by Christopher Alan Sweeney

Created on: February 17, 2010

Christmas music could be heard coming from the doors of the shops on Broadway.

The smell of burning charcoal and roasting chestnuts rose from the cart the peddler was selling from.

Snow was falling into the slushy street.

Santa was doing great ringing his bell because Wall Street is generous especially after everyone has received their year end bonuses.

The wind from the fetch of New York harbor blew bitter cold up this canyon of lower Manhattan.

I crunched off the sidewalk to cross the salty exhaust darkened slush and water which lay in the street. I was heading back to One State Street Plaza from 32 Chambers Street. I was wearing my old parka over a shirt and tie tucked into my blue jeans. I wore thick socks and work shoes. No gloves because I always lose them. I tuck my hands into my parka pockets except right then my left hand was holding a lit Pall Mall red. My hand was shaking.

I was the structural steel superintendent supervising both jobs and I was a little shook.

At Chambers Street we were driving sheet piles and bearing piles in a sixty thousand square foot hole that was forty feet deep. The sheet piles would define the perimeter of the foundation and the bearing piles would support the footings from which the columns of a 32 story office building would soon rise.

Two things had happened at Chambers Street today: one was alarming the other bloody. Our line and grade engineer concluded we were causing the building next door to collapse. We would have to undermine the footings of that building and jack-pile those footings down to bedrock. What’s jack-piling?  Don’t ask it’s too complicated.

The bloody thing was a hammer blow of the pile driver had taken off the thumb of one of our men.

Construction should stop for two weeks in New York. From the weekend before Christmas until the weekend after New Years all jobs should shut down. There’s too much drinking going on and the jobs are not safe. That guy who lost his thumb had liquor on his breath.

As I passed Liberty Street, I heard the most awful sound an iron boss can hear – a ton of steel clattering onto the street. I hustled down to One State Street as fast as I could. The boom of the east derrick was hanging over the side at the eighth floor. A load of beams was draped half on and half off the truck that had brought it. It was a mess. It didn’t look like anyone was even hurt so it couldn’t have fallen far.

The cops were blocking off the street.

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