Every 35 minutes, the monster crane with a boom almost as long as a football field plucked a 35-ton concrete box from a waiting truck-trailer and swung it high over the construction site beside the San Antonio River. Ever so delicately, Crane Operator Gene Smith steadied the massive shell against the push of the wind; every gust was countered by radioed adjustments in the pitch of a helicopter tail rotor mounted on the lifting rig. With directional help from a magnetic compass, Smith gently stacked each concrete box atop an identical unit,...
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