I recently stumbled upon an old column of mine which discusses the sacrifices which breadwinner dads–particularly blue collar dads–make for their families. In it I included a few stories from when I did construction work in my mid-20s. They serve to demonstrate the special hardships that blue-collar men endure to provide for their families, and perhaps will interest the reader.
From my column The Price of Fatherhood–a Father’s Reply to Ann Crittenden’s ‘Mothers’ Manifesto’ (Los Angeles Daily Journal, San Francisco Daily Journal, 1/10/02):
“[Many men are] financially trapped in a hazardous job–what men’s advocate Warren Farrell calls the ‘glass cellar of male disposability.’ A construction job I worked at when I was young illustrates well the untold cost of fatherhood which many men pay.
“I worked at a nuclear power plant in the South. Every morning we strapped on our tool belts and hard hats, and made the long climb up the rebar skeletal frame of the building. Once we were 50 feet up, we hooked our hook belts around the rebar and then leaned back to work, with most of our weight on that hook belt. Leaving aside the blistering heat, the difficult reaches, and the danger of someone else’s tools falling on you, the reality was that your life–minute by minute, hour after hour, day after day–was dependent upon that hook belt.
“One day a journeyman electrician called to me to climb down and help him. He had a rope in one hand and his tool box in the other. We walked over to a large room filled with immense electrical panels. He told me to stand 10 feet behind him and hold the rope. I had no idea why, but I did as I was told. He then made the other part of the rope into a harness, put it on, and said ‘I’m gonna work on these wires, and some of them are live. If I hit the wrong one and start to fry, you pull me out.’
“I thought he was joking.
“He wasn’t.
“He began to work and every once in a while he would take a tool he was done with and throw it at my feet, saying “hey–you awake? I got three kids to feed and they ain’t gonna go barefoot ‘cause you aren’t payin’ attention.”
“‘No, no, I’m here,’ I protested. ‘Why don’t they turn off the power so you can do this without being in danger?’
“‘Company won’t do it. Too expensive.’
“‘More expensive than your life?’
“‘To them.’
“‘How come you don’t just tell them ‘no?”
“‘Can’t. Got kids to feed.’
“‘You could do something else. Go to college.’
“‘No money for it–got kids, a wife, a mortgage. Wait ‘till you get married and have kids–you’ll see.’
“Lunch time was often the time for ‘scare the new guy’ on workplace injuries and safety. Every man had a horror story to tell, either about what happened to him or what happened to his buddy. The guy who shot his nailgun into a knot in wood and the nail glanced off and nailed his hand to the wall–just before his ladder came out from under him. The guy who sliced his fingers off with a saw and stepped on one as he tried to pick them up one by one. The guy who repaired power lines and hit a live wire while working 20 feet up and is only alive today because his buddy kicked him off the pole…”
ÂÂ
|
