In 1913, a young sailor disembarked in Panama City, Panama. He had recently mustered out of the U.S. Navy in the Philippines and was headed home to Florida. But first he decided to tour what was then the world's most famous construction project. He watched concrete being poured to create mammoth lock chambers and saw dredges chewing away at the remains of the mountains in Culebra Cut. He inspected the massive earthen dam that would tame the Chagres River and flood a huge bowl in the heart of the country. Soon great ocean ships would begin to sail this inland sea.
For a man fascinated, as he was, by all things mechanical, Panama must have seemed the very center of the universe. And everywhere the sailor went, someone offered him a job. Though he had only a seventh-grade education, he had trained as a machinist and served in the Navy's primitive early submarines. With his skills in such demand, he decided the homeward voyage could wait. He signed on to help install the machinery to run the Miraflores Locks and began work the next day. When the canal was completed in 1914, most American workers headed home. But some, including the sailor, were asked to stay on to run the operation. He would remain in Panama for another three decades. That man was my grandfather, Al Meigs. Though I was only 3 when he died, I've been hearing tales about the canal my whole life. Then, in November 2006, while helping research this month's cover story, I traveled to Panama for the first time.
It was as much a personal journey as a professional one. Standing with me atop Ancon Hill, a precipitous summit guarding the Pacific entrance to the canal, was my guide and personal canal historian: A. James Meigs, my father, who was born virtually at the foot of this hill in 1921. From our overlook, we could see where my grandfather had spent his entire career: the sprawling Balboa port facilities, the canal carving northward and, a few miles inland, the Miraflores Locks, stacked with conÂtainer ships. Just past the locks, my father pointed out a small body of water, suspended, eerily, 55 ft. above sea level. This was Miraflores Lake, which my father and the other Canal Zone kids used to ply in runabouts, sailboats, canoes and homemade skiffs — all the while dodging transiting ships. Just beyond the lake were the locks of Pedro Miguel and the small town of the same name where my father grew up.
Life in the American-controlled Canal Zone was more like living on a military base than in a foreign country. Workers lived in U.S. government housing and shopped in government stores. "It was a little colony of skilled people," my father says of the canal staff. "Many of the women came down as teachers or nurses. The men I knew were all engineers or tradesmen — machinists, boilermakers, electricians. We had Ph.D.s teaching in our high school."
My father grew up immersed in this culture of competence. "The best thing you could say about a man was that he was a good mechanic," he recalls. "That was the highest praise." That description certainly fit my grandfather, who was named mechanical supervisor at Miraflores Locks in 1914, and kept its machinery running until his retirement in 1946. "My dad spent his life figuring out what wore out first, and then finding a way to fix it," my father says.
At Miraflores Locks today, a modern visitor center stands where my grandfather's office used to be. But not much else has changed. My father pointed to an odd-looking locomotive making its way along one of the railroad tracks that run on either side of the locks — a legacy, he said, of my grandfather's tenure. When a ship transits the locks, it is accompanied by small electric locomotives — known as mules — that control the ship's position using cables. But, instead of winches and cables, this mule carried a large crane. In the early days of the canal, my dad explained, the only cranes were steam-powered, and they were too heavy to climb the steep inclines next to the locks. "So Dad figured out a way to convert an old steam crane to electric operation and mount it on one of the electric locomotives." The crane could be positioned easily to handle the heavy lifting required for repairs and maintenance.
Getting his plan approved by the canal's engineers — the kind with actual diplomas, that is — was a process he found a bit galling. But approve it they did, and soon replicas of Al Meigs's crane were in use at all the locks.
My father joined the clan of good mechanics as soon as he could. At the age of 18 he became a machinist's apprentice, working in the Balboa shops of the canal's Mechanical Division. It was 1939, and prewar traffic through the canal was heavy. "When a ship broke down, we couldn't send away for parts," he says. "We made everything ourselves." He worked on diesel engines so big that men could walk around in their crankcases, and machined parts for the mighty dredges that kept the canal open.
More than the work, however, my father remembers the men. "They didn't have much formal education," he recalls, "but they could read blueprints and make complex calculations — things that would baffle most high-school graduates today."
No job was ever done just close enough. "Craftsmanship was part of the culture," he says. "We knew when we fixed the engine on a ship that we had people's lives in our hands."
My father had the good fortune to grow up in a time when the world believed in the importance of great endeavors. The men and women who built and ran the canal never doubted that they were contributing to the progress of civilization. Today, many of us use highways, bridges and airports without giving much thought to the engineers, the mechanics — the craftsmen — who make it all possible. One of our missions here at Popular Mechanics is to recognize their achievements.
By the age of 21, my dad made the rank of journeyman machinist. He would go on to join the Army Air Corps, and, after World War II, head to the States for college and graduate school. But I don't think anything in the long, productive career that followed ever meant quite as much to him as earning the right to stand among those craftsmen. His machinist certificate hangs on my office wall today.