My grandfather on my adopted dad’s side came from Capistrano Italy in 1906 at the age of 19, was a WWI veteran, and later had one of the hardest jobs I know of – bricking and paving streets shoveling gravel and mixing mortar to complete many of Irondequoit and downtown Rochester NY’s streets and curbways. It was during the depression era when jobs were scarce and how this barely got he, my grandmother and three children by. Times were especially hard during the winter as most times there was no work in the trade so he would paint, carpenter, and do other odd jobs he could find from the local labor halls to keep food on the table and so the kids would not go hungry and have some sort of Christmas. I remember him telling me in his broken English how unsafe the work was and how helpless he felt when an accident killed one of his co-workers when a chain broke that supposedly was securing the back hatch to the dumptruck carrying hot tar laden gravel. The foreman then were not so empathetic and there were no provisions as there still aren’t for labor pool and construction worker’s family survivors. My grandfather bore a deformed nail on his thumb when another foreman missed hammering a casart for a grid line forming curbs. No workman’s comp in those days.
Surprisingly and gratefully I am proud to say that my grandfather lived until he was one single day away from his 100th birthday. He worked very hard, my grandmother was a homemaker after she and my grandfather were married. I guess their sense of duty and responsibility gave me a strong work ethic – so much that I stubbornly pursued my grandfather’s trade for a few years-under not much better working conditions but better than he had. Now here I sit an unemployed 8 year electrical tradeswoman because of the climate of how women in construction have been and are treated.
