Elizabeth Street - Laurie Fabiano [26]
Near the end of August, they finished riveting together the plates of the tank’s bottom. “Ah, just in time for winter, we’ll come aboveground,” Carmine mocked.
They drilled holes in the plate to insert the jacks. The plan was for the scaffolding to be removed and for the jacks and screw logs to hold the bottom of the tank above the concrete floor. Nunzio noticed that Mr. Mulligan looked more worried than usual and was making many phone calls. When Nunzio couldn’t contain himself any longer, he asked what the procedure was going to be for lowering the structure onto the floor. One of the foremen grabbed him by the shoulders and yelled inches from his face, “Stop asking stupid questions!”
In that instant, Nunzio realized the question wasn’t stupid, and he was not the only one who didn’t understand the mechanics of how this disc was to be lowered. Work slowed for a day or two, and another man in a suit showed up. Supervisor Mulligan and the man went into the construction office. Supplies were stored near the office door, so Nunzio walked over pretending to need a new drill bit.
“Mulligan, we’ve got six jobs to worry about. If you can’t handle this one, let us know,” was the first and last thing Nunzio heard before a foreman walked by and snapped, “What are you doing? You’re supposed to have a runner get that.”
Lowering the disc to its surface could be put off no longer. On the morning of September 2, the men arrived at work and were surprised to see an additional crew of twenty-five laborers on site. Mulligan called all the foremen and lead men together.
“Alright, we’re going to lower this baby to the bottom today. I want one man to every two jacks and one to every screw log. We got extra men here to help. Take it down. Slow as you need to. And we’ll need a few men underneath to oil the cups of the jacks.”
Go underneath when it was being lowered? Even the company’s foremen were stunned. Mulligan answered the silence. “The head engineer says that unless those jacks are oiled she’s not going to come down smooth and easy.” The silence continued, and eventually so did Mulligan.
“Okay, let’s try it without men below the disc and see how it goes.”
The men, including Nunzio and Pretty Boy, who was now also a lead man, broke from the circle relieved and went to round up the crews to work the jacks and screw logs. By ten o’clock the disc had been lowered two inches in a tedious, arduous process. The jacks and men groaned from the weight. Nunzio overheard the foremen calculating that it could be three to four days before they got the tank floor to the ground. Supervisor Mulligan nervously circled the disc when he wasn’t being summoned to the phone. At noon the men were promised an extra hour’s pay if they took ten minutes to eat and skipped their lunch. They were hot and exhausted, but it was too good an offer to pass up.
By two o’clock the disc had been lowered to twenty-six inches. After another phone call, Supervisor Mulligan brought the foremen and lead men together once again.
“We’re going to oil the cups; it’s going too slowly. I figure if eight men go underneath, that should do it. At twenty-six inches, they need to work on their backs, so the skinnier the better.” Mulligan walked away, leaving them in stunned silence.
It took a few moments for the chief foreman to speak. “There’s eight crews. Each lead man should pick one person from their crew to oil the cups.”
The eight lead men stared at the Irish foreman, who knew them well enough to know that they would pick themselves. It was a matter of honor. They were the lead men; they were making five cents more an hour. It was their responsibility. Nunzio looked around at the other men and wordlessly asked the question. The lead men all nodded.
“We’re the men,” intoned Nunzio.
They gathered again at the bottom of the disc to discuss positioning. The foremen figured they needed five men in the interior and three