Vandegrift

Yesterday the USS Vandegrift became the first US Navy ship to visit Vietnam since the Vietnam War.
I cut my left thumb with a pneumatic grinder on the upper level (port side) of the Vandegrift‘s engine room when I worked on the ship as an apprentice pipefitter in the early 1990s. We had finished a piping run in that part of the space and were moving to the starboard side, and my job was to switch off the air back at the main valve, bleed the air hose, disconnect the whip and the grinder, re-route the air hose over to the other side of the engine room, reconnect everything, and turn the air back on up at the main valve. I was on ‘bleed the air hose,’ which I did by running the grinder at full speed until it stopped because there was no more air in the hose to make it go. I wasn’t wearing gloves, and with the grinder in my right hand I let the machine whirr and my mind wander — What an amazing piece of machinery! Look at the size of that engine! Look at that shaft! Look at all the shit they have to control it! — until “shffft…” the grinder wheel was into my flesh. Blood spurted onto my coveralls and fell in glops onto the floor and my boots. As quick as I could, before I made the situation worse by looking at what I had done to myself, I pulled a rag out of my back pocket and wrapped it around my thumb. I had no idea how much damage I had done, but I imagined it was considerable. I had been using the tool to grind at slag on welds joining pipes and fittings, a job the grinder handled easily, a job that was far more difficult than grinding my thumb into a stump.
The ship was at the Long Beach Naval Shipyard, and every morning, I and everybody else assigned to it rode a cramped bus from Southwest Marine (our employer) over to the ship. Working at the Navy Yard was unpleasant because you had to show up early to catch the bus, and because there was always a line for tools, though there was no guarantee the tools you needed would be available once you finally got up to the counter, and the Navy was right there looking over your shoulder every minute, and there was nothing to buy off the lunch truck and you couldn’t leave the Navy Yard to find something better, and at the end of the day you got home late cause you had to ride the bus back to Southwest Marine. While I was there, I did not notice very many happy shipyard workers at the Navy Yard.
There was a cargo container on the pier that we used as a tool shed, and this is where we went if we needed pneumatic tools, or a new pair of gloves, or emergency first aid.
After the wrap job I climbed five or six decks up to the main deck, holding my thumb and my arm over my head whenever I could. The throbbing began when I reached the flight deck, where a gangway lead down to the pier. I got in line behind a dozen or so guys waiting their turn outside the Tool Shed to check out tools or retrieve parts special ordered from the yard. It was mid-morning, and except for a pair of shipfitters at the front of the line, nobody talked. Shipfitters seemed to think they were at the top of the shipbuilding food chain, and they were, a status earned by their skill with cutting torches and arc-welders, the blunt massiveness of the pieces of steel upon which they regularly worked, and their position at the heart of the industry. Shipfitters built ships, everybody else supported shipfitters (the carpenters, the riggers, the administrators), or filled with conveniences the ships that the shipfitters had made (the electricians, the pipefitters). Like everybody else in line, they were dirty and tired and unhappy about working at the Navy Yard, but they were shipfitters, so they laughed and chatted while the rest were sullen.
After a moment, the guy ahead of me looked back to see who had joined the line, and after getting a glimpse of my bloody rag, said, “Here, you go on ahead.” Then the guy ahead of him looked back and did the same thing and so on until I was standing behind the shipfitters. The tool shed attendant was nowhere in sight, was probably back somewhere in the racks of tools and supplies locating something only the shipfitters understood.
“Look here,” said someone behind me. “Make way.”
The shipfitters turned quickly upon the line and glared back at the others, then at me.
“Cut myself,” I said, holding forth my hand in its bloody rag. “With a grinder.”
“Well hell! Why didn’t you say so?” They grabbed hold of my shoulders and pulled me up to the counter.
“Tool Man!” yelled one of the shipfitters. “Forget about my calipers and get out here quick. We got a man hurt!”
“How bad is it?” asked the other shipfitter.
“Little cut,” I said. I was feeling important. “A coupla stitches.”
“Shit, with all that blood I’d say you lost the tip, at least.”
The Tool Man, whose name was Jefferson or Jasperson appeared from the shadows of his store room. “How many times have I told you not to call me ‘Tool Ma…’” He paused and looked at my hand and then at my face. “Ahh hell. You’ve only had that grinder since this morning and already you let it get the best of you.”
I shrugged.
“Nevermind. Lemme see.”
I peeled off the rag and the Tool Man took a look and pronounced that I’d need a couple of stitches, that was all, a development that seemed to disappoint everybody who was involved in getting me to the front of the line, especially the shipfitter who had asked me how badly I was hurt. “I was there when that painter lost his head from the sandblaster,” he said to the line. “I was standing right across the road, having a smoke. He tried to pull the top off the tank while it was still full of air and sand. ‘BLAM!’ Shot the lid right off, and everything above his shoulders went with it.”
The Tool Man cleaned me up and half an hour later I rode back to the shipyard in a pickup with the leadman whose job it was to ferry parts and communications (and injured workers) between our yard and the Navy Yard. The nurse gave me two stitches and in return I gave her a cupful of urine for the drug test.