If all goes according to plan, my Focus on History column in the Daily Gazette on Saturday, May 3 will be about Marcus Breier—an Amsterdam industrialist who served as mayor from 1964-1967.

In doing the story, I needed some information from current Mayor Ann Thane and remarked to her that during the Breier administration, I was one of a number of college students and high school seniors who worked for the Amsterdam Department of Public Works as a laborer in a summer jobs program.

Since the rest of my life has been spent sitting behind a microphone, typewriter or computer screen, I’ve always considered my two-month DPW experience as my only real job.

“I think you should do a story about your experience on the DPW crew,” Thane emailed. “As you said, these men work VERY hard and are not given the credit they deserve.”

The regular guys and we summer fill-ins did work hard for the most part, although we put up with a lot of criticism from citizens who caught us leaning on our shovels. We were always skittish going to certain city wards where the alderman would come to the job site and nose around.

The plum assignment that summer was garbage detail, which meant you went in early but got out early and could make it Saratoga by post time.

One project we worked on that summer was rebuilding part of the stonewall on Bell hill. Last I knew the wall, including the part we rebuilt, was still there. I used to point out my part of the wall to my long-suffering children when we would visit Amsterdam. The wall may be the one thing I’ve worked on that has a good chance of surviving for, who knows, maybe a century.

We had to help the masons by lifting stones and putting them in place for the wall. One of the regular DPW workers took pity on me and helped me with the stones.

I also learned that when you show up at the job and have a choice, it’s usually better (if more tedious) to use a shovel than wield a pick.

Another time a worker called Railroad Bill and I were injured in an accident when a stone spreader attached to the rear of a dump truck hit an obstruction. We were shoveling stones into the spreader and were knocked off the truck onto the stones and oil we were spreading. No, we didn’t sue the city. At least I didn’t. We went to the hospital but Bill and I were back to work in a day or two.

One incident doesn’t reflect well on my own personal habits and work ethic, although I’m not sure what it says about the DPW.

Being of legal drinking age for the time (over 18), one morning my fellow college student friend Jim and I were worn out from partying the night before. We thought we’d catch a ten minute nap before morning assignments in a little shed at the DPW garage.

We didn’t wake up until after lunch time.

One of the foremen was still there when we stumbled out of the shed into the afternoon sun. The foreman was mad but knew he’d get blamed along with us for our missing roll call.

So he had us start sweeping the DPW garage until everybody came back, like that was what he planned for us to do that day all along.