Louisville Magazine is Louisville's city magazine, covering Louisville people, lifestyles, politics, sports, restaurants, entertainment and homes. Includes a monthly calendar of events.
Issue link: https://loumag.epubxp.com/i/532701
LOUISVILLE MAGAZINE 7.15 15 Photo by Chris Witzke THE PORTRAIT Nachbar cat '20s pool scene Eastern Standard Time For a DJ And More! Green room Corny Colonel 21Qs 21 questions thebit D JUST SAYIN' ? WHY LOUISVILLE , A bit OF HISTORY JOCELYN SALINAS Bridge Builder S PACE S WE LOVE d espite the forever procession of second-guessing and controversies, the $2.3 billion Ohio River Bridges Project doesn't sulk. It bulks up, thick concrete pillars elbowing the horizon. The pack of orange-vested, hard-hatted bodies at the Downtown Crossing site (aka the new I-65 bridge and reworked Spaghetti Junction) don't bother much with political hand-wringing. They're too busy building. Twenty-year-old Jocelyn Salinas is one of the roughly 250 carpenters building the bones, including the temporary shell that will eventually be flled with poured concrete and 16 million pounds of steel. Though about 20 female carpenters and millwrights work on the project, Salinas is the only woman on her crew. And that's how she likes it. There's great satisfaction in executing daily tasks a little faster than the men. "I like the competition," Salinas says, grinning in half-smirk. She's on-site from 7:00 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. every weekday, plus the occasional half-day Saturday. A 40-pound tool bag tugs at her hips. Friends joke that they can't tell anymore if she's dirty or really tan. But this is the work she feels she was born to do. Her dad works as a contractor. And in high school, traditional classroom subjects bored her. So the day after she turned 18 (the minimum age to become a registered apprentice), she walked into a United Brotherhood of Carpenters training center. Salinas earns about $40,000 a year and within about two years will bump up to $57,000. (In addition to being a certifed carpenter, she's the youngest certifed female welder in the state.) "Trade's dying. Everybody's retiring, leaving," Salinas says. "Young people just see it like: That's hard work; that's outside. "It really is a lifelong skill. You can re-do your house. You don't have to call a handyman and pay $200 for something that you can fx yourself." When Salinas told her parents, immigrants from Mexico, that she was being featured for a second time in Louisville Magazine (the frst was for a story about the need for young people to enter skilled trades), her father got choked up. "He was at a loss for words," she says. "It's like I'm really living the American dream." — Anne Marshall