Blake Schwendiman's Blog and Blook

In my formative years, I received several bits of information that I took as truth (around which I established a great deal of my personal belief system) that later turned out to be not completely true. Here is a short list:

1. Time will not actually flow backwards if there were some force that would cause the earth to begin rotating in the opposite direction. This tidbit of information was initially confirmed by my mom after we watched Superman back in the late seventies, but I found out (much later in life) that the earth’s rotational direction has nothing to do with time. Until I found out the reality of time, I lived my life in such a way that if I ever made a catastrophic mistake I knew that at least I could spend the rest of my life working out a time-travel scenario based on either finding Superman or somehow affixing large rockets to the earth. Life was simpler then.

2. Acne does not go away at age twenty-one. This factoid was provided by my friend Bob. I secretly hope he still has acne.

3. Welding is easy. This is the subject of my writing.

In 1987 I found myself in what I would later cite as the worst job ever. Without exhaustive research, I still consider that job to be in at least the top ten of worst jobs, but I welcome your comments. There is no official title for the work I did, because most of the words that describe it were mostly crude and therefore it couldn’t be printed in the employee handbook. I worked at a decorative bark and rock production facility in Rexburg, Idaho for $3.35 an hour.

Unlike money, decorative bark does actually grow on trees. The problem is that decorative bark doesn’t grow on trees in those handy plastic bags you can get at your local super-mega-discount home store. That’s where the aforementioned bark production facility comes in. Bark arrives (from the forest, I assume) in large trucks. It is then moved into a very large metal bin called a hopper which is connected to a series of tables, choppers, elevators and other complex and highly dangerous equipment. My job was to stand beside one of the large sorting tables and quickly remove debris from the bark as it moved along the conveyor. Debris as I quickly learned is the stuff on the forest floor that gets mixed up with the bark and includes, but is not limited to: glass, cans and other trash; rocks, rills and other naturally occurring non-bark; and small forest creature carcasses no longer suitable for moccasin creation.

Surprisingly, the monotonous work of separating bark from anti-bark was not the worst part of the job. The worst part was fixing problems with the equipment. Most problems involved high-powered electric motors, enormous wood choppers and other mechanical structures used for cutting, crushing or moving tons of bark per minute. Most of the fixes required more than just a screwdriver which was the only tool I had ever been certified to use.

Within moments of being hired, I was thoroughly assessed by someone who I assumed was some type of management:

MANAGER: “You speak Spanish?”

ME: “No.”

MANAGER: “Me either.”

This conversation was apparently all that was needed to determine that I was indeed capable of the job and checked out on all the tools and processes of the job. No further instruction or questioning was apparently required as I was then sent immediately to my post and given my safety training:

MANAGER: “This red button here shuts everything off. If something goes wrong hit this red button here. Unless you somehow get sucked into the conveyor and can’t reach the red button. If that happens, hit this bar. It shuts everything off.”

ME: “Do people get sucked in often?”

MANAGER: “Nah. There was one fella though. Conveyor grabbed onto his jacket and yanked his whole body up on here. Pulled him straight down in. Took us a while to cut his clothes off to git him off. He don’t work here no more.”

After safety training, I was set to work. I made it through the first few weeks with no debilitating injuries and relatively few life-threatening situations. In fact, in the whole time I worked there I never lost a limb (or even a digit) nor did I ever get sucked into the sorting conveyor. It was at the point that I started feeling comfortable in my job that the world turned against me.

Late one afternoon while trying to determine whether I had found a squirrel or a chipmunk (I never could tell the difference) on the conveyor, I heard something unusual in the area of the hopper. Considering that the decibel level of the system was somewhere between inside of tornado and Krakatoa, I was pleased that I could hear anything at all.

I shut down the system and began investigating. What I found was a broken link in one of the very large chains used to pull unsorted material from the hopper. I told my manager. This was when I was presented with the third untruth mentioned above.

ME: “The chain on the hopper is broken.”

MANAGER: “Yup. Broke right here.”

ME: “Pretty bad?”

MANAGE: “Nah. Just weld it back together. Should only take you a couple of minutes.”

ME: “ME?”

MANAGER: “You’ve welded before, right?”

I had to assume that his assumption was derived from my skills assessment interview, but I was quick to correct him.

ME: “No.”

MANAGER: “Welding’s easy. I’ll show you where the equipment’s at.”

We walked to the equipment shed where I was instantly checked out for welding:

MANAGER: “This truck here always has the trailer with the arc welder. Just drive the truck over there and git the trailer real close to the hopper. Then come back here and turn on the welder. Clamp one of these onto the chain – that’s your ground. You know what a ground is? Good. Then take one of these rods and clamp it in this other one and just touch it on the chain and you’re welding. Oh, make sure you wear this helmet or you ain’t gonna see nothin’ fer a couple a days.”

Fortunately for my manager, either I wasn’t aware of OSHA at the time or it hadn’t been invented yet. In either case, I could find no reason to dispute the request to weld, so I continued.

Apparently, in real life, welding is a skill that actually requires professional training. There even seem to be trade schools dedicated to the subject. In 1987, though, I was without the training, the information to know that there was training, and even without the Internet where I would have learned that what I was about to do was a very bad idea.

I returned to the hopper with the welding equipment and proceeded according to my training. First I attached one large alligator-looking clamp to the chain. Nothing exploded, so I continued by turning on the power supply. The deep resonating hum of the generator sparked a deep-rooted personal fear of electricity that caused me to take pause and quickly evaluate my situation:

1.      I have no idea what I’m doing.

2.      I make $3.35. How would I replace that kind of income?

3.      I have no idea what I’m doing.

I continued. I clamped a welding rod to another alligator-looking clamp. I donned the welding helmet. At this point I was entirely befuddled. If you have never had the opportunity to wear a welding helmet, I recommend you try it at least once. I had thought that it would be similar to wearing an oversized pair of sunglasses – it’s more like sticking your head into a black bucket. I could see nothing.

I took off the helmet and positioned myself right next to the broken chain link making a mental note of where I wanted to weld, then put the helmet back on again. I paused to inhale and exhale a few times then tried to strike the chain with the welding rod. Nothing. I lifted the helmet.

New plan! I decided to strike the welding rod against the chain with the helmet up, but I would drop the helmet immediately when the rod sparked.

I breathed. Tap. Tap. Spark!

When I finally stopped writhing around on the ground and pulled my hands off my eyes I realized that I had not been permanently blinded, but there were two dark spots in my field of vision that would certainly distract me for several hours. I evaluated my position again:

1.      I have no idea what I’m doing.

2.      I make $3.35. How would I replace that kind of income?

3.      Is there any benefit to me if I am blind? Probably not.

4.      I have no idea what I’m doing.

I continued again, this time firmly committed to the concept of welding helmets. After banging the welding stick around blindly for several more minutes I finally got a spark again. This time, however, the welding rod welded itself to the chain and I found myself unable to pull it off. A new level of fear overtook me as I imagined that sometime in the very near future the entire welding rod would burst into bright light leaving me nothing more than a fairly good-looking head behind a welding mask. In panic I reached up with my free hand and pulled on the welding rod. Hot!

When I finally stopped writhing around on the ground and got a good look at my hand, I realized that my burns were fairly minor. I evaluated my position again:

1.      I have no idea what I’m doing.

2.      I make $3.35. How would I replace that kind of income?

3.      Is there any benefit to me if I burn off a limb? Probably not.

4.      I have no idea what I’m doing.

I continued again, this time with a great deal of practical welding experience. When I finished about an hour later I surveyed my work. Random chunks of metal were dispersed in the general area of the broken link and by some unlikely chance, some of it actually landed on the broken link and piled up in such a way as to make it relatively unbroken. I determined that my job was finished and returned the welding equipment to the shed.

I walked proudly back to my post, carefully using my peripheral vision to guide me as I still could see nothing directly in my path.