Whatever Happened to H & H ?? -2

I often took my son to work with me just to show off to the guys and they enjoyed him it kinda broke the banlity of the nature of the work we did and it also helped to create a more family conciousness among those who could not care less due to too involved in drugs and booze. My men confided in me about the domestic issues every so often becaue they accepted that i was making my own effort at getting my life together as a father.

Carlos Molena (right) has a son named Dante Molena and he looked up to me as more than just a boss but someone he could trust helping him with more than his financial problems. Carlos became better father to Dante after our years of mucking UST together and spending out free time talking of life.

A week before i was hired as a sweeper at the company there was a fatal accident where a tank blew up and killed the cutter who was also the supervisor in the yard. I found this out a week later when i asked about dent in the zinc roof of a shack that was located at the job site where the incident occured. I was told that this was where the body of the cutter had been flung against when the tank exploded and the body had richochette and was sent over the telephone wire across into the next door parking lot. They measured it to be about 75 yards from the site of impact. This was how dangerous the job was.

Underground Storage Tanks came in various shapes and sizes and most contain residue of what they used to contain, like petroleum products, Bunker C oil, Jet fuel, cooking oil, even tar and other forms of discarded waste. Oue job was to steam cut and clean these tanks as soon as they arrived at the yard.

Two large hole were cut on the tanks for the entrance and ventilation purposes and most of these tanks had a quarter inch thick metal plates and the cutting was done using a acetelyn torch
which in our case had a three feet long handle to avoid from getting burnt by sparks from the melting metal.

Jose Molena was one of our truck drivers and when he was not on the road picking up or delivering tanks he would help out in the yard with the forklift. We called him him La Gordo, because of his overweight, but he was a very sensitive and gentle man that i know of.

Herman Renaud was the fire watcher who took his job very seriously. The firewatcher is the guy who keeps an eye of the cutter while he was cutting the tanks to make sure that there was no danger of the cutter getting burnt, or the tank was getting enough steam, or that there was no flammable materials in the vicinity of the cutting area.

There are the correct ways and the safe ways of doing things and a slight error of not following a simple rule of thumb can cause you and your feloow worker's life in this job. So if was important that we watched each other's back making sure that nothing was left to chance. While i was working on this job my personal spiritual practice was the Bodhisatva's virtues and I put this practice into action.

Brian the cutter, he was a very intelligent man who was going through his own motions with life. he was doing his drug rehab when we worked together and was deeply in love with an African American lady. We talked of things and we learned of things from each other while developing respect as co-workers.

'The Chief" whose real name was Tim Mosqueda was my mentor and my tormentor. He moulded me and groomed me for the postion which I stumbled myself into. "Mohammad!!" he would yell at me when he learned that i was a Muslim, "...you dont know the score!!!" He does not talk to you but he shouts simply because he could not hear. He once told me the he was an honorary tribal Elder of the Navajo Nation. I believed him. He was the toughest old fart that I everworked with in my life. He in his own way made me the "Yard Boss for H&H."