VOICES - Black Hawk College

I was choking with smoke and answered, “About three hundred
feet south of the furnace.” Knocko pulled out a compass and changed
direction, heading toward a spot where fireman were hosing a huge pile
of molten iron. Knocko fell to his knees and started to cry like a baby,
his hands to his face, sobbing and rocking. I picked up his flashlight
and pointed it to the huge pile of molten iron where a huge pair of
shoes were sticking out, size fourteens. Tim was the only man that
worked in the plant who wore a shoe of that size.
Two firemen came over to Knocko but he pushed them away,
screaming “We need Father Fitzgerald here right away.” He grabbed
a portable two way radio. “A Priest is needed in here right away in the
furnace room.”
I was in shock; Knocko knelt down, got his rosary out and started
praying at Tim’s feet. Workers arrived with picks and shovels to start
working on the pile of molten iron as Father Fitzgerald and Iron Mike
O’Brien, the police captain picked Knocko up and hugged him. A
medic wrapped a blanket around me as I just stood and stared at Uncle
Tim’s big feet. A small bulldozer picked up a corner of a pattern bench;
its driver yelled, “Come out! we found bodies.”
Tim and two others had tried to take cover under the huge bench.
Ripple Ass McCauley was Tim’s sand hauler, Toad Cutter was a
patternmaker and Tim himself. They all three were crushed under the
weight of the bench and the molten iron. Knocko and I gently removed
Tim’s body from under the thick steel bench. Father Fitzgerald anointed
the three bodies.
We wrapped Tim’s enormous body in canvas; he was too big for a
coroner’s body bag. Tim’s body was too large for the stretchers, too, so
Tim was placed on a nine foot pallet for a fork lift to remove him to a
hearse. The coroner and the medic tenderly placed Ripple and Toad in
body bags and then onto stretchers for transportation.
“I will handle all the arrangements for my Uncle,” I told the
coroner.
Iron Mike explained, “Red is Tim’s nephew; he will handle
arrangements with O’Neal’s on Thirty-eight and Shields.” Knocko gave
me a big bear hug and I walked back to my locker to change clothes
and get to a phone outside of Building Five. . . .
I placed my pool money on a little ledge and put a quarter into the
slot and hit four, one, one. “What city and state?” a recording asked.
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