The old union hall sat silently at night. Ironworkers Local #348 was part of the Labor Temple Building, located on State Street, which is the original, main thoroughfare through this northern port city. The small family restaurant and bar located underneath had its heyday decades ago, fueled by the bustling construction trade during the height of the American-Russian Cold War. If the military-industrial complex, coined by former President Eisenhower in his farewell speech had an upside in those days, it was that need created work. Mohawk ironworkers went to meet that need and that was how, at one time, Erie became the largest community of them, outside of New York State and the home reservations.

My great-grandfather Frank Mayo was the bedrock of this interesting cultural legacy. He “boomed out” from New York City, as the ironworkers said in their unique lingo, to Erie in the late 1930’s, to work on the eventual Kaiser Aluminum manufacturing facility smokestacks. When my mother drove to work next to this old plant (now an EPA superfund site) at the Zurn Energy Division, located under a now-closed but still-standing bridge, she could still see the fruits of his labor when she pulled into her parking lot. The City of Erie had grown from wooden shacks to the towering Boston Store Building which dominates its skyline to this day. Skilled workmen like these ironworkers were the firsts among equals in the building trades of these growth times. Drawn from the generations who had seen the Great Depression and the Second World War, their families were adjusted to the perils of the job in a way modern people can only wonder at. The American middle class was symbolically built on the backs of these aerial daredevils, so much like the Iroquois creation story of Turtle Island, which brought human beings to life.

Frank Mayo’s wife Mary Jacobs came with him. They eventually settled in the Little Italy section of Erie, located near a well-frequented watering hole at the time called Jake’s. It was there that my own ironworker grandfather’s stories began to overlap with Frank’s, his father-in-law.