Little Joe Arrives

More equipment and manpower was expected from the Salt Lake City home office of the company which was building the Lassen ski lift. On the day the truck was due the foreman told us local laborers to be handy to the parking lot since some materials were going to arrive which needed to be unloaded. The word was that one of the new workers that would arrive with the truck was Little Joe, “one of the strongest men you’ve ever seen.” 

Well.

All of us had been working long hours with hand tools, digging and bashing earth and rock and we all felt pretty strong I think, but of course we were all very curious to see this new physical phenomenon.

When the trucks came in and the new men got out, none of them looked any different from the rest of us. The foreman introduced all of us and we shook hands all around. The new guys all seemed to be young, healthy and strong––but I never felt that this Little Joe, who was one of the new gang, looked any different from the rest. For one thing he was not so tall and not so weighty and he was only about eighteen years old.

Our first task was to unload some big flat cardboard boxes containing the metal chairs for the lift from the truck.

We gathered on the tarmac beside the truck and Little Joe was the first in line. I was second.

There were two men up on the truck bed and they slid the top box from the pile of boxes over to where Joe could reach it. He took the sliding box onto his head and walked with it over toward the edge of the pavement where we had been told to stack the materials.

I got ready to take the second box.

The men on the truck slid it over to where I could reach it, but as soon as it started to come into my hands I realized that I was never going to be able put it on my head and walk away like Little Joe had. In fact I realized that I was going to be squashed like a bug under that monstrously heavy package if I didn’t get some help mighty quick!

Of course some of the other guys had been watching and grabbed the thing and took the weight off me before I got hurt––but, boy, did I ever gain a LOT of respect for Little Joe’s strength!

It took two or three or even four men to carry every one of those boxes of steel chairlift seats, but every time Little Joe showed up in the line of carriers, he took the whole thing all by himself!

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