Charlie is the man who can tell you about driving a caterpillar tractor.
He works in a city, helping to put up big buildings, and he knows how to
use other construction machines, too. In fact, Charlie grew up with
machines, for his father and his uncles and his grandfather were
construction workers. It often happens that families pass along their
knowledge of building from the older to the younger men, and they are
very proud of their skills. Charlie uses the caterpillar tractor with a
bulldozer blade to push heaps of earth and rock into a pile, ready for
the shovel to load on a truck.
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[Illustration]
[Illustration]
People often call the shovel a “steam shovel,” but that’s not its right
name. You hardly ever see a real steam shovel any more. Years ago the
big digging machines were driven by regular steam engines. Before they
could start to work on a job, the men had to build a fire in the boiler
and wait until they had enough steam pressure to make the shovel go. Of
course, this wasted a lot of time. So, when very strong gasoline and
Diesel engines came along, builders began using them for their shovels
instead of steam engines.
Many shovels and other construction machines ride to work on long
gooseneck trailers. They travel faster that way than they could on their
own crawlers. And, in cities, the caterpillar treads might damage the
pavement. To load and unload a shovel, the operator sets a short ramp of
heavy planks against the trailer. Then the shovel creeps up and down on
its own crawlers.
The kind of shovel that’s used on a job depends upon the work that must
be done. If a basement has to be dug through hard rocky earth, Charlie
may operate a crowd shovel, which crawls down into the hole. The shovel
has a heavy dipper with teeth along the rim. When it digs, it crowds its
teeth down into the ground. Charlie, sitting inside the cab, called the
house, swings the dipper outward and up, then dumps the load into a
truck.
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Another shovel digs in the opposite way. It’s called a pull shovel. The
teeth dig down and toward the driver. It can work from a bank and
doesn’t have to go down inside the hole at all.
Sometimes Charlie uses a crane to get loose earth out of a hole. The
crane has a long boom with wheels at the tip. Cables run over the
wheels. Charlie fastens a kind of bucket called a clamshell to the
cables. With its mouth open, the clamshell drops down over a heap of
rocks and earth. Then Charlie starts machinery that pulls up on the
cable. The jaws of the clamshell squeeze together and come up with a
load of earth. Now Charlie swings the whole crane around till the
clamshell is hanging above a truck. He pulls a cable that opens the
bucket, and the earth and stone tumble out.
After the basement for a building has been dug, Charlie uses the crane
for other jobs. Men hook the cables to heavy steel beams, and Charlie
lifts them into position.
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No matter what he is doing, he has a lot to watch out for. He must know
which of four brake pedals to use at any moment and which of four hand
levers to pull. One lever works the turntable which swings the whole
house around. One moves the boom up and down. The other two control the
cables.
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At the same time, Charlie must watch what’s going on outside. A man
stands on the job giving signals. Thumbs up mean “Take the boom up.”
Thumbs down mean “Lower the boom.” When the signal man points up with
his first finger, it means “Raise the cable.” If he wiggles the finger,
it means “faster.” When Charlie is lifting a beam and has to hold it for
a while in the air, he says he “takes a strain and dogs it off.” Dogging
is his word for setting the brake on the cable.
Things are always likely to fall around a construction job, so the men
who work on the ground have steel caps in their shoes to protect their
toes. They wear steel helmets on their heads, too!
As the building goes up, Charlie’s crane lifts loads higher and higher.
After a while he has to put a jib on the boom. This is an extension that
makes it longer. When the building goes too high for his crane to reach,
Charlie works another crane. It sits on top of the building’s framework
and reaches down from there.
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After Charlie lifts a big steel girder into position, other men bolt it
in place then fasten it tight with rivets. A man called a heater gets
the rivets red-hot in a fire. Using tongs, he tosses them one at a time
to the catcher who reaches for them--not with a mitt but with a kind of
cup. The catcher pokes a rivet in a hole, and two other men fasten it
tight. One of them, the bucker, holds the rivet in position with a bar,
and the rivet man pounds the other end flat with a rivet gun. (The gun
works like a jack hammer, and it makes an awful racket.)
When you’re down in the street, it’s hard to realize that there may be a
heavy wind blowing across the bare girders of a tall new building. High
in the air, men have to keep their balance on narrow places and walk
with sure feet. There are families who specialize in work far above the
solid ground. Boys learn from their fathers how to walk safely without
being afraid--although almost everyone is frightened at first. And, of
course, everyone is careful. In New York a group of Mohawk Indians have
worked on many high buildings where men like Charlie did the beginning
work.
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[Illustration]
Once in a while Charlie helps to wreck an old building before putting up
a new one. First, a crew of men go in and take away everything that can
be used again or sold for junk. With specially made crowbars, they pry
away floors and door frames. They take out furnaces and plumbing
fixtures. Then Charlie gets to work with his crane. At the end of a
cable he fastens a heavy steel ball, called a skull cracker. Then,
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swinging the boom, he bashes the skull cracker into the wall of the old
building. Over and over, the ball strikes the mortar and bricks. Cracks
spread, and big chunks of the wall start tumbling to the ground. In a
little while Charlie and his machine have made a heap of rubble out of a
house that it took dozens of men to put up.