Tower Dog: Life Inside the Deadliest Job in America

by Douglas Scott Delaney

Overview

An insider's look at the rough and tumble workers throughout America who are risking their lives—and losing them at an alarmingly high rate—all in the name of connectivity.

What is the price of staying connected, of that phone in your hand or that watch on your wrist?

Recent TV shows would have you believe that the most dangerous job in America is a crab fisherman, or maybe even an ice road trucker. But what U.S. Department of Labor unequivocally recognizes as the most dangerous job in America belongs to the tower dog, the men and women who work on cell towers across the country, building the networks that keep us all connected.

In Tower Dog: Life Inside the Deadliest Job in America, Douglas Scott Delaney, a tower dog for more than fifteen years, draws readers into this dark and high-stakes world that most don't even know exists, yet rely on every minute of every day. This risk-laden profession has been covered by NBC Dateline, Frontline, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post, but none of these reports have provided the real, inside story of these men and women who have always lived on the edge of society; a fascinating mix of construction crews and thrill-seekers. Delaney is a brash and illuminating guide, and Tower Dog gives us the real experience of what it's like for the workers balanced precariously above the clouds.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781619029385
Publisher:	Catapult
Publication date:	04/25/2017
Pages:	304
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Douglas Scott Delaney is an award-winning and produced playwright and screenwriter. He has done development work with Fox Searchlight and Columbia Pictures, among many others, and has done production work for both TV and film. His one produced film, All Roads Lead Home, won Best Picture at the Los Angeles International Film Festival in 2007. His short fiction has been published in Kansas Quarterly, Prism International and Western Humanities Review. His drama has been performed in theaters all over the United States. Delaney was born in Brooklyn, New York, and raised in Levittown, Long Island. He now lives in the Kansas Flint Hills, where he is "at least a quarter mile from anyone who could aggravate me, and vice versa." He has been a tower dog since 1997.

Table of Contents

Prologue: The Greeks Had a Word for It xi

Chapter 1 Death Is a Salesman 3

Chapter 2 Jungle Boy Says Belt Up 11

Chapter 3 Terminal Velocity 21

Chapter 4 The Mississippi Rule 33

Chapter 5 Wheels Over Indian Trails 49

Chapter 6 Won't You Try Extra Dry Rheingold Beer? 67

Chapter 7 I Am He as You Are He as You Are Me and We Are All Together 81

Chapter 8 The Wheels on the Bus Come Off, Off, Off 99

Chapter 9 Ding-Dong, the Bitch Is Dead 119

Chapter 10 Mom, I Think I Was in Heaven Tonight 137

Chapter 11 Kirk to Enterprise: Can You Hear Me Now? 149

Chapter 12 I Have Charted a Course to the Vineyard 165

Chapter 13 A Deceptively Simple Talent 185

Chapter 14 A Little Dose of Digger 203

Chapter 15 Oh, Nike, You're So Fine 215

Chapter 16 We're Lost But We're Making Good Time 225

Chapter 17 It's Rainin' Men 239

Chapter 18 Barefoot in the Parking Lot 247

Chapter 19 They Call the Wind Pariah 263

Chapter 20 I Am the Greatest That Ever Was 277

Editorial Reviews

"I was totally compelled by this . . . the writing is strong; in the tradition of Junger, Langwiesche, Krakauer . . . with a dash of Hunter S. Thompson.” —Jon Winokur, author of bestselling memoirs The Garner Files and But Enough About Me

A vivid book guaranteed to make readers more aware of what it takes to get that cellphone signal into his or her hand, for better or worse." —Kirkus Reviews

"Delaney’s descriptions of working on broadcast towers document fatigue (90-hour weeks) and fear (of gravity’s heartlessness) and reverberate with bravado . . . Delaney’s book promotes appreciation for those who risk their lives so we can get a cell-phone signal, and it just might provoke some acrophobia, too." —Booklist

From the Publisher

2017-02-20
A memoir from a young "fourteen-dollar-an-hour cog in a thankless deadly wheel."For some people in this world, their routines involve drinking beer in lawn chairs set up in the parking lots of small-town hotels, then getting up to climb hundreds of feet into the air to construct and maintain the cellphone networks that the rest of us depend on. It's dangerous work—the most dangerous job in the world, by the measure on which this narrative hinges, and one that has already taken the lives of many of the people portrayed here. In 1997, sometime screenwriter and playwright Delaney exchanged the ivory for the steel tower and made his first "tower dog" ascent into the sky over Kansas in freezing weather. "This would not be so bad," he writes, instantly adding, "But for the next 200 feet and the next eleven hours it was very, very bad." His fellow climbers are philosophical, if stoically resigned to the pain, discomfort, and danger of their work. They are also masterful technicians, and if nothing else, readers will learn what 4G means and how cellphone towers work. Throughout, the author plays a few writerly tricks, including protesting his writerly status ("I never called myself a writer. I never introduced myself as a writer and I was always uncomfortable when I was introduced as a writer"), but these are minor annoyances in a readable book whose larger import is in depicting a world that very few people would want to explore firsthand, somewhere between the blue-collar and the high-wire. Delaney is unfussy and workmanlike, and if he never attains the philosophical depth of, say, Matthew Crawford's Shop Class as Soulcraft (2009), he delivers a persuasive, whole-sighted view of a highly specialized pursuit. A vivid book guaranteed to make readers more aware of what it takes to get that cellphone signal into his or her hand, for better or worse.

Kirkus Reviews