I had just turned 20. I didn’t care about a career. Nor did I care about health care (every job provided that then). It was the $16-an-hour thing. That’s what I cared about. That and proving to my father I could be worth something in the world. All I had to do was show up every day and work really hard, and then maybe I’d get into the union. And then, after four years of apprenticeship, I’d get the big dollars, make my father proud, and buy whatever the hell I wanted. Like a new thing I’d read about called a CD player.
Get The Primary Source
I had tried the college route. For a year and a half. But I didn’t want to be behind a desk, as I had been for the previous 13 years. I wanted to be outside. Move. Drive around. Actually do things. So I took the job with the HVAC shop in Newton, and my career as a refrigeration mechanic began.
One of the dispatchers handed me a beeper. And when it beeped, I’d drive around till I found a payphone without the handset ripped off, scrounge a quarter from my coffee holder, and dial the office.
The author repairs an exhaust fan on the roof of the Iowa River Power Restaurant in Coralville, Iowa.Danforth Johnson
As a changer of air filters, I was always on the move, picking up my order at Filter Sales in Charlestown and then driving to the first businesses on my list so I could set up my ladder. I wore out more than one Arrow Street Atlas trying to find my way around eastern Massachusetts. Charlestown to Jamaica Plain to Allston to Somerville to South Boston. Not only did I not know where I was going, I had no idea what I was doing. I’d never even handled a pipe wrench before. I remember one journeyman, laughing at me when, on a snowy rooftop somewhere in Brighton, I tried to loosen a ¾-inch union by pushing a pipe wrench in the wrong direction. “You know,” he said, “those things only go one way. See the teeth on it? You gotta pull ‘em. See?”
I attended union school a few nights a week in Dorchester and worked in the trade in the daylight hours. After four years of apprenticeship, I was making the big money. I distinctly recall feeling rich and accomplished one warm spring day in Boston when I walked out of a mechanical room beneath a parking ramp near Storrow Drive and across the parking lot to Strawberry Records and Tapes, where I purchased my first CD, “September of my Years,” by Frank Sinatra. And I didn’t even fret about the cost. Because I was now a journeyman.
I got used to spending most of my time in the company of machines. About half the machines were located on rooftops, so I learned to enjoy being outside in all weather. First, I’d determine what the machine wasn’t doing that it was intended to do, in what ways it deviated from the spirit of its original design. And then I’d align it with that spirit. It was a fine life.
It gave me a boost to repair a broken thing. It made me feel sort of like a miniature god. And the math worked. After I fixed a machine, I got paid. After I fixed two machines, I got paid twice. It was a good, simple, miniature-god-like life.
After nine years in the trade, I gave college another go. I paid my way by doing jobs under the table for a union outfit on the North Shore. I fell in love with a girl during a literature class, eloped with her to Niagara, and soon thereafter left Boston for Iowa, where I found work at yet another union shop in Cedar Rapids. I’ve been running my own one-man shop for the past 20 years.
When COVID hit, my phone stopped ringing. It might sound like I’m being dramatic, but even after working in the trade for four decades, it took only a week of inactivity to convince myself that I was unable to fix anything. All the years of experience boiled down to nothing at all. What is the worth in the world of a mechanic who sits on the couch and watches “Gunsmoke” all day? The answer to that math problem is zero. Zero worth.
The stream of cash that once flowed into our reservoir slowed considerably. We ceased going to restaurants and shows. We didn’t fly anywhere. Didn’t rent any hotel rooms. Didn’t remodel the downstairs bathroom the way we’d planned. Didn’t buy the new work truck I thought I needed.
My wife and I took walks. I read more. Listened to more music. I set aside the calculus of productivity and worth. I slowed down. Allowed myself to be happy. And lazy. I decided that 40 years was a long enough stretch of being responsible for all that equipment. All those people. I was tired of working. I didn’t want to work anymore. Even though my longtime customers were still closed for business, I informed them that I intended to continue with my sabbatical for an entire year.
My year, however, lasted only eight months. That’s when the cash ran out. I took my first call on a hot day in early June. Old Chicago, a large restaurant I’d serviced for a number of years, had no air conditioning. “Joe, you gotta help me,” said Bill, the owner. “They shut me down.”
“Who shut you down?”
“Well,” he said, “I called some big outfit from Cedar Rapids about the AC, and they said it couldn’t be fixed. They shut it all down and said it needed to be replaced. But the thing is, they can’t get the new equipment shipped till October.”
When I showed up on the job, I found the kitchen eerily still and quiet. Bill, a man I’d guess to be somewhere in his early 80s, was waiting for me at the bar. The air temperature inside the empty restaurant was over 90 degrees. “I sent everyone home a week ago,” he said.
Six rooftop HVAC units served the kitchen and dining area. One unit had a bad supply fan motor, so I replaced it. Two had refrigerant leaks. I repaired them. One needed a new expansion valve, and one needed a new thermostat. I replaced them.
I had felt a little guilty about leaving my customers hanging, given the shortage of service technicians available. Besides, I realized that I missed working. I missed the rooftops. Being so close to all that weather. I missed the humming mechanical rooms. The customers I’d come to know. That fleeting jolt of joy that comes when the broken piece of equipment whirrs to life. I’d missed the easy reassurance of my worth that taking walks doesn’t provide.
Bill reopened Old Chicago the following day. As I was handing him the work order, I noticed that the conveyor on the large pizza oven in the kitchen wasn’t turning.
“Oh,” he said, “That thing hasn’t worked for eight months. The guy said it needed a part, and it’s been on order.”
“For eight months?” I said.
“Yeah.”
I ordered the part online and replaced it two days after that. Then I quickly went through the rest of the equipment. The ice machine was operational. The coolers. Freezers. Air conditioners. Coffee machines. Infrared cheese melters. Ovens. Grills. Exhaust fans. I changed a few fan belts and gas valves, and then everything was perfect. I believed I’d done a good thing.
Two months later, however, Bill told me he’d had enough. He was closing the place for good.
“I can’t keep it going,” he said. “I can’t hire anyone! Nobody wants to work anymore!”
Joe Blair is an author and refrigeration mechanic in Iowa.
