WHAT’S THAT SMELL?

A Day in the Life of the Choke Battery.

BY: Joe Zaragoza

Time to get up again. Up before the crack of dawn, get dressed, get my lunch, jump in the truck and go to work. Man, I hate my job.

I arrive at my destination the “Choke Battery”, park my truck and open the door. Once again that acrid coke battery smell attacks my nose. The combination of many toxic chemicals that I don’t even want to know about hits my senses. The smell depresses me; it symbolizes the beginning of yet another dreary day of work. . Into the shop I go, bummed out already and the day hasn’t even started yet.

Soon my partners in crime arrive, we update each other on the latest events in our lives and get ready for the grind. We all check in and Willie, The Boss, (a.k.a. Lil Hitler), lines us up for the day. 7:02 am - marching orders are handed out and we all get the heck out of Dodge. Dawdling around the shop is not allowed.

My partner in today’s adventure is Danny, also known as Jingles, he got that name because he is always adding hooks and clips to his tool belt to add more tools, jingling whenever he walks. We are to go to the Coke By -Products Area to do calibrations and preventive maintenance. I stop off at the control room to let the operators know what we’re up to. Danny wanders off - but not to worry - I follow the sounds of his tool belt and locate him without any problem. We finally are ready to attack the problem at hand, cleaning and clearing plugged instrument lines. I try to take apart the first fitting; it is turned down so tight that the fitting is deformed. I was having a difficult time with it. Danny sees my predicament and comes to the rescue. He says,”Hey, I’ve got just the thing for that”, and he whips out a 12” crescent wrench that has had the handle cut down to fit in his tool pouch. He says,”I made sure this fitting was good and tight so it wouldn’t leak.” Danny wasn’t the brightest bulb in the lamp. So he proceeds to put this massive tool on the ½” fitting and muscles it off, with a massive application of torque. Since the fitting was deformed, it was not reusable. The fitting and the piping would have to be replaced. So it’s off to the shop we go to get new parts, - well that takes care of the morning. Let’s check our watches - we can’t arrive to early for lunch. Finally, 11:27 arrives. Willie gives us a dirty look for jumping the gun by TWO whole minutes.

Time for a relaxing lunch break, clean off a spot on the work bench, hope all that dirt doesn’t get on my gourmet ham and cheese sandwich. Damn it’s 12 already, must be out of the shop by 12:01 or Willie will give us hell for slacking off.

Time to make the rounds on the battery itself, I’ve got to get my respirator on, federal regulations don’t ya know? Any time you have to work on or around the battery you’ve got to wear a nose guard. We go into the control room and check out the instruments and wipe off the glass to see if they are working okay. Next stop - the battery top- on our way Danny and I stop to talk to some of the guys. So far the guys say everything is going okay.

Everyone is wearing their respirators. After a few minutes of wearing them they turn black, imagine what you just stopped from going into your lungs. I notice a couple of guys taking a break and to my shock and amazement they had punched a hole in their nose guards and were sticking a cigarette through the mask so they could smoke. Talk about a death wish! These guys were hard core nicotine addicts. \

Well enough chit chat. It was time to do one of my FAVORITE jobs, check out the nitrogen flow meters. The scene on the battery top is surreal at best - smoke and weirdly colored flames emanating from stacks and cover plates everywhere. The nose guard could not even begin to stop the acrid poisonous smell from burning my nostrils. Surely I thought, this is the kind of thing Dante envisioned when he wrote his Inferno. My objective was to get in, do the job and get out as quickly as possible. The flow meters were in good working order, so it was time to go.

On the way back, Danny reminded me that today was calibration day for the gas alarms in the by-products area. Okay! This would take up the rest of my exciting day. Let’s do it. Into the by-products control room we go. We use test gases to calibrate the sensors, CO, H2SO4, Nitrogen, for the alarms for CO, Hydrogen sulfide, and cyanide (hey isn’t that the stuff they use to execute people with?). The alarms check out OK. It’s a funny thing, whenever the alarms go off we get called to check it out and see if the alarm is real or just a malfunction. Makes a lot of sense, the alarm goes off indicating a deadly gas is present and you want me to go check it out. What do I look like, a canary? Not a chance, if that Hydrogen Sulfide or Cyanide alarm goes off I’m headed the other way, feets don’t fail me now! 

Well it’s now fifteen minutes before official quitting time, too early to go back to the shop, so we shoot the shit with the operators until it’s time to go back. Ahhh! My favorite time of the day - go - home time. At 3:45 it’s time to go back, put away my tools and write a quick report. At 3:50 on the dot by Willie’s watch, it’s wash up time. We go to the locker room remove our lemon yellow suits, which by the end of the day are mostly black and step in the shower to wash the toxic gunk off of our bodies. Work suits and towels are left for the company to wash and clean, federal regulations, once again. 

It makes my clothes bag that much lighter on the homeward trek. Now it’s out – the - gate time, time to forget about Inland and to think happier thoughts to head south on Cline to the back roads home to Crown Town. Time for supper and quality family togetherness which is what makes this all tolerable. And finally it’s bedtime for it’s back to work at the Choke Battery all over again in a few short hours.