Part Monkey Fred

 

The Lassen Ski Lift's work foreman’s name was Fred.

He was a good boss. He knew what to do and how to do it. He knew how to keep all of us workers hard at work––and working well and happily. Not “ha, ha” happy, but content with the job happy––which takes a certain skill as you probably know.

He was a little better at everything than anyone else too and that’s not so easy either.

Yet he was a regular guy. Not proud. Not a show-off, just a nice, regular guy, rather small and slight in build, but strong enough to do any of the heavy work as well as any of the rest of us—except probably Little Joe, who showed up later and who was a prodigy of strength.

One of the first days I was on the job one of the regular contract crew of ski lift workers from the head office said of “Freddy” that he was “part monkey”. I filed that information away since the digging work we were doing for the first few weeks was on the ground and there was no need for any monkey skills.

But when the towers came in and were set up on the mountainside some work developed that was more in the line of circus acrobat stuff.

Someone had to climb the towers and with the aid of heavy lifting machinery and power tools, fasten rows of heavy wheels, the “shiv trains”, to arms on the tower. One of these towers was 80 feet high and all the rest were way up in the treetops to lift skiers above the deep snow in the winter.

This was very dangerous “touch and go” work. I couldn’t do it, of course, and wouldn’t do it. It was far too risky. (They never asked any of us pick-up laborers from California to do this kind of specialized work.)

But Fred was absolutely in his element. He WAS part monkey!

He was up the towers and running around on the arms of the machinery and bolting the heavy wheels on like he had a little spider blood too.

I watched him with my heart in my mouth whenever I was not too busy with my work on the ground. He was taking risks I wouldn’t even think of as a matter of course and with a nonchalance that was, to me, incredible.

I swear this next bit is true.

I was watching from far below one time when Fred slipped off the cross-arm of the tower and as he fell he grabbed that steel arm, which was a rounded square and as big around as your body, whipped himself around it and came up sitting on top of the arm!

He saved his own life and kept right on working without missing a beat.

By golly I REALLY admired that!

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