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| Felipe de Ortego y Gasca about 1943 |
Excerpt from Bravo Road: A memoir; author, Felipe de Ortego y Gasca
By Felipe de Ortego y Gasca
I was 14 when I first heard the name “Carnegie” in association with the word “steel.” As a wild orphan waif from the sun, in 1940 I was taken in by my father’s cousin, Rumaldo Mendez and his wife Mrs Lucy. They lived in Brinton, Pennsylvania, halfway between the Carnegie steel works in Braddock, Pennsylvania, and the Westinghouse Electric plant in East Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. A trolley line from Pittsburgh ran through Braddock ending in East Pittsburgh, cutting through Brinton.
I didn’t learn about the history of Carnegie until I studied American history at Pitt during the years I was an undergraduate there from 1948 to 1952. However, my first job in 1946 after my Marine Corps years during World War II (1943-1946) was as a laborer at the Carnegie Steel Works in Braddock, Pennsylvania. As a laborer I was assigned to a gang of workers for manual and menial work throughout the plant.
Quite often gangs were used to “break down” the Bessemer blast furnaces which turned out the steel. That is, to “tear down” the interior brick lining of the furnaces. More often than not, the furnaces were still “hot”—that is, the bricks were hot enough to burn exposed skin. When “tearing down” those still hot furnaces, we worked with asbestos vests and gloves and shields. We also wore wooden clogs to keep our shoes from igniting as we traipsed across the floors of the furnaces strewn with embers hot bricks.
When we were through, masons would put up a new lining of bricks on the inside walls of the furnaces. The Bessemer process was the first industrial process for the mass-production of steel from molten pig iron. The process was named after Henry Bessemer, who patented the process in 1855. The slow Bessemer furnaces were replaced by Open-Hearth furnaces which were ultimately replaced by Electric-arc furnaces.
Oftentimes, gangs were taken down into the flues of the furnaces, there to “bag-out” the crust of soot that accumulated on the walls of the flues. We did the clean-out work without masks or respirators. Our work clothes had to be washed immediately. Showers were essential. Cleaning the flues was not one of my favorite jobs. Neither was working on the Ore-Trestle, that part of the steel mill where standard-sized gondolas and half-sized gondolas filled with “ore” from mining sites were shunted for discharge into waiting chain-driven metal carts routed on rails to the top of the furnaces where they spilled into the mix with other products in the steel-making process.
To empty the gondolas of their ore, laborers released the locks of the chutes at the bottom of the gondolas. In warm weather, the ore would just slide out of the gondolas into the waiting buckets. In cold weather when the ore was most likely frozen in the gondolas, laborers would bang the sides of the gondolas with 50 or 75 pound sledge hammers to expedite the slide of the ore. Particularly hard cases of frozen ore in the gondolas required someone to climb the gondola and with a long metal lance (bar) poke at the ore to urge a slide. To avoid losing a man with a suddenly unexpected surge, the lancers were tethered to the rim of the gondola. Though I never witnessed the loss of a lancer, stories circulated with gruesome details about lancers who failed to get tethered and disappeared with the slide of ore into the buckets. The details that followed were lurid. In the drawing the Stock House would be the Ore Trestle. Below the Ore Trestle the skip cars are filled with ore, coke, and limestone.
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| Chart by author |
I was young and barely into my twenties but strong. That 129 pound kid of 17 who went off to Parris Island in South Carolina in August of 1943 emerged from the Marine Corps as a strong 140 pound man of 20 in search of the promises of life, ready to tackle it with 75 pound sledgehammers. Good naturedly I was the Mexican kid who had been a Marine. We were all aware of the boundaries of being good natured. The teamwork of the military was evident in the teamwork of the gangs on the Ore Trestle. Most of the gang had been in the Army, some in the Navy, I was the only one who had been in the Marine Corps during the War.
Wherever the labor gangs worked or converged, there was a lot of ruckus, cursing, and kibbitzing. The secret was not to take anything said personally, to become adept with reposts that let everyone know you were a regular guy who took in stride the ribbing that depended heavily on stereotyping. We were wops, spics, krauts, and—unfortunately—niggers. Despite the labels we were a reasonably cohesive group.
The Machine Shop section of the Mill attracted me most. The Old-time machinists were a no-nonsense group of professionals. On my rounds, I’d stop long enough to chat with them. I explained that in addition to being a Rifleman in the Marine Corps I had been an Aviation Machinist Mate, working on Corsair airplane engines to keep them aloft with Marine Corps pilots. That caught the attention of the Chief Machinist who had me assigned to the machinist group as an apprentice machinist. It didn’t take long for me to become one of the group—the Mexican kid . . . a Marine during the War.
In 1948 some gnawing awareness had wormed into my consciousness that urged me to consider college. The two colleges nearby were the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Tech. Going to college was actually spurred by an incident with two Carnegie Tech students working part-time at the Mill with one of the gangs I was attached to. A kibbitzing bout with them turned ugly, growing into a fist fight. They did a number on me but I gave as good as I got. Se me subio lo Mexicano. Their elitist comments got my dander up. Strange feelings of low esteem invaded my confidence and self-worth.
I sought out the local office of the Veterans Administration. Thanks to the V.A. in 1948 when I was 22 I was enrolled at the University of Pittsburgh as a provisional student with only one year of high school. As a student on the G.I. Bill I received a $125 dollars a month stipend from the government for my service during World War II. All my education expenses were covered by the G.I. Bill. That was the start of my academic career as a high school teacher first then as a professor in higher education, spanning 50 years.
Focusing on my studies at Pitt, I was unable to continue as an apprentice machinist at the Carnegie Steel Works so I signed on to the labor gangs at the Jones & Laughlin Steel Plant closer to the University of Pittsburgh on the north side of the Monongahela River near the 22nd Street Bridge leading to the South Side of Pittsburgh. I needed the money at the time to support a wife and a growing family. Eventually I went to work at the Homestead plant of U. S. Steel where I learned about the labor tactics of Andrew Carnegie and the Homestead Strike of 1892 during which Carnegie’s administration brought in Pinkerton agents as strike breakers. The melee was brutal. I vowed to continue my union membership with the Mine & Mill Workers of America which I kept up until 1952 when I finished my studies at Pitt.
In 1950 I was accepted into the Advanced Air Force ROTC Program at Pitt from which I received a stipend of $28 dollars a month. Every little bit helped to keep me and my family afloat. During the years from 1946 to 1952, I was also working as a jazz guitarist with different groups and combos around Pittsburgh, travelling a circuit when my studies permitted from Pittsburgh to Chicago. My life was filled with promise, purpose, and hope. My life would be different from the lives of my parents.
As a Comparative Studies major at Pitt, I focused on languages (English, Spanish, and French), literature, and philosophy. At graduation exercises at Pitt in 1952 I received a gold bar as a 2nd Lieutenant in the Air Force Reserve. In six years I had moved forward in life by leaps and bounds. My regret was that my parents were not there to share that moment with me and my family.
Short of pilots due to the Korean Conflict, in 1952 the Air Force put out a call for pilot training. I applied and was accepted. I was 26-½ years old. A waiver from the Secretary of the Air Force kept me in the program since 26 was the maximum age. I reported for pilot training at Goodfellow Air Force Base in San Angelo, Texas, the day before my 27th birthday—the absolute cut-off date.
Editor’s Note:
Felipe sent me a photo of him as a very young Marine, but it was of low resolution so I asked him if he had another better photo of those times, and, by the way, what had drawn him to enlist.
His answer:
Sadly, I’ve no photos anymore of that time. Time, Tide, and moves have gobbled them up. I joined the Marines in August 1943 during the dark days of World War II when we weren’t sure we’d win the war. In May 1943 I completed the 9th grade of school. I should have completed the 11th grade. When I started school in 1932 I spoke no English and our teachers spoke no Spanish. I was held back to repeat 1st grade. Making no real progress with English by the time I reached the 4th grade, I was held back once more. It’s ironic that given my difficulty with the English language I wound up with a Ph.D. in English. Anyway, what prompted my joining the Marines when I turned 17 in 1943 was the dark mood of the country and patriotism to defend it. There were many 17 year-olds like me who signed up. At war’s end I wound up at Iwo (Jima) and Okinawa. I came home from the Pacific in 1946 and at 20 I was prepared for the world’s challenges and promises. I hung up my uniform with its plastron of medals and set out to meet my destiny. Here I am at 88 fulfilled by that destiny.
Felipe de Ortego y Gasca is Professor Emeritus of English, Texas State University System (Retired 1999), Founding Director, Chicano Studies Program, UT El Paso, 1970-72, the first Chicano Studies Program in Texas, and Editor-in-Chief, of the forthcoming Greenwood Encyclopedia of Latino Issues Today.