Barnf & Depotf

For some reason in NYC they call the building they put subway cars in a subway
barn, and where they put buses a bus depot. Though I worked on a subway barn
for several months, where you had to take care not to bump into the 700 V shoe
sticking out of the cars or the homemade heating systems on the walls. You had
to make sure you never leaned, touched or spit on anything if you had not
check it out first, you also had to look where you stepped. I spent 2.5 years
as assistant PM & Clerk-of-the Works on three bus depots in Harlem. I consider
this time in my life the equivalent of graduate work for a builder. No papers
to write but man if you don't drop dead, get beat up by the coalitions, or fry
yourself then you pass. This morning on the way in I remembered a few stories
about the barns & depots.

A portion of the project at one depot was to install ten hydraulic lifts for
buses with a vacuum exhaust system for each bus. When the system was designed
nobody thought to speak with the mechanics. We are talking a few million here.
Though the construction took place in and around where the mechanics were
working they looked on, grumbled, but said little. We got along with them just
fine but they did seem to have an attitude. When all was done and punched they
turned out to inform everyone that the exhaust system went to the wrong end of
the bus.

In the process of excavating for one lift we had to dewater. The depot was
close to the Harlem River so the water level fluctuated with the tide. Once we
dug the hole you would have thought we struck oil the water was so black. It
stunk bad as well. The bus guys had been dumping the used bus oil in pits
within the depot for so many years that they had their own plume. So, our
foreman on the project had it in mind to dewater, and being the hard pushing
practical guy that he was (worked two jobs seven days a week at union wages),
he ran the 4" diameter hose out into the street. We are talking major pumping
action. A fire truck, speeding off to a local emergency, came around the
corner and slid off the street onto the sidewalk. This caused a bit of
excitement as the Fire Department and Department of Environmental Protection
were prohibited from entering the Transit Authority (TA) world without due
cause and they had been waiting for due cause many, many years. Talk about a
rash of inspectors! We were asked by the TA to provide a change order for
containment and legal disposal of the water… which seemed to imply shipping it
in a truck tanker to Ohio. We quickly came up with $2 million for one lift. I
won't tell you what happened after that because I'd have to shoot both of us.
Just consider the oil may have never left the premises.

The dumpster drivers were regulars, but they were also usually coked out. We
had one idiot inside the building, this place the size of a football field as
they like to say, who backed his full truck around and dropped it in the pit
in front of the boiler room. We were replacing the boilers and delivery was
expected the next day. This was the old school NY construction, yell, holler,
curse, scream and spit your tonsils out but get the f'n thing done. Proudly, I
had the site record for throwing telephones.

Neighbors would break into the back of the depot and steal the mechanic's
tools then go around to the front of the depot and sell them to the bus
drivers who would then sell them to the mechanics at the back of the depot.
Fights would break out between the mechanics when they found someone on
another shift using their tools. There was a cash discount.

Coalitions, one day I showed up to work, my first day supervising a project to
lay brick pavers beneath the Manhattan ramp to the Brooklyn Bridge. This was
my first project in Manhattan. Two busloads of hairy and bald African
Americans showed up with pipes and baseball bats asking where the super was.
The foreman, whom I later found out was dealing drugs on the site, said he
would take care of it. I went in the trailer to see if I could find the
construction drawings, you know, the ones with all the pencil notations on
them. I found them shredded and stuffed in a wastebasket. It was fairly
obvious they had been urinated on. I spent two days on that job.

Working in Grand Central was a breeze compared to the NYC hinterlands of the
TA.

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