Life in Heavy Construction

© 2004 copyright Raymond C. Evans

We called ourselves “dirt stiffs”, most likely because when we got down from those big machines it always took a few steps to loosen up our joints enough to walk naturally. I was young then, but still my legs could barely get going after a long day on that machine. I was a bulldozer operator on a freeway construction site.

We had moved the dozer from one project to another that day about twenty five miles distant. This was going to be a day to remember. This was going to be the evening after work that I would meet Joy, my wife. This would be the night that she and my brother and sister-in -law would keep me up most of the night and I would have to start clearing off that steep hillside the next morning. No, this was not a date; rather, it was an evening planned by my brother and sister-in-law just for Joy and me to get acquainted. It would be a day to remember.

It took me a couple of weeks to get up enough courage to call her, (she lived almost 200 miles distant). “Well I, ah, uh, well I’m just going to happen to be in your area Saturday night”, I stammered.------------ Well, you already know how the rest of it goes. I learned a lot about her that night, I learned that she grew up in Corpus Christi, Texas; I learned that she was teaching high-school classes, teaching Spanish among other things. I learned that she could laugh.

How about you? She wanted to know. “Well I worked in a saw-mill for awhile”, I replied, “I was a sliver picker”. “Then later I went to work in the woods as a logger”, “I was then a timber beast”. “After that I went to work in heavy construction”, I added, “and that’s what I do now”, I went on. “But what is your exact job”, she pressed on. “Well, I’m a “dirt stiff”, an Operating Engineer”, I answered. Would you believe it? This made her laugh. Well I know my previous resume didn’t give her a whole lot of confidence in my engineering abilities, but that’s what I was, a “dirt stiff”, an Operating Engineer. Still she laughed. She could not imagine, from all her experiences that operating a bulldozer could be called engineering.

It was true though, I belonged to the Operating Engineers union and my title was an Operating Engineer. This title all goes back to the days when all the machines were operated by steam and all of the operators were called steam engineers. Locomotives, steam shovels, pile drivers etc. Listen! The great pyramids of Egypt could not have been built without some good bulldozer operators. “Well, I myself wasn’t actually there when they built the pyramids, even though my children and grand-children think I was. I’ll just have to take someone else’s word for it.