chapter twenty-two

Every major university library has a Special Collections Department. I’ve used them often. The books and material are old, frequently historic, generally priceless. None of it can be checked out, but it can be held, read, and studied, if done so with gloved hands, appreciation, and care.

I am embarrassed that it hasn’t occurred to me before now to search there for items relating to the bridge. I recognize Gwen, the librarian in charge, and she recognizes me. She is a pleasant older woman, and if I was playing my separated-at-birth game, I’d say she reminds me of a modern Mary Poppins.

“Professor Winston’s assistant, right?”

“Yes, that’s correct.”

“What project are we working on today?”

“It’s an assignment about the history of the Golden Gate Bridge.”

“There’s a fun way to spend your weekend.”

“Tell me about it.” I chitchat until the timing is right, then I get to my point. “Listen, I’m looking for old books or letters from men who may have worked on the bridge during its initial construction. Do you have anything like that?”

“Honey, we’re in San Francisco. We have shelf loads: notes, letters, pictures, drawings. You name it.”

It turns out that she is not exaggerating. There are several drawers of letters, minutes from government meetings, photos, even plans and drawings of the bridge. I ask specifically about items that may have been dropped off anonymously years earlier, but she has no way of checking. Anything so acquired would have simply been cataloged eons ago. I take a pile of the material and spread it over one end of a table. The information is fabulous—and I mean fabulous—and I quickly get lost in my work.

I’m transported back to a harder, lonelier time. I am reminded of the climate and conditions, of the fact that the country was in the throes of a debilitating depression.

“August 1934. It is late summer, a time carpenters normally cherish—a time of abundant light and warm weather. That is not the case at this forsaken place. The Gate is plunged in cold, wet gloom. During normal times one would never consider working in such a place—but these are not normal times.”

Another reads, “1933—times are tough with the Depression going on. There are always men looking for work, and so if you mess up, they let you go quicker than the bay fog. Take time for a smoke and they replace you. And we only get paid for time put in, no matter how long we’ve been waiting for work to begin. Even guys out on the steel, where it’s cold and miserable as hell, they all just feel damn lucky to have jobs.”

I leaf through the various notes and letters, pondering the conditions, wondering what role Patrick O’Riley played.

“May 4th, 1934—Never seen a completely calm day at the Gate, always windy, a gale that seeks men out. It blows up our sleeves and pant legs, no matter how many layers we wear. When this hellhole ain’t windy, we’re shrouded in fog. There are days we stand in sunshine on top of the tower, but we never see the water because of the fog. Sometimes it’s all around and you wonder what the hell you’re doing out here—fog, cold, wind in your face. But you stay, and despite the weather, the tower continues to rise—and it is a beautiful sight.”

As I read, I am surprised to find that an earthquake struck the bridge while it was being built. The event was recorded by a bridge worker, Frenchy Gales.

“It was early June. I was on the tower when the quake hit. It was so limber that it swayed sixteen feet in each direction. There were twelve or thirteen guys on top with no way down. The whole thing would sway toward the ocean and the guys would say, ‘Here we go!’ thinking the tower was going to collapse into the water. Then it would sway back toward the bay. Men were throwing up. I figured if it collapsed into the water, we’d hit the iron first. It never did.”

As I continue to peruse their words, one fact becomes obvious. Through the insurmountable hardship of bridging the Gate, a comradeship developed among the men—a feeling that all were taking part in something historic.

A note left by a tower worker makes me chuckle.

“We had toilets on the tower where the waste collected in a trap. It was always a temptation to open the trap on one of the passing ships, like dropping a live bomb. Nobody did, ’course, till we heard that the Shensu Maru, a Japanese freighter, would be steaming through the Gate. It wasn’t long before the war, and the Japs had already invaded Manchuria. A lot of the guys on the crew weren’t fond of ’em. I guess the temptation became too great for one of them. I can’t say who, ’course, other than to say I heard he figured his precise timing the day before. The next morning when the ship appeared right on schedule, steaming toward the bridge in the outbound shipping lane, there was a sudden waiting line to use the toilet. Funny how all the guys had to go at once. Well, whoever the culprit was, he missed the smokestacks but still managed a direct hit all over the deck. You could hear the men’s hoots ’n hollers all the way to the shore. The Japanese filed a protest and inspectors came around asking questions—’course, nobody knew nothing, nothing at all.”

There are also letters documenting the tremendous amount of concrete and steel consumed by the bridge during its construction.

“Two separate concrete plants have been erected, one on each shore. Cement is poured day and night, a huge river of aggregate that never ceases to flow. I would not have believed the scale of the project had I not been here to see it with my own eyes, to touch it with my own hands.”

And then another note from Frenchy Gales. “There were guys down in the cement who would level it off. At the end of a pour we took count, and we were one guy short. The pours were deep. Everybody started stabbing around in the cement trying to find the guy, but we couldn’t. The timekeeper asked if I would go with him to notify his family. It was one-thirty in the morning when we knocked on their door. The timekeeper nearly fainted when the missing guy answered the door in his pajamas. He explained that he got tired, slipped out, and went home to bed. That was the last time he ever worked on the bridge.”

The name Frenchy Gales appears often. He apparently worked in many areas of the bridge, and I can’t help but wonder if he knew Patrick. Were they friends? Did they work together, laugh together, drink together?

I continue to sift. There were times when the construction moved along at surprising speed, but other times when the Gate refused to be bridled. I find notes from Russell Cone, a man who headed one of the major construction companies.

“On October 31, an unexpected storm rolled huge waves into the Gate. They struck the steel forms with tremendous force, breaking over the deck of the access trestle. They kept buffeting until the fifty-ton tower began to shudder six feet forward and back. The oscillation worked the foundation pipes loose. The trestle groaned and creaked and then a mountainous wave, higher than any of the others, hit the forms like a cyclone. Before our eyes it swept a tangled mass of wreckage into the Golden Gate. All we could do was stand and watch. It didn’t just tear out the trestle that day, it also tore out my heart. It was ten months of the hardest kind of work imaginable, and in just one swallow, it was gulped up unmercifully by an angry sea.”

I am struck by their persistence, amazed by their determination to overcome all obstacles. Just six months after the storm had devastated his company’s work, Cone notes, “May 4, 1934. I was heartbroken when the storms washed the trestle out into the bay, but we have found the will to move forward. The work continues, and the bridge is now taking on an almost living quality. Today, we rode the elevator some seven hundred feet up from the tower’s concrete base. It was a raw, windy day—perhaps fitting—when we placed the American flag on the top of the bridge tower for all to see. For a certainty, the men now know, we will succeed!”

They were asked to tame one of the most treacherous pieces of water meeting land known to man—and they did.

They found a way.