[log in to unmask] wrote:

>When the Westies ran the Riggers Onion
>
Michael,

In trying to figure out my future career I've been wondering if I should
write about my past career in the trenches of NYC, effectively putting
my past career in a coffin, and what it means to histo presto and
heritage conservation in general. Talking Union, I wonder if I should
tell about the methadone addict shop steward who had been released a
year earlier after a stint in the joint for manslaughter and was related
to such and such and who would wait on the corner every Friday
midmorning for his envelope of green vig. Of course, as usual I would
confuse fiction with fact and change the names to protect the indecent.
The day I met the same guy uptown in Harlem on an elevator with my son
in tow was a wonder of wonders. So much that we don't say about the crap
that goes on that should be said in order to protect those who follow
us. The union is a wonderful thing when it works, like the Soviet system.

So, on another note. The stonemason in the union from Michigan my friend
was brought in during the 80's boom when stonemasons were short as hen's
teeth, and he was a relatively short guy (aside, I heard it said
recently in an unrelated comment, "He was like a racing snake. Thin as a
rail and hard as nails.") to work on a high-rise stone clad building, or
two in Manhattan including the pink & SS ovoid on 3rd Ave., and on a
Saturday the riggers (in the union you have riggers -- derrickmen -- who
lift the stones, two of them not counting the crane operator, and one
mason who sets it... and we are not talking mortar here but a panelized
system of stainless steel angles & clips) drop the stone, a slab of 2"
thick granite that flies down 250' feet and slams into the top of a
Jaguar with a nice cutting slice, unoccupied. My friend's reaction is
one of wonder as the two riggers don't talk about if they might have
just killed someone, but they begin bickering over their cover up story.
There were two pin holes in the stone and they had used the top one
which did not give enough of a bite. Talk about pennies thrown off the
Empire State Building? WTF?

I read recently in Setauket that two dumpsters were stolen. It is
uplifting to not read about bodies found in dumpsters.

][<en

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