Still making the grade

LYNN – Its sides are flecked with rust and its driveshaft caked with dried grease, but ask the men who drive the city?s 1966 Austin-Western road grader and they will tell you about a machine with the stamina of a prizefighter and the grace of a ballerina.?You can make it do the rhumba if you want,” said retired Public Works Department employee Richard Perry.In an age of onboard computers and automatic transmissions, the Austin-Western, with its four-wheel steering, is a veteran piece of equipment beloved by city workers who spent decades-long careers paving city streets, plowing snow and sprucing up parks.?It was like a big toy to me – a lot of fun,” said Perry.It is also the oldest operating vehicle in the city?s 300-vehicle motor pool. Mayor Judith Flanagan Kennedy underscored the grader?s status as a gas-powered patriarch during a June discussion with City Council members on the need to spend tax dollars on purchasing new trucks and pieces of heavy equipment.City workers keep the Austin-Western operable with parts stripped from a 1962 grader marooned in a corner of the Commercial Street city yard. Like its younger sibling, the older grader spent its life clearing snow, carving out ballfields in city parks and smoothing roadbeds in Lynn Woods.Perry logged dozens of hours in the grader?s cramped cab during his 31 years with DPW. District Fire Chief John Barry first drove the Austin-Western while working emergency plow shifts in the 1980s and Associate DPW Commissioner Lawrence Donahue climbed into the grader?s cab last winter and pulled one of the city?s new payloaders out of a tight corner on Brownville Avenue.?You can do so much more with this than a truck. You can pivot it and it whips right around a corner,” Donahue said.He is quick to point out city workers don?t “drive” the Austin-Western; they “operate” it. The grader does not have a steering wheel: Operators manipulate foot controls and shift a dozen levers to control the grader?s direction, and the angle of its center and front plow blades.In the hands of a good operator, the Austin-Western can slice along a curb edge clearing snow off a street gutter to gutter right down to the asphalt. Barry said learning to operate the grader is a challenge.?The first time out, you?re all over the street,” he said.The Austin-Western is poised to outlast the men who have driven it over the years: Donahue is on the verge of retirement after a 40-year city career and Barry operates the grader only when he is called in to plow.It has proven durability and maneuverability, but Acting Associate DPW Commissioner Lisa Nerich said the Austin-Western survived six decades in the city?s work fleet because of the job it can do in the hands of a master operator.?Having an operator who can handle it is a big factor. You don?t always have people coming up through the ranks who can do it,” she said.Perry retired in 2001, joining a select club of former Austin-Western operators including George Potter Sr., John DiCearse, Robert Dow and Richard Moulison Jr. The late John Davis and William Furlong also did turns on the grader in their time.City Motor Vehicle Care Supervisor Anthony Gately said fresh sets of tire chains, a new battery and hydraulic fluid is all the Austin-Western requires to take on another winter.Nerich and Interim Public Works Commissioner J.T. Gaucher estimate the city needs to buy $3.1 million worth of new vehicles to replace heavy equipment dating back to the 1980s, but the Austin-Western is not about to go the way of Mike Mulligan?s trusty steam shovel in the popular children?s book.?There?s other pieces of equipment that can do the job,” Nerich said, “but not as well as this one.”