Finding Work in Aberdeen

Hitchhiking from London, England to Aberdeen, Scotland was easy.  But my employment there didn’t turn out as expected.  How often do plans match outcomes?

I went to Aberdeen to work on an offshore oil rig in the North Sea.  At my first oil company interview, I was told the lack of Scots employed in the industry, and the multitude of Americans hired, had become a political issue.   Better luck next time. 

I found an employment agency and worked at a lumber yard for two weeks.  Though I was living at the cheapest place I could find, a second-floor firetrap of a YMCA hostel populated mainly by old alcoholic men, I soon realized I would save little on lumberyard wages.  Luck came my way when three Irish boys checked into the hostel and befriended me. 

“So, you’re looking for better work then Yankee?”

“I sure am.”

“Why don’t you come with us tonight?  We have a meet-up with a man from our town back in Donegal who’s putting together a work crew for a pipeline.  It’ll run from Aberdeen here up the coast about 48 kilometers to Peterhead.  Will last for a good while.  Maybe we can get you on.”

Darkness found the four of us on a sidewalk in a rundown neighborhood ringing the doorbell of a tiny house.  When the door opened, light from inside the house fell on my three new friends and outlined the shape of a big man in a tweed sports coat.  I stood behind them. 

One boy did the talking.  He introduced himself and dropped the name of an uncle who formerly worked for the big man and had sent them.  The man acknowledged knowing his uncle and asked after him in a low voice.  The boy went on to introduce his two mates by name.

“And we’ve met up with a big Yankee who appears able to put in a fine day’s work.   Might you be needing him as well?”

“Let’s have a look.”

They stepped aside and I took a step forward.  I felt odd being sized up physically with little consideration of anything more.  He looked me over and said nothing.

“Right then, the bus will pick up the four of you tomorrow morning at (some intersection).  If you’re late you’ve lost the job.   We won’t be waiting for you.“

He took a small notebook and pencil out of his jacket pocket.

“Let’s have your names again.”

He wrote down their surnames.  Never asked me mine. 

That’s how two and a half months of hard labor for good pay in the Scottish countryside began.  Next to a deep trench, Caterpillar tractors with side mounts grabbed wide steel pipes and joined them to a string of pipe welded together.   I was on the small crew that shoved eight-foot wooden 4x4’s under the pipes where they joined, building platforms of various heights to hold them steady and level while spot welders tacked the pipe ends together. 

The 4x4’s were scattered next to sections of pipe with a ditch beside them.  The line snaked as far as we could see across Scottish farm fields and meadows.

They put me on that job of horsing 4x4’s the first day and I never had another one.   Finish welders followed, working under canvas shelters, welding the pipes completely.  Later they were X-rayed to ensure seamlessness.  An English foreman ran the job.  He was the king.  The welders and the Caterpillar operators were princes.   The Irishmen, forty of them maybe, along with me were the serfs.  I was the only American.

It rained every day.  I had leather shoes that were quickly being destroyed in the mud.  They all had rubber Wellingtons.  They served tea morning and afternoon.  Tired filthy workers stood in the mud balancing a China cup of tea and a biscuit during a break twice a day.  An old Irishman with a kind face took me aside during afternoon tea on my first day. 

“Ask the English foreman’s man for Wellies.  They won’t give them to ya till ya do.”

He paused.

“And mind your back.  There’s no safety outfit gonna come to your aid on this job.  If you get hurt, they sack you.  If they ask you to do something ya thinks too dangerous tell them ta fook off.  They’ll find someone else.  You‘re not in America anymore lad.”

He was the man on the job first to notice things beyond us and point them out.  A stone fence snaking up and over a rise.  Cows on a hillside.

 

And the rainbows.  Because it rained so often, with sun off and on, rainbows were plentiful.   Partial rainbows ending in clouds, full sky rainbows making a perfect arc between two points on the horizon, double rainbows. 

“Look there Yankee.  There’s another one. “

I glanced up. 

“Yeah.  Nice.”

“Nice? All ya can say is nice?  Is that what they teach you in America then?  Rainbows are God’s gift to man Yankee.  His assurance of pardon to us wretches.  His promise of forgiveness.  Gorgeous, beautiful, blessed forgiveness.  Have a bit of humility Yankee.  Acknowledge beauty and grace for fook’s sake, even if just to humor an old sod like me.”

Fridays were paydays.  My first payday on the job the big man who looked me over that night in Aberdeen came out during afternoon tea in an old jeep, wearing that same tweed coat, its pockets now bulging with cash.  The foreman’s man was with him holding a clipboard and calling out last names.  Men would walk up to him when their name was called.

“Doogan.  Five days.”

The man in the tweed coat multiplied our daily wage in his head by the days attended and handed each man a wad of cash.  Some mumbled thanks.  The man in the tweed coat said nothing.

The list was alphabetical.  I was last.

“Yankee.  Five days.”

The man in the tweed coat handed me my money.  I thought I saw a smile.  Could have been my imagination.  He walked back toward the jeep, where the foreman’s man was rummaging around. As I turned to walk away, I heard the foreman’s man yell out.

“And Wellies for the Yankee as well.”

A pair of rubber Wellington boots tumbled through the air and landed beside me.

That night on our way back to the hostel the three Irishmen and I stopped at a fish and chips takeout, not much more than a couple of deep fryers and a table on the street,  They made a cone out of sheets of newspaper, folded it at the bottom, filled it with deep-fried potato wedges, and put two fried fish filets on top.  We shook salt and malt vinegar on all of it and ate it with our hands as we walked.  I held the paper cone to my chest under my chin. The smell of the vinegar and the heat from the fish rose up onto my cold face. 

“So, whatcha think of your first week Yankee?” asked the Irishman who did most of the talking.

“It was damned hard, but good.  I’m making decent money.  Thanks for getting me on.”

“You’re doing well.  We’re going to the pub for a pint.  Care to join us?”

I went, feeling like I belonged.