Life’s Memorable Moments: Stories that didn’t Make the Book

The FDIC Building Downtown Dallas: Part One

During the summer of 2002, the plumbing company I worked for, Geep Mechanical, picked up a project at the FDIC building in downtown Dallas. The task was simple enough: drop a pair of chilled-water lines down from the roof of the twenty-two-story building through a pipe shaft to the ninth floor. That’s where the communication systems and internet servers were. The first challenge was figuring out where the two 4-inch Victaulic lines were going in the existing pipe shaft. 

The pipe shaft was about the size of a two-car elevator shaft, only it was crammed full of an assortment of piping and I-beams to hold the piping in place. The task of installing the piping was so daunting that Geep could charge time and material to complete the project rather than an outright bid. Geep could charge this because the job was so dangerous that no other companies wanted to touch it. Not just for those of us doing the installation but for the employees working in the building. 

Victaulic Pipe and Coupling

To put some perspective on the task, this is what we did. We dropped fifty feet of pipe at a time down the pipe shaft with a winch cable. To accomplish this, we assembled two twenty-one-feet long pieces of Victaulic pipe, then cut one foot off of one end so we could get rid of the grooves. Then we welded a nine-feet long piece of weld pipe to the end we cut off; to make fifty feet. We then welded a ⅝ nut onto the side of the pipe about ten feet from one end, wrapped the winch cable around the pipe under the bolt, and pulled the cable tight. Once the cable was tight, we shoved a pin through the nut and continued to lift the pipe, guiding it into the hole in the roof leading to the pipe shaft.

As the pipe was lowered down the shaft, two of us would leapfrog down the stairway stopping at every third floor where an opening was cut into the wall to give access to the pipe shaft. A person would crawl through the hole into the shaft and stand on a 4-inch wide I-beam until they could get their hands on the pipe being lowered towards them. They would then guide it down to the person three stories below. At any given point, a person was standing between nine and 19 stories trying to manhandle fifty feet of pipe without plunging to their death. 

There was one event where the pipe got hung on a pre-existing I-beam, and the noose of the winch cable grew larger as more slack developed in the cable. Those of us in the pipe shaft began yelling in the walkie-talkies, we were issued, at the winch operator telling him to stop. Unfortunately, the operator heard our screams before he heard us over the radio. All the metal in the shaft disrupted the signal. Luckily, the cable was pulled up, the noose tightened around the pipe again under the nut, and the pin fell back in place when the pipe began to straighten. If that pipe had dropped, it definitely would have bounced off of something, shot through a wall, and killed a few employees minding their own business. Fortunately, that never happened. The fact that no one was seriously hurt on the project speaks volumes to how capable Geep Mechanical was as a plumbing company. That’s not to say the project went without incident, though. The entire duration of the job was one big screw with Mikey, fest, which began about a week into the project. 

Chain Fall

It was late May, and Mike Callan, the Plumbing Department Supervisor, had come out to get a chain-fall we weren’t using to take to another project. I remember it was about 1:30 PM because we had worked through lunch due to a looming storm moving our way. When Mike Callan arrived, the storm was directly overhead, and the sky was green, signaling hail or a tornado. Clay, Donny, Darin, and I were scrambling to pick up anything that might get blown off the roof by straight-line winds. Mike Callan was helping tie things down and pointing out anything we might have missed. When we were done, we headed to the stairway right when the bottom fell out of the clouds. The raindrops felt as large as fists, and the wind was so strong it blew the rain sideways. When we opened the door leading to the stairway, the wind tried to rip it off its hinges. It took Darin and me to pull the door back closed once we were all in. It was then we realized no one had grabbed the chain-fall in our dash to the door. Everyone looked at me. 

“You can’t be serious? I only weigh 140-pounds. That wind will blow me right off the damn roof,” I exclaimed, genuinely concerned I might take flight. 

“Well, stay low and get to the chain-fall quick; it will help hold you down,” Clay laughed.  

I looked to Mike Callan to save me. 

“Sorry, Gump, you’re the low man in this group,” Mike Callan replied to my glare. He, too, was laughing. 

“Well, shit, this sucks,” I said as I stood at the door. 

Darin stood holding the doorknob, looking at me in his straw cowboy hat, wrangler pearl snap shirt, jeans, and boots, and asked, “You ready?” 

I felt like I was seventeen again, sitting on the back of a bull, getting ready to tell the cowboys around me to open the chute. I took off my hat, set it in the corner, returned to the door, took a deep breath, gave a nod, and said, “Okay, let’s go.”

Darin opened the door, I bolted out, then he and Donny pulled the door shut. The wind was at my back, trying to take me into the air with each stride. About halfway, a lightning bolt lit up the sky, accompanied by a thunderous clap.

“Holy shit, that was close,” I said to myself. 

Block-and-tackle of a chain fall

I reached the chain-fall, lifted it, draped the chains around my neck and over my shoulder, so the ends hung on my chest. I held the large block-and-tackle in my arms like a running-back holds a football and headed back into the wind and rain. I reached the stairway and kicked the door so they would open it for me, but nothing happened. I reached out and opened it myself. I walked into an empty stairway. Setting down the chain-fall, I walked over to the door leading to the offices and knocked, but again there was no answer. I couldn’t open that door, though, because to get through that door, you had to have an I.D. to wave in front of the card reader on the wall. Clay and Mike Callan were the only ones with such an I.D. I merely had a visitor’s pass. 

“They wouldn’t have? Mike Callan wouldn’t have let ‘em,” I mumbled. Then I looked over at my hat, and tucked inside was a note that read,

Gump,

Bring the chain-fall to the boiler room at Kettle when you finally get out. You can finish your day there.  

Thanks. 

Mike Callan.

“You have to be fucking kidding me,” I grumbled. 

Kettle was a food plant in Fort Worth, and the only way out of the stairway without an I.D. was to walk down the twenty-two flights to the loading bay in the garage. I picked up the chain-fall and began the journey. 

“I guess I should be happy; I am going down instead of up,” I mumbled. 

Finally, I got to my truck, opened the hatch to my camper shell, and put the chain-fall in the bed. Sitting in my tool bag was another note. 

Mikey, 

Do you want to work this weekend?

Mike Callan.

I got in the driver’s seat, reached into the back cab, grabbed a towel to dry off then called Mike Callan.

“Yeah, I’ll work. Is Clay going to be there?” I said when Mike Callan answered. 

“Yeah,” He replied. 

“Good, because I am going to kill him. I know you wrote the note, but I also know it was his idea,” I responded. 

“Okay. Just wait until the end of the day when the work is done,” Mike Callan suggested while laughing, then hung up his phone. 

By the time I got home that evening, I had admitted to myself that shit was funny, and had I been Clay, I would have done the same thing. 

To be continued.