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.
Literary Titan gold award
Eric Hoffer Grand Prize shortlist
Read more posts about Bob and his book, click HERE.
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