Edgar Thompson Works, U S Steel
Braddock & North Braddock
Pennsylvania
January 2014
There are 27 columns in my Pennsylvania Series. Behold!
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Behold the greatest imaginary folk hero steelworker who ever lived. And he lived and worked right here in my home town of Pittsburgh.
The word Magarac, this character’s last name, is Croatian for “donkey,” which in this case can be interpreted as “persistent,” “tough,” “determined.” Joe Magarac was a tough sumbitch, a man of steel, literally. He was born in an iron ore mine and raised in a furnace. Standing seven feet tall, he used his huge hands like buckets to pour molten steel. Joe ate hot steel like soup and cold steel ingots like meat. He could do the work of 29 men, working 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, stirring vats of hot steel with his bare hands and making rails for the trains by squeezing molten steel between his fingers. Great party trick.
With the proper attitude and steely muscles, Magarac won a babe in a weight-lifting contest, and by “won a babe” I mean, this woman was awarded as the grand prize. But Joe was so dedicated to his steel building activity, he declined marriage and allowed Mary Mestrovich, the grande dame, to marry her true love, Joe’s friend, a guy named Pete Pussick.
Let’s think about this for a moment. It was widely accepted that Joe was, as I described him, a man of steel. But there were some who simply thought of him as a strange human person. I wonder, if Joe had chosen marriage, what that first night of wedded bliss might have been like. Sizzlin’ no doubt. I’ll let this one go.
As concerns the fate of this cape-less superhero, there are a number of stories, some of which tell of his death and some tell that he lives on, awaiting the American steel industry to regain its original strength and influence.
Or he may have melted himself down in a Bessemer furnace, producing enough material to build part of the U S Capitol Building.
Ahh, but Joe is still with us, he lives on. Here he is, at the entrance to U S Steel’s Edgar Thomson Works.