High Steel Transcript
- [Harold] That's me, Harold McComber, iron worker. I am a Mohawk Indian, born in Kahnawake just outside of Montreal. Most of the men from Kahnawake work on skyscrapers here in New York. Ask anybody and they'll tell you, "Those Indians are good iron workers." I've been an iron worker for 15 years. It's hard work. Some people say it's dangerous, but if I didn't like it, I guess I wouldn't be doing it. I'm 34 now. I've got a wife, three kids. Gotta bring home the bacon. This is the easiest part of the job, taking on iron. You have to hook up the beams so they can be lifted up to the deck. That's where the real work gets done. Eddie Langles and I, we've been partners for quite a while. It's good to know a man well when you're working together 25 floors from the ground.
♪ Well, I'm off to building mountains, love ♪
♪ Off to earning our meal ♪
♪ Well I'm off to building mountains, love ♪
♪ Mountains of iron and steel, oh yeah ♪
♪ Mountains of iron and steel ♪
- [Harold] Each man on the raising gang has his own job to do but the teamwork's gotta be good with all that steel flying around. We call this shaking out iron, placing it where we'll connect it later. The bellman signals the Derrickman 25 floors below. Now with only the bell signals to go by, he's gotta move that steel around as pretty as you please. It's like landing on a plane in a heavy fog. A good size beam can weigh up to eight ton but it's gotta hit the deck like a feather. Your life could depend on it. It's teamwork. It's all good teamwork.
♪ Well, I'm working in New York City, love ♪
♪ Working by the sweat on my brow ♪
♪ I'm working in New York City, love ♪
♪ Laying that iron down, oh yeah ♪
♪ Laying that iron down ♪
♪ Well, I'm always building mountains, love ♪
♪ And that's why I must roam ♪
♪ But when I'm done with the mountain I'm on ♪
♪ Then we're heading home, my love ♪
♪ Then we're heading home ♪
♪ We'll go back to our country ♪
♪ Back where we were born ♪
♪ We're gonna say hello to the people we know ♪
♪ Then off to build some more, oh yeah ♪
♪ Off to build some more ♪
- [Harold] Things have changed since I was a boy in Kahnawake. But I still like my kids to spend part of the summer there. It keeps them in touch with the old days with what it's like to be an Indian. Not that we're different from other people. I mean, everybody eats corn flakes, so we gotta eat corn flakes. But I still remember going out to the bush with my grandfather hunting and fishing. He was an iron worker, so was my father. A man gets married, has children. He's got to get out and make a living, and it's not till he retires that he's back long enough to enjoy the places he did as a kid. I love Kahnawake but the work is in New York. Even as a kid, my ambition was, or my heart was always set on doing iron work.
♪ Don't you know what I'm thinking, love ♪
♪ Don't you know what I feel ♪
♪ Don't you know that I've got to go ♪
♪ Where they're working on iron and steel, oh yeah ♪
♪ Working on iron and steel ♪
- [Harold] Placing the corner columns isn't easy. You are the furthest from the Derrick with a sheer drop on two sides. But it's one of the last things you do before you start connecting. I've always liked working in high places. When I was about 17, I got a job painting the inside of a factory in Lachine, Quebec. I walked a beam about 60 feet in the air. Well, I was tickled to death walking that beam. They say Indians have a special knack for high jobs, I don't know. I guess a man takes the best thing that comes his way. When you get the beam and the column lined up, then bolted up, then you got things well underway.
- [Worker] That's it!
- [Harold] Like all small boys in Kahnawake, I learned to play lacrosse. Now my sons are learning to play it too. Sometimes we iron workers form our own lacrosse team. Like the men who worked on the Quebec Bridge way back in 1907. That's a job where Indians never forget. It was gonna be the largest cantilever span in the world. Work was begun in 1906 and by the summer of 1907, the span was stretching well out into St. Lawrence River. Then around the beginning of August an inspector noticed that a few of the beams were twisting out of alignment. Orders were given not to move out the heavy working traveler at the head of the span until a careful check would be made of the whole structure. The work on the bridge was stopped temporarily. For Indians like Tom Deerhouse and Harold Divo it was their first big chance to prove themselves as ironworkers. So though it's nice to have time to play lacrosse, I guess everybody was glad when the work on the bridge started again. The working traveler was moved out ahead of the span and toward the end of August, work was going ahead as usual. Everything was fine until August the 29th, 1907 in the early afternoon. 36 Indians were killed. Almost the entire wage earning population of Kahnawake at the time. The tide was out and some of the men badly injured were trapped under the steel. As night began to fall, the tide returned and the priest crawled over the wreckage to give the last rites to the drowning men. Everybody thought that would be the end of the Mohawk iron workers, but it was just the beginning.
♪ Let me tell you, I know, love ♪
♪ Know that the danger is real ♪
♪ Let me tell you I know that love ♪
♪ But I gotta work on that steel, oh yeah ♪
♪ Gotta work on that steel ♪
- [Harold] I fell off one job in Baie-Comeau, Quebec. It was about a month of October and it was very misty. A little before eight o'clock I went up on the top of this oval shaped tank. I went out of the catwalk, took a few steps, and I slipped. There were these little cone head rivets on the top of the tank and I tried to grab them but I couldn't stop myself from rolling. About the edge of the tank, I see this pipe coming straight out towards me. I was about one foot shy, about one foot shy of grabbing it, but that's all I remember. Woke up in the hospital 16 hours later. I'd only fallen about 35 feet, they said. Spent two months in that hospital. Still got a piece of silver in my shoulder and it bothers me sometimes. I was lucky, I guess. Iron's my job, I just go ahead do my work as best I can, as fast as I can. That's iron work. You just gotta get that piece of iron hooked up, take the choker off and let 'em get another piece. Gotta get this building up.
♪ Well, I'm off to building mountains, love ♪
♪ Off to earning our meal ♪
♪ Oh, I'm off to building mountains, love ♪
♪ Mountains of iron and steel, oh yeah ♪
♪ Mountains of iron and steel ♪
♪ Mountains of iron and steel ♪
