A Legacy Project

I was standing next to the crane with a sandwich in my hand. My Italian father-in-law, the crane operator on our crew, was fixing stuff. I was going to find some shade next to one of the trucks and eat with the American guys, the five of us who had been setting panels for concrete basement walls all morning. It was August 1977, sunny and hot. It was heavy work. We would eat and rest for 20 minutes, while Dutch–that was the Americanized nickname for Canducci–patched broken panels. 

“Don’t you want to learn how to operate this thing?”

He’d asked me more than once.

I felt like I’d passed the test. A lot of laborers didn’t last a week. I’d made through the whole summer. When he asked I shrugged a reply. I didn’t think so.

The crane was a yellow beast with a long black boom in three pieces that we assembled when we arrived at a new job site. It rotated on a vertical axle, lowering nine- and twelve-foot panels from a truck into the hole dug for the basement. It was dangerous work. That summer a twelve-foot panel had fallen on a guy on another crew and broken his back. I was especially afraid of the crane. The first thing I learned when I started the job was that it killed guys, dropping stuff on them, crushing their skulls if they were looking for tools in the side compartment when the crane swung around and the counterweight caught them.

So when Dutch asked, I held up my sandwich and motioned toward the crew. 

One time he said, “Impara l’arte e mettila da parte.” 

Some days Tim, one of the laborers, would finish his lunch fast and climb up into the crane cab. There were levers and pedals, gas, clutch, brake. And weighted by a heavy black ball, the long steel cable that ran the length of the boom. You rotated up to 270 degrees up there, you picked up stuff and set it down. It was about timing, feel, distance and motion measured in yards, feet, and inches, coordinated use of both hands and both feet. The seasoned operators, like Dutch and Joe Bell and John Paul, had finesse They made it look easy.   

“Like playing the piano,” I said once. 

And was told I was full of shit.

“There he goes,” the guys would say, rolling their eyes, making fun of Tim.  As far as I could tell, he wasn’t really catching on.  

I think now: I could have learned. 

“Impara l’arte e mettila da parte.” You learn a skill and set it aside. You learn it because there’s value in knowing it. Art for art’s sake. Who knows? It might come in handy in the future. 

Today I see it as a missed opportunity. Just as when I was 16 years old, I should have learned arc welding from my dad. He was a good teacher. I could have learned arc welding from him and crane from Dutch. Some opportunities never knock twice.