My father’s crew did most of the work on the houses we built in the early 70’s. We could have also done the insulation and drywall, but it was a lot cheaper to leave those unpleasant jobs to others, and the plumbing and wiring all had to be installed by licensed plumbers and electricians. We also contracted out the installation of the forced air heating systems to the same sheet metal shop that provided the window and roof flashings needed to weatherproof the house.

These sheet metal workers are sometimes referred to as Tinners, a holdover from the old days when most of the metal flashings were made from tin plate. They would fabricate the metal heating ducts and architectural flashings in their shop then install them on our job site. We used the same contractors for most of our jobs and I eventually got to know their crews quite well.

Ralph had been in the sheet metal trade since right after WW II. He was from Southern California and like so many others he had grown tired of the smog and congestion and relocated to Western Washington. He usually worked with Ron, an apprentice about my age whom I vaguely remembered from high school and who was also a Viet Nam vet.

Ron had a wife and two small kids and was struggling to make ends meet. His apprenticeship program started him out at one half of Journeyman wage scale, and then increased it every six months for four years, at which time he could join the union as a Journeyman. He also had to go to school one or two nights a week to learn the rather complex layout procedures for the items they fabricated as well as other things that couldn’t be learned on the job. He was a good worker and he was willing to tough it out for a few years to eventually get his Journeyman card so he could get a good paying job about anywhere in the country along with medical benefits and a decent retirement plan.

Ralph showed up alone one Monday, and I casually asked him where the hell his helper was. Ralph explained that Ron had pulled a week’s vacation time to have a little surgery done, or ‘get his nuts cut’ as he so subtly put it. Vasectomies weren’t that common back then and few guys would readily admit to submitting to one, and I kind suspected that Ron would be royally pissed off if he knew that Ralph was blabbing it around. I hadn’t yet done the wife and kiddy thing but I could certainly understand Ron’s choice. It was bad enough being single and worrying about knocking your girlfriend up; having to be careful with your wife would be a real son-of-a-bitch.

We had stopped for lunch and our typical noontime bullshit session when Ralph happened to mention that he knew one guy that got his vasectomy courtesy of a ten-foot brake.

“I was working in San Bernardino,” Ralph explained, pouring a fresh cup of coffee from his thermos jug. “That was in about ’53 or ’54. I had just turned out a couple of years before and got my card.” He said, referring to completing his apprenticeship and joining the union. “Anyway, the shop I was working for had just got a big hospital job in Fresno. It was going to be a two or three year job, lots of overtime, and they were willing to pay some subsistence. I was just renting anyway so the wife and I moved up there. The shop had rented a building up there and sent a whole shit load of machinery and tools up there along with the foreman and a few of the men. We hired the rest of the crew out of the union hall there.

“You couldn’t bring your own apprentices into a job like that; you had to call the hall and have them send them out. Also, they would only let them work in one shop for a year or so, then they would rotate them somewhere else. That way they would get a broader experience base than by just working for one shop all of the time. They sent out these three guys. Two were in about their third year and were all right. The other one was eighteen or nineteen years old and just starting out and was as green as grass. Didn’t know shit.

“The job was just coming out of the ground, so all the work was in the shop making up ducting to install later. It should have been easy, but things started going to hell right away. All sorts of shit went wrong; the new ten foot brake they sent up got sprung all to hell and wouldn’t bend a shitting thing.”

“How the hell do you spring a brake?” I asked. I knew what a brake was, and I had even helped one of their guys bend up some flashing I needed on the one in Ralph’s shop early one morning before they opened. It could accept strips of metal ten feet long and had two big handles on each end. One handle moved the top part up and down to clamp the metal, and the other had a big cannonball counterweight on it and was used to swing the lower part of the brake up and actually bend the metal. It could mash your fingers if you weren’t careful, and I didn’t see how you could possibly damage something like that.

“They put a hunk of quarter inch plate in the very center and tried to bend it,” Ralph explained. “Then some asshole put a piece of car spring or some damn thing or other in the shear. It put a big knick in the blades and we had to send them off to get reground. One of our pickup trucks lost its oil and blew the engine, and the crank handle on the slip roll broke. It was just one damn thing after another and of course nobody knew anything about how it all happened.

“Everyone was pissed off. The big bosses down in Bernardino, the superintendent, the foreman, everyone. They were losing a lot of money, not only in repairs but also in lost time, and the job wasn’t getting done. I wasn’t a die-hard company man but I wasn’t getting the overtime I had been promised and I was a little pissed off about the whole deal myself. Also, I didn’t like to see good equipment getting all fucked up.

“Anyway, the foreman took a couple of us guys aside and asked us to spend a few nights watching things. There weren’t any of the fancy security systems like there are now, and he didn’t know who else he could trust, so we agreed. The third night we caught the guy, or rather Johnson did. He saw the youngest apprentice come in right about midnight and mess around with the spot welder. He waited until the kid left and then took a look at what he had been up to. The kid had laid a wrench across the output terminals in the switch box. It would have screwed up the electrical wiring, and possibly even have started a fire the first time someone tried to use it.

“This was on a Friday night, so all he did was call up the foreman and tell him what he’d seen. The foreman was going to have to deal with it his own way, probably just fire the little fucker. There wasn’t any real proof, just Johnson’s word against the kid’s, so there wasn’t any point in getting the cops involved.

“The only problem was that the kid didn’t show up for work Monday morning. The bosses changed all of the locks and sure enough the vandalism stopped. They also did some checking around and finally got to the bottom of things. It seemed as how the other shop that had bid on the hospital contract, a local non-union outfit, was a little miffed because they had gotten underbid by an out of town company. The kid that we hired as an apprentice was the son of one of the owners. Nobody ever said for sure but I know damn well what happened; they planted the little shit in our shop to sabotage us.”

“I’ve seen that kind of stuff happen, too,” the electrician offered. “Usually some anti-union feud or something like that.”

“Well anyway,” Ralph continued, “I came to work one Monday, about a week later. The big bosses from San Bernardino were in the office with the super and the foreman. They came up most every Monday for most of the day to do paperwork and keep everyone shaking. I went through the office and into the shop, and the first thing I smelled was shit. I looked around, and the apprentice we had fired was hunched over in the middle of the same ten-foot brake that he had fucked up. His pants were down around his ankles and he had shit all over himself and the floor.

“I was pissed and grabbed his shoulder to get his the hell out of there. He couldn’t move. His ball sack was clamped in the brake. He was white as a ghost and couldn’t talk. I didn’t know what to do, so I ran back up to the office and called an ambulance and the police. The foreman and I waited for the ambulance before we opened the brake to let him loose. They said he must have been there for most of the weekend.”

“Ouch!” Said Carl, speaking for all of us.

“It didn’t really crush his nuts,” Ralph explained. “There was even a string still tied around them that must have been used to pull them into the brake. The clamping surface was only a couple of inches deep, so all it did was mash his bag above his balls. All the veins and cords and stuff were completely flattened out. His balls were already black and rotting and stinking like hell, so I’m sure the doctors cut them off.”

“Who did it?” I asked.

“The cops investigated for a while and questioned everyone, but never came up with anything,” Ralph answered. “His old thirty-fifty Indian motorcycle was parked behind the shop, but they couldn’t figure out how he got in. One thing was sure though, and that was that he couldn’t have done it to himself even if he was fucked up on drugs or something. No way he could reach the handles. Also, he was a strong little shithead and it would have taken a couple of pretty stout guys to get him clamped up like that. It was just like all the stuff in the shop that got fucked up; nobody knew nothing.”

“Whatever became of the guy?” I asked.

“I don’t know. I never saw or heard from him again but the rest of the job went smooth as silk, no vandalism of any kind. I’ll bet you one thing, though,” Ralph said, closing his lunch box and rising to his feet.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“Wherever he is, his voice is about two octaves higher than it used to be. Just like Ron’s will be next week.”

That got a rather uncomfortable laugh from the rest of the crew, and I’ll be damned if Ron’s voice didn’t sound different the next time I talked to him.