by Gay Talese
After the two catwalks were in place, another set of wires would be strung above each catwalk, about fifteen feet above, and these upper wires would be the "traveling ropes" that would pull the wheels back and forth, powered by diesel engines mounted atop the anchorages.
Four spinning wheels, each forty-eight inches in diameter and weighing a few hundred pounds apiece, would run simultaneously along the bridge—two wheels atop each of the two catwalks. Each wheel, being double-grooved, would carry two wires at once, and each wheel would take perhaps twelve minutes to cross the entire bridge, averaging eight miles per hour, although it could be speeded up to thirteen miles an hour downhill. As the wheels passed overhead, the men would grab the wires and clamp them down into the specified hooks and pulleys along the catwalk; when a wheel arrived at the anchorage, the men there would remove the wire, hook it in place, reload the wheel and send it back as quickly as possible in the opposite direction.
After the wheel had carried 428 wires across the bridge, the wires would be bound in a strand, and when the wheel had carried across 26,018 wires—or sixty-one strands—they would be squeezed together by hydraulic jacks into a cylindrical shape. This would be a cable. Each cable—there would be four cables on the Verrazano— would be a yard thick, 7,205 feet long, and would contain 36,000 miles of pencil-thin wire. The four cables, collectively, would weigh 38,290 tons. From each cable would later be hung, vertically, 262 suspender ropes—some ropes as long as 447 feet—and they would hold the deck more than two hundred feet above the water, holding it high enough so that no matter how hot and limp the cables got in summer the deck would always be high enough for the Queen Mary to easily pass beneath.
From the very first day that the wheels began to roll— March 7, 1963—there was fierce competition between the two gangs working alongside one another on the two catwalks. This rivalry existed both between the gangs on the early-morning shift as well as the gangs on the late-afternoon shift. The goal of each gang, of course, was to get its two wheels back and forth across the bridge more times than the other gang's wheels. The result was that the cable-spinning operation turned into a kind of horse race or, better yet, a dog race. The catwalks became a noisy arena lined with screaming, fist-waving men, all of them looking up and shouting at their wheels—wheels that became mechanical rabbits.
"Com'on, you mother, move your ass," they yelled as their wheel skimmed overhead, grinding away and carrying the wire to the other end. "Move it, com'on, move it!" And from the other catwalk, there came the same desperate urgings, the same wild-eyed competition and anger when their wheel—their star, their hope— would drag behind the other gang's wheel.
The men from one end of the catwalk to the other were all in rhythm with their wheels, all quick at pulling down the wire, all glancing sideways to study the relative position of the other gang's wheels, all hoping that the diesel engines propelling their wheels would not conk out, all very angry if their men standing on the anchorages were too slow at reloading their wheel once it had completed the journey across. It was in such competition as this that Benny Olson had excelled in his younger days. He used to stand on the catwalk in front of an anchorage inspiring his gang, screaming insults at those too slow at pulling down the wire, or too sluggish at reloading the wheel, or too casual about the competition. Olson was like a deck master hovering over a shipload of slave oarsmen.
On Wednesday, June 19, to the astonishment of the engineers who kept the "score" in Hard Nose Murphy's office, one gang had moved its wheels back and forth across the bridge fifty times. Then, on June 26, a second gang also registered fifty trips. Two days later, in the heat of battle, one of the wheels suddenly broke loose from its moorings and came bouncing down onto the catwalk, skipping toward a bridgeman named John Newberry. He froze with fright. If it hit him, it might knock him off the bridge; if he jumped out of its path too far, he might lose his balance and fall off himself. So he held his position, waiting to see how it jumped. Fortunately, the wheel skimmed by him, he turned slightly like a matador making a pass, and then it stopped dead a few yards down the catwalk. He breathed relief, but his gang was angry because now their daily total was ruined. The other gang would win.
On July 16, one gang got the wheels back and forth fifty-one times, and on July 22, another gang duplicated it. A few days later, the gang under Bob Anderson, the boomer who had been so irresistible to women back on the Mackinac Bridge, was moving along with such flawless precision that with an hour to go of working time it had already registered forty-seven trips. If all went well in the remaining hour, six more trips could be added—meaning a record total of fifty-three.
"Okay, let's move it," Anderson yelled down the line to his gang, all of them focusing on what they hoped would be the winning wheel.
They watched it move smoothly along the tramway overhead, then it rolled higher to the tower, then down, down faster to the anchorage, then up again, quickly reloaded, up the tramway— "Keep moving, you mother!"—closer and closer to the tower now . . . then it stopped.
"Bitch!" screamed one of the punks.
"What the hell's wrong?" shouted Anderson.
"The engine's conked out," some punk finally yelled. "Those goddamn idiots!"
"Let's go beat their asses," yelled another punk, quite serious and ready to run down the catwalk.
"Calm down," Anderson said, with resignation, looking up at the stilled wheel, shaking his head. "Let me go down and see what can be done."
He went down to the anchorage, only to learn that the engine failure could not be fixed in time to continue the race within the hour. So Anderson walked back up, sadly giving the news to his men, and when they walked down the catwalk that night, their hardhats under their arms, their brows sweaty, they looked like a losing football team leaving the field after the game. In the remaining two months, no gang could top the mark of fifty-one, but in September, when the gangs started to place the two-thousand-pound castings over the cables (the castings are metal saddles which would help support the 262 suspender ropes that would stream down vertically from each cable to hold up the deck), a new kind of competition began: a game to see who could bolt into position the most castings, and this got to be dangerous. Not only were bolts dropping off the bridge in this frenzied race—bolts that could pepper the decks of passing vessels and possibly kill anybody they hit—but the castings themselves were unwieldy, and if one of them fell . . .
"Chrissake, Joe, let's get the bolts out and put that mother on," one pusher yelled to Joe Jacklets, who was being cautious with the casting.
The pusher, noticing that another gang working down the catwalk had already removed the bolts and were clamping the casting into place, was getting nervous—his gang was behind.
"Take it easy," Joe Jacklets said, "this thing might not hold."
"It'll hold."
So Joe Jacklets removed the last bolt of the two-section casting and, as soon as he did, one half of the casting—weighing one thousand pounds—toppled off the cable and fell from the bridge.
"Jes-sus !"
"Ohhhhhhh."
"Kee-rist."
"Noooooooooo !"
"Jes-SUS."
The gang, their hardhats sticking out over the catwalk, watched the one-thousand-pound casting falling like a bomb toward the sea. They noticed, too, a tiny hydrofoil churning through the water below, almost directly below the spot where it seemed the casting might hit. They watched quietly now, mouths open, holding their breaths. Then, after a loud plopping sound, they saw a gigantic splash mushroom up from the water, an enormous fountain soaring forty feet high.
Then, swishing from under the fountain, fully intact, came the hydrofoil, its skipper turning his head away from the splashing spray and shooting his craft in the opposite direction.
"Oh, that lucky little bastard," one of the men said, peering down from the catwalk, shaking his head.
Nobody said anything else for a moment. They just watched the water below. It was as if they ha
ted to turn around and face the catwalk—and later confront Hard Nose Murphy's fiery face and blazing eyes. They watched the water for perhaps two minutes, watched the bubbles subside and the ripples move out. And then, moving majestically into the ripples, moving slowly and peacefully past, was the enormous gray deck of the United States aircraft carrier Wasp.
"Holy God!" Joe Jacklets finally said, shaking his head once more.
"You silly bastard," muttered the pusher. Jacklets glared at him.
"What do you mean? I told you it might not hold."
"Like hell you did, you . . ."
Jacklets stared back at the pusher, disbelieving; but then he knew it was no use arguing—he would collect his pay as soon as he could and go back to the union hall and wait for a new job . . .
But before he could escape the scene, the whole line of bridgemen came down the catwalk, some cursing, a few smiling because it was too ridiculous.
"What are you stupid bastards laughing at?" said the walkin' boss.
"Aw, com'on, Leroy," said one of the men, "can't you take a little joke?"
"Yeah, Leroy, don't take it so hard. It's not as if we lost the casting. If we know where a thing is, we ain't lost it."
"Sure, that's right," another said. "We know where it is— it's in the river."
The walkin' boss was just too sick to answer. It was he who would later have to face Murphy.
Across on the other catwalk, the rival gang waved and a few of the younger men smiled, and one yelled out, "Hey, we set ten castings today. How many did you guys set?"
"Nine and a half," somebody else answered.
This got a laugh, but as the workday ended and the men climbed down from the bridge and prepared to invade Johnny's Bar, Joe Jacklets was seen walking with his head down.
If a casting had to fall, it could not have fallen on a better day-September 20, a Friday—because, with work stopped for the weekend anyway, the divers might be able to locate the casting and have it pulled up out of the water before the workers returned to the bridge on Monday. There was no duplicate of the casting, and the plant where it was made was on strike, and so there was no choice but to fish for it—which the divers did, with no success, all day Saturday and Sunday. They saw lots of other bridge parts down there, but no casting. They saw riveting guns, wrenches, and bolts, and there was a big bucket that might have been the one that had fallen with four bolt machines, each worth eight hundred dollars.
Even if it was, the machines as well as the other items were now unserviceable, having been ruined either by the water or the jolt they received when hitting the sea from such high altitudes. Anyway, after a brief inspection of all the tools down there, the divers could easily believe the old saying, "A bridgeman will drop everything off a bridge but money."
Yet this is not precisely true; they drop money off, too. A few five-dollar and ten-dollar bills, even twenty-dollar bills, had been blown off the bridge on some windy Fridays—Friday is payday. And during the cable-spinning months, inasmuch as the men were working long hours, they received their pay on the bridge from four clerks who walked along the catwalks carrying more than $200,000 in bundles of cash in zippered camera cases. The cash was sealed in envelopes with each bridgeman's name printed on the outside, and the bridgeman would have to sign a receipt as he received his envelope from the clerk. Some bridgemen, however, after signing the receipt slip, would rip open the envelope and count the money—and that is when they would lose a few bills in the wind. More cautious men would rip off a corner of the envelope, clutching it tight, and count the tips of the bills. Others would just stuff the envelope into their pockets without counting. Still others seemed so preoccupied with their work, so caught up in the competitive swing of spinning, that when the pay clerk arrived with the receipt slip, a pencil, and the envelope, the bridge-man would hastily scribble his name on the slip, then turn away without taking the envelope. Once, as a joke, a clerk named Johnny Cothran walked away with a man's envelope containing more than four hundred dollars, wondering how far he could get with it. He got about twenty feet when he heard the man yelling, "Hey!"
Cothran turned, expecting to face an angry bridgeman. But instead the bridgeman said, "You forgot your pencil." Cothran took the pencil, then handed the bridgeman his envelope. "Thanks," he said, stuffing it absently into his pocket and then quickly getting back to the cable-spinning race.
On Monday, September 23, shortly before noon, the casting was discovered more than one hundred feet below the surface of the narrows, and soon the cranes were swooping over it and pulling it up out of the water. The whole bridge seemed, briefly, to breathe more easily, and Murphy (who had been swearing for three straight days) suddenly calmed down. But two days later, Murphy was again shaking his head in disgust and frustration. At 3:15 P.M. on Wednesday, September 25, somebody on the catwalk had dropped a six-inch steel bolt and, after it had fallen more than one hundred feet, it had hit a bridgeman named Berger Hanson in the face and gone four inches through his skin right under his left eye.
Berger had been standing below the bridge at the time and had been looking up. If he hadn't been looking up the fallen bolt might have hit his hardhat and merely jarred him, instead of doing the damage it did—lifting his eyeball upward, crushing his jawbone, getting stuck in his throat.
Rushed to Victory Memorial Hospital in Brooklyn, Berger was met by the surgeon, Dr. S. Thomas Coppola, who treated all injuries to the bridgemen. Quickly, Dr. Coppola removed the bolt, stopped the bleeding with stitches, then realigned by hand the facial bones and restitched the jaw.
"How do you feel?" Dr. Coppola asked.
"Okay," said Berger.
Dr. Coppola was flabbergasted. "Don't you have any pain?"
"No."
"Can I give you anything—an aspirin or two?"
"No, I'm okay."
After plastic surgery to correct the deformation of his face, and after a few months' recuperation, Berger was back on the bridge.
Dr. Coppola was amazed not only by Berger but by the stoicism he encountered in so many other patients among bridgemen.
"These are the most interesting men I've ever met," Dr. Coppola was telling another doctor shortly afterward. "They're strong, they can stand all kinds of pain, they're full of pride, and they live it up. This guy Berger has had five lives already, and he's only thirty-nine. . . . Oh, I'll tell you, it's a young man's world."
True, the bridge is a young man's world, and old men like Benny Olson leave it with some bitterness and longing, and hate to be deposited in the steelyard on the other side of the river—a yard where old men keep out of trouble and younger men, like Larry Tatum, supervise them.
Larry Tatum, a tall, broad-shouldered, daring man of thirty-seven, had been spotted years ago by Murphy as a "stepper," which, in bridge parlance, means a comer, a future leader of bridgemen.
Tatum had started as a welder when he was only seventeen years old, and had become a riveter, a fine connector, a pusher. He had fallen occasionally, but always came back, and had never lost his nerve or enthusiasm. He had four younger brothers in the business, too—three working under Murphy on the bridge, one having died under Murphy after falling off the Pan Am building. Larry Tatum's father, Lemuel Tatum, had been a boomer since the twenties, but now, pushing seventy, he also was in the steelyard, working under his son, the stepper, watching the boy gain experience as a walkin' boss so that, quite soon, he would be ready for a promotion to the number-one job, superintendent.
It was just a little awkward for Larry Tatum, though it was not obvious, to be ordering around so many old boomers—men with reputations, like Benny the Mouse, and Lemuel Tatum, and a few dozen others who were in the yard doing maintenance on tools or preparing to load the steel links of the span on barges soon to be floated down to the bridge site. But, excepting for some of Olson's unpredictable explosions, the old men generally were quiet and cooperative— and none more so than the former heavyweight boxing champion, James J. Braddock.
/> Once they had called Braddock the "Cinderella Man" because, after working as a longshoreman, lie won the heavyweight title and earned almost $1,000,000 until his retirement in 1938, after Joe Louis beat him.
Now Braddock was nearly sixty, and was back on the waterfront. His main job was to maintain a welding machine. His clothes were greasy, his fingernails black, and his arms so dirty that, it was hard to see the tattoos he had gotten one night m the Bowery, in 1921, when he was a frolicsome boy of sixteen.
Now Braddock was earning $170 a week as an oiler, and some men who did not know Braddock might say as men so often like to say of former champions, "Well, easy come, easy go. Now he's broke, just like Joe Louis."
But his was not another maudlin epic story about a broken prizefighter. Braddock, as he walked slowly around the steelyard, friendly to everyone, his big body erect and his chest out, still was a man of dignity and pride—he was still doing an honest days work, and this made him feel good.
"What the hell, I'm a working man," he said. "1 worked as a longshoreman before I was a fighter, and now I need the money, so I'm working again. 1 always liked hard work. There's nothing wrong with it."
He lost $15,000 on a restaurant, Braddock's Corner, once on West Forty-ninth Street in Manhattan, and the money he had put into a marine supply house, which he operated for ten years, proved not to be a profitable venture. But he still owns the $14,000 home he bought in North Bergen, New Jersey, shortly after the Joe Louis fight, he said, and he still loves his wife of thirty-three years' marriage, and still has his health and a desire to work hard, and has two sons who work hard, too.
One son, Jay, who is thirty-two, weighs 330 pounds and stands six feet five inches. He works in a Jersey City powerhouse; the other, thirty-one-year-old Howard, is a 240-pounder who is six feet seven inches and is in road construction. "So don't feel sorry for me," James J. Braddock, the former Cinderella Man, said, inhaling on a cigarette and leaning forward on a big machine. "Don't feel sorry for me one bit."
