Bulldozers

A brief reminiscence I was moved to write after reading accounts of two Harrison Construction Company projects in Construction Methods: L. S. Wescott, “10,000,000-Yd. Earthmoving Job: Levels Hills for West Virginia Airport” (January 1942), and Henry T. Perez, “Here’s One Way to Build a Rock-Fill Dam” (June 1953). 

Courtesy of Todd C. Harrison, my nephew and fellow descendant of E. J. Harrison (1883-1963) and Max C. Harrison (1905-1966), who led the family business from its beginning in 1928 to its Pittsburgh end in 1962. Its southern division still named ‘Harrison’, taken over by Max’s personal assistant, Carle Davis (1919-2012), carries on today from its office in Knoxville, Tennessee. https://harrisoncc.com/

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A person’s work deserves a memorial when all is said and done. That I’d imagined would be stored somewhere when Dad died, like the basement? Nothing doing! My second wife and I traveled to Wyoming after her Dad died, lured by word that his ‘papers’ were stored at the University of Wyoming in Laramie. To be treated to a copy of Ulysses Grant’s memoir and not much else. This from John K. Jessup, the editor of Henry Luce’s Life Magazine, a serious opinionator. So Max’s wasn’t the only life of accomplishment to leave behind a trailhead to nowhere.

Until you showed up. These articles and the one about the West End Bypass do nicely to fill the void. They’re also the memorial Dad and his Dad deserved: serious writing about serious projects. Whetting my appetite for more. One of Max’s ads that appeared in Luce’s Fortune magazine was headed “Ninety-Two and You,” referring to Harrison’s to-do list. Subtract these three projects and you’re down to only eighty-nine more!

While running a business had no appeal for a philosophizing writer I could be and was captivated by one aspect of it. Heavy construction machinery’s effect on the senses. The images of earth-moving equipment speak of godlike manhood going about godlike business. Relatable to me because I spent June-July-August 1957 riding a D-8 Caterpillar. Getting up at seven each morning to crank up the pony motor, get the diesel going, and hop up behind the controls. A routine that could have crushed the soul of an artist but it didn’t. To me it was poetry, and I loved it.

Riding that ‘dozer all summer, just the two of us sub-soiling a pasture, was the best summer job ever. I never tired of the roar of the motor and the feel of its primal force. A gentle giant. A gift of the gods. What horse must have been to the first human to tame it — a friend.

Of such insignificant details are histories written. Were I thirty years younger and at your side while you unearthed troves of documents maybe we could have done justice to the material. My experience with one ‘dozer just a taste of a whole world of sensing to be had. Brought to life by my Dad in the image of another kind of bulldozer. Godlike and fierce. A worthy foe. Whose every construction project, every encounter, was a test of manhood. A proving ground for Meaning. The makings of a great story.

Like Pompeii, to be unearthed one structure, one life and artifact at a time. Are you having fun?