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