Armco Steel - part 2

Continuing with the story of working at Armco, I'd like to share the worst day I had there....and maybe one of the worst days of my life.

I got assigned to do some brick work at the basic oxygen furnace.  This furnace was an odd contraption that looked for all the world like a giant thermos bottle. It was about 30 feet tall with a bottle shape and about 10 feet in diameter.  It had a narrow neck at the top, and they used it to burn the impurities out of the molten iron.  First they'd fill it about half full of molten iron, then insert a big metal tube into it and blow pure oxygen in.  It looked like a giant fireworks display when they did that, because the oxygen would cause anything other than iron to burst into violent flames and sparks.  The iron would get white hot too....so the heat was intense and almost overpowering.

To protect the furnace bottle floor on the inside from melting too, they had a layer of protective long bricks made of a mix of asbestos and silica.  They were unique in shape being narrow on one end, but then expanding towards the outside of the vessel.  They were each about two feet long, and maybe 3 inches square on the small end, and six inches square on the big end.  They nested together in a very interesting spiral pattern that looked a lot like the seeds of a sunflower when you looked down into the bottle.  As they used it, the bricks would slowly burn away and eventually they all needed to be replaced.  They had two basic oxygen furnaces, and so could shut one down while the other was still operating.

My job was to do down inside the bottle, tear out the old bricks at the bottom and then lay new ones.  Access was a challenge because of the narrow neck, so they had designed a special open cage elevator that a crane would drop into a vertical bottle.  It was just big enough across to ride in if you kept your arms at your sides to fit into it.  Some of the guys were too big around to fit, so they picked us smaller people to do the down side work.  They used the elevator to drop us in, and all the tools and materials we needed too.  We would load up the platform with broken brick in buckets and they would take it back up again.  It was not a place for anyone who is uncomfortable in small tight places.  I have to admit that it did bother me a bit, especially when I looked up a the little opening far above me.

I got assigned to this detail three days in a row, and so got pretty good at it.  We got the old bricks out quickly, and then started dropping in the new bricks.  Te ensure they were solidly in place, we used a dry mortar approach.  They would send us down bags of very finely powdered sand and asbestos.  We would put a couple of the bricks in place, and then slowly pour a little of the mortar powder into the cracks between them.  This way the molten iron could not flow between the bricks and get the to outside steel vessel walls.

All was going smoothly until the unexpected happened.  Someone who was loading up materials on the topside stacked a bunch of bricks into the elevator, and then a bunch of mortar bags on top of them.  As the elevator came down with that load, the pile of stuff slid sideways.  A couple of bags of the dry mortar first hit the sides of the elevator cage and then slipped over some more.  They got caught on some exposed angle iron near the top of the vessel, and it cut the bags wide open.  Immediately all the contents spilled out into space and the whole place was filled with dense white fog of fine sand and asbestos powder.

It's hard to describe just how bad it was in there.  We were in a total white out, but our eyes were blind anyway from the dust and tears.  Then we started breathing the dust and we all coughed until I thought we'd lose our lungs on the floor.  We put our hands over our mouths in a useless gesture to cut the dust.  Then the worst thing of all happened.  The elevator ground to a halt about half way down, still spilling large quantities of dust into the air. 

We were trapped and couldn't see and couldn't breathe.  I pulled my kerchief out of my back pocket and wrapped it over my mouth.  There was a lot of profanity flying, and I'm sure I was helping.  The guys on the topside started yelling too.  They told us to hold on and tried to reverse the direction of the elevator, but it was totally stuck.  The dust had spilled into the gears and it wouldn't move up or down.  It was stuck firmly half way down, but way above our heads.  The full impact of our situation began to sink in.  We were trapped in a place where it was almost impossible to see or breathe.

I had to try very hard not to panic, and worked on slowing my breath and keeping my eyes closed.  After what seemed like forever, another crew came to help out the topside people.  They couldn't get the elevator to work either, and so finally decided to call in a crane and pull the whole unit straight up out of the vessel...leaving us behind below.  They really had no other option, but it took them a long time to get a crane in place and then pull the elevator up and out.  Once it was gone, I was hoping for some fresh air to come down, but it didn't seem to help a bit.  We were all gasping for air, coughing, and one guy was throwing up from coughing so hard.  We all had tears streaming down our faces and couldn't see much of anything.

At first the top crew tried to figure out a way to get us out of there, but didn't have ladders or lines that would work.  They finally decided the only option was the get the elevator working again.  So, they got busy with air hoses and brushes and finally got the gears all cleaned.  They did a quick power check to see if it was working again, and then dropped the elevator back down into the bottle.  They could only take out one of at a time, and it seemed like forever before I got my turn...the last one out.  They put us all into the back of a pickup truck and drove us over to the infirmary.  They washed out our eyes with something, and let us take a shower to get all the powder off us.  They said we'd be fine, and just take a day off.  I didn't know any better, and this was long before people understood the impact of asbestos on lungs.  Two days later I was back at work again.

I remember being tired a lot after that, but gradually recovered.  It took weeks for the cough to totally disappear.  One thing that I really noticed much later though was that I wasn't as good at distance running as I had been before.  I just wrote it off to lack of training and getting older.

Years later I got a great job at Boeing, and when I went into Field Service they subjected me to the first indepth physical of my life.  I got my first chest x-ray and the doctor came out to ask me some questions.  He said I had a lot scarring in my lungs and wanted to know why.  I was at a loss for awhile to explain it, but finally made the link to Armco.  The body is smart and when your lungs get bad stuff in them, it puts scars around it to protect you.  So...my body did it's job, and now I've got a bunch of nice scars in my lungs as my souvenir of Armco.  Of course asbestos exposure can cause lung cancer, but I'm just hoping that it stays right there where it belongs, totally surrounded and isolated from the rest of me.

I don't worry about it much, figuring that if it was going to cause cancer I'd already be dead.  But I can't help but count my blessings for having survived that awful day.  Many times when I go outside I take a full fresh breath of air, and am so grateful that I can do that still.  So, here again I'm feeling thankful for air and life on the eve of Thanksgiving.  I do wonder at times if the other five guys who were down there too are as lucky as I am......

Lessons learned:  Never take the little things in life for granted, they can be taken away in a single second of surprise.  Enjoy the moment, it's all we ever have anyway.

Armco Steel - part 1

Sign at the Main Entrance

One of my more interesting and challenging jobs was working at Armco Steel in Ashland, Kentucky.  My younger brother Ed and I got jobs there one summer with the help of a family friend.  The pay was amazingly good, but the place was filled with ways to get hurt or killed.


We got temporary summer jobs called vacation fill in.  Vacation fill in means that each day when you punch in for work, you also get a pink card that tells you where in the plant to report for work.  Pretty much every day or night was a different job, but a lot of the time we did the worst of the worst kind of annual maintenance work.  Like climbing down into deep concrete wells and pumping out hydraulic fluid and other junk that had fallen in.  It was kind of like the scene in the first Star Wars movie where they were all trapped in the garbage collection area and the walls started closing on them.  It stank, it was dark, and if you got the skydrol on your hands, the skin would peel off.  Nice.

The Tipple area where the iron ore was delivered by trains

Steel mills are tough places to work, and Armco was no exception.  Their primary idea for an employee safety program was putting a big illuminated scoreboard at the main gate.  It was just like the kind you see at football games, except this one was a bit more personal.  They posted three different numbers for the last 12 months...Minor Injuries, Major Injuries, and Fatalities.  There were no zeroes in any of the three, including the fatalities.  I think there were three people killed the summer we worked there.  They seemed to think that posting the scores would scare people into being more safe...but it sure didn't seem to have much effect.

We were required to join the United Steel Workers Union to work there, and they had one particular practice that drove me nuts, but made Ed smile.  When you hired in, you got a seniority number assigned.  It was based on the date, and also the order you hired in on a particular day.  In our case we were hired in the same day in alphabetical order.  Meaning that Ed was the person who got hired right before me.  That was ok, except he was my younger brother.

The full impact of the seniority system didn't take long to rear it's head.  When we'd both get assigned to the same fill in detail, we would often be assigned slightly different jobs.  Like the hydraulic pit clean up job.  For that job, two people were required.  One had to climb down into the pit, and wade around in hip boots in smelly, caustic junk...and the other would lower down a big bucket, that the down side person would load with junk.  So the top side person would then pull up the bucket and dump it into a loader, and lower it again.  Clearly the top side person had the much better of the two jobs, so it went to the person with the higher seniority...in our case to Ed.  Ed was good about it and never rubbed it in, but he would always have that quiet smile on his face when I got the worst part of every assignment, and he didn't.

We had many really dirty, hot, smelly and dangerous jobs there.  Without fail, the foreman would always ignore all the posted safety warnings and never issue the required safety equipment.  On one job we both were working on the roof of the basic oxygen furnace building to sweep and blow off iron ore dust before it got so heavy it would collapse.  Since heat rises, it was about 130 degrees up there, and we wore face masks, big smelly rubber gloves and walked around with a huge vacuum hose to pick up the piles of drifting dust.  There was a large sign that said "Natural Gas Hazard Area - Oxygen Masks Required at All Times".

Of course they didn't give us the masks, and I got concerned.  When you use natural gas in a residential setting they add that wonderful aroma to it so people can smell it in case of a leak.  However, in industrial use, it is completely odorless, but just as deadly.  So, being a bit concerned, I pointed at the sign and asked the foreman, where were our masks.  He frowned and said "We ain't got none son.".  Pressing the point, I asked about how we can know we will be safe.  He paused, and then wet his finger in his mouth and stuck it straight up into the air.  I thought he was pointing to God as our protector, but he had a brilliant plan.  He was checking for which way the wind was blowing.  He then asked the most senior person on the crew to move to the upwind side of the building and watch us all.  He told him that if any of us collapsed, his job was to call for help on the radio.  Unfortunately, the foreman's radio wasn't working...but at least he made an effort, and none of us did collapse.

At night it seemed like a set from the movie Alien

We got this same foreman a number of times (maybe he was being punished), and so got to know him pretty well.  I think his name was John, and he rolled his own cigarettes.  Fascinating but disgusting at the same time.  But I learned to appreciate his dry wit, and especially his ability to act fast when needed...and that time came one day.

Ed and I had been operating jack hammers inside a large bathroom complex, and so got pretty good at it.  Don't know if you've every used a jack hammer, but they weigh around 100 pounds, shake the crap out of you, and will deafen you when you start them up in a tiled room.  Not to mention the chocking concrete dust they blow everywhere since they run off of compressed air.

So we were both happy to get cards one day that told us to report to a closed building for jack hammer work.  At least we wouldn't be in that bathroom sounding like a war zone.  John was our foreman, and he had us walk up several flights of stair to the very top of the building lugging our hammers and hoses.  They had big steel beams, laid in pairs that crossed just under the ceiling at regular intervals.  The one foot space between each pair had been filled with reinforced concrete, and it needed to be broken out so they could take the beams down.  They were remodeling it for some purpose that did not require ceiling cranes.  So, our job was to keep our left foot on one beam, our right foot on the other, and use the jack hammer to break out the concrete in between.  All this was done while we were about 60 feet in the air above a concrete floor.

Of course there was no safety equipment...no ropes or harnesses to catch us if we slipped.  And slipping was easy.  We walked backwards down the beam pairs, and would set the hammer down on the concrete to break it free. When the concrete broke, it would fall to the floor below with a crash, and the jack hammer would try to fall too.  It was a fine art to know just when to pull back hard on the hammer to keep you and it from going down with the concrete.  And the longer we worked and the tireder we got, the more likely an accident was.  I knew if we made a mistake on this one, we would show up in the Fatalities section of the scoreboard.

At first it went fine, but both Ed and I had some near misses.  We learned very quickly to be slow and methodical.  I got my beam pair done first, and was standing back on safe ground watching Ed get to the last five feet of beam before he too would be done.  John had been watching us the whole time, rolling and smoking, but not saying much.  He moved over to stand behind Ed, and watched him slowly backing towards him breaking out the beams.  I'm still not sure exactly what happened, but suddenly Ed lost his balance forward as the concrete broke.  His jack hammer dropped about half way down through the beams, and Ed was clearly going down with it despite his strength.

Just like a miracle, John quickly reached out one had and grabbed Ed's belt in the back, and reached back with his other hand to grab a piece of pipe attached to the wall.  He was now holding Ed and the jack hammer both, and swung them both back to the platform on which he was standing.  Ed and I were both totally freaked out, knowing how close he'd just come to dying...but John just smiled and said "Sure wouldn't do for you to work alone would it boy?  Next time just let go of the GD jack hammer.".  My heart was beating so fast I felt like I was going to throw up...and I think Ed felt even worse.

So...John let us take a break, and then we went back to work again...more slowly and carefully than before.

I learned a lot from working there, and in part 2 of this story will share how I still carry a souvenir of one of my worst days.  It wasn't all bad though.  I loved working with Ed.  He had a nice 57 Olds, and would would take us both to and from work in it.  We got so filthy dirty there that he had to put blankets in the car for us to sit on to keep from ruining the seats.  Our faces and clothes would be black, which made it all the more fun to see each other smile and laugh as we'd talk about our day on the way home...totally exhausted but proud of the hard work we'd done together.

I also learned the value of a good job, and to appreciate one when I had one.  I have a lot of respect for the people who actually made a life career of working at Armco.  I knew that I could never do that work for long, but some of them had been at it for 30 years.  They were tough, still hard working, and very wise in their own way.  They are the kind of people, like miners, who gave their lives to make a living for their families and to help build this country.

So, I give thanks to each of them on this day, but am especially thankful to foreman John....I love my brother Ed, and without you John, he wouldn't be here with us all today.  Thank you!

Life after Death

In my last blog I described how it's possible to fly down stairs with only minor injuries.  This blog of a different sort, and describes the accident that most changed my view of myself and my life.  I've had a lot of accidents in my life, but have only had one turn out to be fatal...and this is the story of that event.

When I was 14, I got one of the dumbest ideas I've ever had - and I consider myself world class at coming up with dumb ideas.  The dumb idea?  I decided to get Red Cross certified as a life guard.  That's something thousands of people have done, and maybe it doesn't sound so silly.  But, I was about 4 foot 9 inches tall, and weighed maybe 80 pounds after a big meal.  So, physically I would have struggled to rescue a small wet dog, much less a real person.  The second thing is that I'd never had a swimming lesson in my life, and didn't know the first thing about proper swimming technique.

None of that deterred me in the least, especially since my big sister Ingrid was taking the class too.  We went to the local pool the first evening, and signed up with 40 other people to take the class.  The instructors were interesting - two big beefy guys just out of the Marines, and right away I could tell they were wondering why I was there.  I think they thought I was the kid of one of the real students at first, and that I was just going to watch from the sidelines.  I made sure very quickly that they understood that I was there as a student, and that I had every intention of completing the classes and getting that treasured certificate.

The Red Cross offers a standard curriculum for training life guards across the US, including a nice book and handouts that tell you all about how to save other people without getting yourself drowned in the process.  Not getting drowned is the biggest challenge when you try to save someone.  Drowning people are always in a panic, and they will literally climb up on top of you, or get you in a death grip if they can.  So, a big part of the training is how to approach a victim, get them into a hold that is safe for both of you, and then swim you both to safety.  It's not easy- especially when most of the people are about twice your size, but I did surprisingly well at it..

About a third of the way through the class, when everything was going swimmingly well (sorry), the two lifeguards got bored.  They decided that the standard classes were just not challenging enough to prepare us for the real world.  They introduced a very difficult training regimen into our evening sessions.  We had to be either swimming, running or doing pushups/situps all the time.  They said that endurance and strength were critical to our future success.  That's when people started grumbling behind their backs and some people quit.

I have to admit it was hard work...harder than anything I'd done before, but I wasn't going to give up no matter what.  And besides, if Ingrid could do it so could I.  After an evening session, we would walk home together and eat a whole loaf of bread between us.   We were like starved animals all the time, but the exercise was starting to have it's effect, and we got stronger and better at our swimming and rescue work.

The real downward spiral of our class began when the lifeguards once again reviewed what we were doing, and had a brilliant idea (at least they thought it was brilliant).  They decided we should wear clothes while we did our training - tennis shoes, blue jeans, and a long sleeved sweat shirt.  The swimming and exercise was already hard, but doing it fully clothed was incredibly difficult.  I think that their experience in the Marine Corp had caused some significant skewing of their view of what was normal and expected.

The very first evening of when we were to begin our training this way, I brought my clothes in a brown paper bag, and my dinner in another bag.  I was very worried I wouldn't be able to swim with the clothes on, and I asked them if I could practice in the pool before class began.  The way it worked is that the pool closed at 6 pm, and the classes started at 7 pm.  So they had a one hour break for their own dinner and paperwork between.  They said ok, and then went to the pump house office to do their daily work and eat their meal.

There was no one else in the whole pool complex and the water was glass smooth.  I put on the clothes, and got into the shallow end of the pool.  It just felt wrong to be in the pool with shoes and clothes on, but I forced myself.  However hard I thought it was going to be, the reality was worse.  It was very hard to kick effectively and swim, and just try raising your arms out of the water to swim a crawl when you have a sweat shirt on.   I finally decided to move to deeper water and try swimming all the way across the pool.  I did fine for a bit, but was getting very winded and losing my rhythm.  Somewhere in the middle of the pool, I did a very bad thing.  I took a full breath while my face was in the water...I still don't know why.

Taking a full breathe of water is usually not a good idea, and in my case was no different.  I realized immediately that I was in serious trouble.  I fought my way to the surface to yell, but couldn't make the slightest sound.  I couldn't breathe, couldn't call for help, and in very short order could not even stay on the surface any more.  In total panic I sank towards the bottom and knew I was going to die.

I continued to thrash around ineffectively for awhile, but gradually my movements slowed, and I came to a complete stop.  I remember my feet hitting the bottom, and a great sense of peace replaced my panic and fear.  Things got dark, and I couldn't see anymore...but I really didn't care.  Then I heard an amazing sound.  It grew louder and louder, and completely filled me with it's vibration.  Much later in life I heard Tibetan prayer bowls, and realized they are very similar to this sound when you "ring" them by rubbing a stick around the rim slowly.

The sound was like a magnet, and in total darkness I started moving towards the sound.  Not swimming, but somehow just moving because I wanted to move.  As I moved that way, I saw a dim light ahead.  The closer I got to it, the brighter it became.  It was a golden, yellow, warm light...and I was totally drawn to it.  At one point I felt like I was being pulled along down a shimmering tunnel of light, and then I came out on the other side.  I immediately realized that what I had seen was not a light.....but an entire universe of lights.  These lights were orbs of the same golden color, each shimmering and radiating their light.  It was their individual lights that was creating the light I had seen from afar.

The other thing I felt immediately was being totally bathed in complete, unconditional love, bliss, and connection.  I realized that each light was in fact another person, and that they were welcoming me home.  I knew I'd been here before, and recognized many, many beings there as people I'd known before.  I was also filled with a huge relief that I was home again after a tough journey.  I continued moving slowly through the lights, and knew that I was a light just like them.  It's hard to describe just how wonderful the experience was, but it is forever burned into my brain and heart.  I don't know how long I was there, but it seemed like days.

Then without warning, I was moving very rapidly backwards out of there.  I awoke lying in the grass beside the pool with my face in the dirt.  I was scratched and bleeding from being pulled up over the concrete edge of the pool, and had been throwing up water and my recent dinner.  I was completely confused for a few seconds, and then realized I was back here and had left the other place behind.  I jumped to my feet, and have never felt such rage and anger in my life at being brought back.  I was a very well mannered, quiet boy...but not then.  I screamed at both of the lifeguards, calling them bad words I didn't even know I knew, and started kicking and punching them both.  I don't need to get into all of it, but I'd had some really challenging times in my life, and was extremely unhappy to be back here again.

Clearly they were caught by surprise - after all they had just saved my life.  They just kept pushing me away, and then one of them got me in a bear hug and lifted me off the ground until I stopped struggling.  At this point, I was so filled with sadness for the loving place I'd just lost that I just went limp and sobbed with my hands at my sides.  I'm sure they must have thought I'd gone totally insane...and maybe I had. 

They then told me their story.  After I said I was going to swim, they went back into the pump house.  Some time later, one of them said he felt something was wrong.  He went outside and looked at the pool and the area around it.  He said the water was calm, and that I was nowhere in sight.  So, he decided that I'd changed my mind about practicing and had gone home for dinner.  He went back inside and continued his paperwork.  About 5 minutes later, he again got a strong feeling that not all was well, and went out again to look around.  Still not seeing anyone, he walked over to the deep end of the pool, and saw my body at the drain in deepest water.  Apparently, my body had slowly drifted down the bottom to the drain.  He called for help, and they jumped in, pulled me out, and were able to revive me after a lot of work.

As I regained my senses and my temper, I went into a form of shock.  Shock from being oxygen deprived for so long (they estimated 15 to 20 minutes under water).  But also shock at being back from a place I so loved, to one I didn't love so much.  I began to wonder if maybe what had happened was just a crazy dream of some sort, but I knew in my heart it was very real.  Maybe even more real than here.  But I just kept my mouth shut about my experience, and instead asked them if there was any way they'd be willing not to tell my parents about it.  They readily agreed, and I now understand it was because they knew they'd get in a bunch of trouble if anyone found out they'd let me swim without any supervision...and I'd almost drowned as a result.

By the time they revived me, I had to have been dead for at least 15 ro 20 minutes...plenty of time for brain damage which starts after 2 minutes.  I'm pretty sure that I did suffer some brain injury, but one of the nice things about brain damage is that you don't really know you have it.  I do know I had a much better memory and total recall before that day, and I wasn't so good at that after.

The impact of that evening has continued to change me throughout my life.  I didn't tell anyone about what happened for 25 years or more, but I couldn't help but see my life and the world in a very different way.  I was no longer afraid of death, and understand that it is just a transition to a much better place.  But at the time some of my experience was very troubling for me.  How could I have known so many people there, and why did I know I'd been away before and come home before too?  

We were raised in a traditional Christian family, and I'd never heard the word reincarnation before.  But when I came across it years later, and I knew that's what it was about.  Not in the way that many might think though.  The "me" that went through the tunnel and went home was not so much like the "me" here.  The essential elements are the same, but the personality I have here just dropped away, much like my scrawny little body did too.  I also understood that all people are connected through love and compassion there, and that we search for and long for that connection here.  That sure knowledge of the love that awaits me has been a lifelong comfort to me here.

In my own lack of understanding and maturity, I decided at that age that my religion was just wrong about too many important things.  I stepped away from it, and began studying every other religion to see which one was "right".  I didn't find one that matched my experience, so I rejected them all for awhile.  Then I finally realized something.  I was studying religions like I was panning for gold.  Except that I'd throw the whole pan back in the water because it contained some sand, and was not all gold.  Now instead, I see that every religion has gold nuggets, and all do also have some sand.  So they are all good in some way - and not so good in others.  All can be helpful for our growth and betterment as human beings - and learning to understand what is true or for ourselves.

I'm not trying to say anyone's religion is better or worse.  I just think they all are doing their best to describe the same thing from different perspectives, and do so in different ways.  One thing I am very sure about though is that the ones that think they are the only ones with a ticket to heaven are seriously confused.  There were no Christians, Muslims, or Jews where I went...only wonderful caring beings who hope for nothing more than to love and be loved.  I hope this doesn't offend any of you who might read this, and I'm only describing own personal experience.  I respect and honor everyone else's point of view, and I've found that arguing or debating doesn't help or matter.  After all, we are all taking whatever we believe on faith or our own experiences.  The most important thing is to do our best to help and love each other while we are here, and to give that love unconditionally.

So...back to the lifesaving class before I end this.  I did end up learning to swim with the clothes on without drowning, and eventually completed the very difficult test at the end to get my treasured certificate.  We had to swim three miles in our final exam in our clothes to prove we were worthy.  In the end, only three of us out of the originally 42 graduated.  My sister Ingrid was one of the three too...so don't ever underestimate just how tough and determined she is.  The two lifeguards were fired at the end of the season for changing the training to make it so hard - the city got a lot of letters of complaint from the people who dropped out.

To this day, I don't remember the names of the two teachers...and I'm ashamed I never said thank you for saving my life.  I was angry for a long time at having to be here again, but now I know that they gave me a great gift by bringing me back - even though I thought it was against my will.  Now I do my best to spend each day in gratitude that I did get to see what I saw, and that I still have a chance to experience each day here as the treasure that it is.  I'm not in any hurry to die, but know that one of these fine days I will be going home again...and I will smile all the way there.

Lessons Learned:  Life is simple, just listen to your heart.  Sometimes when you sign up for a lifesaving class, you get exactly what you signed up for.