[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 -- To terminate puerile preservation prattling among pals and the uncoffee-ed, or to change your settings, go to: <http://maelstrom.stjohns.edu/archives/bullamanka-pinheads.html>