Smudger Snippets
Created | Updated Oct 14, 2004
I suppose it's because I have so much time on my hands these days, that all these memories come flooding back to me.
Radios
It was back in the early eighties that I found myself back in the same construction yard I had left a few years earlier. The place had not changed much; it just looked older, as indeed was I. The people were much the same as before as well; a few more promotions from when I was last there. Maybe I was just being facetious - after all I had a thing about that yard as that was the one which paid me off exactly five years to the day that I started with them. If I had turned down the promotion they offered me, I would have probably still been working
there as the policy for the pay offs at that time was time in present
job. So I suppose, in a way, I should have been grateful. After all, it was after leaving there that I gained all my further experience.
Still I was back now - and this time as a subbie1 welding supervisor for a firm in charge of a fourteen man squad. Four members of this squad were welders helpers; men who dragged welding cables and kept the rod ovens filled up. One of these was a bloke who had a PHD; we called him the professor, for obvious reasons.
When I asked him why he was doing such manual work instead of using his education, he told me that he could not earn as much money as he was then. The industry was full of such people at that time, as there was good money to be earned if you were prepared to work all the hours for it.
Just before we arrived back on that site, we heard in the news that five men had been killed when they were tipped out of a basket while working high up on the structure. Just to explain what that is, it's a working platform hung from a crane, which men worked out of while being
suspended high up in the air. This was not an ideal way to work but, at times, there was no other choice if production targets were to be met.
I suppose the risk of such accidents came along with the big money we
were all earning, but then again we never gave it that much thought.
In those days the cranes were guided by men who used hand signals and could see the basket and the crane driver at the same time. It was right after that accident that this habit was stopped and hand-held radios were used instead. In fact, the first job I had to do upon arriving on the site was to attend a safety course on the use of these radios as they had made it a rule that only supervisors that were in charge of the men in the basket could use the radios to contact the crane driver. This put a lot more responsibility on us, hence the reason for the training course. The only snag with this situation was that sometimes, when a lot of baskets were in use, the radios could get the signals mixed up and you found yourself talking to the wrong crane driver. So they made a limit to the amount of baskets being used at any one time.
It was during one really wet and windy night shift that I found myself way up high in a basket, along with four men doing repair work. The basket was swaying in the wind and we had to tie it to the structure - which was not really allowed, yet it was the only way we could work. I was in the process of telling the crane driver what we had done - in such a way that no one else listening could understand what I was saying - when, all of a sudden, I heard this strange voice coming over the radio which I knew was not our driver.
I asked the person who and where he was, as his accent sounded nothing like any of ours. The reply not only left me stunned, but also the crane driver who could also hear this other voice. It turns out that this person was a skipper of a North Sea trawler who was presently around eight miles out at sea fishing in his trawler!
I suppose, in a way, it was a dangerous situation, but it was just so funny at the time that we could not help but have a laugh about it all. It did, after all, cheer us all up no end and put some humour into what was a dull, boring, cold and wet night shift.
These radios went on to become more widespread throughout the site and it was not long before all supervisors had them and could be contacted at any time by management or colleagues. In the end they became more of nuisance that a help. The only downside I noticed with these new-fangled hand-held radios was the fact that we could be contacted at all times and there was no way you could have a wee break away from it all. No place to hide - unless, of course, you could find some little radio black spots on the site... which I did!
