Killinger's Crew: 1949
Summer – 1949 - Downtown - Chicago, IL
Daniel Phillip O’Coileain graduated from St. George High School in Evanston during a time which found Korea heating up and his brother, James Edward, Jr., slated to return from Japan (where he had served Macarthur’s reconstruction as an MP). Daniel, the younger of the two, spent the summer after his graduation in the employ of Ace Power and Equipment, a machinery moving and rigging company. He had been accepted to Notre Dame and also to the University of Illinois, where his sisters had attended school. He had wanted to attend Illinois, but "The Deacon" couldn’t imagine anything better than his “clean-up hitter” son attending an all-male catholic university run by brilliant doctoral priests. The Deacon won out and Dan had the summer to bank as much cash as he could for the coming year.
At Ace, Dan was assigned to work with what amounted to a “crack unit” of union Micks: seasoned and worldly-wise. Among these men were the likes of Danny Green, Bill Killinger, Ernie “the Old Missouri Mule Skinner” Hunt and “Dundee Dick” (whose given name was incidental by the time Daniel met him). They were Irish immigrants all. They were hard-core, blue-collar union professionals. They were the pride of Ace Power. And most had spent at least a spell of time staring out at an adopted landscape from the wrong side of cool, vertical bars.
Now Daniel had the benefit of being Nisei, while his mentors at Ace were fresh-out-of-the-box from the Old Country. And while Daniel was plenty familiar with the “Irish need not apply” campaigns, the “Know-Nothings,” and lived as a citizen of a country that made it clear Catholics were of the third-class sort (trailing behind even the Chinese), this crew had not come to America with any misgivings about what to expect. No, it was a matter of relativity to these men; they had left Ireland for good reason. And America, with her anti-Papist bigotry and all, was still an improvement in their eyes. These men had something in common with Daniel beyond their shared lineage among the rocky partitions of counties Cork and Limerick. Neither he nor they had been among the first Irish to arrive in New York only to find indentured servitude among the descendants of their long-time oppressors. No. They would benefit from those who had blazed the trail for them. Each generation standing on the shoulders of the prior. Even so, America was still no rosy place for a Catholic. But they were tough men all. They were determined to make a go of it or die trying.
Ace Power knew what it had in the spectacular team of men… Killinger’s Crew. No job was too tall, no order unattainable. And if there was such a job, they had not encountered it, and reasoned it didn’t exist.
Daniel would only be working for the summer and therefore not eligible for union membership. He found himself working on a temporary permit. Nonetheless, the pay was decent and he was content to learn from the best.
Killinger’s Crew were proud to have Daniel among them. The Deacon was well-known among the community as a stand-up, honest, principled man. A man who, as the Irish would comment, would not “take the soup.” They were also proud because Daniel was college-bound. He was headed for the Big Time. And he was theirs. And their pride was thick with the knowing that Daniel was set to break free of the cultural yoke that had been strapped to him for the guilt of bloodline alone. And a change like that, occurring over the impossibly short span of 50-odd years, a mere two generations out of Ireland, was remarkable. It was unheard of. Utterly unimaginable for these hardened Micks to accept. Yet, here was the proof. Here was their hope. Here was the personage, the embodiment, the living evidence that reinforced their convictions. Leaving everything behind across the Great Pond was the right decision after all. And so, with their pride renewed and their hope emboldened, they rallied behind the young man. He was their champion and he would be their revenge.
One for the Company
On one particular day that summer, Daniel found himself many stories high, above the cement floor, nearly bumping his head on the rafters of a wickedly hot, under-ventilated tin tinderbox housing a massive machining operation, littered with machines roughly similar in layout to a scaled up version of a silicon microchip. Yet, there was nothing at all micro about the area he surveyed. It was downright macro. It was the age of all things giant and inefficient, after all. He was nervous as he sat on the plank and was hoisted by pulley and rope up to where Ernie “The Old Missouri Mule Skinner” was perched. He was the second lightest among the bunch and the junior-most member of the crew. So, it stood to reason that when The Mule Skinner barked out his mantra, Daniel would be elected to deliver the necessary assistance.
“Ya Ha!! Ya Ha”, Ernie Hunt announced, cupping one hand to direct his sonic pronouncement. “Send de young sprog an' 'av 'imself brin' de persuader, ‘ill yer!”.
“Ah, for feck sake, cum an' git it yerself, yer lazy feckin langer!” Killinger shouted.
“Ya Ha, Billy! You're wan jammy meck, seein' as yer don't 'av de barguckers ter cum up 'ere yerself.” The Crew laughed in a refrain of entangled and familiar cadences. The Kid laughed along, adding his voice to the rest, and they with theirs accommodated him with his without skipping a beat or losing the tune. The Kid knew there was no other way about it. He grabbed The Persuader from the box of tools near the dolly. As he calibrated the weighty pipe in his hands, it dragged briefly and ever-so minutely across the tired old concrete. Yet, in doing so, Daniel added his own stroke to the chalkboard hieroglyphs underfoot. And with a clank or two, while the others put together his rig, The Mule Skinner retrieved the rope he had let down, like a one-handed fisherman checking a lobster trap.
Once his rig was in place, the team hoisted Daniel to Ernie’s side and he set The Persuader down upon the top of the iron brontosaurus’s squarely-humped back directly in front of his still-swaying perch.
A sudden creak emanated from the exact coordinates of the pulley to which his swing seat was affixed. This caused The Kid to startle and in the infinite breathlessness of a mere moment, Daniel had returned both of his hands promptly to the uprights of the ropes to which his plank was tethered. At the same time he realized he was not going to spill to his death, he felt the strong hand of The Mule Skinner at his collar.
“Sprog. Luk at me, sprog. We’re up 'ere juicy 'igh, yer nu. Oi want yer ter mind somethin' for me, sprog. Yer got ter use wan 'an' for de company. Cos if yer don’t, you’ll never git anythin' done.” Ernie said in a manner more serious than Daniel had ever seen from him. He squinted a bit, looking straight into Daniel’s soul until he was convinced The Kid was all there. “An' yer 'av ter use wan 'an' fer yerself, sprog, ter 'owl onto de rope.” Then he got quiet and his face got all screwed up as if he was in mourning, experiencing an event that had not happened. That couldn’t happen on his watch. And couldn’t happen to anyone, least of all his Hope. Then he branded Daniel with the most useful admonishment he would ever receive. These words have reverberated ever since, through the 60-some odd years, and from father to son. Quietly now, Ernie set about imprinting The Kid’s soul with the following words, each one sliding gracefully behind the next, searing the steak with a very deliberate score: “Never… ever use both ‘ands for de company…”
The Hospital Side
WW II had ended. And, as such, a whole lot of the machinery was no longer necessary. The economy didn’t need tanks or shells. It needed automobiles and refrigerators… tv sets and tooling equipment. Rebuilding Europe would take a completely different set of competencies than liberating it. And Chicago figured to play a massive part in the effort in Wal-World I. So the old machines needed to be retired. Needed to be deconstructed, moved and stored for the next war. A good lot of it would eventually be brought to O’Hare Field, to rust or be transported elsewhere. And that’s where Daniel saw his first jet airplane. At O’Hare Field.
It was the dawn of a new era. And everyone knew it. Everyone felt it. This was the birth of the “beautiful world” Donald Fagen sang about some 35 years later. And, at the time, the perfectly plausible vision of a new era of tech-supported leisure was just being formed. Half of the population was excited about shaking the fetters of two world wars and looked forward to enjoying the fruits of the automated-delirium to come. Hope. The other half lost faith and despaired at man’s cruelty to man. These were the times of The Stranger, where authors discovered a humanity devoid of purpose and conscience. There was a revival of the so-called intelligentsia, who drank coffee and sulked while the rest of the world sweated to revive something more practical: namely, the world economy. This was a hard time. The working folks mobilized to rebuild the civilized world, while the artists reflected and criticized it.
What this meant for Killinger’s Crew was job security. And moving things into storage was a big part of the job. But it was the spookiest part of the job as well. In the days before the widespread use of hydraulics, ropes and wire were the tendons of the day. And tension could cut a girder in half should a tendon snap. The muscle was crude leverage and came from the cranes. And the cranes were large and much more numerous in those days. Very, very large, crude cranes would be charged with culling the great herds. The nuevo-dinosaurs were at work moving the carcasses of impractically large proto-dinosaurs. And man is impossibly small… and fragile. He is small and fragile.
Declan was a crane operator. The best in the fleet. And the crane operator was a very important part of the crew. He managed the muscle. And if he was good, he was very good. And if he was not so good, he was bad. Bad could hurt you very badly. So, Killinger made sure he had the best. And Declan was that guy.
“Danny! for dis job, we’re gonna be 2 storeys 'igh. For dis pure seem job, we’ve got 105 ton av machinery & equipment. Oi 'ill tell yer dis once: at al' times, wan side av dis machine… dis crane… wan side is de safe side… de other side… yer nu waaat de other side is Danny?”
“No, sir…”
“De other side is de 'ospital side. So, ‘tis up ter yer ter nu whaich side is whaich an' whaich side ter be on.”
“Yes, sir.”