Coming
of age in the 70's, I grew up overlooking the shipping lanes in Puget
Sound. This view afforded me a working understanding of
transportation and international commerce when Japanese technology
was surpassing the United States in quality, price and sheer volume.
Trade was high.
College
was never an option for me. I dropped out of high school before I
finished 10th grade with above-average intelligence and
below-average grades because, according to my report cards, I never
“applied” myself. I just didn't believe in the school system.
Even a high school diploma wouldn't assure me anything more than
minimum wage, so I saw no reason to hack away for 3 more years. By
the time I was 18 years old, with the Women's Movement gaining
ground, I recognized that men would not work so cheaply and the
answer to my future lay in blue-collar.
My
very first 40-hour-a-week job was a summer position acquired through
the state employment office at the tender age of 16 years old.
Building on that foundation, I analyzed and imitated the traits
necessary to work in the trades – rising early, taking breakfast at
4 AM at a local roadhouse frequented by drivers, longshoremen and
operating engineers – crane operators. Flannel shirts and Levi
button-fronts, tiny leather-palm work gloves and black lace-up boots
in boys size 4 topped off with a signature hickory-stripe railroad
cap completed my ensemble.
Although
I got my first blue-collar job when I hit 18, I didn't longshore
until I was fired from my job at 21 years old. I returned once again
to the state unemployment office where I discovered an interesting
phenomenon. Hours before the office opened, men would pull up, get
out and set a hard hat down in a line next to the door beneath the
awning, and return about an hour-and-a-half before scheduled hours.
Another man would emerge in shirt sleeves from the nearly dark
office, and all the hard hat owners would line up expectantly to
accept job slips, retrieve their hard hats and drive off into the
predawn dark. I learned that they were “extras,” taking day jobs
from the local longshoreman’s hall.
So
I got a hard hat.
Follow
along as my adventure unfolds.
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