Things had gotten a little stagnant starting in the mid 70’s. The deck rehab work was getting busy but large projects diminished. Bridge replacements were out there, and the competition was fierce.
One nice project was Broadway in Cheektowaga. We replaced the super structure over Union and did concrete pavement three quarters of a mile East and one quarter of a mile west of Union Road.
This project came along just a few years after scrapping the old form riding equipment and slip forming wasn’t the answer for this chopped up project.
George found an auction with the equipment he needed and as luck would have it, he brought everything home for 30% of what it should have sold for. It seems there were 20 or so Maxon concrete transports selling before the finishers, and as they were coming up, a rainstorm blew in and everyone headed for shelter. When the trucks sold, they went to one bidder for all. That left George the only bidder for the paving stuff. The others that were there to buy it were staying out of the rain thinking they had time and missed the bid. They appealed to the auctioneer to reopen the bids to no avail.
Now I know our guys are never happy when a Bobby auction piece shows up, and some say that we must be a division of Ritchie Bros Auction Company, but the high that one gets from hitting a good deal can never be matched by picking up the phone and paying list price for a shiny new machine. And yes, I’m proud to have created another auction junkie in Jared.
It was on this job that Fred Gelz and George got to screaming at each other while pouring pavement. Fred had an eight-pound sledgehammer in his hand and chose to throw it down and tell George to stuff his job rather than smashing it into his skull.
At that point, George went to the office boy/intern and appointed him super on the job.
That young and inexperienced lad was none other than Jack Ford.
I guess you could say that was the start of the Alfred State influence on Union Concrete. Seems Gary had a great deal of confidence in his alma mater.
As for other work, we had quite a few bridge jobs in that era.
Smith Hills was a good job. It was the Hanover Road Bridge and roadway realignment. The people in the area were great to work with. There was a general store that had coffee and treats set up on the back room for the crew.
I went in one day and they had a coffee can on the table asking for donations to buy new work shoes for our own project manager Gary Hill! It seems with his young family money was short and work shoes weren’t in the budget.
Another notable job was Clinton Street over Cayuga Creek in West Seneca.
Whenever the structure being replaced was a truss bridge, the method of maintaining traffic was to build a temporary bridge adjacent to the old one. When that was complete the truss could be removed.
With the soil conditions in the area, we had to drive a sheet cell coffer dam and excavate within the cell for the abutment. As we dug the cell out, we had to install whalers to support the cell. On a project like this we used a crane and clam bucket to do the work. This required a great deal of handwork and the deeper we went the more bracing got in the way of the clam and more handwork was needed.
At the start George decided that no man was as good as him at signaling the crane as the operator was working blind.
So, for weeks, George stood looking over into the cell signaling the crane and yelling at the laborers in the cell. As it got deeper the guys decided they couldn’t hear George and ignored him.
That was a mistake and when he couldn’t get their attention, he started throwing stones and dirt. The longer it took for them to acknowledge him, the bigger the stones got. He was a good shot and would hit the ground at guys’ feet, but when his “favorite son” was down there with a small crawler loader ducking under bracing, he quite often would misjudge and show the other what happens when one gets bonked in the head with a hardball sized chunk of clay.
It was at this time that the job was referred to as the “Penalty Box.”
One poor bastard was Larry Lange. Now Larry would never screw with George unlike what the rest of the guys in the box had, so one wondered why he was there.
It wasn’t until I had my own daughter that it came to me. Larry was dating Jodi and George was just getting even.
