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Memory of the month the way things were (Part Three)

During one of my rare days in the yard between jobs, I was attacking a stack of lorry wheels by fitting new tyres to them when Les White came to me and said “get your machine you have a bit of demolition to do”. Well the place we had been told to go to was only a few miles away so we soon arrived with my current machine a IH 175c track shovel an excellent machine which I thought had the edge on the  Cat 955 because of a better more robust clamshell bucket and planetary steering.

On arrival we couldn’t see anything that needed knocking down except two nice stone built farm cottages in good order, with good front gardens and a big orchard behind and they would have made a super property knocked in one, I said are you sure this is the place, then we spotted a lady walking across a field towards us evidently the owner, Les asked what she wanted knocking down and she pointed to the cottages.  I was horrified at this as they were better than the small council place I was living in and I could barely believe it, I said are you sure, yes, well if you don’t mind me asking why do you want them down, she replied “they are spoiling my view”.  Well, it was with a heavy heart that I took the first bite out of them, I finished next day having cleared the site and wished it was one job I really hadn’t done. I reckon they would be worth about £350k today as one unit with a modern interior.

A colleague and I were sent to dig out some foundations for a new shopping centre at Southway near Plymouth, the site had been cleared and the trenches marked out but we were the only workers on site.  I forget what swing shovel we had, probably my least favoured machine a Hy-Mac 580B but we got stuck in. It was soon apparent that the ground was very hard blue grey shillet standing on its edge which immediately turns to dust when trying to dig it in a trench situation. Also that we were not going to be able to reach the specified depth of around seven foot without jackhammering by hand as the machine mounted hammer had not yet been invented and probably would not have worked in this situation.  As the ground was so hard it was not really necessary to have gone so deep but that request fell on deaf ears so day after day we took it in turns on the hammer and machine, daily we broke bits and the compressor hire company was very unhappy but kept supplying new ones. 

In those days most sites were not fenced off and as there were lots of houses nearby the local children were a real menace and the parents refused to control their brats. We used to cover the trenches with sheets of galvanised iron and then of course they took great delight in running up and down on them, one fat kid of about twelve seemed to rule all the other kids throwing stones etc. I’m afraid we had dark thoughts about him and he was obviously heading the penal system. Oh for Heras type fencing.

One day my colleague was down in the trench at the full depth and I was standing on the edge when I saw two small pieces of shillet about the size of my thumbnail fall off the edge I just shouted “OUT OUT OUT!” he dropped the hammer and ran, I grabbed his hand and pulled him up and as we looked the whole side of the trench fell in, many tons of material, we shall never forget the speed of it and the sighing sound of the trapped air escaping from the trench, even today it makes me shiver, there had been no previous fall ins and no cracks to be seen, that was definitely our lucky day and funnily enough we only talked about it a few months ago and it happened forty-eight years ago.