Daily Excerpt: A View through the Fog (McGee) - First Days

  


Today's book excerpt comes from Bob McGee's award-winning book, A View through the Fog:

FIRST DAYS

        The late afternoon Bay Area breeze knows no season. My once white coveralls, now stained with red-oxide primer, helped take the bite away from the piercing April air, allowing me to become lost in the remarkable view of the Carquinez Straits as I looked out from the catwalk below the Benicia Bridge.

     The sound of soft-soled work boots approaching me on the catwalk interrupted my reflective moment of solitude. Taking up the same pose as me, arms crossed, leaning across the top guard-rail of the catwalk, my paint foreman Don shared the view for a moment before whispering, “The Gate is hiring painters.”

     My concentration broke, and I immediately turned my gaze on Don. Still facing out toward the straits, he said, “There’s three openings, but you’ve only got two days to get the paperwork in.” Then, he added, “Just something to think about.”

     The timing of this opportunity couldn’t have been better. I love working on bridges. For years, I had painted bridges from one end of California to the other, but after two years on the Benicia Bridge, the routine had become tedious. A great job, but just a job, nonetheless. The thrill had dissipated. Perhaps it was time for a move. I’m guessing Don sensed this feeling in me.

  He took one last look at the view, breathed deeply, and began the half-mile walk down the catwalk toward the abutment when suddenly he turned and held a finger up as if he’d remembered one last point, “Oh, and probably best to keep this to yourself. Most of your competition will probably come from the painters on this bridge—and don’t misunderstand the situation: it will be a competition.”

     Nodding thoughtfully, I thanked Don again, and went back to my casual lean on the rail, but now there was much more on my mind than just the view. I considered the foundations of my love for bridge painting: the work, the view, the challenge, and, of course, the pay. The Golden Gate Bridge excelled in all these aspects, and wasn’t working on this marvelous structure the reason I’d become a bridge painter in the first place? As I made my way down the catwalk that afternoon, I was all smiles with dreams of grandeur. I knew that the Golden Gate Bridge provided one thing above all—glory!

 

     Openings within the Golden Gate Bridge Paint Department only occur about once every decade. These openings are often in such high demand that their existence is guarded with secrecy—perhaps by Bridge Management who have favorites they hope to fill the positions or maybe by painters from the outside who do not want competition from fellow workers. I was lucky to get the heads up, and I applied just in time.

     Despite the deliberate covertness, there were still hundreds of applicants for the three spots. The job prerequisites were tough, and after six weeks of screening, 16 applicants were chosen for the next phase of the hiring process: a full day of hands-on testing, followed by an oral interview the next day. This would result in six finalists, three of whom would be offered a painter position at the Golden Gate Bridge.

     The first day of testing involved displaying our technical knowledge and efficiency at three separate stations: a sandblast station, a spray paint booth, and a knot-tying station. This was not a problem for me as I was well experienced in these tasks. The next day was where my worries lay. I faced a one-hour oral interview conducted by two bridge officials, the paint superintendent, and a union mediator acting as a representative for fair hiring practices.

     After this stressful process concluded, I had received the second-highest score, which was good enough for one of the positions. All that remained was a background check, an intense physical, a drug-screening test, and five months of impatiently waiting for the number two spot to open. It was an anxious but wonderful five months.

 

     With my new job secured, it was time to give notice at the Benicia Bridge. I approached the Bridge’s paint supervisor, who, according to what I had heard, didn’t think the job opening at the Golden Gate would be a good fit for me. “A few years before, I spent six months on loan as a steel inspector for the Golden Gate Bridge,” he told me and began recounting what he had seen while working there.

     Walking past the painters’ break room every morning, he said, he’d often smell bacon being fried during work hours. “Painters would sometimes wait days for the weather to change and do nothing but spend that time in their painters’ shacks, polishing rivets and whittling duck decoys!”

     If the reasons he gave were meant to make me doubt my decision to work at the Golden Gate, he could not have been more wrong. I laughed and let him know that I absolutely loved bacon. “Plus,” I pointed out, “why would you assume I wouldn’t enjoy polishing rivets and whittling duck decoys?” I thanked him rather sarcastically for watching out for me, but despite his warnings, I knew I was about to start the greatest job of my life.

 

     After a long five months, I was at last a Golden Gate Bridge painter. The Paint Department included a paint superintendent, five crew foremen, twenty-six bridge painters, five paint laborers, and two apprentice painters. It was a very experienced group. At 39 years old, I was the youngest painter in the Department.

     On the first day, I met Rocky, the Paint Superintendent. The Paint Department definitely belonged to him. A wiseass with a somewhat warped sense of humor, he was generally easygoing and a good guy. A longtime painter on the Bridge himself, he approved and enforced Paint Department traditions. He did not want any troubles within the Department to hit his desk. Basically, if you didn’t give him extra paperwork and certainly didn’t embarrass him in the eyes of management or other departments, then you would be fine.

     The Paint Superintendent before Rocky had held the position for many years and was a well-liked leader until his reign came to a horrible end. He was found dead at the Bridge early one morning. He had hanged himself in one of the storage bunkers.

    

     Rocky went over basic protocol for my first day: showing me the sign-in/sign-out sheet, which was to be signed in the morning when we arrived and each afternoon before we left. This was a means of monitoring a painter’s whereabouts. “Painters had become too carefree, just sneaking off at any time during the day to go home,” he said, pointing at the sheet. “This is an official way of curbing painter attendance problems.”

      I tried to search out his eyes with mine, but no contact came. His expression gave every indication that he was serious about painters leaving the job. He continued to speak, but for a few long moments, the words that followed were just babble to my ears as I envisioned painters moving stealthily through the parking lot, wearing high-collared trench coats and ball caps pulled down low, creeping to their cars and speeding off the bridge in all directions. Shaking myself loose from these thoughts, I reentered the conversation and dutifully nodded my assent. I felt a strong urge to discuss this further with him, but not now.

      Rocky just needed an official record showing that painters were where they were supposed to be, one of the many forms of CYA (Cover Your Ass) that existed on the Bridge. This was still not enough to keep painters from finding ways to totally screw up even the simplest of job regulations.

     When I started at the Bridge, the sign-out sheet would be posted at 3:20 pm even though our official quitting time was 3:30 pm, granting us ten minutes to get to our cars. This was a privilege that ended one afternoon soon after I’d arrived. One of our more impulsive painters signed out at 3:20 pm, jumped into his car, sped off, and made it all the way to Lombard Street in San Francisco before he accidentally struck and killed a pedestrian. Official time of death? 3:29 pm.

     The death occurred while the painter was still officially on the clock. The Paint Department took a lot of heat for this, and as a result, sign-out time was now set forward to 3:25 pm. The irony of this was that there was more uproar in the Department about the loss of those five minutes of grace time than the loss of a person’s life.

 

     Later that first day, Rocky took me on a tour of our facilities at the toll plaza. We descended into the underground military bunkers, which stored much of our paint and equipment. These areas were old and had served troops during World War II, with some rooms even dating as far back as the Civil War. As I entered the maze of bunkers for the first time, stale, moldy air immediately greeted my lungs, and coupled with the eye-watering pungency of ammonia, caused an involuntary gasp. As I dried my eyes and regained my composure, though, I realized that the dank atmosphere of the bunkers only added to their eerie appeal.

     Rocky brought me to the infamous beam from which his predecessor had hanged himself. My skin crawled as I circled beneath the beam. Examining it with curious wonder, I imagined what might be going on in Rocky’s mind. My gaze switched to Rocky, whose face betrayed no emotion. I wanted to ask questions about the former superintendent’s suicide: Did he commit suicide because of his job? Should this be a warning of what I might be in for? But I knew this was not the time. Rocky just stared at the beam for a long moment before we moved on. Later, I would find out there wasn’t much known about the suicide other than it being an apparently spontaneous act committed by a seemingly stable family man. I avoided this area of the bunker for the rest of my years at the Bridge.

     Next stop was “Stores.” This was a mini warehouse set up as a means of supplying Bridge employees with anything they needed for the job. The facility resembled a small hardware store and offered unlimited tools, safety clothing, paint supplies, office supplies, and sundries. If it could be used at the Bridge, you could probably find it at Stores. In fact, I once lost a bet when a painter actually walked out of there with a machete and a pitchfork!

     All we had to do was give the shopkeeper our Bridge ID and then shop away. Obviously, acquiring store items for personal use was not allowed, but excessive abuse of Stores was something of a norm at the Bridge. Some painters would show up to work with empty backpacks and leave with them jammed full every day. One afternoon, I saw a painter heading to his car. He was wearing a thick coat but still looked as if he had gained a lot of weight since I’d seen him earlier in the day. When he spotted me, he raised a finger to his lips, then opened his coat to reveal a huge clear bag full of plastic forks and spoons. He zipped the coat back up, proudly smiled, and kept walking. I shook my head, incredulous. This guy made a lot of money working at the Bridge, yet he would risk getting caught and losing his job for fifteen dollars’ worth of plastic utensils.

 

     After a tour of the yard, Rocky took me onto the Bridge in his paint scooter. He told me that the East Sidewalk, which faces the bay, was open to tourists and bicyclists. The West Sidewalk, facing the ocean, was for Bridge workers only. We took to the East Sidewalk first. “Dealing with tourists is an important part of our job,” he explained. He insisted that I be courteous, take time to answer their questions, and try to make their visit to the Bridge as enjoyable as possible.

     During my years at the Bridge, I never had a problem with this part of the job and enjoyed interacting with tourists. At times, I felt no different than one who had been hired to wear a Mickey Mouse costume and roam Disneyland might feel posing for selfies, pointing the way to the restrooms, and letting kids stomp your feet. Tourist interaction was a simple means of expressing my love for the Bridge. This made my job more than “just a job” and enabled me to become a part of the tourists’ Bridge experience.

    

    Now, it was time to meet my new crew. The members of the South Tower Crew were known affectionately as Tiller, Stew, Robin, Smokey, Kevin, Junior, and Mike. Each painter I met was very welcoming and treated me like family, making it feel more like a fraternity than a workplace. Some I had met or worked with before, and some were legendary painters whose names I had heard many times over the years. These were men I would be around each and every workday for years. Mike was assigned as my work partner on day one and remained my partner until I retired 12 years later.

     The first day was filled with advice from different painters I met: “Remember to forget everything you ever knew about painting,” “Just don’t tell your wife what goes on here,” and my favorite, “Sit back and relax, you now work for the Golden Goose.” What a great first day!

     When I clocked out that day, I realized I could not wait to come back in the morning. I saw much on my first day I could not yet comprehend and had more questions than answers, but I decided to just go forward with an open mind and immerse myself in my new job.

 

     My second day working at the Bridge was warm and sunlit. A man once told me there

were only 13 days a year when the weather is perfect in San Francisco—sunny, clear, and virtually no wind. This was one of those 13 days.

     First thing that morning, my new boss Rocky had me grab my harness and lanyards. He told me to go see one of the operating engineers, who instructed me to put my body harness on, telling me I would need both my lanyards for where we were heading. “Are you ready?” he asked.

     “Absolutely,” I replied, trying not to show the curiosity or the anxiety I felt.

     He laughed. “You have no clue what we are going to do, huh?”

     “Nope. I decided to open my mind to anything new here, and I’m just gonna enjoy the

experience!”

     “Okay, I like that,” he said. “Well, then, I won’t spoil the surprise for you, but you’re going to love what’s coming up.”

     I smiled, and we climbed in his Bridge scooter and headed out to the West Sidewalk to

mid-span, where the main cables reached their lowest point. He untied a 12-foot extension ladder from the outer rail, leaning it against the lowest point of the main cable and turned to me. “Are you afraid of heights?”

     “Afraid of heights? No,” I answered, “afraid of falling, yes. I’m scared to death, so I respect every second I work up high.”

     “Good,” he nodded.

     I had worked heights my whole painting career and had been to the top of every other bridge in the area, but I knew this would be different. Just how different I had yet to find out. I climbed up onto the main cable, hooked in both lanyards, and we began ascending from mid-span to the North Tower. Footing on the cable was surprisingly more secure than I’d expected, but the upward angle of the cable was much steeper than it had seemed.

     Not even halfway into the 500-foot climb, exhaustion began setting in. Foolishly

underestimating the angle of the cable, I had used all my energy early in the climb, trying to keep up with the operating engineer. My upper body tensed from the tight grip I maintained on the safety cables, which acted as a handrail. A slight burning sensation spread through my thighs, and my multi-layered clothing was doing me no favors as I became overheated and began to sweat.

     I felt as though I needed a brief rest. As I raised my head and glanced up at the engineer, though, I realized there would be no stopping on this climb. Not a glimmer of sweat on his face, only determination in his eyes. As I watched him gracefully unclipping and reattaching his lanyard hooks at the vertical post situated at every 30 feet of the handrail, it was obvious he had made this climb at least 100 times.

     He had not looked back at me in the last ten minutes, and I doubted he even remembered I was behind him. Was his speed actually picking up as he neared the top? I stopped, smiled, shook my head, and took a deep breath before pressing onward. Had it not been for my excitement and adrenaline, the trek up the cable probably would have beaten me.

     The operating engineer reached the top of the North Tower first, and just before I caught up to him, he took out his camera and snapped a photo of me. I have examined the photo often, They say a picture tells a thousand words. Well, this photo of me is still a word short because there is no way a mere photo could ever capture the pure exhilaration and elation I felt at that moment.

     I climbed onto the tower top, went to its center, and began turning slowly in a circle to catch every angle of the unobstructed dream view, 700 feet above it all. The city, the Bay, the Headlands, the ocean—it was all here in front of my eyes. The sweet and overpowering beauty of it excited a sensation of joy in me, one where reality and dream coexist, and breathing becomes something that takes effort to do. I leaned my hands on my knees, catching my breath, shaking my head, and laughing to myself.

     “Amazing,” I said, glancing up at him while still bent over. “A few more minutes, if it’s okay with you?”

     He nodded, and a few minutes turned into half an hour. I just could not get enough of the experience, but he understood because he loved the Bridge as I did.

    Eventually, the operating engineer put a hand on my shoulder, and in a soft voice he

told me it was time to head back down. After drawing a huge breath of the cool, salty

air, I took one last scan of the glorious view before submitting with a humble nod.

     Descending the cable was quite another experience. “Whoa,” I breathed, careful not to slip. The incline was even more evident heading down and at some points seemed like a straight drop. In order to restrict myself from too fast a pace, I had to tightly grip the safety cables the entire way.

     When I reached the bottom of the cable at mid-span, I looked down at my gloved hands. Both had been so severely chafed from the descent that the gloves now had palm-sized holes in them.

     I was buzzing all that day from my cable climb, an experience very few are ever privileged to have and one extremely hard to express in words. I am smiling even right now as I write this.

     By the end of my second day at the Bridge, I no longer had questions in need of answering. I was a changed man after my main cable walk to the North Tower. The Bridge had successfully used her beauty and charm to take possession of my soul, and her subtle spirit had bent me to her will. I belonged to her now.

 AWARDS
Pinnacle Book Achievement Award
Literary Titan gold award
Eric Hoffer Debut Author Award finalist
Eric Hoffer Grand Prize shortlist
Eric Hoffer Grand Prize honorable mention

Read more posts about Bob and his book, click HERE.


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