New WSU Press Memoir Takes Readers into World of Seattle’s Shipyards

Following weeks of fruitless 1970s job-hunting, honor student and new college graduate Mike Nolan was broke and miserable, sleeping on his sister’s couch. As a last resort, he signed on as a shipyard laborer and discovered that the most worthwhile education often happens outside of a classroom. Indeed, when he toppled from the crow’s nest of the USS Roark while trying to impress the foreman, only his rote, on-the-job safety training kept him alive.

Nolan shares a coming-of-age story with a unique setting in the newest title from WSU Press trade imprint Basalt Books, Hardhat Days: My Re-Education in Seattle’s Shipyards. With themes centered around growth and identity, blue-collar union work, and the value of a college degree, he describes what happens when extraordinary circumstances force a person to reinvent themselves.

Desperate to keep his job after joining a primarily African American Ship Scalers Union No. 541, Nolan lied about being a sandblaster. In reality, he knew nothing about the trade and deserved to be fired. Instead, his kindhearted Black coworkers took the white kid under their wings, and the former honor student from a small, not-so-diverse college became “Brother Nols,” the crew’s only white sandblaster. His mentors included Eddie, on work release from prison, who sympathized with Nolan’s situation and showed him the tricks of the trade; and U.S. Olympic rowing coxswain hopeful Chris, who became his best friend.

Taking pride in his blue-collar life and developing immense respect for his fellow ship scalers, Nolan writes entertaining accounts that reveal the gritty, dangerous, yet-still-often-humorous world of heavy construction.

“Most readers have been on a ship; few have worked in a shipyard,” he says. “My story invites them into a curiously overlooked segment of the construction industry. I shine an honest light on the beauty and value of hard work in heavy construction, a world that sometimes gets downplayed—or even disparaged—in our society.”

A resident of Port Angeles, Washington, Nolan’s previous work has been selected as a finalist for the 2022 Pacific Northwest Writers’ Association Nonfiction/Memoir Literary Award. In 2019, Tidepools, the art/literary magazine published by Peninsula College, awarded Nolan first place in adult prose.

His writing is included in the third volume of the Olympic Peninsula Authors anthology, and he has published stories in Flash Fiction Magazine, Seattle Times, Spokesman Review, and AAA Washington. Nolan has also been interviewed on KONP News Radio’s Todd Ortloff Show and KSQM’s Notes by Northwest.