So with that said, here is "Part One" of a story I wrote some time ago. I decided to post it in parts so as not to tax the one or two readers who might be kind enough to actually read it. If I am speaking of you, thank you.
The Value of Baseball
The Value of Baseball
Part I:
Harvey rolled like a pinball. In 1934, four months after leaving school at sixteen, he worked twelve hours a week unloading flatbed produce trucks at Patruli’s Deli. During his off time, Harvey leaned against rusted piers under the Market Street bridge with the other men––the German, the Slovak, and the Lithuanian immigrants––groping for steady work. Interchangeable, expendable men slouching fifty feet below the bridge and just outside the yards, clad in filthy, drab work cloths and boots of worn leather with their steel-toe caps peeking out here and there like patches of gray primer beneath chipped paint, smoking cheap tobacco in hand-rolled cigarettes and green Lucky Strikes and hitting off hazy homemade booze until it did not much matter that the bearded Croat in the booth had posted the NO sign for the fourth day that week; and until it did not much matter that even when the man did give the order to insert three or four guys to this mill or that yard, that the Croat would not so much as spit at you if you were unfortunate enough to carry no vouchers from those already inside; and until it did not much matter that even mill work was unlikely for a two-bit punk like him. And so, blunt and vagrant, time passed for Harvey, and just when he figured he could stand under that bridge no longer, just as he was about to abandon ideas of mill work, to hit the open road, to pick up and jump trains to California, or Texas or somewhere different, to slip out of the mill before ever slipping in, Harvey caught a bone. A bone tossed by a grimy man with forearms bigger than Harvey’s thighs who saw Bud’s kid brother walking to Patruli’s and remembered his visage from when they used to skip rocks at him until he would run away, and from when they used to wet-willy him until he would cry; and thus, the next morning, Harvey walked aside this man, aside this heavy plate and black iron worker who looked just as filthy that morning as he did the night before; aside this stoic figure of labor who casually wore a leather tool belt over his shoulder and who carried a dented and scratched lunch pail––an industrial knight so long clad in the armor of the trade that Harvey could not have imagined him looking any other way; aside this progenitor of scarred and bruised children who ran wild in the streets jumping free rides on the back of milk trucks and playing football with an old soup can before belly-flopping into the murky Mahoning River; aside a worker so unaware of leisure, happiness, and holiday that he clustered the concepts with that of death and tossed them all down to be trampled by duty and obligation; aside a grown son whose own father had incinerated in a coke furnace during the long-shift; aside his precursor; and, indeed, from seven o’clock that drizzly Wednesday morning until three-thirty in the afternoon forty-seven years later, between which time begetting three children from a wife who broke vertebrae after slipping on bathroom tile, between which time cultivating a dry hacking cough which eventually would lay him to rest, between which time enduring two severed fingers and the unstable knees of a laborer, between which time learning how to hide flasks in toilet tanks and tool box drawers, between which time tattooing welts on his forearms with the leaping embers that accompany the welder, Harvey worked sheet metal. When Harvey crossed the threshold that last afternoon, he wore a gold-plated watch presented to him by the owner, he carried a pension booklet passed to him from the shop steward, and, most importantly, Harvey held the memory of that summer afternoon, in 1956, when he spoke to his eldest son, my father, about an apprenticeship in the trade and hooked my father into that same shop that entrapped so many good men into three bedroom homes and American automobiles, into little leagues and booster clubs, into Florida vacations and Fourth of July cookouts, into black coffee and tomato juice, into Sunday mass and visits to Catholic cemeteries, into twilight double-headers and high school football games, into cheap domestic beer and cigarette coupon booklets, into January first kielbasa in sauerkraut and wedding tables covered with platters of kalalcity and pizzelles, into a way-of-life, a structure, out of which a man develops pride, loyalty, security, perseverance, and comfort, and it was these qualities that turned good men into pigeons, that blinded the prophets and sages, that allowed the structure to crumbled upon them as the mills collapsed and their understanding of how the world worked, of order, of logic, of life, ceased to exist like a flame extinguished, like an alarm silenced, like a scream muffled; and these men watched Youngstown wrest into a ghetto of aimless middle-aged workers by US Steel and Republic Steel, and even Bethlehem Steel, one by one shutting the gates of their antiquated mills and leaving for Asia, Mexico, and the south-western United States where trade unions carried the stigma of greedy workers and ruined industry; but my father, who somehow stayed afloat while his comrades sunk into ruin––lost their homes, their families, their dignity––refused to abandon Youngstown, refused to extract our family and float south where skilled welders worked for half of his wage and felt lucky. The shop somehow prevailed over the erosion which surrounded its dilapidated buildings and sweaty men. My father still worked, and thus he was still able to believe in honesty and loyalty and the creed of the worker––if I work harder, if I work longer, if I do a better job, I will prosper––and so much did my father believe in these ideals that even in 1981, well after the mills had abandoned the valley, well after the lifeless ex-workers ceased to be angry and settled into the despair of shattered existence, when the shop, which once operated six days a week with three shifts of forty men crews, was operating merely one shift of ten men––a ghost town of five B workers, four foremen working labor on the floor, and a one-armed shop superintendent––my father declined an opportunity to quit and open his own sheet metal company––risks demeaned prudence. Instead, he followed his creed and held strong to his belief that the shop would be there for him, but beliefs and creeds are intangibles which have never spoken with a strong enough voice to throw down a crooked owner increasing profits and ignoring deferred maintenance, forlorn buildings, and antiquated equipment; and who alone dropped the company so deep into a chasm that after thirty-five years of physical labor, my father lost his job, and the bank sold the foreclosed property that was what I had always known as the shop to developers who dreamed of a trendy Mahoning River district, and who left one building standing amongst piles of rubble when they drifted away in the night.
Harvey rolled like a pinball. In 1934, four months after leaving school at sixteen, he worked twelve hours a week unloading flatbed produce trucks at Patruli’s Deli. During his off time, Harvey leaned against rusted piers under the Market Street bridge with the other men––the German, the Slovak, and the Lithuanian immigrants––groping for steady work. Interchangeable, expendable men slouching fifty feet below the bridge and just outside the yards, clad in filthy, drab work cloths and boots of worn leather with their steel-toe caps peeking out here and there like patches of gray primer beneath chipped paint, smoking cheap tobacco in hand-rolled cigarettes and green Lucky Strikes and hitting off hazy homemade booze until it did not much matter that the bearded Croat in the booth had posted the NO sign for the fourth day that week; and until it did not much matter that even when the man did give the order to insert three or four guys to this mill or that yard, that the Croat would not so much as spit at you if you were unfortunate enough to carry no vouchers from those already inside; and until it did not much matter that even mill work was unlikely for a two-bit punk like him. And so, blunt and vagrant, time passed for Harvey, and just when he figured he could stand under that bridge no longer, just as he was about to abandon ideas of mill work, to hit the open road, to pick up and jump trains to California, or Texas or somewhere different, to slip out of the mill before ever slipping in, Harvey caught a bone. A bone tossed by a grimy man with forearms bigger than Harvey’s thighs who saw Bud’s kid brother walking to Patruli’s and remembered his visage from when they used to skip rocks at him until he would run away, and from when they used to wet-willy him until he would cry; and thus, the next morning, Harvey walked aside this man, aside this heavy plate and black iron worker who looked just as filthy that morning as he did the night before; aside this stoic figure of labor who casually wore a leather tool belt over his shoulder and who carried a dented and scratched lunch pail––an industrial knight so long clad in the armor of the trade that Harvey could not have imagined him looking any other way; aside this progenitor of scarred and bruised children who ran wild in the streets jumping free rides on the back of milk trucks and playing football with an old soup can before belly-flopping into the murky Mahoning River; aside a worker so unaware of leisure, happiness, and holiday that he clustered the concepts with that of death and tossed them all down to be trampled by duty and obligation; aside a grown son whose own father had incinerated in a coke furnace during the long-shift; aside his precursor; and, indeed, from seven o’clock that drizzly Wednesday morning until three-thirty in the afternoon forty-seven years later, between which time begetting three children from a wife who broke vertebrae after slipping on bathroom tile, between which time cultivating a dry hacking cough which eventually would lay him to rest, between which time enduring two severed fingers and the unstable knees of a laborer, between which time learning how to hide flasks in toilet tanks and tool box drawers, between which time tattooing welts on his forearms with the leaping embers that accompany the welder, Harvey worked sheet metal. When Harvey crossed the threshold that last afternoon, he wore a gold-plated watch presented to him by the owner, he carried a pension booklet passed to him from the shop steward, and, most importantly, Harvey held the memory of that summer afternoon, in 1956, when he spoke to his eldest son, my father, about an apprenticeship in the trade and hooked my father into that same shop that entrapped so many good men into three bedroom homes and American automobiles, into little leagues and booster clubs, into Florida vacations and Fourth of July cookouts, into black coffee and tomato juice, into Sunday mass and visits to Catholic cemeteries, into twilight double-headers and high school football games, into cheap domestic beer and cigarette coupon booklets, into January first kielbasa in sauerkraut and wedding tables covered with platters of kalalcity and pizzelles, into a way-of-life, a structure, out of which a man develops pride, loyalty, security, perseverance, and comfort, and it was these qualities that turned good men into pigeons, that blinded the prophets and sages, that allowed the structure to crumbled upon them as the mills collapsed and their understanding of how the world worked, of order, of logic, of life, ceased to exist like a flame extinguished, like an alarm silenced, like a scream muffled; and these men watched Youngstown wrest into a ghetto of aimless middle-aged workers by US Steel and Republic Steel, and even Bethlehem Steel, one by one shutting the gates of their antiquated mills and leaving for Asia, Mexico, and the south-western United States where trade unions carried the stigma of greedy workers and ruined industry; but my father, who somehow stayed afloat while his comrades sunk into ruin––lost their homes, their families, their dignity––refused to abandon Youngstown, refused to extract our family and float south where skilled welders worked for half of his wage and felt lucky. The shop somehow prevailed over the erosion which surrounded its dilapidated buildings and sweaty men. My father still worked, and thus he was still able to believe in honesty and loyalty and the creed of the worker––if I work harder, if I work longer, if I do a better job, I will prosper––and so much did my father believe in these ideals that even in 1981, well after the mills had abandoned the valley, well after the lifeless ex-workers ceased to be angry and settled into the despair of shattered existence, when the shop, which once operated six days a week with three shifts of forty men crews, was operating merely one shift of ten men––a ghost town of five B workers, four foremen working labor on the floor, and a one-armed shop superintendent––my father declined an opportunity to quit and open his own sheet metal company––risks demeaned prudence. Instead, he followed his creed and held strong to his belief that the shop would be there for him, but beliefs and creeds are intangibles which have never spoken with a strong enough voice to throw down a crooked owner increasing profits and ignoring deferred maintenance, forlorn buildings, and antiquated equipment; and who alone dropped the company so deep into a chasm that after thirty-five years of physical labor, my father lost his job, and the bank sold the foreclosed property that was what I had always known as the shop to developers who dreamed of a trendy Mahoning River district, and who left one building standing amongst piles of rubble when they drifted away in the night.
I love your descriptions. I can feel the heat of the summer, see the smoke sending black soot through the neighborhood, and smell the burning steel the old mills. Your words bring back childhood memories.
ReplyDelete