To Mammy

I just thought I’d write you a letter, to let you all know how we are doing over here. I know I’ve not been very good at it, so here’s a bit about my day.

The boys and me, we start at 7. It takes me an hour to get in from the Bronx on the subway. Jimmy gets on one stop before me and little Mikey two stops down the line.

We have our lunch pails with us that, for me at least, Eliza made the night before. It’s filling, as always, because we boys work hard, real hard. So we need it.

By the time we get off, there are five of us and we sign in and make our way up to where we left off last night.

At this time of year, it’s pretty cold up there, as exposed as it is, so we keep busy and make sure we don’t hold onto the freezing steel for too long even with gloves. Numb fingers are likely to get chopped off if you can’t hold on properly. The least of our worries, but still a big concern.

Snuzzy knows all about that of course. He won’t be back, ever. In fact he was lucky to make it in almost one piece, that time in the Fall.

We all have our favorite work to do. Favorite places to work. To stand. But we work as a team, looking out for each other.

Looking out for number one first, though. For we all have folks back home depending on us and this edifice we are building, right here in the center of this small and crowded island.

Manhattan is taking shape. Bigger and better, they say. But I don’t think so. The old place was dirtier, that’s true. But now, it’s all about money. And big business. No one cares about the little man at all.

Today’s like any other day, except for one thing, of course. And that changed all of our lives.

Sammy – the Sammy I grew up with over the river in Hoboken – isn’t here today, as he should be.

It all started so innocently, that day last Summer; so normally. At lunchtime, as we did, we stood around on the 54th floor and started to eat. But we all felt it was too dusty to eat our food. So, like we do sometimes, we sat out on a spare girder, out in the fresh air and sunshine. We love it. We’d done now it for months, though never in the cold weather, naturally.

There’s eleven of us, on that girder, back in August. That lunchtime. It seemed so easy, yet looking back it was so fragile, really.

That’s all it was, a freak gust of wind and he was gone. Considering how dangerous this job has been, there have been so few lost, overall. Maybe 3 or 4 so far, that’s all.

We all went to the funeral at St Brendan’s. What a turnout for Sammy it was. You would never have believed it. Hundreds showed up and then for the wake, well, that was almost (but never, of course) worth it.

But we did Sammy proud, you know.

Still we all work there. Life goes on and it’s steady work, though the pay could be better, of course.

Are we different now that we are only ten on the crew after we lost Sammy? Are we more careful; more worried? I don’t think so. Sammy didn’t want to fall, now did he, so how could we try harder to be careful.

But we don’t eat our lunch on that steel. No way. It’s far too dangerous.

As I’m sure you can imagine.

Your loving son

Jerry