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| My Delivery System |
Moving stone,
due to its mass, has always been a topic of conversation and interest
to the general public. Pyramid construction, Stonehenge, Mayan ruins,
etc. Seems to be a endless source of TV documentaries. Sculpture
groups give seminars on handling large heavy stones. Working with
gravity, simple levers, inclined planes, etc. Is essential to
stone-loving sculptors. Today we have lifting devices of all sorts to
make things easy, but it wasn't so long ago these aids were not often
used.
When I was attending Portland State
University in the early 1970s, I cut letters and polished monuments
after classes and often delivered monuments with Howard Coleman, a
five-foot-six 130-pound machine polisher. We both worked at a
tombstone manufacturing shop in Portland, Oregon Howard got his start
in the stone trade working in Medica Lake white granite quarry in
eastern Washington, near Spokane Howard would take me along when he
had monuments to install in local cemeteries around Portland and
sometimes outside of the Portland area as well.
He needed no help with with flat
markers 2 foot by 1 foot, or 2 foot 4 inch by 1 foot 4 inch. Or 4
foot by 1 foot double markers. Nor did he need help with hickey or
slant markers, they only weighed 150 to 200 hundred pounds.
It's a special language this monument
business. I taught it to my daughter and we still laugh at things
like ”carnelian 3-0 x1-10x 0-8 ck molds -rock sides with 4-0x 1-0 x
8 base.” All a stone man needs to know to start working making a
specific color, size, and detailed monument.
Howard cut and polished raised
lettering by hand at night for extra money using hand-held emery
bricks. My mentor Julius would rough out the lettering with the
sandblast and Howard would take it from there, polishing square and
sharp corners with lots of fine details with a flat recessed
background in granite.
I spent many pleasant Fridays helping
him deliver monuments in a 1947 four-speed green flatbed, equipped
with split rear end for the open road to local cemeteries.
Monuments, that is die and base, went
mainly to Jewish cemeteries, and occasionally to a gypsy section in
one cemetery. Flat run the lawn mower over the top markers is good
enough for most of us. Its all about price and cemetery efficiency
and a lack of interest in the dead. In our mainstream society, no
“day of the dead” ceremonies remembering our parents or
grandparents north of the Rio grand.
Howard’s basic tools were planks,
broom handle rollers , 4x4 cribbing, plywood for path construction, a
4-wheel balloon tire heavy-duty hand truck, and a pinch bar seldom
used, it being a dangerous tool. He would deliver and install 500 to
1000 pound fragile and expensive monuments with ease. Knowing that
any chips or scratches were unacceptable to the customer. He would
raise them up on the base with the hand truck and put a special goop
he rolled in his hand while I rocked the monument back. He slid them
down off the truck on his trusty planks and moved them through the
cemetery without damaging the grass with his hand truck on plywood
roads he laid down.
With a guy like Howard, what company
would bother with a lifting device? We both worked cheap, low wages
and long hours. Fridays were often 7 to 7 by the time we got back to
the shop with a lunch at one of Howard's favorite beer joints.
Early one spring – I don't remember
whether it was hood river or The Dalles, Oregon – Howard asked me
to go with him in the old green flatbed loaded with his trusty
planks, 4x4 cribbing, 4x4 by 8 foot beams, chains and belts, come
along puller, plywood road material and a solid stone altar about 8
foot long and 4 foot wide and 3 feet high, it must have weighed about
8 tons. It was to be installed in a catholic church. I didn't know
how he was going to do this so I told my wife and children I would be
back later in the week.
Howard had already cased the job out,
for when we got to church parking lot,two auto wreckers pulled up,
one one each side of the flatbed. We rigged the lifting cables, the
wreckers coordinated the lift and Howard drove the flatbed out. I
don't remember whether he had them lower on to a steel cart or
whether it came down on his 4x4 roller system, it's been 40 years. I
do remember that it took 2 days to move the altar with the come along
up into the front door and down the center aisle and up to the front
of the church. Turn it and and safely land this fragile and expensive
stone. I assume it's still there.
Food and lodging at a motel was
provided by the company we worked for. I remember when we drove back
down into the Willamette Valley the heavy rich smell of spring in the
air and feeling of accomplishment working with this gentle man. I
learned a lot from him and a few years later when I had my own little
business I had a opportunity to move and turn an altar with my
companion Schmitty. I will save that story for another blog.
Whenever I go back to my home town in
Minnesota I always visit the cemeteries where my brothers and sisters
and parents are buried, all with beautiful upright die and base
monuments, and think about my roots.
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| My Final Installation System |
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