Scenes from Summer Past - Part I Dark Satanic Mills

Scenes from Summers Past - Part I

Dark Satanic Mills 1973

And did the  Countenance Divine

  Shine forth upon our clouded hills?

And was Jerusalem builded here

Among these dark satanic mills?

--William Blake

In the summer of 1973 I worked in a paper mill. It was long, hard, hot work, six days a week and for two weeks in July you worked seven days a week for maintenance on the machinery when the mill stopped making paper. That added up to a 20-day work stretch for me before I had a single day off. And the mill was a hellish cesspool of carcinogens, machinery, heat, heat and heat, and deafening noise and hot water pumped into the nearest river killing fish in large numbers. 

Temperature inside the mill was normally 15 to 20 degrees hotter than it was outside, so during the summer if the afternoon temperature reached 95 then the temperature inside was likely to be 110 or 115 degrees where you were working and working hard, and if you stood near a roller---or worse---under a roller with the bath-like steam dampening your scalp, then the temperature was even higher. Paper would sometimes break off the roller stacks, long curling strips of paper corkscrewing or ribboning into a five-foot trench, the paper either wet or dry depending on the section of rollers where the paper had torn. The trench was appropriately nicknamed "the pit" and any broken paper in "the pit" was a problem to be avoided and removed at all costs because if too much paper sheared off the stacks twisting mounds, then the paper making machine would need to be stopped and that meant lost time which meant lost volume on product which meant lost money. So when a paper break occurred you would have to jump down into the trench known as the pit and begin lifting and bailing out the lost paper, sometimes heaving sodden clumps of it that would come apart in your hands like so much cellulose mush with scalding heat of the rollers mere inches from your skull and often turning as you worked, sweat pouring from the temples of your forehead, the corners of your eyes and dripping off your chin and nose and forming pools everywhere on your body. We drank absurdly large quantities of water and swallowed salt tablets to prevent dehydration, incurred nasty paper cuts from the dryer paper because even as we started with cloth gloves, the gloves were soon saturated with sweat and became ineffective, and as often as we nearly dropped and died under the heat, the tour boss or foreman would be standing right above you or occasionally bend over and thrust his head down to your sad level, shouting at you to work harder, faster, "get that shit out of here! don't stop! what the hell's wrong with you?" and the sweat and heat and boss shouting and it's 120 degrees and the scorching iron of a paper roller is about a half foot from your head.

That was the pit. At the finishing end of the machine, you had "the box" where finished box board sheets fell in neat stacks of various sizes into a bin and the paper then needed to be picked up---fast and with both hands---and placed on a pallet---neatly and fast---until the pallet was full then it could be weighed and bound with metal strapping. Unlike the pit the box was at least above ground, but you needed to focus constantly (no daydreaming or sexual fantasies here) and lift a lot of box board sheets at one time and if you lifted too many you may drop them or they may slide off the pallet when you tried to stack them. So one needed speed, strength, and good judgement. 

When the mill closed for two weeks we worked on heavy machinery. The most ridiculous of the maintenance jobs was to remove hard dried pimples or encrusted barnacles of pulp from a beater or turbine simply using a scraper and wire brush. One time I took turns with a couple other hands using a jackhammer to break up a square block of concrete that was several inches high. Mostly I assisted the welder. Whenever the welder made a weld you were supposed to wear a mask to prevent looking directly at the arc welding which could damage your eyes. Once, after a number of days working with him, I forgot to shield my eyes, and I'd also had only three hours sleep the night before having been drinking and partying over at a friends place in New York. Whatever the reason, when I awoke from a dream later that night I was unable to see temporarily, and I became frightened and confused. 

There were a number of characters who worked in the mill but I'll just mention two. The first was Gene, who maintained the skid yard where pallets were repaired and moved about with a forklift and delivered across the road to the mill to be weighed and used to hold stacks of box board. Gene had killed a couple men in a bar fight in the South, and had been serving a life sentence when his case was appealed and the charge of murder 1 had been reduced  to manslaughter (either on new evidence, or a new witness, I'm not sure) and Gene was released after a shorter period of time. He did have a temper and he was strong, but for the most part Gene was extremely kind and considerate. His wife was from Ireland and they took trips over there every couple years and Gene would always bring back a small gift for my father. The other person was a mechanic named Daryl from West Virginia. Daryl wore a yellow hard hat with the word "Coming" written on the front of the hat and the word "Going" written on the back. He had no hair. He walked with a slow but steady gait so that his position of coming or going could always be determined. Bald and slightly overweight, about 40 years of age, Daryl had lived on the poor coal mining Appalachian diet for years, a diet not known for being "heart smart," consisting largely of grease fat or lard, other fat, salt and sugar. And the benzene and chloride vapors and other noxious chemicals in the environment certainly didn't help. Daryl dropped dead at work. He took medication for epileptic seizures, and a couple times in the past he'd skipped his medication while at work and went into seizure and needed to be wrestled to the ground to keep from hurting himself. In the first few seconds when the heart attack struck, his co-workers mistakenly misread the coronary explosion for another epileptic seizure, but it became apparent after a few seconds that Daryl had not had a seizure and by then it was too late because he'd stopped moving altogether and would no longer be coming or going.