 |
 |
So, it was June 1st 1966, and time to start work in earnest, in the C.W.Mills. With some apprehension I turned up for the 7-3 dayshift wondering what was in store for me. To my surprise, who was there but my mate Robert Nicol. It was great to see a familiar face. First memory I have though is of entering the C.W. (Continuous Weld) Mills and nearly crapping myself. The noise, steam, rancid air, dirt, overhead cranes flying back and forth with two and a half ton loads of tubes swinging back and forth like a hammock. Christ what is this place! The noise was deafening. I felt like running back home.
The first week was spent under the beady eye of foreman Jack Lynch, another crusty Jock, what did I expect? His sidekick Martin, forget his first name, was even worse. He treated us like we were reprobates on basic training in the army. Forever lurking around trying to catch us drinking tea or reading the paper instead of sawing the end off mountains of rejected tubes. Designed to bore us rigid! Martin proved to be a right miserable prick. Probably suffering a complex because he wasn’t smart enough to be a foreman.
Alongside the saws was the ‘frazing' machine. Never did understand what the ‘frazing’ bit was supposed to mean. Basically it was a set of chains that you rolled tubes onto when they emerged out of the steam and mist of the cooling racks. The ‘frazing’ I suppose was a term describing the cutters tidying up each end of the tube. Easy enough if interminably boring. Jesus it was mind numbing. But. Silver lining to every cloud.. you shared the duty with your pals and worked an hour on and an hour off. The ‘Number One’ mill produced tubes of a quarter an inch and three eighths of an inch diameter, of varying weight. Took a bit of getting used to, and getting your hands burnt on the hot tubes was a regular hazard. As was the shrapnel flying out of the cutters and into the top of your glove. What a bastard that was!! God forbid if a piece fired into your eye.
Promotion in the mills was working your way along the frazing machines of the four mills which were alongside the railway wagons which were used for scrap metal running parallel to the Central Roadway. This separated the mills from the C.W. Detail department. Moving on to the cooling racks was the next step up and then jobs at the back end of the furnaces followed. On cold days, or nights, when the doors of the C.W. were open, the onrushing air would freeze your balls off.
My time on the frazing machines are memorable for a number of reasons. Not all great. First of all was nearly getting my head knocked off by a slinger on the number one mill. His job was to tie steel slings around a skip of tubes for the crane driver to take away, using sign language and signals. ‘Our’ slinger was a big guy called Tom Smith, a 50 odd year old Glaswegian. He had the misnomer of a nickname, ‘Dainty’. Sitting on a plank of wood set on a couple of bricks, with four other lads adjacent to where Dainty was going about his work, two decided to take the piss, Bobby Milne and Gavin Vint, or Squint as he was called.
Sitting alongside these as Dainty was signalling to the crane driver, Taff Roberts, Bobby and Squint started heckling and when the crane took the tubes away, Dainty turned round and asked who the fuck was doing the shouting. He looked serious. Nobody answered. I made the mistake of shifting my ass from one cheek to the other, which with hindsight wasn't the brightest thing to do. He obviously thought I was going to confront him, and next thing, his fist slammed right into my face, right on the nose. My head was knocked back against the wall, blood pouring from my splattered nose, stars were circling. The lads took me off to the wash house to get cleaned up. Talk about a rude awakening to the ‘big outside world’ as our old schoolmaster Syd Owen had warned us about! Dainty did later apologise but word apparently went around the mills and he was probably fearing I would report him and he’d get the sack. Guys from the back end of the mills came to see if I was ok and to tell me it was out of character for big Dainty. He needn’t have worried. There was no way I was going to go crying to the foreman or manager that the big oaf had flattened me. Someone later asked me why I didn’t hit him back. I was 16, nine stone or something dripping wet, my nose had been splattered, I was seeing stars, and truth was, I didn’t feel like getting another belt on the nose! An early lesson it was. You’re not at school now.
Another lasting memory was when I was on the number two mill frazing machine, working with two inch tubes. Easier to handle but the shrapnel spitting out were even bigger!
I was on nightshift when the slinger on this mill, a Welshman, Ernie Leaker, asked me as I was heading off to the canteen for my hour’s break, to get him some cigarettes out of the vending machine. When I entered the canteen, a group of lads were playing cards and I joined in. The hour flew by and of course, Ernie’s cigarettes had gone completely out of my mind. He was waiting for me on my return, gasping for a fag and was raging when I told him I’d forgot! When he calmed down he gave me another job to do, telling me to nip down to the Detail where the tea urns were, to fill up his billy can. And he gave me money for milk from the vending machines alongside. As luck would have it, I got talking with a pal down there, filled Ernie’s can up with hot water and then my mind went blank. What was it Ernie wanted? I stood there looking at the vending machines trying to remember, and bought him a packet of biscuits! Handing over his billy can he asked me where the milk was. ‘Milk?’ I said. I gave him the biscuits. Ernie went off his head, called me every effin’ thing, you name it. And stormed off to do the job himself, leaving me feeling gormless and.. well hopeless! I was never that bright on nightshift!
