Our second child, a girl, was born shortly before I was sent to Connecticut to work. The wife had a difficult time of it with me gone all week, and we both cherished our weekends together. But life goes on, and we adapted. At the time we were living in a duplex on Prospect Street, owned by Harry Olney. Harry had a policy with his tenants concerning property improvements. Anything we wanted to do he usually agreed with; he would pay for the supplies and we would donate the labor. This is where I got experience in wallpapering and painting. We fixed the place up pretty well in the four years we were there. I remember there was a large Catalpa tree in the yard, and in the spring it would be fully bloomed (and carpeting the ground with flower petals as the spring progressed).

In the meantime, we three draftsmen continued to toil “downcountry”. Living out of a motel is pretty boring, and we spent a lot of our free time window shopping. Sometimes we would buy a gift for our wives, or toys for the kids back home. But money was always tight, after all, we were just starting down the Road Of Life. As I mentioned before, we each had $60 to go us the week, and food was the biggest expense. If we skrimped on eating, we could bring more money home. And each of us approached this goal differently. I remember on more than one occasion having to pay the Charlestown toll bridge fee out of my own pocket because one of the guys (who lived in New Hampshire) didn’t want to break one of the two twenties he had saved to bring home………..

As was my habit wherever I worked, I would take occasional breaks and walk thru the manufacturing and assembly areas. There is a lot to learn by observation, and meeting the people “on the other side of the fence”. I may have been involved on the creative side of machinery, but having an understanding of the manufacturing side is equally important. Working on the assembly floor during the just recent strike at J&L just reinforced those beliefs. But I had to be careful not to get lost at the Waterbury-Farrel plant. The few months that I spent there didn’t really allow me to get comfortable with the full layout. It kind of reminded me of a long ago tour as a VTC student going into the old Fellows plant in Springfield. Machine tool  manufacturing is a dirty business, most of the components are gray iron castings, dust is in the air, the floors are grimy. The lighting is quite often inadequate (due to the dust settling). It is also very noisy, and, if you are new to it, it is easy to be intimidated, with people coming and going, the forklift trucks with their horns blaring. If the factory includes a heat-treatment department (which most do), that has its own sights, smells, and dangers.

After working at J&L for five years, and learning their procedures and practices, it was quite a shock to learn that I knew nothing. But that was basically what happened when I was sent to work for our parent company, Waterbury-Farrel, after the strike was over. Their standards and processes where completely different than J&L. But this was not a unique situation, as I learned later in my career. Every company evolves on its own, with its own way of doing things, the manufacturing methods, the engineering standards. Its not a matter of who is right and who is wrong, although I did think along those lines as a young engineer. It wasn’t until fairly recently (in the last fifty years or so) that some “National” standards for manufacturing have appeared (I.E. in the early years of the automobile, there were no standards for screw threads, and each car manufacturer had their own ideas concerning the nuts and bolts that held the car together. It was not uncommon to see oddball threads such as 1/4-14 or 9/16-28, but as the fastener industry grew, these variations evolved into what we see today).

Living out of a motel in Waterbury, Connecticut, thru the winter of 1970-71, was a unique experience. If I remember right, the winter weather consisted of either wet snow or freezing rain (kind of like what we are getting in Vermont now). The town of Cheshire contracted out a lot of their snowplowing, and it was not uncommon to see garbage trucks with plows. We stayed at a place called The Red Bull, on top of a hill not too far from I84. We spent four nights a week there, travelling back and forth from Vermont on Mondays and Fridays. The product line at Waterbury-Farrel was completely different than what any of us was used to; they designed and built hot and cold forming machinery, basically stamping machines of various sizes. Forging machinery. From small units that may stamp out electrical contacts in silver, to multi-ton capacity machines for large forgings. At the time they were building some multi-station machines that took a chunk of brass and progressively stamped it out into a bullet casing. A lathe-like device at the end would machine an ejection groove to complete the item.

The engineering department at Waterbury-Farrel was set up similar to J&L in that they had rows of drafting tables in a large room. This was before computer aided drafting (CAD) was in existence. Design work was done with pencil and eraser, on large sheets of vellum (a high grade of paper used for drafting work). They had dedicated crew of checkers, and we found out soon enough that our way of drawing would have to change to conform to their “standards”. Our job was basically one of “detailers”, to take their assembly layouts and draw up every single part so that it could be manufactured. But our methods and dimensioning approach had to bend to conform to their standards. It was, in some ways, a painful four months.

 

One of the uncomfortable aspects of the 1970 strike was having to cross the picket lines every day. The union had placed some of their workers at the parking lot entrances, and the local police had a presence there to keep things orderly. For the most part there was no violence, like you might see in the big cities. The pickets were people we all knew, some were close friends. Of course, as the strike dragged on, tensions did increase. Especially when the trucks came to ship the machines we non-union workers had built. There were harassment type chases involving some of the union people, as the trucks left the factory.  I do remember a story about shots being fired down on I91. But as far as I know, nobody came to any real bodily harm

Because the strike dragged on much longer than anyone thought it would, a lot of the out-of-work union people found jobs elsewhere. So the manning of the picket lines was done by a few faithful. They had placed a 55 gallon drum at the Plant #1 office parking lot entrance, and kept a fire going in it for the chilly mornings. Machine orders were dropping off as word of the strike got out. The contract negotiations were stalled thru the summer. It was not until late fall when an agreement was reached, and the union signed a new pact. I don’t remember the exact details, but I believe the long strike did not benefit the union workers at all. And it took the company a long time to recover. The office workers who stuck thru it all were faced with layoffs; many union workers were not called back for some time; the summer of 1970 did not reward any of us who were involved with this event.

My second child was born toward the end of the strike, and my wife had to come pick me up one November Saturday to go to the hospital. I remember it was during football season, and I watched a game while she was in the delivery room. Back then fathers were not allowed to participate as they are now.

As mentioned earlier, some of the office personnel who worked thru the strike lost their jobs when the strike ended. It was inevitable, as there was not that much engineering work to do. But our parent company, Waterbury-Farrel, was developing a new hot former, and needed engineering help. So three of us were sent to work in their plant in Cheshire, Connecticut. This lasted thru the winter of 1970-1971, for about four months. We would leave town (in a company car) on Monday morning, and return on Friday afternoon. We were put up in a motel and given $60 each to cover expenses. We did not have to make out an expense report, so if we wanted to eat cheap, we could pocket the rest. But living on $60 was not difficult, most of the time we would come home with extra money. And we ate well, I remember in particular a small chef-owned steak house where the service was first-rate (I think the name was The Sleeping Giant). We would usually eat one really good dinner a week, and spend the rest of the week on pizza or pasta. Our co-workers at Waterbury-Farrel gave us inside information on where to eat.

In the spring of 1970 we were living in a duplex on Prospect Street. The wife and I and our daughter, then 2 years old. The folks who lived on the “other side” were an English couple who had just moved into town. He was a salesman who had been hired by Fellows Gear Shaper. She was a stay-at-home mom who prepared curry spiced dishes at least once a week (they had just spent several years living in India). Living in a duplex is a little like staying in a motel, some events are shared thru the walls, odors being one of them. We have never been curry spice fans. But we remain best friends to this day, even though they moved away long ago.

The storm that was brewing that spring involved the renewal of the labor contract that the UE had with Jones and Lamson. Negotiations were ongoing and fruitless; business was slow, so the union was at a disadvantage. But the final vote on the contract ended in a strike. This was in June, and I remember the workers rolling out their toolboxes on a sunny day, and stating they were “going fishing”. The office staff (and shop supervisors) were non-union, so we all continued working. But within a few days, Bob Jones (the president at the time) called a meeting of all office staff to explain what the company policy would be during the strike. Anyone who still had engineering work to do would be able to finish it. Then we would be reassigned to various positions in the shop so that machines could still be built and shipped. In effect, we would become the shop work force. Very little engineering work would be done during the strike. I’m not sure if new orders were taken during this time, but they probably were. Nobody knew it at the time, but this strike would last six months.

I was working in Grinder Engineering when the strike started, and I was sent out to “get my hands dirty” on the grinder assembly floor. I think the experience of seeing both sides of the process (engineering, and then build), really helped me grasp the whole picture. I was now the recipient of an engineering design that I created, and hate to admit that perhaps it could (sometimes) stand improvement. But that’s part of the “learning curve” we all hope to climb over. Some never do.

For the most part, the office workers were able to slide into the role of machine assemblers, painters, electrical wiremen. It took some time to accomplish, but with the help of the shop supervisors, who were familiar with the process, things fell into place. Because of inexperience, most of us had to work overtime to complete these tasks. Working Saturdays became part of the normal work week. Because of the circumstances, we became a close-knit group, helping each other out where we could. There was no pressure from management, just an understanding that we would do what we could, when we could. There were regular meetings held so we knew how the union negotiations were going. This would continue thru the summer and fall.