Days on the Hulett
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We received a wonderful letter from David Lee,
Edward Hummer's grandson who came to run the very same Huletts as his grandpa, only forty years later.
 
This is his story...
 
 

Day on a Hulett
 
By David Lee

The Hummer Family Stories

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05/01/02

When I was little, I remember Grandpa Hummer coming home from work with his coveralls and lunch bucket. He was about six feet tall and to me he was a giant.

He worked at the Ashtabula and Buffalo Dock as a Larry car operator. The Larry car was in fact a very large scale hung from the underside of the hulett. It was suspended from tracks that ran the length of the hulett. His job was to wait for the hullet operator to dump the ore from his bucket into a hopper above the Larry car. He would then" grind out "the ore. A very loud grinding sound was made as this was done, hence the term.

He would then weigh the ore and when he had the correct amount in the larrycar hopper he would either travel the length of the hulett or dump it in the "pit", which was a U-shaped set of concrete walls. It ran the length of the dock and was used as a holding area for the storage of ore on the dock. It would then be scooped out of the "pit" by a huge gantry crane that was capable of traveling the entire length of the dock on four sets of "trucks", a series of wheels sitting on tracks.

The other option was to take it to one of four tracks, which was assigned to that hulett and dump it into a waiting railroad car. The cars were brought to the huletts by means of a cable system that ran the entire dock. The r.r. cars had the amount of ore it would hold stenciled on the side, so the operator would have to weigh the correct amount .It was o.k. to be a little under, but if it was overweight they would dump that car because it was unsafe to travel.

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Winter Fleet, Ashtabula Harbor

Map Courtesy U.S. Army Engineers & Cleveland State
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The larryman had a fairly demanding job. He not only had to be accurate as he weighed, but he also had to do this at a pretty good pace. It was a cardinal sin to have the hulett operator stop and wait for you. Grandpa must have been good at it because he worked at that job for many years.

I worked on the Union Dock, which was just across the creek from the A&B where grandpa worked. I started out a "gripper".They were the ones who would pull the r.r. cars under the huletts to be loaded. There were two sets of cables that ran the length of the dock. These were as big around as an average cucumber.  They were situated between 1&2 tracks and 3&4 tracks and were constantly moving. Each set had a forward cable and a back cable.

The gripper had a vice-like apparatus with a smaller twenty-foot cable with a hook on the end. The grip would allow the large cable to slide through it. The gripper would place the hook on the r.r. Car and when he pulled up on the 3 ft. handle of the grip it would clamp down on the moving cable and the railroad cars would start to move, hopefully. On a cool day you could pull a string of sixteen cars at once. When the temperature reached 80 and above there were times you could only pull three or four at a time. I did that for three seasons and then I moved up to the larrycar.

When the Union Dock closed, the A&B Docked hired some of us. I was experienced on the larrycar and was hired. That is how forty years later I came to run the same larrycar as grandpa .

The huletts are just a memory now. The docks are still there but they are levelled. They still ship ore from them. The ore comes in on thousand foot long self -unloaders. There is part of one of the huletts mounted outside of the Marine Museum in Ashtabula. It is the bucket and part of the "leg". The operator sat above the bucket inside the leg. He controlled the bucket with one set of levers and the up and down with another set. He could also rotate at the same time. With practice you became part of it and it was an experience to watch the old hands work.

It truly was poetry in motion.

I was just starting to learn how to run it when the dock closed. I did get to solo a few times and it was a great experience.

Speaking of the museum, they have the hulett that "Spike" Pearson made. It is made of metal and is an exact replica down to the tools that hung on the side, the wood planking on the catwalks and the dock under it. It was on loan to the Smithsonian at one time, I believe. I don't know where the nickname, Spike, came from, as he was a very mild -mannered soft-spoken man. He was my larrycar operator at the Union Dock when I was a gripper. I didn't realize until years later how talented he was.

Your Cousin,

Dave