Advance praise for Hardhat Days:
“A strapping, big-hearted memoir of life on the Seattle waterfront.”
— Steve Olson, author of Eruption: The Untold Story of Mount St. Helens
"Mike Nolan gives us an engrossing and refreshing look inside the blue collar world. From the intimate camaraderie of workers, to the triumph and heartbreak of life in the laboring trenches, Nolan's book is a phenomenal journey."
— Finn Murphy, Author of The Long Haul
"Hardhat Days is a coming-of-age story set against the grit and clang of Seattle’s shipyards in the late 1970s. Fresh out of college, a young man takes a union job blasting rust and barnacles off Navy vessels—and learns that not all education comes from books. With wry humor and raw detail, Mike Nolan captures the rhythms of blue-collar life and the unseen labor that keeps this country afloat."
—Thomas Kohnstamm, author of Supersonic
“Mike Nolan's memoir of working in Seattle shipyards in the 1970s and 80s caresses the gritty details with Proustian curiosity and affection, but without sentimentality. Finely etched portraits of shipyard workers come into focus, their friendships and hostilities, fears and elations. Vivid vignettes reconstruct the usually hard, sometimes dangerous jobs that were "scaler work". I worked as a ship scaler around the same time Mike did, and his evocation of sandblasting captures the dread of the simulation of World War One-era trench warfare that I recall. In the pre-Civil Rights Movement days, Ship Scalers Local 541 used to be the only shipyard union that welcomed Black members. Mike highlights the importance for them of union-wage industrial jobs with a potential management path in a desegregating workforce. In the wake of the emigration of shipyard jobs out of the U.S. during our era of deindustrialization, "Hardhat Days" shines a sharp light through the sandblasting haze on the emotional textures of a mostly lost industry and culture.”
- Peter Costantini, retired writer and former shipyard worker
Mike is a freelance writer, living in Port Angeles, WA, where the mountains meet the sea.
His writing has appeared in the Seattle Times, AAA Washington, and the Spokesman-Review, among other publications.
Mike has written a memoir, Hardhat Days…set in the Seattle shipyards. The book is now available for pre-order through Indiebound.org (recommended), Barnes & Noble, or Amazon.
It is scheduled to be published by Washington State University Press in Fall, 2025.
Cover image of Hardhat Days by Mike Nolan. Washington State University Press.