I moved the last of my three children to Bethlehem, PA the other day, where he will be attending Lehigh University. If you're expecting some maudline attempt at soul searching, you'll be disappointed. I was completely unaffected. He's a good kid, with lots of talent, and no bad habits (except for his penchant for Halo, the enormously popular XBox game of murder and mayhem.) Aside from that, I expet he'll do just fine.
Lehigh University is an endowment child of the late great Bethlehem Steel Corporation. Engineering and Business were its mainstays. Generations ago, upon graduating from Lehigh, you would have been guaranteed a job in the mill, and then lived out the rest of your life in the quaint town that gave the company it's name. You would have made the steel that formed the New York skyline and the Golden Gate Bridge. You would have helped win both of the World Wars. Now, Lehigh is a full fledged University and the steel mill is a ruin.
I got a chance to tour this 1500 acre montage of rust, brick and weeds. Our tour guides were retired (layed off) steelworkers, Bobby and Czechy. Czechy was the sixth son of eleven children born to a Czechoslovakian immigrant who arrived during the twenties. From the back of the trolley, Czechy spoke with the passion of a history professor about the one thing in life he loved more than anything else. Bobby interrupted regularly from the front of the bus, with color commentary that seemed to awaken the ghosts of this great and glorious bygone era.
The piece de resistance of the tour was the blast furnace. Now I'll be the first to admit that factories are inherantly ugly, and eyesores upon the landscape; but this thing was beautiful. Joined together by thousands of pieces of steel, it appeared none the less monolithic, as it loomed ten stories or more above our heads. For about a century, iron ore, coke and limestone were fed to this monster 24/7. By the time Czechy's father arrived, it was already producing over 1 million tons of pig iron a year. The men who served it feared it, for its power and influence over their lives was absolute. But that was then.
With pride, Bobby told us several stories of how during the seventies, the "time study guys" would come with their stop watches and clip boards, and try to measure the institutionalized lethargy that had become endemic within the union. He boasted about how they had slowed down production in order to gain "piece-work" compensation. He was completely unaware that he was incriminating himself and his fellow steelworkers, in the death of the American steel industry. But that's OK. I was a steelworker myself during this time, and I remember how difficult it was working amid the smoke and the noise.
Bethlehem is quiet now; and the air is clean. It's got a great bagel shop and of course, the Moravian Book Store. And then there's Lehigh, Bethlehem Steel's legacy to the world. Before leaving, we visited the engineering library on campus. There were about a dozen or so students there, all of which appeared to be of middle east or asian origin. Who else but serious students would you expect to find there, on a Sunday, during semester break?
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4 comments:
Charlie,
As always, you have fascinated me with a subject I probably care nothing about - at least before I read your blog. Keep writing, my friend. Your talent is crawling out of the end of your pen every time you do.
Cathee
Chuck
someday maybe consider telling that story when you were in the steel mills, and that centerfuge went out of control and spun off its axis, with tragic results.
It's an incredible story, and I still think about it, eventhough it has been many years since I heard you tell it.
Q.S.
Dad,
Loved your post as always. As I was reading it, I thought back to the Ken Burns documentary on the Civil War. Some of the most moving moments in that production were when the narrator read excerpts from the letters written to and from the battlefront. People used to know how to tell stories, convey their emotions, and encapsulate their experience of history through writing. Amazingly, they didn't even realize how much significance those letters would have to historians. Now, with computers and telephones, we interact with each other in a more dynamic way, but our conversations live only in our memories. I'm no Luddite, but I wonder if modern communication technology will end up leaving a gaping hole in the sociological record of 20th century western society. Maybe the advent of blogging will stand in the gap. At any rate, keep the stories coming!
Hanione
You never cease to amaze me with your literary skills. Keep up the writing.
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