If there were ever an honest help-wanted ad for the job, it would probably read something like this:þþSeeking applicants for strenuous physical labor. Mostly overnight. Work locations shift around the city. Must be willing to spend time in damp, dark, narrow underground spaces — or on elevated structures high above the street — where potential hazards include but are not limited to: mice, rats, wild dogs, homeless drug addicts, inhaling steel dust, tripping on unidentified slippery substances, being electrocuted or being struck by a 420-ton subway train traveling at 35 to 40 miles an hour.þþStarting pay: $15.56 per hour. Rises to a maximum of $22.24 per hour after three years. Work boots not provided.þþÿIt's not for everyone,ÿ George McAnanama conceded yesterday, unsmilingly. ÿI will give you that.ÿþþMr. McAnanama comes to his opinion with some hard-earned experience. In July 2001, he retired after 27 years in a job like the one described above. He was a career track worker in the New York City subway, a job that seems to attract attention only when someone loses his life doing it, as two men did just last week.þþWhile it is undoubtedly not as dangerous as climbing the stairs of a burning building or being shot at in a police uniform, in Mr. McAnanama's long view down the tunnels, it can often seem just as deadly, with none of the attendant glamour.þþThere was the time in the mid-1980's, for example, when he and a co-worker were in the Whitehall station on the N and R line inspecting the tracks for faults that could derail trains. They watched a Brooklyn-bound train approach and moved safely out of its way. But as they walked into the narrow Montague Street tube that carries the rails underwater to Brooklyn, Mr. McAnanama sensed that something was wrong.þþHe could not hear anything because of the loud wind gusts that whip around the entrances to underwater tunnels. ÿBut I looked up,ÿ he remembered, ÿand saw a light on the wall and realized that another train was coming right behind the one that had just passed.ÿ He and his partner sprinted to the tunnel wall, and clambered up it to reach a high catwalk out of the train's path.þþAnd by three seconds, they avoided dying beneath the wheels of a train carrying the trash of thousands of city subway riders.þþÿMaybe we wouldn't have died,ÿ he said, reflecting, again unsmilingly. ÿBut even if a train strikes you a glancing blow it's certainly going to change your quality of life, isn't it?ÿþþAs you might expect from someone who spent most of his adult life working overnight and underground in a place where most people find themselves only in bad dreams, Mr. McAnanama, 55, is a somber, serious man. He jokes very little. He punctuates his conversation with the kinds of monosyllabic words that carry well in subway tunnels but cannot be printed in this newspaper.þþOver a Chinese-food lunch yesterday, taking a break from a new job with the Transport Workers Union, he described the things he saw in the tunnels in an almost clinical manner.þþNot long after starting his job in 1974, he watched homeless people move into the tunnels, and many times came upon the infamous camp near the Second Avenue station on the F line, a gathering that could grow to more than 100, with pirated electricity powering television sets and microwaves. ÿI saw a guy sitting down there in a recliner once,ÿ he said. ÿHow in the hell he got a recliner down there I'll never know.ÿþþBut he also saw people in such advanced states of drug addiction and dementia that rats chewed on their feet and they did not even notice. ÿThe first few times you see something,ÿ he explained, ÿyou take it home with you. But then I guess you become desensitized a little.ÿþþHe and his 2,000 or so co-workers have a much harder time losing their sensitivity to other things, such as being unseen and generally misunderstood. While the subway would not run without them, the public generally sees them only after they have stepped out of the way of a train and are waiting for it to pass, making it seem as if they are on a perpetual smoke break.þþWhile their job involves great danger and sometimes even derring-do, such as righting derailed trains and helping chase criminals through tunnels, they have never had an ÿN.Y.P.D. Blueÿ or ÿThird Watchÿ to dramatize their work. In fact, on ÿGrounded for Life,ÿ the only television show in memory to include a character who was a subway track worker, one episode had the character quitting his job because he hated it so much.þþMr. McAnanama, pausing for a minute to think, said he never hated his. He looks back on it with great pride and wishes only that two things had been different. He wishes that it had been less dangerous and had paid more.þþAnd one other thing: more sleep. ÿA friend of mine and I figured out once that for more than a decade we only got six nights' worth of sleep a week,ÿ he said, adding, ÿIt's not good for you.ÿ þþ
Source: NY Times
