The Bow Socket

The Bow Socket

The blast furnace burned at 2,000 degrees as I watched a steel bar burn hot.   The bar glowed red as a strong man lifted it from the furnace and placed it in a forging hammer.  The ground shook as a massive drop hammer slammed to the ground mashing the red hot metal into the die.  The bar was lifted and carried again to a trimming press where another earth shattering sound trimmed the part into shape.  The worker placed the bar back in the furnace reaching for another bar and moving again to the forging hammer to repeat the steps of the forging process.

It was the winter of 1977 when I watched this process.  The heat of the furnace was making my face red.  The outside temperature was zero degrees.  My face was warm, but my feet were cold as I watched these men work in a factory built before Teddy Roosevelt was president.  

It was not the first time that I learned about the horrific conditions in which my father worked.  A 1970 May Day, I came home from school and my Mom wasn't home. A fog came over me that was so thick that warm glow of the sun was blocked out as I heard my Dad, my hero, was hurt.  I remember sobbing and falling into my grandmother's arms.   A malfunctioning press cost my dad two fingers.

A few years would go by before the dangers of working in a forge were brought back home.  I am not sure which of my friends heard that someone was killed at the Bow Socket.  I just know it was the quietest walk home from school.  We were silent hoping, praying that it wasn't one of our Dads.  I remember my Dad coming home that night.  I was so relieved, but to young to understand that someone else was in mourning.

That cold winter night I stood in front of that blast furnace.  The echoes of the drop hammers shaking every fiber of my body as the realization of why my Dad made my brother and I a promise on the day we were born washed over me.  A proud working man made a promise that he never had a chance to dream for himself.

He promised that we would go to college and earn a living with our minds and not our hands.  On that night, I knew I had to make a promise to my Dad.  I couldn't let him down.  I had to fulfill the promise he made to me.

My Dad did not want his sons working in the horrific conditions of the forge.  He wanted us to have a better life.  All we wanted was to be like our Dad.  The hardest working and most loving man that a boy could call a Dad.

My brother and I fulfilled the promise my Dad made as he held us in his arms for the first time.  We are  proud to be the college educated sons of a piece working steel worker.   I will never forget that cold winter night because it was the night I finally comprehended the reason my Dad was so adamant about his sons being men who earned a living with their minds.