Stephen Szeszak. Born: 14 September 1917, Glenwood, Pittsburgh, PA Presently Lives in: Greenfield. Parents: Born in Hungary; Father: Andrew; Mother: Mary. Worked: Jones and Laughlin Strip Mill (J & L). 1937-1980.
Mr. Szeszak in His Own Voice
(418K 38.84 sec.)Interview conducted by Michael M. Nimec. Transcribed and Edited by Barry Chad. Recorded 10 November 1995.
I can remember back in '36 when we had the flood. My mother and I we just came back from Johnstown on the B & O train before the flood hit Pittsburgh and everybody in the neighborhood--we lived in Glenwood--everybody in the neighborhood with flashlights went up on the Glenwood Bridge--it was a wooden floor on the bridge and we were shining those flashlights down in the river to see how it was rising and we stayed there all night--just watched the river coming up.
And then, before the flood, underneath the Glenwood Bridge they used to have a sawmill. They used to cut ties and you'd have a lot of scrap lumber down there. My dad built a wagon and we used to go down there after school and load this scrap up and bring it home and put it in the shanty and, when you got so much, then you had to go out there and chop it up so you could have kindling wood for the winter. We used to pile it up underneath the shed and used to do that after school. Then Saturday used to have to chop it up.
And then my brother and I we used to go out and collect milk bottles. We used to get two cents for a bottle. We had an old outhouse that we used to pile all the bottles in and then the milk company would come along with crates and we used to separate the companies and then they would take 'em. We used to get pin money for it and we used to use that to help because growing up--things were rough--and then, when the depression hit, then I had to leave school to go to work--during the depression. I only went to ninth grade 'cause I had to get out because my dad says, "You got to go to work." My teacher in mechanical drawing, he wanted me to take night school up and I used to like to draw things but I could never go to night school.
I did that--a drawing of a hydrogen unit at work. This is what I used to like to do. And I did this in my spare time at home. I made a rough sketch of it at work. Then I brought it home and I made this. And--I think there's one little mistake but I can't find out where it's at--I showed this to my boss one time and he wanted to keep it. I said, "No way," I says, "I'm going to take this home." But he wanted to keep this. This is where we made the hydrogen gas and then this part here was where we used to store it in these tanks. We used to store it. So, as you used it, you had to keep building your tank up because if you went down too long, you got a siren: it said that your machine wasn't operating right.
They used to use this because, when you're annealing steel, you didn't get too much carbon on the edge of the steel with hydrogen gas. Whereas when you used--I think it was Pittsburgh Gas Company--and sometime during the winter they used to take so much gas off of us and they used to have to go over to by-product gas which is from coke, but then that would take a long time to anneal because there was not too much heat in the by-product gas. And that's when they decided to put the hydrogen unit in.
We had what we called bases. We used to get steel sheets of all different sizes and we'd load them on the base and then around the edge of the base you'd have a groove. And when you loaded your steel on the base, then you'd have a trough around here. When you had loaded this all up, you used to put a cover over it and then this was sealed up with sand and then in between you'd have a pipe--like a 3/4 inch pipe. You had pipes in the front here and then you had a pipe back here. During the annealing process you would apply natural gas in here. Same thing in the rear. And that would keep the steel cooking. And these two pipes would supply the gas from one base to another. So, when the steel was cooked (or annealed), we used to pull the steel out and put it on the cooling bed. And then you'd have gas lines here and a gas line in the back so when you put this on the cooling line, you'd hook natural gas up right away into both ends and that would cool the steel down gradually. With the natural gas you used to get a lot of carbon on the edge of the steel and when it cooled off and they unloaded it, they would put it on the floor, then the guy would have to get a buffing machine--he'd have to wear goggles--get a buffing machine and he'd just buff the edges off so it'd be clean so whenever it'd go into the next department where they'd roll it down to the thickness that they want, the steel would be clean because if you don't do that it would mark up the rolls in the other department.
The hydrogen came in after because it was mixed up in here on the cooling line. That's how you eliminate all this carbon on the edge of the steel on the sheets. They used to make sheets almost as long as this base which they used to use for rooftops on a car--from one end down to the tail end of the trunk. And they made steel for doors, iceboxes, refrigerators, you name it, they had steel for everything. The hydrogen gas was to eliminate a lot of the carbon on your steel. So when it went into the next department you didn't have to waste all that time buffing it. We used to get steel that were in coils. And they would do the same thing: put 'em on bases--all depend on how high they were--if they were 40 inches, well they used to put two on top of one other because your cover was, I think it was 90 inches or something like that.
In our department the shears would be here. Then they'd have a conveyor come in our department. As they would cut the steel here, they would have skids underneath. They would pile the steel on there and that would roll down into our department. And then the crane would pick it up and load it on the base. It would all depend on the size now. And the same thing with your coils. The highest weight on the coil, I think, was 3,000 pounds. But then we had different type of furnace. We had furnace that the base was like this here and our furnace used to be like a cover, used to pick the whole furnace up. You'd have to disconnect your electric and you'd have to disconnect your gas line and then the crane would pick it up and they would pick it up and move it over to the next charge. And then the base would have your cover inside this furnace. They'd have the cover that you'd have to seal it up with sand. And if you didn't do that, when you lit this up it would blow the sand out.
How long would it take to anneal a batch of steel? Well, it all depends on the weight and the grade. It all depends on what grade it is. Sometimes you be in there for maybe 98 hours or 76 hours. They had different types of grade of steel that they got different temperatures. There were some that you got: well, your sheet ran thirteen hundred and ten degrees. Your furnace temperature would be fourteen hundred degrees. And that's for sheets. Now, coils were around thirteen fifty temperature with fourteen hundred furnace. And then there were some coils that they only called for thirteen hundred and twenty degrees. And then there were some that was only twelve hundred and eighty degrees. It all depends on your grade of steel and what it was for.
But it also depends on your weight. He would calculate your weight. And then you would figure out how many hours it would take to hit temperature. Once it hit temperature, then he would count. He'd have to figure out how many hours to hold it at thirteen or twelve hundred and eighty degrees. He'd hold it for maybe 36 hours maybe 45 hours and then he'd pull the furnace out. He'd pull these out and then put them on the cooling line, and hook your gas up and let it cool off. And once it gets under 300 degrees, they can take the cover off of it. They can unload that steel. And they put it on the floor. And if there's any carbon, they have to clean it off. And, once it's cleaned off, we used to have what they call a ross carrier. And this guy would sit up on top here. And they used to have a scoop and the scoop would come in. You'd have your steel here and he'd get the scoop and pick it up underneath and then he'd haul it over to the next department and put it on the floor. And he'd be doing that all day long.
In all this process what was your specific job or did you do
pretty much everything?
I started out as a laborer. I worked every job all the way up to a furnace operator.
When I started, I was a laborer. Then I worked as a crane follower. When I got into the
department, I started out making thermocouples. That's because, when you load steel, you
got to put a thermocouple. So in the front you would put one
thermocouple and that would come out as your base. Then you'd have a thermocouple in
this coil that come out the back; and then you'd put one at the bottom of the coil that
come out the back so you'd have temperatures from the top here and top here and then from
the bottom here. So you'd know your temperature what it was at the top and the bottom in
the rear.
If they were sheets, you used to get six sheets. Then
you would put it in in the middle of the load. You
put your thermocouple in halfways. And that would come out the back end. Then on the
bottom, you would go up five or six inches and they would insert this up
against the steel (like this). So that way you would get the temperature
of the bottom of the pile, on the bottom of your steel. Then you run your thermocouple
out the front and then you had to
hook it up and then that wire would go into what we called the pyrometer
house. That's where you had instruments that would record your
temperature. Then the other one had where you would control your furnace
temperature. You had two instruments. The top one was your furnace
temperature, the bottom was your steel temperature. So then you
regulated it. (This was automatic.)
You just turned your dial up on the
instrument--whatever you wanted--to take it up--'cause you always started out
gradually. You graduated maybe like eleven hundred or twelve hundred. And
then when they did twelve hundred so then you would raise it up to
thirteen hundred and then you would take it up to yet fourteen hundred.
Then you'd have to hold it there till your steel got up to thirteen fifty
or thirteen ten. If it got up to thirteen, then you had to start cutting
your furnace temperature back in order to maintain this temperature. And
sometimes you would come down from fourteen hundred; you might come down
to maybe thirteen thirty or thirteen forty degrees in order to hold this
temperature. Once you hit it, then you had to cut your
furnace temperature back in order to maintain that. But once you hit the
temperature, like twelve eighty, then he would count how many hours to
hold it there and then he'd mark it on the sheet because you went around
every hour and you record the temperature and your steel temperature. Every
hour you had to go around. And then when the boss would check it, he'd
mark it off maybe 36 hours or 40 hours then he'd put an "x" there and
when it hit there that's when you pulled the charge out of the furnace and
you put it on the cooling line and then put your gas in so they'll cool
down.
What would happen if you left it in too long? What would be the consequences of making a mistake with the timing? Well, sometimes if you overcook it, you're taking the strength out of your steel. [The metallurgical department] used to get test pieces and they used to put in a machine and put weight or something on it. If you get a bubble in it and if it cracked, then the steel was no good. It was too soft or too hard. But if it didn't crack or anything, then the steel was good.
Your first job was making thermocouples and then you did...? From there I went to laborer--that's like cleaning up the department and doing the sanding. Anytime they loaded a charge you got to sand it up. Then from there I went to hooking up--working underneath the crane. Then you would load your steel on your bases. Or sometimes if you didn't have enough bases, then you had to put your steel on the floor and pile it up on the floor till you needed it. Then from there I got to be a straw boss.
What exactly is a straw boss? Well, you had six men working underneath you. We used to have two cranes in the department. Three men under each crane. And my job was to see that they were busy all the time. That was my job. I had to line up the work. Now when we had coils, we'd have coils piled all over the department. I had to go around and get an order (say order #1462 for example) and I'd have to look for all the coils with this number on and then I'd have to mark down on a piece of paper where they were located so when I gave it to one of the crews there, he wouldn't have to hunt around for it because they used to do that to kill time. See my job was to locate it and mark it on a piece of paper where they were so they knew where to go to. And that was the one crane. The lower crane in the department--most of the time they did all the unloading, like sheets or coils. But if this crane went down for their break, then this one would have to come up and take over and vice versa. But my job was to see that they were kept busy. If the crane stood still, my boss would want to know, "Hey, what's the matter?"
I got ahead of myself: before I got into straw boss I worked in the office where we used to write up production--whatever you loaded on the base we had to write it up. When they'd put that in the furnace, they took this piece of paper with all the information--they used to put the temperatures on the back. Well I did that for I don't know how many years and from there I went over to crane leader. That's when I had to take care of six guys and then from there to be a furnace operator. But the fellas that were on there before me, you asked any questions, they wouldn't help you because they were afraid that you'd take their job. But when I got on the job, I've helped four fellas to learn that job. They wanted to learn it because they were crane leaders like I was at first. When they'd have spare time, they'd come back and then I'd tell 'em well, "You take the reading, you make the adjustments, and if you're gonna make a mistake, I'll correct you, but if I don't say nothing, then you're doing okay." So the one guy came along and he was taking the temperature and he was going to make some adjustment. And I didn't say nothing. Then when he got done, he says, "Did I do all right?" I said, "What did I tell you, Joe? I said if I don't say nothing, that's what I woulda done."
When I first started on that job, my boss asked me one day he says, "What in the hell are you doing, Steve?" He says, "You got the furnace going up and down." I said, "Well, I'm experimenting." While the temperature's going up, you can't ruin your steel. The only time you ruin your steel is when you hit temperature. So when the temperature was going up on this furnace here, I would go out and cut burners here or here, and here--wherever I thought the thermocouple was. Then I would go in there [pyrometer house] and watch the instrument and if I hit the right one, then I knew where they were so when the temperature got up to where it was at and sometime they would overshoot--maybe they'd up up to thirteen fifty-five. So you'd go out there maybe cut two burners to bring that temperature down to around thirteen fifty. So, like I says, I had the steel going up like this when it was starting up. He says, "You're the only guy that ever doing that." He says, "I'm proud to see you doing that." I says, "That's how I learned to operate that furnace"--what we called a portable furnace.
There was four or five pyrometer houses because we had thirty-two furnaces in this one section. There was thirty-two furnaces. Then with the portable furnaces we had thirty-eight or thirty-nine furnaces all together. But on the other department which was the coal mill. The coal mill was where they used to roll the steel down to the exact thickness that they wanted. At the end of their department we had a real big furnace that we only loaded coils on them--anything from a thousand to two thousand pound coil. Sometimes they didn't roll 'em that big. Inside you had coils that were loaded. Six stools you had. And you'd put your coils on there. Then you'd put your cover. Then you had to make sure that there was sand around it. If you didn't seal 'em up good, whenever you lit the furnace, soon as that heat would hit that gas underneath it--cause there was gas going in underneath that cover--if you didn't have that sealed up good, you'd light that furnace up and that wasn't sealed, that used to blow the sand and, man, you'd have sand all over! What we had to do--you only release so much gas in there--and we used to get a torch. We used to make torches out of paper, make a long torch. Then used to go along and ignite everyone of these pilot lights. You'd have to go all the way on both sides of the furnace. You'd go around with this paper. Then you'd go around, light 'em all up. Once you get that all lit up, then you could put the full force of gas into it. If the furnace is red hot, whenever you change it over, you don't have to do that. All we do is hook it up, turn a little bit of gas in there, and it'll ignite itself because you got the heat still in it. It's still red. So lot of time you'd save time that way. But, if it was dark in there, then you had to go around with a torch and light each one individually.
When you started working in the mill, how much were they paying you? We made five dollars a day.
About how long was the average day? Eight hours. Your pay was fifty dollars in two weeks. That was back in '37 when I started in there.
And when you finally retired? [1977.] On an average pay, with your bonus, you can average two hundred and some dollars a pay. (That's with your deductions now.) You'd end up with maybe a hundred ninety-seven. All depends. And then you got bonus on your tonnage. And it all depends what kind of a day you had during the turn. It can average anywhere from a hundred and ninety to two hundred and fifty dollars a pay. That's clear.
What were the conditions like? Well, whenever you worked in
there it was all sand. One time I couldn't hear.
So I went to the doctor and this doctor. (He was an old-fashioned doctor.)
His name was Dr. Ertzman. He was a family doctor. So he just got some
soapy water and I guess you'd call it a syringe. He held a pan underneath
there and he just shoved that water in my ear and that thing came out. It
was like a bullet. It was hard. It was sand. Mixed in with your wax in your
ear. I mean when that hit the pan, it was like a bullet. And he had that
in both ears. And, by God, the difference! You could hear so good!
You had
a lot of sand. You get it in your nose and your throat. Sometimes you'd chew
tobacco to try to keep the dust from blowin' into your...then you had to
keep wiping your glasses off so you can see. But you got dirty from the
sand because whenever you loaded the steel--in between the bases you had a
lot of sand. Before they would cover this up, you had to dig a groove in
it so when the cover went down--the cover sat in the groove. And then that's
when you took this sand and you would shovel it and throw it in there, and
as you're doing that, you got dust all over the place. So you got it in
your nose, your ears. Later on then they gave you a mask [but not at
first].
Noisy? Yeah, it was noisy. Because when they would cut steel, they had a guy there that he'd have gloves on that they had steel in them so it wouldn't cut the glove. And he'd be piling it as it came out of the shearer and fall down on the skids. He'd go like this to keep the pile even on the side. That noise there--boy, sometimes that would drive you crazy. It all depends what end of the department you worked in. You worked at the upper end where the shearers were, yeah, you had a lot of noise, but if you worked on the lower end, you didn't have too much noise, no. Then later on, they came around, they made you earplugs. That's when people were complaining that they were hard of hearing. So then the company, they had a nurse come in--she'd make models and then once they got them made, then they would give them to everybody in the mill.
Shifts? When I got to work on the
floor--underneath the crane--first time we worked, we worked one turn for
one week. That'd be like 12 to 8, 4 to 12 and daylight and when I started
work on the floor I worked two days of midnight, two days of daylight, one
day of
4 to 12.
And that one year I lost...I went down to a hundred and thirty-two
pounds or something. I couldn't eat. I couldn't sleep. But after one year--we
worked that for 15 years--and after the one year, man, that was a piece
of cake. You never got tired of one turn. Then when the war started, the
girls came in. They were complaining that they couldn't take it so then
they started to work weeks-about: one week of 12 to 8, one week of 4 to
12, one week of daylight. But when they broke this up, I was heart sick
because the days went by so fast. You didn't even realize what day it was.
But when they first started out, it was hard to get used to because where
you were supposed to be sleeping, you were supposed to be eating...it was
hard. Like I said, the first year was hard, but after that I worked that
for fifteen years and I was sorry when they gave it up because those days
went by so fast and the years went by. You didn't even realize it.
And we had to work five years before you got one week's vacation. But when the war came and the girls came in, they only worked one year and they got one week of vacation and then they were complaining. And we were trying to tell them, "Hey, you're lucky. I had to put five years in before I got one week's vacation." And then they came around where, after you had so many years in, you got thirteen weeks vacation. The first time I took it, I didn't want to go back to work. I was off for thirteen weeks and I took a couple extra days off and my boss called up and he says, "Steve," he says, "You better come in to work or you ain't gonna have no job." So when I went in to work, later on he got a hold of me. He says, "Well how did you enjoy your vacation?" I says, "I didn't." He says, "What was the matter?" I said, "Wasn't long enough." He says, "Get outta here before I kick ya."
Your first vacation? I didn't go anywhere because the kids were just growing up then. We used to go out in the parks. At that time I drove and we used to go to the parks and have picnics or take a short trip somewhere. We used to go down to, I think it was Butler, where the Amish people lived. We were going through the countryside and we stopped at one Amish farmer. He was there and then the wife she was talking to him and he was saying that no electricity...they had none of the modern convenience. And the man had a big, black hat and a beard and their chicken and the cows they were clean. I mean just like they were washed off. She talked to him for, oh I guess about a half hour, and then we left and went down the road. And then we hit a farmer where he was milking his cows by automatic milker. So we stopped and I says maybe we can get some milk off of him. So he was just milking so he asked my boy and girl, he says, "Would you like a glass of fresh milk?" And I told the farmer, I says, "I don't think they'd like it but I would like it." So he gave us a cup. The kids tasted it. They didn't like it. But I loved it because I had a friend when I was growing up. They had a cow. And I used to go over their place every morning just to get that first glass of hot milk and it was delicious. So he gave us a quarter of milk and when we got home the next morning, there was cream that thick in it 'cause the farmer says what they do, these milk companies, they take all this cream off and they make this whip cream and that and he said then they dilute the milk with a little bit of water. But when we got up the next morning, like I says, there was cream like this in the bottle. So what you do, you just shake it all up and then when you poured it out, you really had milk. But you don't get that today.
