Tag: Skyscrapers

Francesco glanced down from his perch 60 stories above the streets of New York City; that translated into roughly 900 feet in the air. As he ate lunch, he talked casually to his companion, Giuseppe, who sat across from him on a ledge about four feet away. Francesco lit a Camel cigarette, tossed the box of matches to Giuseppe and both men lounged on their beds of steel. Francesco took a long drag on his cigarette, keeping his eyes open to maintain his balance on the 18-inch-wide metal plank. A whistle blew, its shrill notes informing the men that lunchtime was over. 

Giuseppe pitched the matches back to Francesco. They rose to their feet, now old pros at this daily death-defying ballet they performed. When they first arrived in America, they learned very quickly that the jobs of police officers, firemen or train engineers were not meant for them; those positions were reserved for the Irish and English immigrants. The Italians and others who didn’t speak English were forced into manual labor – jobs in construction or sanitation where grunting and nodding were the main forms of communication. They took pride in their work, the resulting cathedrals and skyscrapers testaments to their skill and determination.

An errant gust of wind made its presence known; it swirled around the men’s feet and scooped up the wrappings from lunch, tossing the papers about before they slowly drifted out of sight. Both men held on to a nearby vertical beam, silently waiting until the wind stilled.

Looking below at the large wind flag, the men saw that it was white; it was safe to continue working. A yellow flag meant to exercise extreme caution while red indicated dangerous weather conditions. The crew worked through many different elements, but if a red flag was up, no one climbed the beams. 

There were no harnesses to prevent a catastrophic fall, no safety nets should someone slip …  nothing to protect the men, to save them. All they had to help them scale the beams were ropes dangling from above, good balance and guts. 

Calmness restored, the men strapped on their tool belts containing welder’s gloves, hammers and tongs. A pulley system was used to hoist beams and buckets filled with iron rivets in white hot coals. Using their tongs, the men removed the rivets one by one from the coals, inserted them into holes in the beams and hammered them into place. After every hole was filled, the men climbed up to the next level and repeated the process. 

When the end-of-work whistle blew, Giuseppe reached for the rope to begin the long, slow descent to solid ground. A slight misjudgment caused him to lose his footing and he slid off the beam like a marionette whose strings had been severed. Francesco yelled out in horror “No, Giuseppe, no!!” as he tried in vain to grab his friend’s arm. The crew watched in stunned disbelief as Giuseppe fell headlong to the sidewalk far below, his screams echoing throughout the canyon of steel. 

Francesco slumped over, his head in his hands, silently weeping as a single mournful thought invaded his mind: he didn’t even know Giuseppe’s last name. 

NAR © 2023

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