The Foundry

There were three Bobs at the foundry. First up was Bob the owner. He had three half fingers on his right hand. He'd cut off the tips of his digits on a rip saw. This I found hard to fathom. You would think that once he cut off the top of one finger he'd have the good sense or presence of mind to stop what he was doing and save the rest of his fingers from the whirring blade. But apparently he was in too much of a hurry to stop chopping off fingers at the loss of one. Bob number two was the head of the Grinding Department. He was rotund and ineffectual and the general consensus was that he had his job by way of nepotism. He was married to Bob the owner's daughter. And then there was me, Bob number three. Or Disco Bob as I later learned I was dubbed the afternoon I was taken for a tour around the foundry in the course of the hiring process. I got the nickname by the way I was dressed, garbed as I was in the attire of a disco smoothie given to garish and synthetic fabrics.

The foundry had four divisions of labor. There was Molds, a three man operation, Grinding and Painting with a half dozen employees each, and the Furnace which was manned by one worker. On any given day the Mold guys snapped together wooden boxes and filled them with a mixture of sand, adhesive, and a hardening agent that caused it all to heat up, turn green, and solidify. Then each mold was laid out to cool off. Every finished casting no matter the shape or size took two boxes, that is two molds, for each box had a corresponding half. Once the molds cooled they were taken to Painting where each one was painted with a nonporous agent. (The stuff was best applied in a room with good ventilation - because as the warnings affixed to the 55 gallon drums of it stated in so many words: inhale too much of the stuff and it will kill you.) After it was painted the mold would be sanded down and then the two matching halves of each mold were lined up and glued together. There was usually three to four castings per pour so the stack of molds was from bottom to top some six feet tall. The stack which had a steel plate on the bottom was then fitted with another plate at the top of the stack and then banded together. From there an overhead hydraulic lift would be lowered and clamped on to the stack to turn it sideways. A fork truck then carried the now horizontal stack over to the furnace where the liquified metal was poured into the molds. Afterwards the stack was taken over to grinding where the castings were left to cool down. Then the grinders would grind and sand blast each of casting free of burs.

My first job at the foundry was in Painting. At the time there were two women working in the department. They were both in their twenties and I thought of them as girls. One was the love interest of Joe who was the foreman of both Painting and Molds. He was a haunted and sallow alcoholic and some twelve years older than his chosen girl. One morning shortly after I was hired a stack of molds toppled over and landed on top of the other girl snapping a bone in her right leg in two. It was then decided that the foundry was not a fit place of work for a women. Joe's love interest promptly departed and Joe in turn wandered around forlorn.

I got dirtier by the hour while working at the foundry. In the morning I was splattered white while haphazardly applying the nonporous solution to the molds. Then I was covered with a fine dust from sanding all that I'd just painted. As the day wore on the smoke from the smelting furnace and all the grinders grinding would rain down on me in the form of ash and the smell would seep into my clothes until I smelled of industrial fires. (Once while cashing my check at a local bank the woman standing in line behind blurted out, "I smell something burning." I eased her concern by saying, "It's only me.") Every two weeks there was a sand delivery and the foundry would be choked of air by the accompanying voluminously billowing clouds of dust. And it did not matter that some of us chose to wear the company provided hospital masks. By the day's end no matter what the precautions we took we all had the taste of dust in our throats. Each night after work I labored in the shower scrubbing myself red with a hard bristle brush.

Around ten o clock each morning the Roach Coach would pull into the foundry parking lot and blare its horn melodiously. We'd scramble outside in our alloted fifteen minute break to purchase and wolf down coffee, breakfast goodies, and would be hangover remedies. We were save for Bob the owner, Pete the engineer, and the furnace operator copious consumers of liquor, cigarettes, and drugs. One morning during break a none too loved employee bought six bags of potato chips. By the time break was over and we all had to get back to work he'd eaten the contents of only three of the bags. Rather than picking up where he'd left off before break he took his three remaining bags of chips into the bathroom and there he perched in one of the weakly fecal smelling stalls munching away. Another employee who took a wiz heard the crunching of chips and reported it to Joe. He quickly took action threatening to fire the chip muncher if he didn't immediately return to work. And the chip eater's actions won him no new friends.

An us against them vibe existed between the other departments and Painting. This was due to the fact that all the employees working in Grinding and Molds, and also on the furnace were from the town where the foundry was located. They also as a whole had been working at the foundry for a number of years. Painting employees on the other hand came from all over and quit with regularity. Over the months I worked at the foundry I was somewhat reluctantly taken into the fold and invited to parties thrown by assorted grinders. These were guys only affairs. At one of the gatherings I watched the three hundred pound giant pear shaped guy who worked in Molds and reminded me of the cartoon character Baby Huey and who was lovingly called The Mayor guzzle down a fifth of vodka. In a matter of seconds he drained the bottle dry. He spent the rest of the night seated upright at the kitchen table with his eyes glazed over and hiccuping every so often. It was apparently the way he always drank.

Another employee who worked in Molds, Eddie Corpizinski, was gullible to the point that he seemed to be performing an unsubtle parody called "The Stupid Pollock." One afternoon when he was informed that live chickens were going to be let loose in the ducks that transported sand in order to clean them he responded with indignation that that wasn't fair to the chickens.

I'd been at the foundry a number of months when I was promoted with a small bump in pay to the position of furnace operator. It was an induction furnace that melted metals by currents of electricity and even a hint of moisture could set off an explosion. So caution was the word when working the furnace. Every day Pete the engineer who smoked more cigarettes than it seemed humanly possible would hand me a print out of weights and types of metal I was to liquify by the introduction of heat. Through a slow procedure of ramping up the temperature the cauldron's hold would melt and I would add more weight and skim from the mouth of the furnace slag and impurities. One day Bob number two gave me a new skimmer to use. It had been abandoned outdoors for a number of months and it had rusted. The instant I lower the skimmer and it touched the molten hold of the furnace the contents exploded hurling me to the ground and shooting out a spray of molten metal. Fortunately the skimmer did not then fall into the cauldron. Had it done so we would have suffered an eruption equaled in size to a diminutive Mount Saint Helen.

I had a two man crew who worked the pours with me. There was Ed (not Korpizinski) who drove the fork truck (and who would some months later head off to live in the wilds of Alaska.) Aiding him was Mad Dog. He had earned his nickname by the wine he favored, Mogan David. One Saturday morning when we were working overtime and Mad Dog was terribly hung over he was directing Ed forward while walking backwards. "Come on, come on," he instructed Ed who had paused the fork truck momentarily. He had paused because Mad Dog who was resting his body against the stack of molds did not realize that his back was less than an inch away from the sheet rock wall of the bathroom. "I said come on," barked Mad Dog. With a hint of merriment Ed did as instructed. He drove forward. In doing so he bashed Mad Dog right through the wall of the bathroom. After Ed and I ceased with our laughter and Mad Dog emerged from the rubble, threw up, and groaned, "Yeah. Funny," we got on with the pour.

One night with a few accomplices I stoled the company pick up truck and took to the neighboring hills. At a free standing mailbox of a house along the way, one that we had years ago picked at random and routinely blown up with fireworks ever since regardless of the owners attempts to fortify it, I backed up the pickup truck against the newly erected sturdy and cemented pole. After a count down from ten to one I floored the gas pedal and smashed the pole and mailbox flat to the ground. From there we went whooping and hollering until one of my cohorts threw the gear shift into reverse as we were cruising along at fifty miles an hour. It blew the transmission and we coasted to a stop. A good citizen who happened to be walking his dog nearby told us he'd call for help as soon as he got home. We said thanks and the moment he was out of sight we ran willy nilly through the woods until we reached the home of a friend.

A short time later I quit the foundry. Two months after that my brother and I and two of our friends loaded up a van and headed with uncertainty for points west.