1976
Acrylic Paint on Canvas
36 inches x 24 inches
My wife’s sister’s husband was a Bethlehem Steel “Looper,” second-in-charge of the blast furnaces. He was also the photographer for our wedding and as payment for his services I painted “The Steel Company” for him. Once delivered, Richard sent it down to the Steel’s carpentry shop, had a frame built, then hung it on his wall. Four years later, tragically, he was gone and this painting went into “storage” until I was surprised by its resurgence only recently.
More than any other painting I’ve done: this one speaks with an entirely new voice.
1976: I’m back from two years in the service then four years of living and painting in California. I returned to find half of everyone I used to know employed at Bethlehem Steel. Guys I knew from high school had been working the blast furnaces or the soaking pits or the beam yards or the in-plant railroad long enough to afford cars and houses. My old surfing buddy was pouring ingots. Another operated a crane. An old girlfriend was a secretary in the corporate office. Others worked at the Steel Club. My new brother-in-law was a white-helmet: a boss.
My errand takes me down to Sand Island where I set up my easel, get out my colors and paint as vibrant a scene as could be imagined—almost effortlessly. That place across the river was alive. You don’t see the fire, the steam, or the smoke—but it’s there: red hot with sparks the size of baseballs.
The din of steel manufacturing flooded the south side and came at me in a constant stream. Rolling mills compressed hot bars. Cutting saws howled. Sirens and alarms blared to each other as crane hooks drug beams off cement floors. Glowing ingot cars creaked and groaned over tracks they didn’t have time to replace. Plant trucks raced by while sidings lined with hopper cars slammed in chain reactions humped by dirty yellow and purple PB&NE diesels. The rush of waste gas burning off in invisible blue columns and a thousand guys on shift change was like war: with no break and no end.
And like never before, those sounds made color I could never repeat if I tried.
Knowing what the Steel once was is to not care what happens to it now. Casinos and businesses try to make it into something that will never be. What is left of the Steel sits silently over there: five towering piles of rust vaulting into oblivion. Nobody who worked for Bethlehem Steel ever forgot it. My buddy was laid off in 88. “I wish I would have grabbed my yellow helmet and brought it home” he says today, joking with a grin. “You know, Beedle, I’m just waiting for them to call me back!”