Fer-de-lance

In the fifties you would have met a non-comprehending stare if you spoke of the wind chill factor. It was either nice, warm, windy or cold, in varying degrees. If you worked longshore on the docks of the City of New York in January, especially at night, you knew what bone-chilling cold was because likely as not, the great doors that enclosed the pier itself were open, and the wind, forced through a smaller opening, would produce the Venturi effect, the same forced-draft principle used in carburetors. In short that North River wind, and that was the name of the Hudson, tried to slice and dice you.

You wore layers and layers of clothes and two pairs of gloves to do the heavy work in the way-below-freezing temperatures. Indeed, if you worked pig iron, moving the heavy slabs by hand, the rough edges would slice through anything less than a steel gauntlet.

Most of the longshoreman had a ready cure for this. They made the “shape,” got picked, and retired to the saloons which lined 12th Avenue, leaving the work to young guys like myself, many of whom were trying to go through college during the day and make a buck at night. I remember Sid Towne, my very fine and caring journalism instructor, telling me straight out that I couldn’t come into his early morning, heated class, and promptly fall asleep. He said I was a good student but enough was enough. It got so bad that he finally told me he was being forced to flunk me. He said the alternative was to report to the 83rd floor of the Empire State Building one night the following week. I did so and started writing copy for WOR TV and was hired two weeks later, but that is another story. I think about him often.

One night the bottom dropped out of the thermometer, it was below zero and the work was inhuman. We were unloading bananas, Harry Bellafonte’s “Banana Boat” song was then in vogue, and I would traded places with any of those guys in the Bahamas loading this cargo. One old guy would stand with his foot on a treadle and the conveyor belt would move at the speed he determined with the pressure of his foot. I used to think he had the best job in the world but he had to have his foot on the treadle which was right next to the open hatch, albeit somewhat shielded by the United Fruit freighter that lay alongside. Some of those bunches of bananas would go over 125 pounds, so you grabbed the stalk and tried to put your shoulder precisely under the center of the bunch so the weight was evenly balanced. If you didn’t, you could drop the bananas, which would then be used to make oil, or so we were told.

There were two kinds of gangs, “deck” and “hold.” If you were white, you worked deck most of the time and the black longshoremen worked the holds. I was so needful of money I would work anywhere. To be among those big, black men working crates of eggs was a good experience. They accepted you if you worked and their joshing each other made it a good place to be on even the coldest nights.

Anyway, we were working bananas when suddenly a snake dropped from one of the stalks and fell to the concrete dock. Half a dozen guys started looking and shouting. Remember, we were city kids and believed all snakes dripped venom and would strike without provocation. One of the other longshoreman, whom I knew was attending Columbia University, looked and said, “I think it’s a Fer- de-lance, and its dangerous.”

Maybe he was right, but dangerous or not, it was below zero and the reptile could barely move, it was nearly frozen.

Slowly the circle of men drew nearer as it was obvious the snake was in no shape to attack anyone. One guy picked up a two-by-four and suddenly attacked the snake, slamming the eight-foot-long piece of Spruce again and again onto the creature, which writhed slowly. Sometimes he missed, other times he barely hit it, but some of the blows would have killed a full grown man.

Most of the work gang cheered this assault on the snake. The Columbia student and I just looked and, truth be told, felt sorry for the reptile. Anyway, within minutes he was mostly pulp. The skinny, half-drunk man who had attacked the snake said, “He won’t die until dawn, everybody knows that,” exhibiting a bit of folk wisdom which I had never heard, but who was I to argue the point.

The reptile obviously had been broken nearly in half but he managed to get it off the floor with the 2x4 and threw it toward the river and an odd thing happened. It landed on one of the hawsers holding the ship to a bollard and lay draped there, occasionally seeming to shudder in this frigid, North River night. Columbia and I looked at it from time to time and could see the occasional sign of life, or perhaps post-death rigors.

It was an eerie sight and many paused to look at it. The reptile had to be dead after that assault but still there were tremors. Slowly the dawn broke over the city skyline and we began to revive a little with the light. The first rays broke over the river and a couple of us stared at the snake. As God is my witness, when the sun touched the reptile it gave a convulsive shudder and fell into the river.