Aircraft warning-lights atop the brand-new 125-foot Ventnor water-tower. (Long-ago photo by BobbaLew.)
The correct pronunciation of “Wawdz” is as one syllable, not two (“Waw-dizz”).
—That’s the way a boss at Myers-and-Watters pronounced it. He was
Greek, and full-of-himself.
During college I worked as a laborer for Myers-and-Watters, a painting contractor based in Philadelphia. Myers-and-Watters may have been nationwide, but my crew was based in Philadelphia.
They were painting steel in my father’s oil-refinery in northern DE. That is, the oil-refinery where my father worked. It was owned by Tidewater Oil at first. It had many owners since.
It opened in 1956, designed to process sour Venezuelan crude-oil.
The refinery was not far from the Delaware River, which could be navigated by ocean-going tanker-ships.
My father was an
inspector. He got me a job there because there was
no way a religious summer-job could pay for my college education.
(During high-school I worked at a religious boys-camp.)
My father asked if that Greek supervisor could provide me a summer-job. The implication was “
you scratch my back, and I’ll scratch yours.”
My father inspected that contractor’s painting. My father was difficult enough already, so the implication was he’d ease-up if Myers-and-Watters gave me a job.
I of course was
non-union; all the others were
union. My foreman was union too, but was a Myers-and-Watters employee. A few others were too, but most were from Wilmington’s painter-union hall.
At that time my family lived north of Wilmington, DE. My Myers-and-Watters foreman also lived in Wilmington.
A union laborer got much more per hour than me, so with me Myers-and-Watters saved money.
I’m sure payoffs occurred. Like probably Myers-and-Watters paid off the painters-union so I could work unfettered.
The pipes await my tender ministratin’. (Long-ago photo by BobbaLew.)
—My first job was
“making love to the pipes.” A long line of pipes went from the wharf up to the refinery — a mile or so.
Most of the pipes were a foot off the ground, exposed to the weather.
They rusted along the bottom. My job was to sand off the rust so they could be properly painted.
To do so I had to sit on the pipe, then lean down and sand the pipe-bottom. Photographed I would be “making love to the pipe.”
My father was
notorious as an inspector. “Uh-oh; here comes ‘Tommy.’
Cigarettes out!”
Smoking was
forbidden, but done with abandon. Even atop gigantic floating-roof tanks filled with av-gas. (You could smell it!)
Every time I see an oil-refinery fire: “someone was smoking.”
My father (“Tommy”) inspected pipe-bottoms with an auto rear-view mirror screwed to a broom-stick. But pipe-bottoms got painted, and my rust-removal was adequate.
My foreman quickly noticed I was very dependable and willing.
Woody Allen said it: “The key to successful employ is
show up!”
That foreman took me off that pipeline to try tending sandblaster.
There are two Myers & Watters employees sandblasting a heater-unit. Both are on long extension-ladders, and wearing protective hoods. One (barely visible) is almost at the top. (My brother in northern DE, who works in the same refinery, says such work now would be forbidden. (Long-ago photo by BobbaLew.)
—Two Myers-and-Watters employees were sandblasting the steel shells of gigantic
heater-furnaces in the Hydro-Desulfurization unit. The heaters burned natural-gas; I looked inside through a peephole, and viewed the fires of Hell. (No Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.)
The blasters were small steel vessels that held 300 pounds of sand. The vessels were pressurized by a small compressor to blast the sand through a hose.
I’d load each vessel with three 100-pound bags of sand, which meant hefting each sandbag about
five feet off the ground. Then I cut the bag open, and emptied the contents through a funnel into the blaster.
I got so I could do it; that foreman was
thrilled. “Little Bobby can do it!” He tried to scare me at first.
That foreman thought it
hilarious I’d have the blaster back on before the blaster-guy finished his cigarette.
“
Bobby, ya gotta slow the f*** down!”
That pipeline and those heaters were essentially all I did that summer.
—The next summer that foreman wanted me back. “Little Bobby” was dependable and willing to work.
We did various jobs that second summer, none in my father’s oil-refinery.
I remember a tank-farm in south Jersey, where I learned a trick of the painter-trade. The gigantic tanks were supposed to get two coats of white paint.
“Blueing,” I was told. The painters mixed dark blue tint into the white paint, so one coat of paint looked like two.
We also did other projects in Marcus Hook (PA). The world does indeed have an armpit, and it’s Marcus Hook, location of two smelly oil-refineries. One was Sunoco, and one was Sinclair.
We did both, but most notable was Sinclair. We painted a huge floating-roof oil-tank.
Sinclair dropped the tank-roof maybe eight feet per day; we’d brush-blast the exposed interior walls, then paint.
It was the only time I actually painted. Red ship’s-bottom on a roof-top.
It also was the first time I quaffed beer. “Little Bobby becomes a sinner.” I’m a child of hyper-religious parents dead-set against alcohol. Those painters tried mightily to get me me to drink beer, but I never did until that hoary afternoon atop that floating-roof tank.
—My third summer was 1965, and we got involved in my favorite Myers-and-Watters job, a golfball water-tower in a south Jersey beach-resort.
As you can see, the water-tower looks like a golfball on a tee. The single-leg support column is flared at the bottom, and not filled with water. (Long-ago photo by BobbaLew.)
Before that was a 175-foot golfball in Baltimore-harbor. But I was
scared, and my foreman noticed.
He wanted to switch to a job I could do — he wanted “Little-Bobby” helping him.
A water-tower at a south-Jersey beach was only 125 feet.
I wasn’t scared.
It was a
really neat job — a brand-new water-tower for Ventnor’s Water-Department. I revisit occasionally.
We’d brush-blast then paint, first inside then outside. I still have the surplus military-jacket I used: “
a coat-of-many colors” — all the various paints we used.
There were distractions
galore, mainly pretty girls in skimpy bikinis. My foreman liked the older women: “You can be my wife, honey!”
An “Operating-Engineers” union-steward appeared to protest my operating our small Schramm air-compressor.
Like we’re supposed pay some dude
megabucks to stand there all day
and watch. I always wondered what Myers-and-Watters had to payoff that steward.
Every morning I’d drive to
Delaware Memorial Bridge (single then). My foreman picked me up, and we’d charge across to south-Jersey to pick up another Myers-and-Watters employee. (There were three of us.)
Then we’d charge to south-Jersey’s fabulous “shore.”
Later that afternoon we charged home, but usually stopping someplace for a sixpak.
By then I was guzzling a can a day, a
sinner bound for Hell,
brain a-rotting.
But after sweating profusely in the hot sun, and ogling pretty ladies in skimpy bikinis, that beer tasted pretty good.
My foreman spray-paints the water-tower from his spider. (Long-ago photo by BobbaLew.)—I’m sure by now that foreman is
gone. He smoked, as did most of my fellow painters.
Mahz-N-Wawdz was an
education. Most importantly I learned even the so-called
dregs of society, Hillary’s “deplorables,” are pretty good.
That water-tower was my
neatest job, but that first summer on the pipes I met a complete
illiterate. Yet he was
sharp as a tack!
He was also an easy smiler — and
funny.
• The tale of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego is a Bible-story. Three Hebrews were cast into a fiery furnace for refusing to bow to King Nebuchadnezzar’s image. They were seen inside unharmed with a fourth, God-like. (A miracle.)
