On hot roofs, we used a regular black tar, that we would cook up in our big kettle on the job site and pump into buckets so Phil could carry them to where the guys had big mops they used to swab the tar over the roofing materials to seal it all in.

There was another kind of tar though… called  Pitch… that created a yellowish smoke that smelled horrible and we wore a mask so as not to breathe any of the fumes.  I guess some folks thought  Pitch  was a better sealant… Ford Motor Company did.

We got paid an extra $2 an hour to work  Pitch  jobs.  I loved to work  Pitch… got $8 an hour, instead of $6!  I guess there was a pretty good reason for that… 🙂

We set up our  Pitch Kettle  by the roof to the assembly line that we were re-roofing…  got it cooking, set up everything on the roof, watched that yellowish smoke billowing into the air… no one seemed to notice that it was blowing right into the assembly line.

Yes sir… we caused a  wildcat strike  at the Ford Motor Company that day… everybody just walked off the job…    🙂

We had to re-set our kettle 2 buildings over… the buildings were all connected… so Phil got to spend the day with a bucket of  Pitch  in each hand… crawling over the parapets of the 2 buildings, bring them to the end of the 3rd building, dump them in a big pan…then walk back with the empty buckets to get them refilled.

It was another of those days… you know… like any other day…. filled with those happenings that change and alter the course of human events… and Phil was there!

🙂