“I’m
Working on the highway, laying down the blacktop
Working on the highway, all day long I don’t stop.
I’m
Working on the highway, blasting through the bedrock
Working on the highway, working on the highway…”
– Bruce Springsteen
Working on the Highway – Blasting through the Bedrock
Or, Once Upon A Time In Canada…
My first adult job after escaping high school was working for the New Brunswick Provincial Department of Highways. Just as my father had. And I loved it. Hard work but easy duty.
I had grown up knowing the crew Dad worked with. As I wrote in my Life & Works post, “I had the good fortune of working with most of these guys years later.”
We worked out of the big Government Garage in Coldbrook, just outside Saint John.
Even then we had to wear orange hard hats, leather work gloves and steel-toed boots. Although come winter, the older guys quietly told me, “Don’t wear steel toes. They’ll draw the frost and freeze your feet. Just get a pair of work boots that look the same. The bosses won’t ask.”
It was the mid-Sixties and a lot of Highways work was still done by hand.
The specialized machinery was just coming in. Such as mechanized salt and sand spreaders.
We were still…
Diggin’ post holes with an iron bar and shovel and tipping in the creosoted posts. Two of us lifting up the steel guardrails and bolting them in place.
Being dropped off down a country road with axe, scythe, file, whetstone (and lunchboxes) to cut bushes for the day.
Building wooden culverts. Cutting treated timbers with a buck saw and nailing them with big galvanized spikes, driving those with a sledgehammer. An Old Timer told me, “This’s how we once built the railroads.” I couldn’t help it — I asked, “Just how old are you, man?”
Skunk patrols. Cruising the highways to throw fallen junk and road kill (usually skunks) in the back of a dump truck. Being the “young fellow,” I was there to do the throwing-on. They were lazy patrols and often involved reaching under the seat for a stubby Moosehead beer. Three of us just killing time after a long hard winter. And, depending on the mood, they told old jokes or gritty war stories. I laughed at the jokes. And have never forgotten those somber stories. Most of those guys, like Dad, had travelled the long and brutal road from the beaches of Normandy to the Rhineland.
Spreading sand by hand. Balancing on top of a decreasing pile of sand on the back of a big dump truck in winter, two of us alternately “banjoing” it out over the icy road with long-handled shovels.
Working on the Highway: Flashlighting
“Flashlighting” for snowbank cleanup along Rothesay Avenue through the night. Our front end loader had a BIG snowblower and was tearing up the piled banks and throwing snow chunks into dump trucks to haul away.
My job was to check the snow piles at the ends of the driveways up ahead. Kids had a habit of digging out snow forts in ’em. Flashlight in hand, I had to crawl into each one to make sure it was empty. While the roar of the cutting blades got closer. Never found any humans but once I had to coax out a frightened Golden Retriever.
On frigid nights, while waiting for the trucks to come back, I’d squeeze my work gloves into the radiator grill at the back of the idling loader to warm them up.
Working on the Highway: Wingman
One winter I was a Wingman. The plows were bigger back then, some of the trucks were old Army surplus from the War. Huge trucks. It took two men. The driver working the front plow; and the wingman, raising and lowering the side wing plow, warily watching the snow bank just ahead. There was the night Chester Young came back to the bunkroom and said, “We hit a Volkswagen.” The Beetle had been buried in the snowbank. It was empty. But the guy on the wing refused to go farther. I took his place.
When blizzards shut down the roads, we’d plow through for emergency vehicles — wait for them — then plow them back to their home base. At nights, the snow would be coloured by our flashing lights. Amber from our roof-top; red from the vehicles following us.
A fave memory from those winters — the jingle-ching sound of tire chains in the winter snowstorms. Get a dozen vehicles heading out at the same time and you’ve got pleasant music.
Back then, when the provincial government changed, so did the colour of Highways vehicles. Orange when the Conservative party got in; green for the Liberal. The colours didn’t represent political values, but religious. New Brunswick still had a fervent cultural split between English Protestants and French & Irish Catholics. There were some rugged old orange trucks and graders left when I started. New, smaller replacement vehicles were always a shiny sea green. Today, they’re yellow.
The Dynamite Man
There was the time I was assigned to be the Dynamite Man’s helper for that summer. Art McQuade, the foreman, gave me a searching look when he asked me, as if to silently add, “If you’re smart you’ll say no.”
The Dynamite Man drove. Fast. Even when we turned down those rough gravel roads. He put that vintage (to me) GMC 1½ ton truck through its paces. The truck carried an air compressor bolted to the flat bed. With C-I-L dynamite locked safely in a saddle box on one side of the truck; electric blasting caps and wires locked away on the other. The remaining necessities for blowing up things were stored behind the orange cab.
“Soon be there. Then the fun begins,” he said. He reached under his seat for a thermos bottle and took a swig. And he sang old Hank Williams and Hank Snow songs.
Before long I was drilling holes in backroad bedrock with a pneumatic drill the size of a jackhammer but easier to use.
Dragging heavy hemp-rope mats, spattered with jagged rock chips, over the spot where he’d set the dynamite. Stopping traffic with a red cloth nailed to a stick. When the charge blew, it lifted the piled mats but only a cloud of smoke and rock dust got out. Soon got used to the powerful concussion you could feel in your chest.
Animals could be spooked by our explosions. Once, following a charge, we heard a farmer shouting desperately as he chased a team of horses pulling a hay rig right at us. “This is stupid,” I told myself as I waved my red flag at the oncoming horses. But they did stop.
If he had to blow a few charges one after another, local dogs would appear. The dogs became a pack, excited, whining, barking. They caught on that when he pulled up the plunger, things were about to explode again. The pack began to focus intently on him. The first time that happened he handed me a long rubber hose, saying, “When the dogs attack me, you chase ’em off.” They did and I did.
We moved from one road to another. Cracking the rock so that a crew with backhoe and trucks could come someday to upgrade them.
The Dynamite Man was a war veteran, like all of those older guys then. But he never talked about the War. Nothing bothered him. Of course, he liked a drink. The time came when he said, “Brian, you set this charge. You’ve watched me. You can do it.”
The way he was staggering I figured I’d better.
So I said “OK.”
I dropped a few of the waxed brown dynamite sticks down the hole I’d just drilled. Packed ’em with fine sand he kept in a bucket, tamping it down with a piece of mop handle. Carefully poked a hole in the end of the last stick with a sharp dowel, put in the cap, strung out the long lead wires to the blasting box, attached them, pulled up the plunger. I took my time.
What I didn’t know then was that different rock took different charges. You didn’t use as many sticks in solid granite as you did in porous rock like limestone. Not when you’re so close to folks’ homes.
BOOM! That first day, I lucked out. “Good job.” BOOM! My Angel was watching over me the next time. BOOM! The third time a woman burst out of her roadside house screaming, swearing and saying I’d knocked all her dishes off her kitchen shelves.
The Dynamite Man tried to put on his serious face. “Don’t say a word, Brian. Shut down the compressor and load up.” He drove. And the truck bounced back down the road. And he sang old Hank Williams and Hank Snow songs. “I don’t hurt anymoooore…”
Nobody else ever volunteered to work a second summer with the Dynamite Man. I did.
I was young and I was working Outside with great guys. And I loved it.
“Live Free, Mon Ami!” – Brian Alan Burhoe
And See My Popular Working Folk Post: Men In Blue Denim Built Our Country – Working Man & Working Woman Quotes
FOOTNOTE: I learned later that the Dynamite Man had taken the blame for the broken dishes. It’s something he would do. But he was safe.
While the Mackenzie King government had abandoned so many returning WWII soldiers, it gave them one benefit: most new government jobs (Federal, Provincial and Territorial) were to be open to War Veterans first. There sure were a lot of ’em. And those old soldiers protected each other.
Once Upon a Time in Canada that was our way: “Remember, I’m pullin’ for ya. We’re all in this together.” – Red Green.
For more on these men, see “[6] I had the good fortune of working with most of these guys…” at Life & Works of Brian Alan Burhoe – All About Us & More.
Favourite quote from a fellow highways worker:
“Well, we might as well eat our lunch and get it over with.” – Mister McQuinn.
See Us on Our CELL PHONE FRIENDLY Format: BrianAlanBurhoe.com.
Working on the Highway – Blasting through the Bedrock – History
Burhoe Family history. C-I-L dynamite history. Government Garage in Coldbrook, New Brunswick history. New Brunswick Provincial Department of Highways history.
