The work of understanding the work and those who do it

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“There’s a certain amount of pride — I don’t care how little you did. You drive down the road and you say, ‘I worked on this road.’ If there’s a bridge, you say, ‘I worked on this bridge’ … . Maybe it don’t mean anything to anybody else, but there’s a certain pride knowing you did your bit.”

– Hub Dillard, construction worker, from “Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do,” by Studs Terkel

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That summer, my entry-level task at Kol Manufacturing in St. Paul was, no surprise, sweeping the metal pressing floor. Sweeping metal shavings all day mixed with sticky, pungent oil, grease and sawdust is harder than you think. What I really aspired to was manning a hydraulic brake press bending metal.

After two or three weeks of admirable sweeping, Fred the foreman promoted me to tube-bending on what the heavy brake presser operators called “the dinky.” That was OK with me. It meant I could talk shop with the machine operators at break time.

So I listened as the machine operators commiserated about their misbehaving machines but with hints of pride, even affection, like how dads talk with other dads about their mischievous kids.

One morning, one of them had to quit his job. I don’t know why. That’s when Fred replaced him with me. “No promises, he said. “Just a tryout.”

Standing in front of a monstrous hydraulic press brake, I felt like the king of the world. Why not? I’d swept well and after that met my daily tube-bending quotas on the dinky with barely a foul-up.

Fred demonstrated. What finesse! He made sheet-pressing look like a dance with an invisible partner: “Slide your piece shiny side up into this groove here and align it against your back bar, like this. Press your foot pedal gently and make your first bend. Turn your plate clockwise like this, and make your second bend. Turn it again like this, and make your last bend. Flip your plate, make your three bends again but this time you turn it counterclockwise. Then you’re done. And mind where you set your fingers if you aim to keep ‘em. Gloves won’t protect you. Stack your pieces on this here pallet, like this. When your stack is yay high, wheel it to Mr. Nordahl’s station over there for deburring. Got it?”

I didn’t know what “deburring” meant but I said “sure” anyway.

“I’m sure.”

By midmorning, I’d wheeled my first yay-high pallet of bent plates to Mr. Nordahl. Closer up, I remember wondering, “What’s with this guy?” — he who outfitted himself in immaculately creased navy blue work pants, a matching work shirt, its sleeves rolled neatly and symmetrically just above the elbow and thick, leathery work gloves. All that to do what? “Deburr”?

Then, while working on my second pallet, Mr. Nordahl approached me with Fred, who was carrying several of my finished plates.

I knew I’d knocked it out of the park. For a first-timer to fill a pallet by morning break had to impress them, or would have had I not bent every plate — hundreds of them — backward.

Fred said, “Eight thousand dollars down the toilet. Follow me.”

For reasons I didn’t understand at that moment, Mr. Kol did not fire me. Instead, he assigned me to Mr. Nordahl’s deburring station.

“You’ll work with Mr. Nordahl. He’s your boss, so do what he says. Learn from him. He’s the best.”

I was relieved and grateful. Yet, I remember wondering why anyone would want to be the “best” at something like deburring.

Mr. Nordahl demonstrated how you deburr leftover metal shavings. He maneuvered his electric sander over and around each plate with the flair and precision of a musician. But what I remember most was how he inspected then reinspected each plate studiously with his gloved hands before setting it gingerly on his “ready for assembly” marked pallet. It was a wonder to see.

A few days passed before I asked Mr. Nordahl how long he’d been deburring.

Thoughtlessly, I said something like, “Man, I’d go nuts if I had to do this for that long. What’d you do to get demoted?” That’s when he removed his thick gloves and I saw his right hand missing three and a half fingers and his right one missing two.

Mr. Nordahl hadn’t been demoted, nor had he lost his fingers on a hydraulic brake presser. He’d lost them in the Korean War. Frostbite. When he healed and was discharged, no one would hire him, except for Mr. Kol, who assigned him to the deburring station.

For the remainder of the summer, Mr. Nordahl would admonish me for poor workmanship. That stung. But I walked on air after a rare “pretty fair,” “not bad” or “better.”

Labor Day came and I left Kol Manufacturing behind for school. When I said so long to Mr. Nordahl, he removed a glove and shook my hand, hard.

To this day, I wear my shirts with the sleeves rolled up neatly and symmetrically just above the elbow just like Mr. Nordahl, my boss and expert deburrer.