all day on burning hot cement.
The third single mom was a welder’s helper. Very pretty, dark curly hair that fell out of her work hat. On the back of her black hard hat, she put in big orange lettering, “Don’t talk to me”, and no one did. Gus nodded at her a couple of times, but it wasn’t like we were going to sit and exchange casserole recipes, you know. They both had lots of work to do. Gus? She just wanted to work, get her day over, go home, crash and draw that big fat check every week! Gus sure didn’t want to give anyone the idea she wasn’t pulling her load out there, so she didn’t talk as much either.
Gus worked with the instrument crew. They were a laid-back bunch, never in a hurry. Quality was their favorite word. They did “quality work” and “quality can’t be rushed”. It was their battle cry. They usually ran any supervisor off with those phrases two or three times a week.
Gus worked as an instrument helper for Manny, the lead instrument man. He was a little older than her, tall with dark hair, which was thinning, real nice blue eyes and beautifully large shoulders. Manny was patient and willing to teach her everything he knew about industrial instrumentation and bending tubing for the instruments that would be used in the mill. He said Gus was the second woman that apprenticed for him and the first one is so good at her job she can hardly take a day off these days. Gus sewed and she had a good understanding of measurements and patterns. This is a big plus doing instrument work. Manny was interesting to her, seemed reserved as if he had lived for a hundred years, like an old soul. He taught martial arts of some kind a couple of nights a week but hardly made much reference to it. His wife was ten years younger than him, and they had two young sons and since Gus had boys too. They had plenty to talk and laugh about during their workday. They got along very good. Gus respected his knowledge of the craft and he was always open to questions and would take the time to explain to her in detail why they needed to curve a pipe or reinforce something with braces in a strange angle. She also felt his respect of her trying to work in a field that doesn’t see too many female faces. You could say she was the prize helper, since she had the best looking.... well let's just say, huh, steel toed boots!