Labor Day weekend is the appropriate time to post this look at neglected working class folk hero Joe Magarac. This figure was the Steel Mill equivalent of Paul Bunyan and John Henry.
Though mostly associated with Polish-American steel workers in Pittsburgh, PA the general figure of a literal “man of steel” helping and protecting his coworkers can be found from the East Coast through the American Midwest. Sometimes the figure is Croatian or some other ethnicity instead of Polish.
Written versions of Joe Magarac and/or similar steel worker tall tales seem to have started around 1930 or 1931. Oral legends about such figures – but not specifically Joe Magarac – have been dated as early as the 1890s.
Vintage advertisements from tattered old newspapers indicate that such Man of Steel imagery may have been used for the steel industry prior to World War One. This “Which came first, the chicken or the egg” dilemma for Joe Magarac and other Steel Men puts one in mind of the quandary surrounding Billiken lore.
As a lame play on words since this is Labor Day season I’ll present Joe Magarac’s origin and then depict his tales as “Labors” like in The Labors of Hercules.
BIRTH – Joe Magarac supposedly sprang into existence from a mound of iron ore and – depending on the version – that mound was either in Pittsburgh or the Old Country. Magarac emerged from the melting mound fully grown and spoke broken English like so many of the other Polish steel workers. He was called into being by the urgent need to catch up on production since the current shift had fallen dangerously behind.
Joe was 7 or 8 feet tall, his flesh was like solid steel, his torso was as wide as a smoke-stack and his arms were as thick as railroad ties. His surname Magarac meant “mule” in the workhorse sense, referring to his stamina. Joe’s appetite was such that he carried his lunch in a washtub instead of a standard lunch box.
Magarac’s favorite leisure time activity was polka-dancing and halushkis were his favorite food.
THE LABORS OF JOE MAGARAC: Continue reading
NAIA TOPPLES NCAA DIVISION ONE – The WEBBER INTERNATIONAL UNIVERSITY WARRIORS from the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics played giant-killer at the higher division NCAA DIV. ONE STETSON UNIVERSITY HATTERS. At the Half the Warriors led 17-7, then went on to consummate the Upset by a final score of 31-21. 
KNOCKING OFF NUMBER THREE – In the NAIA the 4th ranked BENEDICTINE COLLEGE RAVENS welcomed the number 3 team in the nation – the MORNINGSIDE UNIVERSITY MUSTANGS. The 1st Quarter ended with the Mustangs on top 14-7 but by Halftime the Ravens held a 17-14 edge. The 4th Quarter started with a 31-27 lead for Benedictine College and ended in a 38-34 Ravens win. 
ANOTHER NUMBER THREE TAKES A FALL – Over in NCAA Division Two, the UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT THE PERMIAN BASIN FALCONS played host to the number 3 UNIVERSITY OF CENTRAL OKLAHOMA BRONCHOS (their spelling). The Falcons put UCO on Upset Alert with their 13-7 edge at the midpoint, then coasted to a 34-14 victory from there. 
VENUS
DOWN GOES NUMBER FIVE – The NAIA’s 11th ranked MONTANA TECH OREDIGGERS welcomed the NAIA’s number 5 team in the nation – the UNIVERSITY OF MONTANA-WESTERN BULLDOGS. The Orediggers piled up a 31-7 lead in the opening Quarter, a score that was unchanged come Halftime. UMW made it a 31-21 game to end the 3rd Quarter, but Montana Tech won out 38-27. 
NUMBER TEN TAKES A FALL – Also in the NAIA, the LINDSEY WILSON COLLEGE BLUE RAIDERS took the field against the visiting number 10 TEXAS WESLEYAN UNIVERSITY RAMS. The Blue Raiders parlayed their 14-3 1st Quarter advantage into a 28-10 lead at the Half. From there, Lindsey Wilson College went on to clobber the Rams by a final score of 45-10. 
GIANT OF THE EVIL ISLAND (1965) – Also released as The Mystery of the Evil Island, this film starred Mission: Impossible‘s Peter Lupus going by the name Rock Stevens. After mild success in a few Italian peplums, Lupus got his one and only swashbuckler movie with this little honey. 
Pedro’s predecessor as captain of his ship has retired after a career of fruitlessly trying to nab the pirate Moloch. Newly arrived Captain Valverde meets cute with the local governor’s daughter Bianca (Dina DeSantis) and the two fall in “love.” 
THE DOOM OF LONDON (1892) – Written by Robert Barr. In the “far future” of the mid-Twentieth Century the narrator of this tale looks back at the catastrophe that hit London in the 1890s. 
THE PAGEANT OF LETTERS (c 402 B.C.) – Here is another examination of an ancient Greek comedy. This one deals with a subject that still affects a very large part of the world to this very day – our alphabet. 
The addition of the four new letters (eta, xi, psi and omega) was causing a certain amount of confusion, as could be expected. Imagine if we suddenly added four new letters to the alphabet now, say, possibly single characters to express sounds formerly covered by two letters together, like “th” or “ph”.
TOWING (1978) – How obscure is this flick? As of this writing there are only 2 user reviews of it at IMDb. That actually makes Towing better known than some of the other flicks I’ve reviewed here at Balladeer’s Blog, but the fact that Joe Mantegna, Sue Lyon, Dennis Franz, Mike Nussbaum, Jennifer Ashley and J.J. Johnston are in this movie make it worth examining. 
Towing is about that period in the 1970s when Chicago tow-truck operators scandalously began towing vehicles out of parking lots based on VERY questionable grounds of being in violation of city regulations. The sleazy towing companies would charge the vehicle owners much larger than reasonable fees to get them back. 
BIRD OF THE IRON FEATHER (1970) – This African American drama was produced for Chicago’s educational station WTTW. The storied black radio and television pioneer Richard Durham created and wrote this soap opera/ soul drama that originally was to air every weekday like network soap operas did. 
WTTW was approved for a $600,000 grant to produce one hundred 30-minute episodes of a series dramatizing the contemporary experiences of black Chicagoans. The title Bird of the Iron Feather was a reference to the 1847 Frederick Douglass speech in which he described African Americans as “birds of iron feathers unable to fly to freedom.”
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