Dear Hulett Ore Unloaders,
Remember me?
I’m that weird little figure pointing at you as I pass your mundane home on Whiskey Island. I amble by and breathe a certain way, my exhalations heavy and full of emotion. Then I linger in the wistful manner of someone who knows they’re slowly losing something they love.
It’s a familiar feeling these days, Huletts.
I first met you in earnest when I was a scrappy kid, about eight or nine years old. It was a hot August night wrapped in the kind of closeness you can’t escape. Dad and I were in the backyard, swatting away the lake bugs. He looked at me, bored and sticky in my tee shirt. The blue velvet of dusk was just beginning to commandeer the sky.
“Come on,” he said, “let’s go for a drive.” It was the early 1970s.
Not everyone knew how to get down to Whiskey Island back then, but Dad did—trespassing be damned. You were still a fully functional quartet. It seemed like we pulled up to within 10 feet of you, but in reality it was likely much further. The operating lights dotting your walking beams made you look like a giant spider crawling through the night sky, with your works moving back and forth above the rails, your buckets dipping deeply into a freighter’s massive hold.
“Before the Huletts,” Dad said, “guys had to go down inside the ship and shovel all the iron ore out by hand.” He took a long sip of his Stroh’s, which by then was nearly as warm as the humid summer air. He told me how the rail cars transported the ore to the mills where it was made into steel.
“It used to take days to empty the hold, then the Huletts came along and that big bucket did the job in a matter of hours.” He exhaled a plume of smoke from his Marlboro 100 and traced a cigarette-tip circle in the night. “Those are real dinosaurs,” he said of you, “and pretty soon they’ll be extinct.”
We sat there for a few minutes as I blinked up at you in fear and wonder. Then Dad sluiced down the rest of his beer and we headed home.
From that night on, Huletts, I always had an eye for you. I’d perk up with excitement when we’d zoom by you on the Shoreway, particularly if you were hard at work. Whenever I saw your twinkling lights at night, I’d point and parrot Dad, “Those are real dinosaurs!” My friends would snort and roll their eyes. You’re so dumb, Erin; no one cares about that stupid old stuff.
Now of course, you’re a sad jumble of steel. When you’re not laid bare in the winter months, you’re covered with winding vines and leaves along my favorite walk in Cleveland.
“That’s what’s left of the Huletts,” I always say to my mostly disinterested companions. They nod and smile politely in lieu of a followup question. “They were real dinosaurs when I was a kid,” I add as they look the other way.
Even during your slide into obsolescence (courtesy of the self-unloading ships), you were still an unmistakable part of the landscape, an integral part of my Cleveland.
It was the part I file next to the muscle cars and the guys who drove them. They always leaned into the bar a certain way and lit a girl’s cigarette whenever she pulled one from the pack.
Back then, we were drinking Bartles & Jaymes. We were making out behind the bowling machine. We were skinny dipping in that filthy lake. We were singing along to every song on Rundgren’s Back to the Bars album. And we were laughing.
We were laughing and laughing and laughing.
My skinny-dipping days are long gone and I stubbed out my final Marlboro Light in 1993, one year after you unloaded your last ship. You then garnered a handful of designations, like that of a Historic Mechanical Engineering Landmark in 1998. A sincere and well-meaning group tried to save you, but to no avail. You were demolished in 2000. Two of your brothers were scrapped and you two were relegated to that humble corner of Whiskey Island, right next to the Northeast Ohio Sewer District’s westerly wastewater treatment plant.
Apparently even your current bleak state is too much to bear for the powers that be and your days are more numbered than ever. Maybe they’ll install one of your buckets somewhere, a sad remnant of your previous might and grandeur. There will undoubtedly be an informational plaque that few will read. Despite the good intentions behind it, the display will fail miserably at conveying your former majesty. Nonetheless, I shall stand before it and place my hand on your steel as that certain sting creeps into my eyes, much like it is right now.
You know what? To hell with that, my dear old rusted friends.
Instead I will remember you courtesy of something called YouTube. There you are at the 5:57 mark, slow dancing along the Lake Erie shore. And for the next six minutes, my grand and towering dinosaurs, you are alive again.
Call that just enough time for one kiss goodbye.
Love, love, love, Erin
ps: Back in the early 90s, the BP Art Club, of which I was a member, commissioned local artist Bryn Zellers to create a print commemorating you. We paid $110 for the print and $125 for the framing.
Now then … was it worth it?
I've never been to Whiskey Island and the ore unloaders weren't even on my radar. I found the YouTube video mesmerizing -- that kind of mechanical activity hypnotizes me for some reason. But not as much so as this spellbinding recollection. Just fascinating.
Great piece, Erin! And I enjoyed watching the whole 10 minute vid. I remember seeing them from far away when I was a kid, but never really knew how they operated. To see that worker climb into the cabin just above the mouth of the bucket, was shocking. I also could t believe how clever the whole operation was. One other memory I have though is the cloud of reddish air over parts of Cleveland when I was little. Thanks for this post!