[PRCo] WORKING IN THE MILL AND GROWING UP

Tue Oct 22 20:16:00 EDT 2013

We all grow up at different rates.  Some never do.   Some, like a doctor friend of mine, had it all figured out by the time he was 14.   In my case it was the army that took one of the lazier kids in high school and made him realize he really didn't want to spend the rest of his life working with Beatle Bailey and Zero.   The factory and railroad work was simply an additional qualifier.   

My doctor friend didn't need that.   I once asked him when he realized what he wanted in life.   He explained that he was starting into 9th grade when he figured out what medical school he wished to attend, what university he needed to graduate from to achieve the first goal, and what grades he needed in high school to insure he would make it into that university.   John said he never got lower than an A from that day on.   And he also managed to play two sports in the same season … he could run on the track, dash inside, change his uniform, and come out and play baseball.  That chap didn't need the factory or coke oven life to wake up … he was already there.  Ah, but all that said, he used the army to get a medical residency and he also, early in his career, spent a year in deepest darkest Africa.   

On Oct 22, 2013, at 4:48 PM, Bob Rathke wrote:

> At the Chicago ad agency I worked with a man who had a photo of himself on the wall - it showed him working on a CB&Q track gang which was a summer job that paid for his college education. He liked to remark that he posted the photo to always remind himself why he was able to get a job that required him to wear a suit and tie to work.  
> 
> ----- Original Message -----
> 
> From: "Dwight Long" <dwightlong at verizon.net> 
> To: "Western PA Trolley discussion" <pittsburgh-railways at mailman.dementix.org> 
> Sent: Tuesday, October 22, 2013 3:39:57 PM 
> Subject: Re: [PRCo] WORKING IN THE MILL AND GROWING UP 
> 
> 
> Fred 
> 
> Good point. 
> 
> I worked one summer at a zinc smelting plant on the labor gang, including repairing the inside of sulphuric acid storage tanks wearing the full space man suit.  Then another summer I worked in a steel mill, which was my intro to rotating shift work and showed me that it was something to avoid if at all possible!  But I only got  a half summer out of that experience because the longest steel strike in history cut it short. 
> 
> Dwight 
>   ----- Original Message ----- 
>   From: Fred Schneider 
>   To: Western PA Trolley discussion 
>   Sent: Tuesday, October 22, 2013 11:48 AM 
>   Subject: Re: [PRCo] WORKING IN THE MILL AND GROWING UP 
> 
> 
>   That is something a lot of kids do not get today … the opportunity to work in the mill or factory and GROW UP.   You got it in the coke ovens.   I had it for three years in the army and then helping working myself through college in a local factory and feeding the fireboxes of locomotives on the Strasburg Rail Road (I actually had 119 months of service on the railroad).   Swindler paid for his whole college experience dodging L support poles in Chicago with CTA buses.  Ed Skuchas remembered Lukens Steel … guess that means the Coatesville plant (as in the knock-knock joke that Coates villa wear better than the pants vill).   
> 
>   I am afraid that too many kids today think that they are entitled and should not need to get dirty. 
> 
> 
>   On Oct 22, 2013, at 7:18 AM, DF Cramer wrote: 
> 
>   > Many of you know I put myself through undergraduate school working two summers at a beehive coke facility located off Mahoning Creek just north of Templeton (on the Allegheny River). We were a captive facility of Sharon Steel. The devastation to the environment was severe. I once brought some classmates over at night during the winter term and as they looked down from the road above they replied: "You worked in Hell!"  That is probably a great way to describe what it was like. 
>   > By the way, I made great money; over six thousand dollars over two summers. (73 & 74)  The coke yard closed shortly thereafter and nothing remains. The environment has recovered. 
>   > 
>   > Dennis F. Cramer 
>   > http://home.windstream.net/dfc1/ 
>   > 
>   >> From: eskuchas at comcast.net 
>   >> Date: Tue, 22 Oct 2013 07:07:31 -0400 
>   >> To: pittsburgh-railways at mailman.dementix.org 
>   >> Subject: Re: [PRCo] Burning Leaves--and Coal 
>   >> 
>   >> Back in the 70's, the Clairton works had an open house. First time in ten years. I signed up and went. We did go next to the coke batteries. They were tight with little leakage, and they had semi-automated capturing devices when they emptied a section of the battery. Doors removed with pusher on one side and capturing unit on receiving end. Various ducts and fans to suck off the vapors. 
>   >> The bus taking us through that part of the plant went by the chemical processing plant where our guide pointed out the chemicals that they can recover and sell. Also mentioned that the chemicals were nasty. 
>   >> The other perspective that I had was how bare the hill side was opposite the plant. We were over by the barge unloader and had a clear view. 
>   >> 
>   >> Ed S 
>   >> 
>   >> Sent from my iPhone 
>   >> 
>   >>> On Oct 21, 2013, at 10:53 PM, "Dwight Long" <dwightlong at verizon.net> wrote: 
>   >>> 
>   >>> 
>   >>> Herb 
>   >>> 
>   >>> But Irvin works is not a primary producer but rather a rolling mill (as you said) and so would not generate the "fire and brimstone" that characterized a primary steel producer. 
>   >>> 
>   >>> I went by Clairton on a train in July and did not notice any smoke at all, just some condensed water vapor.  I think the coking processes are so contained these days that very little emissions emanate from it.  Besides environmental concerns, the steelmakers have learned that the effluents from the coke making process are valuable by products that need to be trapped and sold.  The days of the beehive coke ovens that spewed all the byproducts into the atmosphere are long gone. 
>   >>> 
>   >>> Dwight 
>   >>> ----- Original Message ----- 
>   >>> From: Herb Brannon 
>   >>> To: Western PA Trolley discussion 
>   >>> Sent: Monday, October 21, 2013 10:41 PM 
>   >>> Subject: Re: [PRCo] Burning Leaves--and Coal 
>   >>> 
>   >>> 
>   >>> Bob R, 
>   >>> It still had that "orange glow" when I first moved here in 1972. Plus, when 
>   >>> atmospheric conditions were right, it smelled like fire & brimstone, 
>   >>> everywhere. Even today, on  humid days, I still smell the "fire & 
>   >>> brimstone" coming from the Irvin Works just over the hill (on Camp Hollow 
>   >>> Rd) to the south-east of my place. 
>   >>> 
>   >>> Contrary to popular opinion steel is not dead in Pittsburgh. The Clairton 
>   >>> Works still produces coke as it always did, the Edgar Thompson Works makes 
>   >>> primary steel, the Irvin Works produces rolled steel and the relatively new 
>   >>> Mckeesport Tubular Works (old National Works, now reopened) makes tubular 
>   >>> products for the Marcellus Shale drilling industry. So the sulphur and fi 
>   >> 
>   >> 
>   >> 
>   >> 
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