Luchesi Steel, Gomez and the Fatman
Existential confusion reigned in the summer of 74! The Watergate scandal had driven that maladroit paranoid love child of Joe McCarthy and Roy Cohen, Tricky Dick Nixon, on a government paid early retirement to the beaches of San Clemente. Mediocre grades my freshman year at my private University in Atlanta, spending more time smoking dope and watching the Watergate hearings than studying, had left me both confused about my future and angry about the wider world I would enter in three short years. My desultory attitude towards my studies and overall 60s hippy views on life had led to well earned threats from my dad to "hit the books or come home to Somerset Community College,"
Home in Jersey for the summer, still with no idea what the future might look like or how to get there, I figured I needed to earn some cash, and found a job along with several high school buddies at a factory 20 miles and a world away from my parents' bucolic Somerset County home. There were some hard lessons on offer along with the union wages and steel beams in that mill, precariously hanging on by its dirty finger nails. Along with the United Steelworkers who’d punched out middle class lives in the crumbling cavernous brick factory, squeezing the last blood from an industry and a way of life gone bad, well on the way to extinction, I discovered what life might have in store should I not seize the future my parents and grandparents had worked so hard to make possible. It was the very lesson my father desperately hoped I might learn that summer.
The cavernous facility we sleepily stumbled into every weekday to punch our time clocks at 8AM sharp was spread over 20 acres. Contained beneath the 10 foot prison gray soot covered walls topped with razor wire were numerous airplane hanger sized shops, separated by yards littered with discarded and rusting detritus left over from a more prosperous time. Each morning, boxcars trundling and creaking slowly on rusting tracks that terminated between the grinding and painting sheds, discharged their heavy loads, for all the world looking like the cattle cars entering Auschwitz in grainy WWII black and whites.
The facility was owned by Mr. Lucchesi, a tubercular man with a pockmarked minister’s face, a gambler’s heart, and an executioner's depraved soul, who left his cramped office and roamed the yard daily. It was unclear what he hoped to achieve as he slowly circumnavigated the facility, occasionally picking up nails or steel cuttings and admonishing any unfortunate worker who might be nearby, over the clearly profligate waste. Some of the more astute workers were certain that the real reason the jefe made his rounds was to ensure that the state building inspectors were well compensated, and that the shoddy, hurried work met the necessities of the increasingly shrinking bottom line of this doleful bloated swindler.
Inside the shop, the place was loud. A thousand jet engines broadcast through a broken woofer. Under his watchful eye trusted workers tagged beams for the mob. Paint was slathered to save a few dimes where welds were required. Dead eyes, clanging gates, coughing up steel filings - hell on earth, good will toward none. Sympathy for the devil was the lone salvation. Ah mama can this really be the end?
You could track the late 20th century history of industrial New Jersey on the ride down I-287 to that atavistic factory. Rising at dawn each day, still exhausted from the prior day’s labor, we’d make our way through central Jersey. Soon enough, the middle class suburbs on their half acre lots with expansive green lawns gradually gave way to compact working class towns as you made your way south. A few miles further on, a blood red chemically stained sun would rise over the Amboy flatlands, eventually leading to abandoned factories and belching smokestacks following the train tracks to the hulking structures where we’d spend the summer.
Three of my friends from high school got jobs that summer at the mill. My best buddy Joseph Dale, who went by JD, Anthony Spatziola, aka “The Fatman,” and Vito Mastroantonio, known by all as “Gomez” due to his striking resemblance to the pater Familia of a gothic family in a popular TV sitcom.
JD was an aspiring intellectual back from his freshman year at the University of Chicago, studying Marx, the forgotten legend of first Heisman trophy winner Jay Berwanger, and Milton Friedman in no particular order. There, the progeny of John Rockefeller’s attempts at civic redemption were treated to rigorous academic discipline provided by distinguished minds. The eminent scholars assigned and analyzed “great books” while at the same time filling the minds of impressionable undergraduates with right wing intellectual gruel gussied up in academic jargon disguised as a “common sense”rejection of the socialist dogma of the still gasping counterculture.
Their twisted vision of corporate capitalism took this bleeding heart liberal from Green Point off Flatbush Ave, by way of the Township of New Corleone in Jersey and squeezed his brain so hard he came out the other side sounding like a cross between Vladimir Lenin and Joe Montana. The boy played quarterback for a struggling program, where at 6”4 180, he was heavier than all but one member of his offensive line. Between record level QB sackings he found time to memorize “The Communist Manifesto” by the sound of the L clacking its way through Hyde Park on the south side. JD came home that summer to Jersey, body beat to shit, long black hair scraggly, claiming he was "of the people." The reality was, we were both a little burned out and looking forward to playing with each other's heads for another summer. Maybe we could turn back the clock like we were still in high school - for one last time.
Tony Spatziola could not have been more different than JD. A brilliant scientist and math wizard, who scored a perfect 1600 on the SAT, the Fatman was a local legend. Tall, gangly, swarthy, with deep set coal black penetrating eyes, and sporting a sad attempt at a mustache, Anthony had remarkably poor taste in music - gravitating towards heavy metal “hair bands,” and an even worse sense of style.
Rain or shine, hot or cold, the Fatman religiously avoided even the Levis 501s, de rigueur for hippies and non-hippies alike at the time, instead opting for thin wale corduroys, cut off in summer, and invariably stained with grease from his time working under the hoods of the various Ford clunkers and hot rods he fiddled with on the weekends. He spent his spare time under the chassis at Englishtown Speedway working the pit crews on funny cars.
The grease stained shorts and snow white legs with dark socks were usually topped off by one of the numerous Grand Funk RR tees he liberated from thrift bins. On his size 12 feet he wore nondescript brown shoes, more likely to adorn the feet of street corner preachers living on park benches than 18-year-olds off to the Ivies. He was, to put it kindly, sartorially challenged. Rigidly Italian and Catholic, he and JD, a long-fallen altar boy, could debate Catholic theology, morality, and ethics long into the night. For the Fatman, Church doctrine was accepted without question, (though he remained mildly peeved with regard to the liberal reforms of Vatican 23), if straight out of the middle ages, and thus capable of sending JD into a rage, so much the better.
Working at the mill that summer, and especially during the commute each day up and down I-287, JD, Gomez, and I had the wondrous opportunity of listening to the Fatman philosophize on life. Fast cars, fast women (the stuff of dreams in these still virginal teen boys), and a roast beef hoagie. The Fatman had it wired. All one required for a fulfilling life could be found in these three simple pleasures. Brilliant as this boy was, his head clearly had a few screws loose. JD and I understood that early on.
The last of our crew heading toward the South Pittsfield plant was Gomez. For reasons unclear, the Fatman had always stuck by this strange, out of time character from a Mario Puzo novel. While the rest of the motley high school crew was debating whether Paul was dead and Joe Willie White Shoes, aka Joe Namath, was the greatest quarterback of all time, Gomez was cruising to Sinatra in a ‘65 white Cadillac rag top with red leather interior. Strange dude.
Gomez was a Jersey bred 2nd generation Italian-American, for all that stereotype might entail, good and bad. In modern parlance where the term is no longer viewed as a pejorative, but even proudly claimed as an identity, a “guido.” Think “Goodfellas” meets “Jersey Shore.”
I never quite understood the Fatman’s connection to Gomez. Other than the Italian thing, they had nothing in common. When my folks moved to Rachel Cooper’s Central Jersey dream house to start my sophomore year of high school, Gomez was one of the first people I came across during orientation. Sitting in the bleachers a couple of rows in front of me, surrounded by a group of loud, clean-cut jocks and ROTC uniform clad cadets who were teasing and bullying him unmercifully, Gomez was dressed in a black banlon stretch knit polo, shiny black pants, and black, pointy toed, patent leather boots - a Jersey stereotype straight out of Grease or the Sopranos and completely out of place as he continually ran a comb through his oily, slicked back, jet black pompadour.
To the continuing taunts, Gomez sat quietly until standing and pointing he warned his nemeses, “Better get out of my face motherfuckers. My dad is a made man and your time will come! Cousin Vito from Bayonne is visiting next week, and I know where you live.” At this, everyone laughed until the vice principal put an end to the shenanigans. Years later, his dad, Senior VP at Mussolini Tire and Rubber was busted by the feds in a RICO action. Shit, reality was, his dad was connected. Bet the Reggins were glad the Wise Guys had a sense of humor.
I would find out in time that on a scale of teen iniquities at this new high school, one being insignificant annoyance and ten being ignorant, knuckle-dragging life altering morons, Gomez was a two, while his hecklers were stone cold tens - the lot of them. Gomez was a minor irritant. The others were a bunch of neo-fascist right wing cretins from the other side of town. Racist, antisemitic, semi-violent Neanderthals, they trafficked in slander, meanness, and biliousness - a crew of crude rednecks who could have passed for assistant football coaches at any field in rural Texas. Sadly, you will find a version of them in every high school in America.
They represented the dark side of adolescence - brainless, talentless thugs who get off on making others miserable. On that day, Gomez was their chosen victim. I would have my chance later to feel their lash. To this pack of jackals, being a Jew put you just above the North Bridge Street darkly complected untouchables. They even named their little gang of thugs the Reggins. Drop the S, spell it backwards, and you’ll get the picture.
When the first black family moved into Brady Trails, their rundown fiercely defended hood several years later, these great Americans killed the family dog on day one - and then to show they were serious, burned the house down on day 3. A firm no vote for integration, Jersey style.
Our fellow workers at the plant were a typical assortment of Jersey funk and ethnic jive. Poles, Germans, blacks, Italians, Irish - Americans all, thrown together on a $25 an hour path to mind deadening oblivion. Thinking was not part of the job description. This place was Frederick Taylor's division of industrial labor run to its gasping end. Each job had been divided and subdivided until all individual thought and control had been purged from the line. We ground steel, moved steel, painted steel, punched holes in steel, and welded steel, without any thought whatsoever. From the very first day there I counted the hours and minutes until liberation and a return to college in Atlanta where I vowed to study hard so as to never end up in a place like this. Lesson learned!
I witnessed two tragedies that summer. Both out in the yard where I spent most of my time tagging I-beams to be moved to the grinding or paint sheds. The first I experienced at a distance when a 20 ton stack of beams toppled on top of a hapless worker. It would take hours to move the load and retrieve what was left of his flattened body.
The second left a far more graphic impression. The beams were stacked high on both sides creating a dark tunnel-like effect in the yard. After locating specific beams identified by grade, I would signal the crane jockeys located high in towers where they maneuvered on tracks back and forth across the grounds. I would signal a second member of my team, who would attach two grappling hooks to the beam. He would then move away, and shout “clear.” At that point, the crane operator would lift the beam slowly a foot or two off the ground, the tension snapping the hooks closed, enabling the structural steel I-beam to be hoisted above the stack and maneuvered into position.
On previous occasions I’d seen the hooks slip and the beam crash to the ground, but this had happened with the 2 ton beam only a foot or two in the air. However, this morning, I had moved to a safe position at the end of the row and the old guy I was working with had lit a cigarette with the beam 20 feet above the stack, when the hook slipped. One end of the beam slashed downward neatly carving the startled man in half. His body remained upright for what seemed an eternity before the top separated, cigarette remaining lit. The startled look on his face remains with me to this day.
The entire experience was surreal. When I reported on June 15, I was proud of my shoulder length kinky “jewfro.” Though it didn’t fully nestle beneath my yellow hard hat, like many of my generation the hair was a proud statement of rebellion, and was a matter of pride - cutting it was NOT negotiable. At my job interview, Mr. Luchesi suggested I cut it, but when I refused, he didn’t make it an issue. “It’s up to you son, but to show how liberal I am, do it your way. We’ll just have to see how it goes.”
I’d shown the man! However, this was a short lived rebellion. Before moving to the yard, I spent my first weeks in the paint shop under the direction of the "Grinder Man," as this crusty soul was known. This cat was somethin special. Ageless, as in could be 50, but looked 80, hit Jersey from the coal mines of Silesia. Spoke 5 languages - German, Russian, Polish, English, and Lithuanian. Downside was, he apparently wasn't fluent in any of them. Only English we could discern was some combination of "fuckin grinder no good," and "grinder no fuckin good." There are limited mathematical permutations of these 4 words, but the Grinder Man defied the laws of numbers. He seemed to possess infinite variations. He needed no others. Our job, using a hydraulic 20 pound rotary wire, was to eliminate imperfections in the beams by grinding them smoothe before moving them to the paint shop. Hot steel filings flew everywhere, all lodging in my beautiful auburn tresses, or so it seemed. One week of cutting the hell out of my fingers from massaging filings from the tight curls was all it took for me to trim my hair to a length that would nestle under the hard hat! Teenage rebellion did have its limits!
In addition, to his unique multilingual expertise, the Grinder Man also had a truly unique hobby. The man collected cigarette butts. On break, on the way to work, or leaving the shop after quitting time, Grinder Man could be found patiently walking the rundown streets of the town, stooped low, picking up butts, and removing the unsmoked tobacco. One of the old Poles claimed the habit was left over from the war, apparently having a hard time in whatever East European midi-evil hamlet the Grinder Man crawled out from. What wasn't clear was which side he was on. Sucker was mean. Could have been a partisan. Or an S.S. apparatchik. Unclear at best.
One other character of mention at the mill was Elijah. Now you gotta understand, our primary job was erecting beams into supports for bridges. Old Elijah was a Jehovah's Witness who spent lunchtime preachin the gospel to a bunch of tired cynical United Steelworkers. Elijah was gonna "get the power". He would "walk on the water." Which always seemed to raise the question among one of the grunts, "why build bridges?" Elijah was not deterred. Union steel was his job - savin souls, his calling. And there were no souls more in need of saving than the yard crew in that dying plant, neath the freeway, in Jersey, in the summer of '74.
While I spent my early days with the "Grinder Man," before being promoted to the yard to track lost I-beams, because “you seem like yer a really smart kid,” JD spent his summer on the top floor of hell dragging a hot mop across a shop roof, slopping tar. If the heat didn't get him, the foreman of his little repair unit surely would. Of all the characters, good and bad encountered in the yard that summer, JD was "blessed" to serve under a guy you couldn't invent in a bad x rated Hollywood sitcom.
The job was bad enough. As the temperature spiked the century mark, and humidity made the place feel like a blast furnace, you add to that a black shingle roof and a bucket of boiling tar, and Dante would have felt right at home. Top that off with a summer listening to Johnny "two dicks," expound on life, and it's truly a wonder that JD made it out of there with his sanity intact. The erstwhile foreman of this specialized crew, Johnny did not like college boys and especially didn't like college boys with long hair who had avoided Nam. Johnny was 5"4 and weighed in at over 300. He had the blue piercing eyes of a proud Hitler Youth, chins too numerous to count, and rolls of fat protruding from his neck, with a face perpetually reddened by heat and even minimal exertion, giving him the appearance of an angry, sun burnt, uncircumcised penis after a night in a cheap Atlantic City whorehouse.
Wore his work pants low, providing a wonderful smile every time he bent over his mop (about once an hour from what we could tell). Fancied himself quite the ladies man, spending the summer regaling JD with lustful stories of his numerous? conquests. Got his nickname from his habit of constantly reminding the younger guys on his crew that at their age he would "bang two hookers with the same hard on." Not a sight any of us wanted to contemplate.
Creedence Clearwater was my salvation all summer. Just before the closing bell would ring out, I would softly sing off key to myself, "Just about a year ago, I set out on the road seekin my fame and fortune and lookin for a pot of gold, well things got bad and things got worse, I guess you know the tune, oh lord, I'm stuck in Lodi, again."
Well, in 1974, working at that dying mill in central Jersey, I couldn't locate Lodi on a map, but I was damn sure, it was someplace just like this. And this was not what I envisioned the future to look like. Shit, 35 year old steelworkers spoke longingly of collecting retirement checks as if the next 30 years were merely about punchin a clock, humpin steel, and hoping a beer-addled crane jockey didn't slip a chain on a 2 ton I beam, and slice you open like a mackerel on a Point Pleasant boat dock.
While I still had no firm plan for the future, that summer was certainly critical in my path forward. There would be no guarantees in life, but the highest probability of success, and the one that would open the most possibilities was through education. 3 months toiling in that mill, if it did nothing else, showed me where I did not want to end up.
A closing thought on that summer. The Fatman left in mid August to return to Boston to continue his physics studies at MIT, where he would snag a PhD in computer design in just five years. He took a job right out of grad school with IBM in their legendary skunkworks in Poughkeepsie, before being hired away by AT&T several years later to help build nuclear missile defense systems for the Pentagon.
Then, something beyond weird happened, though in retrospect, fully predictable. While at MIT the Fatman met a local townie, a nice Italian girl by the name of, you guessed it, Maria. After a whirlwind romance and with the blessing and great joy of both families, the wedding took place in Hyde Park NY, under 3 large circus tents, catered by the world famous Culinary Institute of America. Picture the opening scene of “The Godfather,” minus Marlon Brando and mafia thugs.
What could be more perfect? However, there was a surprise in store for all, which JD would discover shortly after graduation. Over dinner at Umberto’s in Little Italy in the City with Anthony and his new bride, the Fatman kept turning the conversation to the bible, which was weird to say the least. After dinner, JD invited them to his apartment in Brooklyn for a nightcap. After drinks were poured and all got comfortable on the threadbare couch, JD pulled out Bruce Springsteen’s most recent album and placed it on the turntable. 10 seconds into the opening bars of “Darkness on the Edge of Town” Maria slumped down on the couch shaking uncontrollably in what appeared to be an epileptic seizure. JD reached for the phone, intending to call 911, when the Fatman grabbed his arm, and told him everything was fine. Hearing “the devil’s music” had seriously upset Maria, and she was “speaking in tongues,” to “exorcise Satan.”
In JD’s telling he was stunned. At first, he said, “I thought the Fatman was yanking my chain.” Another practical joke, for which Anthony was famous. After Maria came out of her fugue, and Anthony assured him this was not a joke, he proceeded to explain what JD had just witnessed. It seems that Maria was a member of a fundamentalist Christian church when they met. After Fatman began his work on nuclear missile guidance systems everything changed. He adopted Maria’s Baptist theology, rejecting completely his “Papist” views. They cut both families off as neither family was willing to reject the Catholic church. Anthony’s lovely parents were devastated.
I’ve given much thought to the Fatman’s transformation. My pop psychology 101 explanation is that once this morally rigid human took a job with a giant corporation and put his brilliant mind to work on systems designed to destroy humanity, something snapped. Not long after the “Springsteen event” as JD describes it, the Fatman quit his job, and moved to upstate NY to become an itinerant minister at several non-denominational fundamentalist churches. JD and I have not heard a word from him since!