What you said about being in port has me thinking. Scraping rust for hours at a time sounds unpleasant on a sensory level, and unbelievably boring. I am nearly 40, and I don't remember a time when I didn't have a portable music player to drown out my thoughts or the unpleasantness of the work I was doing, from having a Walkman on my paper routes through the smartphone age. At the time, what was it like for you to do this work without these distractions? (This is assuming that you couldn't listen to tapes while on deck.)
Great question. Headphone were forbidden during working hours but when I did galley duty were able to listen to a boombox. Lots of mixed tapes. Everything from TSOL to Echo & the Bunnymen. I used to be able to use a chipping hammer on a metal stanchion with a brutal hangover for hours. Lots of clock watching and smoke breaks!
What you said about being in port has me thinking. Scraping rust for hours at a time sounds unpleasant on a sensory level, and unbelievably boring. I am nearly 40, and I don't remember a time when I didn't have a portable music player to drown out my thoughts or the unpleasantness of the work I was doing, from having a Walkman on my paper routes through the smartphone age. At the time, what was it like for you to do this work without these distractions? (This is assuming that you couldn't listen to tapes while on deck.)
Great question. Headphone were forbidden during working hours but when I did galley duty were able to listen to a boombox. Lots of mixed tapes. Everything from TSOL to Echo & the Bunnymen. I used to be able to use a chipping hammer on a metal stanchion with a brutal hangover for hours. Lots of clock watching and smoke breaks!