At Anderson and Christofani, the Anderson was Walter. Walter had a 'thing' about craftsmanship and believed that the best came from the old countries. This was a real bone in the yard.

Every spring Walter would travel around Europe and usually find some person whom he would sponser to come the the states and work at the yard. The reason that he would be able to to this yearly is that many folks would move on after they had established themselves in the US.

On this particular trip he choose a fellow from the Azores. Mario was a journeyman shipwright and came into the yard full of 'piss and vinegar'. His attitude was that of someone who owned the yard and he was going to show the regulars how it was done.
There were two brothers working in the yard, Wes and Dabber. Wes was a sharp fellow and very good with keeping the steam plant and the rest of the machinery and marine railways in good working order.

Dabber on the other hand was, God help him, less than all there. In other words, his elevater did not reach the penthouse. A kinder, gentler, more helpful individual you would be hard pressed to find.

Mario immediately picked up on Dabber's inadequacies and proceeded to heckle Dabber whenever he Mario, thought that no one was watching. This is hard to do in a yard where there are folks on both sides of a hull and others walking to and fro. It was not long before everyone was aware of this situation and it did not sit well with anyone. There was another Portugese shipwright in the yard, Manuel. Manuel was from the mainland and from what I gleaned, no love lost between islanders and mainlanders. He too was very annoyed with Mario's behaviour.

The yard was built on and into the slope of a hill leading down to San Francisco Bay near the Hunters Point Naval Shipyard. All the buildings sloped too! I mean that all the floors followed the slope of the hill. They were not level. One day I was in the mill and planing some planking stock. Feeding it into the big old Greenlee 36" planer and running around to the outfeed side to catch it before it took off  and went skiing across the bay. Dabber came in and saw my predicament and gve me a hand. After we finished planing he showed me some quirks on the machine and a way to prevent the work from taking off on you. I took the opportunity to ask him about the Mario situation and just how much did it bother him? He giggled and said that not to worry, he knew Marios' secret and that Mario may be fooling Walter but not him.

My own unqualified observations of Mario were not favourable either. I noticed he was missing several finger joints. He was about 35 at the time and I was not encouraged to believe that he would retire without loosing any more segments of his fingers.
One Monday Al announced that Mario was leaving to go back to the Azores. Seems his father died and left him a small vineyard and some other property. Needless to say there was no going away party for Mario.

After his departure Al asked me to clean up Mario's workbench prior to a new hire coming into the yard. All the journeyman shipwrights had their own workbenches scattered around the walls of the mill.

I was cleaning up the scraps and getting ready to hit the top of the bench with a belt sander to clear off the glue spatters and such when Dabber comes over and nudges me and gets on his hands and knees under Marios' bench. Recall I mentioned that the mill was on a slope?  Some walls, frame and panel construction, abutted the hill. Dabber pushes on a panel and it hinges up and he starts pulling out pieces of wood, Teak, Mahogony etc.. It  did not take a genius to see that these were mistakes or as we said, boo-boos.

Mario the old world craftsman had made a nice little pile of boo-boos and hid them from sight in this hidey-hole.

Dabber got a wheelbarrow and put all the boo-boos in it and wheeled it over in front of Walter's office and walked away with a great big smile on his face. The whoops and whistles came from all over the yard.

All the men, old worlders, old timers, Maltese, Yugoslavian, Swedish, Irish, Portugese banged their hammers on the nearest piece of wood. Walter pulled the blinds down in his office.

From then on whenever you goofed in the yard, you did a 'mario'.