Last week while visiting my brother he told of falling off a ladder earlier in the summer while cleaning at his house. He talked about how lucky he felt that he wasn’t seriously hurt. It reminded me of the many times I’ve fallen while working and how thankful I am that I was never hurt. The most serious fall for me happened during my college years.
During the summer between my sophomore and junior years I worked for a construction company pouring concrete. I spent most of that summer helping to build an addition to a GE manufacturing facility in Grove City, PA. On one particular occasion we were pouring concrete in the water treatment area of the facility. We had dug a huge hole in the ground. A carpenter crew had spent over a week building the wooden braces around the sides of the hole. Iron workers had built an elaborate rebar frame at the base of the hole which would receive the concrete as part of the foundation. This rebar frame also had many individual rebar spikes sticking upward to within a half inch of where top of the concrete would be poured. The carpenters had also built a wooden chute that went from the top of the hole at ground level, all the way to near the bottom of the hole. About half way down into the hole the carpenters had built a temporary walkway for workers on the concrete crew to encircle the hole and reach down into the hole with concrete rakes and automatic vibrators to coax the concrete into a level state.
On the day of the pour we finally began guiding the concrete into the hole at around 7:00 pm. Truck after truck pulled up to the area where the chute stuck out of the hole as the trucks emptied their contents. My job during that particular time was to rotate between running the vibrator and moving concrete around with a very long handled rake and shovel. After we had been pouring for about 30 minutes, the contents of one particular cement truck were not well mixed. On several occasions, large balls of concrete (what we called “meatballs”) came out of the truck and became stuck in the chute on the way down. Usually we just reached up the chute with a long handled shovel and worked the ball free. The contents would then spill down. Unfortunately, one time, the “meatball” got stuck way up at the top of the chute. I looked at the rest of the guys and said “I’ll get it.”
I loosened the belt around my pants (I wasn’t wearing a shirt – never did on construction jobs), fed the belt through the u-shaped handle of a short shovel and re-fastened the belt. I climbed up the slimy chute in a bear-crawl fashion using both hands and feet. When I finally got within reach, I loosened my belt again and took hold of the shovel. I reached up with the shovel and jabbed the “meatball.” After two or three stabs, the “meatball” broke free and all the concrete that had built up behind it came rushing down. I floated a few feet with the concrete and then fell over the side of the chute. I let go of the shovel as I began a free fall toward the bottom. Thankfully, my right arm and left leg caught onto two braces that stuck out from the side of the hole to support the walkway. I was suspended above the bottom with the rebar jutting up menacingly close to my bare torso.
The foreman of our crew looked like a caricature of a construction worker. He was big, loud, and very strong. He came running over, bent down to reach me and scooped me up like a baby. I had never seen him scared. His eyes were huge as he continued to bounce me up and down while excitedly yelling over and over, “Are you ok…Are you ok?” I said, “Yeeessss…put me down.” He said, “I’ve never lost a man yet – you scared the shit out of me…Don’t do that again…” I said – “Don’t worry, I’m not going to climb up any more chutes today.”
I climbed up the ladder from the walkway and went to the water hose to clean the concrete off my body. We finished pouring the remainder of the concrete in short order. The whole way home while riding my motorcycle my mind kept replaying my fall. I decided this was one story I would keep to myself….my mother didn’t need to hear this one…in fact – I don’t think I ever told her this one…
Todd Rivetti 