Fall 1986 Cornell West Campus

In the Fall of 1986 I began work for the first time at Cornell University. It was the beginning of a long love affair with the campus. There is something awe inspiring about working in such an old and beautiful location. This job was a renovation of some of the dorms on West Campus. Next time you need a visual lift take a walk around West Campus, especially beautiful when the leaves are changing. You can look north to Cayuga Lake or south towards Ithaca. Unfortunately that was the best part of this particular job. I did learn a few things on this job; like it isn’t personal. Some people aren’t going to like you simply because of what you represent. In this case not only was I a female, but my boyfriend was trying to clear into the local from his home local of Toronto Canada. I never did figure out which bothered them more. It wasn’t a long job, but it was a fairly hostile environment. On my first day I was told to go remove some copper caps and solder on some adapters. When I explained I had only done brazing and threaded pipe and didn’t know how to solder, I was told, just do it. So I lugged my B-tank up 3 flights of stairs and proceed to burn the crap out of those caps. Luckily there was a 2nd year apprentice Brian S who came to my rescue. There was still water in the systems and those caps would never have come off unless I had drilled a hole in them to let the water out. The subtle harassments continued from silences to misdirection to pointless jobs meant to see if they could break me. Our contract at the time specifically said that the contractor would provide all tools. Many members still carried their own hand tools, such as pliers, measuring tape and torpedo levels. Every day my boyfriend would insist I not break the contract by bringing in my own tools and every day I would be yelled at for not having tools. I was a very long two months. There was however one very memorable day. Brian and I were working a composite crew with the tin knockers (Sheetmetal workers) installing covers on heating elements. Since they were journey men and we were the apprentices it was our duty to throw away the huge piles of cardboard that the units came in. There was an open window on the floor above a large dumpster dedicated just to cardboard. Well, at the end of a long hard week, Brian came up with the brilliant idea to jump into the dumpster from above. Do NOT try this at home!!! But I gotta tell ya it was fun! The job ended right before Thanksgiving. I didn’t go back to work for over two months. This was a pattern I would learn to love/hate for the next 30 years.