PART SEVEN, "REMINISCENT REFLECTIONS,"
An Adventure of Faith,
by Robert Ginther
INCIDENTS, ACCIDENTS, PERSONALITIES, GOOD AND BAD HATS, AND COLORS
The color and insignia of a man's helmet has special significance in the yard. By looking at the hat, his craft is identified and it distinguishes his rank, helper-mechanic, leadman, foreman, etc., [down to the lowest, the untrained laborer.]
One day when I had just joined the Joiners, the Leadmen gave me my assignment. It was a bedroom in the officers' quarters. I was to put up firing and maronite on the walls but he said, "Before you start, get yourself an orange hat [meaning a non-professional laborer], to clean up this mess for you."
Needless to say, a mechanic does not humble himself by doing that kind of work.
DARKNESS AND DEATH
It was very dark on the Bay aproaching midnight last January, for it was an ugly, nasty night. Raining ceaselessly, the temperature was at the freezing point. This thin film of ice made the ship slippery and the scaffolding dangerous. I came up from underneath from where I had been working--warm and dry to see the weather I suppose.
Walking to the rail at the end of the ship I looked across the Peterman dock to those mountains of scaffolding, the Ways, and then down at the water in the darkness. If a man falls in there tonight, I thought, he will surely be gone. I didn't stay there long alone in the darkness, but went back to my work.
A man slipped off the scaffolding on the Ways that night into the Bay, and the Coast Guard found his body the next day.
AN UGLY INDIVIDUAL
It was lunch time and we all grabbed our lunch kits hurriedly to go up on the main deck for supper. My partner, by mistake, took the wrong kit. We were all sitting down to eat when a raving man, a husky Italian, came running up to Sam my partner. For this harmless, unintentional mistake, he cut loose upon poor Sam with a stream of foul, blasphemous cursing, revealing the fact, that though he was black on the outside, he was blacker yet on the inside.
I felt sorry for poor Sam, who is now my neighbor and friend. There may be good Italians but those I have met are lacking much in those qualities which make for true and noble manhood.
A MISS AS GOOD AS A MILE
I had just climbed down a 25-foot ladder from the flight deck to the main deck and gone about six feet when "Bang!" A careless ship-fitter had dropped an I-beam bracket from above, heavy enough to have cut my body in two. I began to think solemn thoughts. [If Robert had been killed at that time, Roberta his youngest daughter would not exist. Joyce was born two years after I was in 1942, so she was a possibility, but perhaps not, she might not have been born too if his life had been ended at this point in time.--Ed.]
JACK THE WELDER
It was on a Friday night just close to quitting time. Jack had just finished my job of welding which proved to be the last weld he would ever make. We said good-night. He was a big, good-natured fellow, and I kind of "tickled him"--[stimulated his good nature a bit with my remarks and humor.] The next day I observed no Jack in his stall. After a while, the word was passed around that Jack had gone home that night and killed himself with a 30-30 rifle. Life has no significance unless you have Christ.
OLD SPAULDING--MECHANIC AND GOLDMINER
He is now a tough, old man with a rugged physique and very strong and able in spite of his years. He offered to let me hit him in the abdomen with a hammer just as hard as I could. When I refused, he hits himself a dozen times, enough to ruin an ordinary man. He tells some hair-raising stories of his mining experiences, and while he never struck his fortune he is convinced that "Thars gold in them thar hills." He says also, there is one place yet in the wild mountains up there which he hopes to look into, for only he himself knows where it is--it's his secret. That's the spirit of a gold seeker--"Next time I'll strike it!"[This has evolved in our decaying and decadent 21st Century society to "Next time I'll win the lottery!"--Ed.]
NO. 9
One day I went fishing salmon in the bay close to the mouth of the Puyallup River. I was busy with the tackle and boat when suddenly I heard the horn-type whistle of a ship. Looking around I saw coming up Commencement Bay "No. 9" one of our aircraft carriers built by the Seattle Tacoma Ship-building Corporation. It was out on a trial run. You may be sure that in my little rowboat on the surface of the water I felt pretty small as I gazed up at this mountain of steel passing by.
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