Hard work provided our families with homes, indoor plumbing, higher
education, and Jordache jeans. Nobody was bound to the “company store,”
however, the debt we accrued was far more costly. While the paper mill
gave our town life since 1901, it also generated tons of toxic waste
and, arguably, brought death. Particulates clouded our skies. Sludge
brooded in our soil. Plumes from effluent pipes greased the river that
ran through our town. Dioxin, cadmium, benzene, lead, naphthalene,
nitrous oxide, sulfur dioxide, arsenic, furans, trichlorobenzene,
chloroform, asbestos, mercury, phthalates: these are some of the
by-products of papermaking. Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, lung cancer,
prostate cancer, aplastic anemia, colon cancer, liver cancer, esophageal
cancer, asbestosis, Ewing’s sarcoma, emphysema, cancer of the brain,
cancer of the heart: these are some of the illnesses that appeared in
our town. People got sick in curious clusters, across generations of
families, and in higher than average numbers.
In the summer of 1986, I had a job lined up at Boise Cascade, our mill.
We college kids coveted the cash we could earn, even if it meant
shoveling wood pulp in a windowless pit for eight hours a day or working
amid dangerous toxics we couldn’t see. This was the same summer my
father’s union went on strike. The strike disoriented people like my
father, who grew up respecting another man’s job. When neighbors and
friends crossed the picket line, it was a step too far. So, instead of a
mill job, I stood in food lines, yelled at scabs, and scrambled to find
work somewhere else. I eventually got a job bussing tables at a horse
racetrack in Scarborough, Maine, and hitchhiked back and forth to Mexico
whenever I could.
https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2020/09/01/my-eighty-six-jobs/
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