Get off my LAWN! "Grumpy Old Farts"

[the harp unstrung]

Kahnawake Skywalkers

Kahnawake Skywalkers - the Mohawk Steel Worker Tradition

My uncle Mac worked walkin’ the high steel.

One time...I was 17?...we were driving across the GW Bridge toward his home in New Jersey...a gold Karmen Ghia with the top down...he points across the Hudson, South, toward lower Manhattan, and asks if I can see the World Trade Center buildings...they were Brand new...the lead story all around the town...pretty freakin’ easy to spot!
“Yeah...(another pull on his
Pell Mell)...Yeah, me and some of my friends built them.”

 

[beans-on-toast]

Old time drum beats, presented with taste.

 

[beans-on-toast]

My uncle Mac worked walkin’ the high steel.

One time...I was 17?...we were driving across the GW Bridge toward his home in New Jersey...a gold Karmen Ghia with the top down...he points across the Hudson, South, toward lower Manhattan, and asks if I can see the World Trade Center buildings...they were Brand new...the lead story all around the town...pretty freakin’ easy to spot!
“Yeah...(another pull on his
Pell Mell)...Yeah, me and some of my friends built them.”

View attachment 3417643

What a job to have. They got paid well.

Social smoking was big back then.

As a kid, I worked as an assistant in a sheetmetal shop. One of my jobs was inserting a rivet into the hole, then holding a bucking bar (a piece of steel) behind the rivet to keep it in place while a pneumatic hammer was used to flatten the other end.

They didn’t always bolt the girders together, they also riveted them. People didn’t wear (much) hearing protection, many lost some of their hearing.

Steel workers had it harder.

 

[the harp unstrung]

Kahnawake Skywalkers

Kahnawake Skywalkers - the Mohawk Steel Worker Tradition

My uncle Mac imagined himself a cowboy...an Irish kid from the Bronx who ran away from home at 16 to join a traveling rodeo.
Of Course he chose the Most dangerous thing a rodeo cowboy could do...so when he wasn’t the Clown, (‘dodging hoofs and horns’ was what he called it) he rode bulls.

He had a scar that ran from the bottom of his throat to just below his belly button, and he was happy to show it off.
...says he ‘caught a hoof’ in Florida.
My grandparents said they didn’t know if they were going to the train station to pick Him up, or to pick up his body.

That musta been the mid-1940s.

The year I was born, he won the biggest belt buckle I could even imagine, (the size of a damned dinner plate is the way 10 year old me remembers it), riding bulls in Madison Square Garden.
It was engraved with ‘Grand National Champion’.

Yeah, he was really proud to be one of the only White men working with the Mohawk, walkin’ high steel.

 

[GwenOnBass]

Informed by the librarian cadre that a high proportion of people under 20 can't read a clock face because they've only ever had digital clocks.

 

[GwenOnBass]

Another World Trade Center reference. Had to go through that again Tuesday.

So on the lighter side of that, it's my first day on site and I'm outside, in front the office at the World Financial Center.

Me: We must be near the World Trade Center.
"Look up."

 

[G-Dog]

Informed by the librarian cadre that a high proportion of people under 20 can't read a clock face because they've only ever had digital clocks.

There's also some proportion of people over 40 that may fall into that category! About 35 years ago, at a parent-teacher conference, we all laugh it off that my stepson simply wrote numbers for the assignment of drawing clock faces of various times, as he proclaimed his digital clock. Today, ironically, he would roll his eyes as that's exactly the type of thing his own son would do! To his chagrin, he is the poster boy for "The Mother's Curse", his son is as exasperating to him as he was to his mother and I.
.

 

[beans-on-toast]

Informed by the librarian cadre that a high proportion of people under 20 can't read a clock face because they've only ever had digital clocks.

They use a clock face as part of the mental testing when evaluating old people. A lot of kids are incompetent by that standard.

I know someone whose kid was falling behind in school because he couldn’t write with pen and paper, he had to use a computer. Everyone relented and he got a macbook and permission to use it in class for his “disability”. I wasn’t sure if he was spoiled and was simply wanting a computer in class.

Counting down the clock, waiting for the bell to ring.

 

[GwenOnBass]

YAH Alice Cooper

In primary school our classroom clocks were synchronized with a master clock. The minute hand invariably went backwards for a moment before it clicked into noon position and School's Out Time for Fun
(except that dagnabbed homework stuff)

 

[beans-on-toast]

Another World Trade Center reference. Had to go through that again Tuesday.

So on the lighter side of that, it's my first day on site and I'm outside, in front the office at the World Financial Center.

Me: We must be near the World Trade Center.
"Look up."

Working on site. That’s old school.

 

[GwenOnBass]

Working on site. That’s old school.

Well seen.

 

[Jeff Scott]

Man, that was quite riveting to watch!

 

[beans-on-toast]

Man, that was quite riveting to watch!

It can get routine after the first 100,000.

 

[GonePlaid]

It can get routine after the first 100,000.

The realization of how they did that came like a bolt outta the blue

 

[GwenOnBass]

The realization of how they did that came like a bolt outta the blue

Hammered that home, by cracky.

 

[shadowtippy]

Is it okay if I steel those puns?

 

[GonePlaid]

Is it okay if I steel those puns?

Sure. It's o-pun season on them.

 

[GwenOnBass]

Is it okay if I steel those puns?

You'd better bolt if anyone sees you.

 

[LBS-bass]

Oh, nuts. Why can't I come up with a pun like that?

 

[shadowtippy]

You'd better bolt if anyone sees you.

I can't. I wrenched my ankle, but my hammer toe is okay now.