Gay Talese (GT) and Bob Walsh (BW)
<<Gay Talese reading from “The Bridge”>>
When I first moved to New York in the middle 1950s, I often asked myself: Whose fingerprints are on the bolts and the beams of these soaring edifices in this overreaching city? Who are the high-wire walkers, wearing boots and hard hats, earning their living by risking the their lives in places where falls are often fatal and where the bridges and skyscrapers are looked upon as sepulchers by the families and the coworkers of the deceased?
BW: My oldest brother, he was in the business. There was a demand for a lot of apprentices so my brother asked me if I’d like to work on the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge. I said, ”Sure, why not?” You know? It was gonna be the biggest bridge in the world at the time.
GT: And you were 18?
BW: Just became 18, yeah.
<<Gay Talese reading from “The Bridge”>>
They are part circus, part gypsy–graceful in the air, restless on the ground; it is as if the wide-open road below lacks for them the clear direction of an eight-inch beam stretching across the sky six hundred feet above the sea. Some who do welding see flashes at night while they sleep. Most have taken falls and broken a limb or two. All have seen death.
BW: When I was 11 years old, my father had gotten killed in this business.
GT: And you fell one day…
BW: Yes uh, I would jump from one beam to the other and they were probably about five feet apart and uh, I didn’t make the next beam. And I was fortunate enough that the nets were there. But, we lost a fellow out of local 40, a fellow by the name of McKee. He went through a hole in the catwalk…
GT: …and fell about four or five hundred feet to his death in the water.
BW: Yeah, he did yeah.
<<Gay Talese reading from “The Bridge”>>
Men watched him fall, feet first. Then his body tilted forward, his shirt blowing off, his bare back, white against the dark sea and saw him splash hard below.
GT: Tell us about your children, please, because two of your sons are ironworkers.
BW: They’re ironworkers. Now I’ll have to say the oldest fellow, he got hurt a couple of years ago. A piece of timber came down 11 stories and it hit him in the head. But he came out of it very well, I’ll have to say that. And now he’s got three sons that are ironworkers as well.
GT: Wouldn’t they make more money and take less risks doing something else?
BW: Well, it’s probably not in our blood.
<<Gay Talese reading from “The Bridge”>>
They tell their sons the good parts: adventure and big cars and big money and gambling on rainy weekends when the bridge is slippery. Hardly ever describing how men sometimes freeze with fear on high steel and clutch to beams with closed eyes. All of them building something big and permanent, something that can be revisited years later and pointed to: See that bridge over there, son? Well, one day when I was young I drove 1,200 rivets into that goddamn thing.
BW: That’s what I think of when I go over the Verrazano Bridge. I’m just a proud ironworker. I really am.