Job 16

Spring 1978

Patrick Pipeline - Pipe Layer

Within a few days Ed and I were hired by another company to lay sewer pipe in new residential surveys. It turned out to be the perfect move. We had gone from $5.50 at Canadian Tilt-Up to a respectable $6 per hour at Patrick Pipeline.

The first day on the job was spent hiding in sewer pipes and smoking cigarettes with a couple of more experienced employees. Day two turned out to be rather different. We discovered we were actually expected to work.

This was the first time I ever experienced real nagging thirst on the job. Having had no real experience in this area before the thought of bringing an ample supply of something to drink did not occur to me, nor to my esteemed collegue. Looking back, the really dumb part is that even after the first day of real work at this job, neither of us thought to bring adequate drinks on the second day either.

So I found myself, on the third day of my career with Patrick Pipeline, dying of thirst in a hole about twenty or thirty feet deep. With me were a bunch of other labourers and some guy screaming at us all like a drill sargant. We were working like dogs slamming together concrete pipes.

During the work I nevertheless took a few brief moments to survey the situation around me. As noted, we were working in a hole in the ground which was about twenty or thirty feet deep. Around the perimeter of the hole I noticed several pieces of heavy equipment. On one side, a dump truck. On another side a crane. On another side, a caterpillar tractor.

I looked at the walls of the hole we were in and observed nothing unusual... just a wall of dirt. A wall of dirt. Hmmm.. with all that heavy machinery around the perimeter, how could I be sure the walls of this hole would not collapse without warning and the lot of us labourers be buried and suffocate under a huge pile of dirt.

I asked one of my co-labourers what we should do if the walls of this hole should suddenly collapse under the weight of all that equipement above us. His reply was hilarious.... he pointed to the opening in the pipe that had already been layed, about a 36 inch diameter... and said... "run for cover in there."

In my mind's eye I tried to imagine sixteen labourers all trying to cram themselves into a thirty-six inch diameter pipe in the second or two that the hole was collapsing around them. I concluded that it would be unlikely even one guy would get out alive.

Ed was having his own problems. He was fortunate enough to be working outside of the hole. Even though he had no experience or training in this kind of work he had been assigned the task of directing some of the heavy equipment working above.

There was so much noise in the area from these machines that hearing instructions was impossible. All that day, I watched the foreman or supervisor or whatever direct angry and disgusted looks at Ed as he attempted, in vain, to become an instant lip-reader and competent director of heavy machinery.

At the end of that day I had an episode of what is now known as lmao. The foreman approached Ed and told him he didn't really think he was cut out for this kind of work and not to bother returning in the morning. My own thinking respecting whether I myself was cut out for the kind of work which might find me gasping under several tons of earth had lead me in a parallel direction. Thus for Ed and I, the third day of employment with Patrick Pipeline ended up being our last.

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last modified:Monday,June 9, 2008 at 04:21