A Glimpse Into the Falls Township Public Works Department

At 6:53 a.m., it is 35 degrees outside. The sun is barely risen, yet the men who work at Falls Township Public Works Department are already arriving. The shop is mostly empty except for the mechanical equipment lining the walls and middle of the shop. The machinery is large and intimidating to people who aren’t familiar with it. Small murmurs can be made out from somewhere not so close.

As more workers begin arriving, everyone is quiet, and no one goes out of their way to talk, besides greetings, until they are inside the break room, all of them changed and ready for whatever trials the day may bring.

One of the shop workers can be heard mentioning that he thinks that asphalt will be the flavor of the day.

The shop workers all wear similar clothing; yellow green shirts, most with reflective strips, and  dark blue jeans. Nearly everyone’s shirts are stained in some capacity. The black residue of a lost and conquered job stain.

Foreman Joe Arnao, makes his way through the cluttered and crowded workshop, telling  everyone there is going to be a meeting in the break room at 7:00 a.m.

The air is one of relaxed tension. At 7:00, the men check their work assignments and go where they are summoned. Those destined for the meeting room make their way in and wait for Arnao to arrive with the plan for the day.

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Arnao explains that the job is is Quaker Penn Park, a local park used for soccer, baseball, and fishing on the Delaware River. They must replace the infield and install a new top dressing. Arnao explained the full gravity of the situation and noted how the field was only one year old, but has not been maintained properly. The strain of annoyance is apparent on his face as he explains this to the crew, “[They] put down pro level dirt [when they installed the field]. It took too much maintenance. We’re putting down easier stuff.”

In only a half hour, the crew begins mobilizing like bees around a hive. On one side of campus are men loading hand tools into the backs of pickup trucks. There are men readying mechanical equipment such as a back hoe and a lawn mower.

It only takes the entire crew about a half hour to get completely ready and begin the half hour trek to the work site, where the entire day will be consumed.

The crews mobilize separately, and all arrive in a disjointed fashion. . One by one the workers grab shovels in order to begin scraping the old top off of the battered infield.

The sun shines down powerfully. It is 8:30 a.m., and the crews arriving all start working at a much quicker pace. Birds can be heard from the trees surrounding the park, and the work site sounds as though friends have gotten together to discuss their favorite sports. Talks of the NHL playoffs and the just begun baseball season takes hold.

After a few minutes of work, Arnao calls for a brief recess until the rest of the crew arrives on the scene. The air is cool but warmed by the healthy glow of the sun, and the heavy work is already showing on the men’s faces as sweat begins to accumulate on their brows.

During the break, the men break into groups to socialize. Scott Gowton, a member of the crew, said, “Yeah, I don’t know what the game plan is. He (Arnao) throws a lot of curveballs.”

The break lasts mere minutes before Arnao calls the crew back to work.

It takes nearly an hour until the full crew arrives and begins firing on all cylinders. It is obvious the crew is operating at full steam in hopes to finish the project during the day, and before the rainstorms that are forecast rain on their plans and work.

“[This is] a normal day, just doing something different. Whether it’s blacktop or baseball fields, it is really all the same,” said Erich Martin, a crew member.

“We usually do these before baseball starts, but I guess this one is just so messed up [at the moment], that someone wanted it fixed,” said Gowton of the job on the field.

The time passes, the sun rises higher and beats down on the busy crew. The men all have a separate job, and it shows not only in their actions but the tools they utilize. There are men scraping and digging out intrusive weeds that plague the field, men edging out the outfield and infield line in order to give the edge of the grass a nice even appearance, and others shuttling dirt around to get it out of the way of those scraping out the blemishes.

The work day continues in roughly the same fashion for almost two hours. During this time barriers between the men disappear and they speak more easily.

After two hours of raking, edging, scraping and shoveling, it appears to the crew foreman, Arnao, that the field is mostly clear of the weeds.

Before any further work continues, Arnao takes a crew of four people to measure the height of the grass and baseline all around the field. The crew will later use this information to know exactly how high to place the new diamond dust when reinstalling the top of the field. The entire process only takes a few minutes before the crews set out to spread the new dust on the field. “We are measuring so we don’t put down too much material,” explains Arnao. By now, the sun is hot and the men are sweating.

Loud, mechanical whirring can be heard from a few hundred feet away. The men show no reaction to the noise, which is coming from a back hoe lifting and transporting the new dust on to the field. This machine will make nearly one hundred trips throughout the day, each lasting between two and three minutes.

“[I gotta go back] probably 70 or 80 more times. You tend to lose count, you go as many times as you need to go,” explained Mark McBryar, the operator of the giant back hoe.

“The machines are great, but you need to be careful. Things happen really fast. People get comfortable, kind of like driving a car,” explained McBryar.

The sun draws higher, glaring brightly through the few clouds that litter the pristine blue sky. When the sun is at the mid-point of the day, the clock reads 12:00 p.m., and Arnao calls the men off of their intense work for their lunch break.

The crew disappears from the diamond. The wind blows through the surrounding foliage. The silence continues for the next 30 minutes.

Exactly thirty minutes later, Arnao returns to work, and with him the majority of the crew. Men come from various trucks and machinery to take up their positions spreading the new diamond dust.  The dust spread before lunch has lost its dark red and brown hue, and has dried to the much more recognizable golden color that is characteristic of most baseball fields.

The field returns to life as the rakers, dozers and spreaders return to work.

The dust has a consistency of wet sand. Heavy and rich, it is difficult to move.

“It won’t take long to dry once the sun hits it, though,” says Jeff Powers, as the crew moves the heavy, sand-like dust.

The job continues in much the same way as it did before lunch. The machines run and leave mountains of dust to be moved by the buzzing ground men.

As hours pass, the dust spreads in a similar way to a fire, spreading in all directions and consuming all old space to make room for itself.

Gowton continues the work of using machinery to rake out the mini dust mountains in an effective pattern, making the job easier for the men raking by hand.

The clouds drift through the day, and with it the sun begins to slide through the sky towards its inevitable demise. The crew works through the normal quitting time of 3:30 p.m. And extends the day’s schedule in order to finish the day’s work. Even through enormous amounts of effort from the entire crew, the job is too massive to be finished in a single day.

The crew reluctantly heads home, knowing they were unable to complete the job in a single day.

Tomorrow, a small crew will be sent to finish the work on the ball field while the rest of the crew which was present will be busy working on other projects.