Work: Part 1

I started out 49 years ago as an apprentice engineer. That took about five years. We had steam engines you had to know about in those days as well, and I’ve had to stay up to date with all the design changes in trains — it’s a challenge every day. It wasn’t rough on me to go from the steam to the diesel, but people who got spoiled in the early days with diesel had a hard time ever running steam, because diesel’s much easier.

There’s nothing I don’t like about my job. You meet enjoyable people. You meet aggravating ones, too, but every one of them’s interesting, and I have a lot of fun with them. Sometimes someone will call me up and ask about my name. I’ll say, “Well, my name starts with a Q, not a C. But I do smoke cigars, so I have to be careful.”

Bakers > La Brea Bakery

Photographs by Anne Fishbein

Cheryl Krupinksi > Pile Driver > Working on a deck fabrication at Pier J, Long Beach

Photographed by Slobodan Dimitrov

Todd Chidester > Pile Driver > Barge deck at the Point Loma sewage outfall, San Diego

Photographed by Slobodan dimitrov

Charles Breagy > Pile Driver > manning a jet pump at the Huntington Beach Pier

Photographed by Slobodan Dimitrov

Steven “Spider” Robinson > Pile Driver > Point Loma sewage outfall, San Diego

Photographed by Slobodan Dimitrov

Bob Murphy > Commercial Diver > American Marine Corporation

Photographed by Slobodan Dimitrov

What I do is called “marine construction.” We do all kinds of stuff — clean-water projects, building piers, inspection and repairs of underwater construction. Right now I’m on a boat off Morro Bay, where we’re laying a fiber-optic cable down to 120 feet. This one will go to Japan. We have a crew of six divers. All of us work for American Marine Corporation.

I started out 25 years ago, in the mid-’70s. I was working my way through college on construction projects when one of the guys at the union asked me if I wanted to go offshore. They put me through a training program, and then I went to work as what they call a “tender.” A tender goes out on the boat with another diver and looks after him — takes care of his equipment, makes sure his hose is in good shape and everything’s working properly, talks to him on the radio, and gives directions to the crane. That’s how most guys get started. I was a tender for five or six years before I started putting the helmet on myself.

It’s a hard job — a lot of times we work in dark water, and it can be demanding. You don’t worry about all the normal stuff you might expect, like sharks. But you do have to be concerned that a current doesn’t pull away your air hose, or that heavy equipment isn’t falling on you. You look at a crane on the beach — imagine that underwater, in the dark. It’s dangerous. But on the other hand, you don’t want to have a job that isn’t challenging. And I get to be outside all the time, on a boat. It’s hard to beat that.