The Zinc Plant Cell Room: What Made It Worth It

My cousin Summer read my post on freezing in the zinc plant cell room and she wondered what made it worth it.

Her comment to me has had me thinking a lot about this. 

I try not to make the past better than it was, so I'm diligent when I write about working in the cell room to make sure that first and foremost I tell the truth, as I experienced it, that the cell room was hell, a clamorous, acidy, rotten egg sulfurous, often sweltering, always dangerous hell.

That's the foundational reality of the cell room. It was hell.  Anything else I ever write about the cell room must be understood as happening within this reality. '

And, here's another truth:  I enjoyed it.  I never missed a shift. No matter if I'd been out drinking until after midnight before day shift, no matter how hot I knew it was going to be, no matter if working that first of a string of six graveyard shifts meant working all night instead of sleeping, I never missed a shift and I often looked forward to working in the cell room.

In fact, to this day, when I have dreams about the zinc plant ceHll room, they aren't nightmares, even though in my dreams I can smell the rotten egg stench of the place and feel its summer heat.

Now, I surely did not know I would come to enjoy being a stripper when I broke in.  

My first shift was a 3-11 on an above 90 degree day and Jim Hawkins was my teacher.

He handed me a hook and demonstrated how to hook the aluminum plate, pull it up to the drainer, replace the plate and work my way through the cell and how to load the plates on the truck and move on to the next cell.

My muscles were completely unprepared for this work.  Some braid of muscle runs inside the forearm that pulling plates exercised and I had never used this braid of muscle before.

My right hand was unused to holding a hook and then a sharpened chisel to strip with.

Bending down to pull each plate out of the cell, electric heat and sulfur blasted my face, nearly making me vomit.  

On that first night, I had no rhythm, my muscles were unformed,  and I had little tolerance for the heat.  Once in the stripping room, I was like a barroom brawler.  Ever see a barroom brawler fight a guy who knows how to box?  The brawler swings wildly, throws haymakers, wastes energy on needless motion, while the boxer efficiently moves inside these wild punches and with short jabs, each powered by the shifting of his weight from back foot to front, pummels the brawler.

I whacked the zinc covered aluminum plates with wild swings of the chisel, with stripping room haymakers, exhausting myself with needlessly long swings of the chisel.  Jim Hawkins saw me flail away and said, "Bill.  Take it easy.  Watch."  Like the efficient boxer, Jim found the zinc's sweet spot, struck the zinc with short strokes of the chisel once or twice, and quickly removed the zinc from the plate.  "See, you don't have to hit it hard.  You just gotta hit it right."


In basketball, I was the worst defensive player ever to wear a Kellogg Wildcat uniform.  In my head, I could see what I was supposed to do, but never could translate it into physical action.  When an opponent saw we were in a man to man defense and whoever saw I was guarding him would yell to his teammates, "Give me the damn ball!"  Had I played full time and not been mostly a benchwarmer, the players I guarded would have nightly broken conference scoring records that would still stand today.

It was the same with with pulling plates and stripping.  In my head, I could see what Jim was doing, but I couldn't translate it into physical action that night.  In the eight hours I worked, with a couple of breaks, I probably pulled four loads.  Jim was a gyppo stripper.  I think my four loads were part of the twelve loads he pulled that night.  Being a great guy, Jim didn't get upset that my slow work kept him from leaving as early as he could have. 

Worn out, dehydrated, feeling sick to my stomach, I got called into the shifter's office.  I think the shift boss was Crosby.  "Woolum," he said, "We need you in the morning.  Be here about a quarter to seven for day shift and someone else will help break you in more."

I went back to the lunch room and the guys sitting in there wondered why Crosby called me in.

"I'm workin' day shift tomorrow."

Laughter.

"Jesus Christ!  No shit!  You got short shifted your first day.  You make it through tomorrow, you'll be all right.  But, shit, that ain't right.  Gettin' short shifted right off the bat." 

More laughter.

I made it through the next day.  Killebrew helped me some, but I pretty much got eight loads out and it took me all eight hours.

I began to realize, though, that I worked with guys who did ten or twelve minute loads.  These guys were really good.

And I started to get good enough.

And that's when things got more fun.

I started to develop a sense of rhythm and efficiency as I pulled a plate, swung it on the drain, pivoted to the truck, got a clean plate, dropped in the cell and was pulling the next plate out while the new plate dropped in.  I got stronger and moved plates from the drainer to my truck more efficiently and neatly.  I learned how to hop off the truck as I moved to the next cell and have my hook in the first plate almost before the truck stopped.

This rhythm and efficiency felt good.  It's what I dream about and wish I could do again.

Likewise, I learned what kind of chisel I stripped best with and I learned to find the plate's sweet spot and made all my motion count, and quit wasting it. 

I got better at pulling the plates from between the zinc sheets and got better at stacking the zinc.

There was a reward for getting better.  Guys wanted to work with me.  I'd get my load stripped and someone would come over and say, "Here, I'll stack.  Then you stack for me."  We got our work done more quickly and got to get in a little bullshit, too.

Toward the end of that first summer in the cell room, I got scheduled to work on the same shifts as Merle Buhl, a kid I'd know since the 7th grade.

Merle and I had worked together at the IGA store and we liked each other and knew we worked well together.

We were only pulling eight loads on most shifts, and now we could could get a load out in just under a half an hour and so we helped each other stack zinc and then we decided we do the following:  pull four loads, in two hours, take an hour break, pull two more loads in an hour, take another hour break, and then take an hour to finish up and then have an hour to help clean up or do any other odd jobs the shifter might assign us.

I loved those breaks.  Bullshitting in the lunch room with Merle and other guys was really fun, telling stories, bitching, laughing, and, on day shift, listening to the guys on cell repair tell their latest stories about motorcycles and snowmobiles and hunting, or on graveyard listen to the guys who gyppoed on experimentals talk about their luck that day betting on horses at Playfair.

But the best part was getting in that pulling, draining, replacing, stripping, stacking rhythm.  Yes, there were times when the solution was off and the zinc stuck to the plates and stripping was really hard.  Most of the time, though, things went smoothly and I looked forward to getting to work and finding out whether Bruce Wilson remembered where he parked his card the night before and how he got to work if he's lost his car again or finding out how Bob Cassidy thought the National League playoffs would come out and wondering what new ways he'd have to denigrate Johnny Bench or see what the guys thought of how the Wildcats played football that night when I worked graveyard.

Yes, there were guys I avoided.  Scary guys.  They left me alone and I had enough cred that if there was a work problem, we talked straight about it.

When I came on a shift at the cell room, I knew what to expect.  The work was repetitive with only a few surprises and I took pleasure in this and I enjoyed feeling my body get stronger and more efficient and I really enjoyed the men I worked with.

That's what made it worth it.

(And, the money was pretty good for a teenager.)