Several years ago, I was born in Kansas City, Missouri, and if you drove 10 minutes from my crib

down 24 highway, you'd end up at a large steel plant at the confluence of the Missouri and Blue River.

As a native son of Missouri, I'm partial to the Missouri River, and it's the longest river

in the United States.

It still features prominently in my life, and my formative years were spent playing on its banks

and hanging from train trestles high above its murky depths.

The steel plant also played a role in my life.

As a few years on, in elementary school, we'd often go on a field trip to this majestic

place, and I can still remember getting a fifth-sized bolt as a souvenir each time.

Its shiny, gold-toned hue and the stamp on the head of the bolt, while it was like finding

a golden chalice of immeasurable

value, watching sparks of molten steel fly from the forges, and the men hardened and soiled

with soot were wearing masks, gloves, and leather goods that looked as if a century of toil

had stained them beyond recovery. They had filterless cigarettes in their mouths and their eyes

seemed black as coal and they stared at us kids walking by in our Sesame Street t-shirts.

Well, mine was a speed racer t-shirt. There was no doubt that someone loved these men, but at the time,

I couldn't imagine who that would be given their grizzled appearance.

The steel plant was started in 1888 as the Kansas City Bolt and Nut Company, and it was acquired

in 1925 by the Sheffield Steel Corporation. It was the first plant to be located in northeast Kansas City, and within 10 years,

30 other manufacturers popped up with the enclaves adopting the English industrial town

names of Sheffields, Leeds, Birmingham, and Manchester as levees were built on the Missouri River

to protect each one of them.

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