The ironworkers had traveled all night through the driving rain. Crowding into two trucks, they had come straight down the Interstate from Seattle, arriving at the jobsite shortly after 5 am. They buy extra-large cups of coffee from the bagel shop, and by 6:30 they are strapping themselves into safety harnesses and tool belts and beginning to climb the steep ladder to the top of the tower crane.

The jobsite is in Eugene, Oregon. The University of Oregon is adding 133,000 square feet to the business school, and the general contractor had brought in the tower crane to help erect the steel skeleton of the building. The crane stands 250-plus feet above the jobsite and the operator, named Frank Bascomb, sits in a five-foot square box suspended near the center wheel of the crane and lifts, or “picks,” items for the crews that work far below. Most of the “picks” had been steel beams and girders that weighed up to several tons. The crane lifted them into place where the ironworkers could bolt and weld them together. After the steel structure of the building was done, the ironworkers went home, but the crane stayed on the job for another month, working to lift items for the brick masons, glazers, electricians, plumbers, and the special granite crew that erected an 11-ton stone lintel over the main entrance.

It is Saturday morning, and to everyone’s surprise the weather has turned clear. The ironworkers had expected to spend the day fighting wind and rain. They are all members of Local 351 of the United Ironworkers Union based in Portland. The union had bumped all the way down the seniority line to see who was available for the weekend job of taking down the giant crane. With no other complete crew available, they end up sending for the same men who had put the crane up in June. The crew, it turned out, had been working in Seattle and had added a single member: Felix, the rookie.

So eight ironworkers drove south late on a Friday night. Because they had already worked a full week, their contract called for them to make twice their hourly wage on Saturday. This meant they were making about $70 per hour. If the job lasted into Sunday, they could make even more.

“Heck,” one of the ironworkers named Red Rudy tells the rookie, “you could just about go to war on what I’m making this weekend.”

The rookie seems too distracted to get the joke.

While the ironworkers climb the tower crane and begin to disassemble its non-structural parts, another crew starts work on the ground. They had arrived the night before in a convoy that included two flatbed tractor-trailers and the largest portable crane on the West Coast. This crane, a piece of machinery that cost nearly half a million dollars, could reach 50 feet higher than the tower crane, and would be used to lift pieces of the stationary crane to the ground after they were unbolted by the ironworkers. Because it was so large, it took about two hours to put the portable crane together. As this is being accomplished on the ground, the ironworkers climb leisurely along the top of the tower crane, enjoying the morning sunshine, loosening and adjusting the non-supporting pieces.

Frank, the crane operator, is in his seat at the controls. A radio on the shelf to his right keeps him in contact with the site manager who asked him to do a few last pick-ups before the crane came down. It is housekeeping stuff mostly, dropping the hook down to the ground, waiting for the labor crew to connect him to a box of steel scraps and then taking it up over the building and placing it in the storage yard. As he swings the boom around he can see Felix making his way out along the catwalk. He tries to make his moves extra steady, allowing for the slippage in the gears, easing the load into place so he doesn't jerk the end of the boom.

"Aw, come on Frank," says one of the ironworkers who has peace signs stickered to the back of his hardhat, "Give him a little shake out there. See if he gets nervous."

Frank smiles. Then a voice speaks to him from the radio.

"Okay sir, that's your last pick."

"Gotchya," Frank says.

"You can take her over to the south and park it perpendicular." The radio says.

"That's fine. I've got a man on the boom, so I'll come all the way round, nice and steady."

"Sounds right."

Frank retrieves the hook all the way up to his top pulley and then swings the boom around in a 360. From his window he can see the rookie has made it out to the very tip. He is waving to some pedestrians who can see him from the street. Frank resists the impulse to come down a little hard on the brake. He eases the boom over and stops it facing perfectly south.