It's been one of those weeks in my mind when emotion and fear are screaming with a bull horn and the hammers are trying to batter down the door.
One of those weeks where I've clung to a one mile bike ride route ridden ten times around my home each day and these diary threads helping me to hold onto...something, some measure of sanity & rationality, I guess.
You've been so kind to allow me to share my own personal growth. Quitting smoking, sobriety, an exercise routine. Building myself up emotionally and physically instead of tearing myself down. I'm asking you to indulge me a little bit more. To allow me to share an exercise of the mind. I just need to set up some background and framework. You know, to get you there.
Jump with me.
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I worked at a non ferrous (no iron or steel) metal recycling plant in the 70's and 80's. It was hard, dirty, dangerous work, but I was young and reasonably fit, even though I was smoking already. It was my first job, one that I held in some capacity for 12 years, and I learned a lot of things.
I learned how to operate industrial equipment and machinery, like a forklift and a Bobcat and a baler.
I learned about people. It was the most diverse group of people I've ever worked with. White collar and blue collar, business owners and union members, blacks and whites, Jews and Christians, young and old, men and women, rich and poor.
I learned how to act responsibly, show up every day I was able and try to do my best no matter what task was assigned.
This recycling plant initially operated out of an old warehouse building, built around the turn of the last century in north St. Louis, with a large open yard. There was a loading dock where trailers could be parked and some concrete pads but for the most part when I say yard I really mean huge, muddy, open expanse of ground with a fence around it. Trucks would come in and depending on the load and how it was transported, trailers would be parked, or the scrap metal would literally be dumped onto the ground. That ground could be a veritable choking, eye stinging dust storm in the summer or an alien landscape of tire tracks, foot prints, and weird metal scrap scraped shapes frozen hard as stone in the winter.
When I first started working there this company was melting their own lead and making ingots, and also producing their own aluminum ingots. They slowly transitioned away from lead production entirely in a process that probably isn't all that unusual. Profitability. The aluminum foundry was a much bigger operation and furnace. A tilting barrel design capable of approximately 8000 lbs of molten AL. It sounds like a lot because it is, but in the scheme of things it's small to moderate. (it could have been 5 tons, I don't specifically remember now, and they were always filling it to just over capacity, and no I haven't approached anyone there to ask) They also had a small sweat furnace with less than a ton capacity. They ran their own metallurgical lab for a time and were able to produce some reasonably decent quality alloys. They ran this AL foundry through the mid 80's, and used chlorine gas to help remove impurities right at the end of this "era", before they shut the foundry down to develop and expand other interests.
Generally most of the work involved sorting and separating. "Clean" metal was metal uncontaminated by foreign material or other types of metal. Some metal can be cleaned easier than other kinds and types. So, for example, a basic aluminum window frame would be stripped of the glass, plastic & rubber, and then the die cast (usually zinc alloys back then) latches and connectors could be removed from the four separate window frame components or extrusions. Throw the clean item in a large container and repeat. Sometimes a 55 gallon drum but most often a corrugated gaylord type box. Gaylord Corp wiki (trust me, it was an odd, loaded name even back then, especially for a young man [yes, me] who was just beginning to question his own sexual identity. I lost my virginity in my late teens, and was fearful of exhibiting [or admitting to, even to myself] any same sex attractions, let alone acting on any. I was keenly aware of Anita Bryant and Phyllis Schlafly. I lost a first cousin to AIDS in 1988 but I've deviated enough and this particular aspect of "my" story is for a different diary on a different day. [why yes, a diary])
After sorting and cleaning, a lot of this clean metal was baled or bricked. They had a large baler that worked great for sheet aluminum scrap. These bales measured approximately 5 x 3.5 x 2.5 feet. It was an average size baler, similar to ones in use today, like for cardboard. A smaller high compression machine could make small bricks out of scrap metal, usually copper tubing and wiring. It really did produce something about the size of a large brick.
Like I said, it was strictly non ferrous. Aluminum was the biggest aspect, but they also dealt with copper, brass, zinc, lead, magnesium, titanium...I'm sure I'm forgetting others. That's not to say they didn't have to deal with iron and steel, they did. It was barreled up or boxed up or loaded into a dumpster like container or onto a semi trailer for transport to other companies that did work with those metals.
This was the early days of aluminum can recycling. I'm sure a lot of people would recognize the type of aluminum can crusher / blower I worked with. It has a large hopper to dump the cans into, a conveyor belt that pulls the cans up, allowing for the removal of debris and other foreign material, over a magnet that catches and diverts steel cans (or most Fe based material) and then dumps the cans onto and in between a spinning steel drum and a fixed metal plate (or sometimes two spinning drums) where they are flattened, then drop down into a long tube where a high powered blower sends the crushed cans shooting into a semi trailer.
They started buying scrap metal directly from individuals off the street. Not only at the plant itself, but at various locations around town. A trailer was parked (dropped) at a parking lot, and with a small portable scale aluminum cans were bought directly from the consumer. Other scrap AL was accepted as well.
This company had an exclusive contract for a while with a certain beverage giant based here. Recycling aluminum cans became the biggest operation for this company during this time, eventually replacing the AL foundry (profitability again, I'm sure. factors such as the use of chlorine also meant extremely corrosive conditions requiring high maintenance and replacement of equipment. Plus it was dangerous. I can only imagine what the insurance costs were)
And here is where I'm leaving the story for today. I've tried to get you familiar with what I was doing and where I was doing it 25 years ago.
It really has been a rough week for me. I miss Lois immensely, I've missed work, I'm f*#k*ng depressed and scared and alone in a large empty house that has its own ghosts of the past.
Some might say what does this have to do with electing more and better Democrats, and I say I can't expect the people I elect to believe in the things I believe in unless I'm honest with myself and I'm working towards real change and progress in my own life. But that's just me.
I come here for the reality. Srsly.
The good opinions and thoughts and words and ideas of others.
Those thoughts and words and ideas I know,
I just know,
are true and honest and correct.
I'm certain of it.
I'm positive of it.
I can feel it.
They are more than words & ideas.
Every day everyone has to decide whether or not to listen to the crowd.
You've "got to believe somebody"
And we all have to...
jump.
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