Dirty jobs, not done dirt cheap
As the name suggests, a sandhog does not live a life of quiet refinement and delicacy.
The Sandhogs of the 11-part History series, premiering Sunday, are the urban miners who dig, drill, blast and bore the tunnels of New York to keep water, sewage, transit system and other necessities flowing. It's a job that is hot, cold, dirty, sweaty and dangerous.
"Mother Nature does not like to be upset, and we go down there and blow her up every day," says Chickie Donohue, 67, one of several larger-than-life figures the series will follow.
The subterranean technology has changed through the decades. But the need for grit and stamina remains unchanged. It is a job that is sometimes passed down from father to son.
"We find out five feet at a time what this Earth is made of," says sandhog Anthony Aviles.
Sandhogs takes viewers where few have ventured: the dark, dank, claustrophobic work sites of Water Tunnel No. 3, the Croton Water Filtration Plant, the East Side (rail) Access, and the 7 Subway Line Extension. The narrator is never seen and heard only rarely.
Sandhogs talk directly to the camera, explaining their jobs and the frustrations of their work. They boast and gripe.
One of the more appealing characters is Morgan Curran, 57, a "walking boss" on the swing shift at the Croton job. He left school in the sixth grade in his native Ireland to begin digging tunnels. Curran's specialty is dynamite and blasting. To watch him instructing younger sandhogs is to see the DNA of a risky trade being passed to a new generation.
Will Sandhogs have the same success as History Channel's Ice Road Truckers , which has achieved cable-television cult status? Probably not.
The ice truckers are wildcatters, individualists willing to take seemingly insane risks on the frozen lakes of Alaska in hopes of a big payoff. The sandhogs, by contrast, work in heavily regulated, strictly unionized jobs, with assured benefits and pensions.
Still, Sandhogs makes a point sometimes lost in modern society: Those who build things have a pride in their work and a brotherhood with their co-workers that few high-rise paper pushers can imagine.
