The Scream of Steel (standard:drama, 1001 words)
Author: GXD	Added: Dec 27 2009	Views/Reads: 3161/2028	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
Once upon a time, when American steel mills dominated world industry, this is what it felt like inside the rolling mill. If you've never heard the scream of steel, now is your chance.

Click here to read the first 75 lines of the story

between brutal rolls.  The scream of steel penetrates deeply, beyond 
mere sound.  When men say "you have steel in your blood" they mean that 
you have heard its curse.  Each red cell shivers and mourns in sympathy 
with that scream. 

And as the strand of steel passes from stand to stand, its scream dies. 
That death transforms it from a blazing ingot to a bulky billet, to the 
breadth of a slab, to the mass of a plate, to a web-thin sheet of metal 
two hundred feet long.  Nine roll stands down the line a silvery-orange 
strip spurts from the final nip rolls and whips like a snake onto the 
runout conveyor.  The gleaming, quivering salamander grows cold and 
black and blue as it curls onto the hot-bed and travels off to the 
guillotine.  KA-CHUUUUNK! goes the shear, as Big Joe slices off its 
battered head and fishtail, then quenches it in a deep tankful of 
water.  The cherry-blue hot strip spits and groans, erupting steam 
until silence -- only silence -- echoes in the mill. 

I wasn't working here because I loved it, believe me!  None of us were. 
But the enchantment of steel was in my blood, as urgent as hunger, as 
seductive as sex.  The call was there and could not be ignored.  It was 
no consolation to realize that we were all helpless prisoners of 
enchantment -- selling our souls each day, to be  where we can feel the 
scream of steel. 

Cincinnati, September 1984 - Gerald X. Diamond - All rights reserved


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