Because of our success with the TNC lathe line, we had many visitors who mainly wanted to observe our assembly lines and build procedures. In the beginning J&L had no real policy concerning picture taking, so the early visitors (mainly oriental), came with cameras loaded. They couldn’t possibly achieve what we had done, could they? Well, as we discovered later (to our chagrin), they could, and did. They listened to an American ( W. Edwards Deming), when America didn’t. His manufacturing philosophy and step-by-step methods for improvement enabled the Japanese to eventually become a machine tool powerhouse. But in the 60’s and 70’s we were complacent; just like the American and British motorcycle industry, we failed to see the threat (eventually, of course, we forbid any type of photography in the building). Because the lathe is the predominant machine tool in use worldwide, the Japanese targeted the U.S. lathe market first. This became quite evident to anyone who visited the NMTBA (National Machine Tool Builders Association) show in Chicago over the next decade. Their government worked with them with funding to enable them to develop marketable products.

As we all know now, their grasp of the basic tenants of manufacturing had enabled them to excel not only in the machine tool industry, but in automotive and electronic products as well. And this same approach is valid as these products have moved away from Japan to Taiwan, Korea, and China.

There were quite a few World War II veterans employed in the shops at that time. Their reactions to seeing their former enemies walking around with cameras ranged from polite toleration to (guardedly) hostile. Most of our foreign visitors were young, not having any firsthand experience in the war; a few were older, and were probably war veterans. But as far as I know, we extended a welcoming hand to them all. I’m sure they played up the possibility of being future “customers”.

I was living in North Springfield at this time, and made the aquaintance of an Electrical Tech on the assembly floor. He lived near us, and eventually we set up a carpool arrangement; he would drive one week, I would drive the next. This allowed my wife to have the car on the off week (his wife didn’t drive). He would stroll into the Engineering office from time-to-time, either seeking out some information, or for a brief visit. During one of those visits he asked me if I wanted to see a “Polish Trailer”. I was game, so I followed him out to the assembly floor. He went over to one of the mechanics and asked where the “Polish trailer” was. The mechanic said “it was just here, I think it’s over there”, pointing in some general direction. So off we went, again missing it “by just a few seconds”. This went on for a few more minutes, until I realized I was the “Polish Trailer”………… This joke of course caused a hearty round of laughter (and a red face).

 

One of the side effects of the Arab Oil Embargo was a resurgence of wood burning appliances for home heating. Heating oil, as well as gasoline, had skyrocketed in price. So it was only natural that consumers would look at more affordable ways of heating their homes. We at J&L were lucky in a way, as Textron not only owned us, but they had a division called Homelite, which sold chain saws, among other things. As a Textron employee, we could buy these saws at a considerable discount.

There were several of us office workers that took advantage of the Homelite connection and bought a chain saw. Getting firewood was not much of a problem, as the state of Vermont sold roadside woodlots if you got your bid in early; and there were private landowners who needed their woodlots thinned out. I was lucky enough to hook up with a fellow in the programming department, who had a line on a woodlot up in Reading, off Grasshopper Lane. We had bought a Franklin stove from Steve Bromley (who worked inside sales at J&L), and had it set up in the living room. Not a very efficient unit, but it helped with the oil bill. Several of us office workers pooled our money and bought a hydraulic woodsplitter over at Agway in Claremont. Although most of this group has disbursed over  time, we still have the splitter at our house (two motors later).

We made a family day of cutting firewood, everyone would jump in the pickup truck and head to Reading. Back then it was perfectly legal for the kids to ride in the bed of the truck; and they would climb on top of the load of wood going home.

A lot of the office talk centered around wood burning, BTU’s and stove types. There were Scandanavian stoves such as Jotul and Morso; domestics such as Nashua and Garrison. The various tool requirements for working up a wood pile; types of axes, mauls and wedges. Everyone had a detailed list of the various northern hardwoods and their heat values (BTU’s). There was a joke circulating about some poor soul who had added up the cost of all this required equipment, along with the cost of a pickup truck, and several smashed rear windows from carelessly throwing the wood in the bed. Needless to say, the total cost far exceeded the price of heating the house with oil. But being thought of as “self reliant” was important to many.

There were stories about some of the workers at J&L building their own woodsplitters in the shop, out of sight of supervision. I’m sure this happened in all of the shops over time, as all the components were readily available. Eventually there were seminars given to educate people about the problems that wood burning creates. These talks were usually given by the fire department, and centered around creosote buildup in the chimneys. Chimney fires had become more common, and these discussions helped people to understand how to clean their chimneys, properly dry their firewood and run their stoves efficiently.

The year 1973 started out on a bad note, there was a stock market “crash”, which affected all of us in the investment game. Thru out the summer there was an escalation of hostilities in the Mideast, ending in the Arab-Israeli war breaking out in October. The OPEC cartel, the group of oil producing countries, cut back oil exports to all who supported Israel. This of course included the United Sates. Oil prices doubled almost overnight, and shortages, real and imagined, became an everyday occurance. Gas stations closed early because of these shortages, and it was difficult to buy a tank of gas. Of course, no stations were open on the weekend, which curtailed any long distance vacation plans. Finally the government stepped in with a plan to give everyone an equal chance for fuel; the rationing setup called for those with license plates ending with even numbers go on certain days, and those ending with odd numbers go on the other days. But there were still long lines at the pumps, and you still may only be able to buy a few gallons at a time; I was lucky, as the wife was a stay-at-home mother, and could go to gas up during the day (I should mention that she may have been at home, but she ran her own child daycare business).

The Arab-Israeli war only lasted from October 6th to the 26th, but it started the upward oil price trend that has created immense wealth for the oil producing countries.

It is hard to believe that the classic 60’s and 70’s muscle cars that we see today ( and are quite valuable), sat unwanted after the oil shortage crisis. These big motored monsters were virtually worthless, as everyone rushed to buy smaller, more fuel efficient cars. Detroit suddenly became serious about building an “economy car”. Up until this event, their offerings were scant, Ford with the Falcon, and Chevrolet with the Chevy II. Chrysler was already selling their front wheel drive Omni and Horizon, basically a copy of the VW Rabbit. Speaking of VW, their “Bug” had been imported since the mid 50’s, and they had a solid magazine ad campaign which sold millions of these cars. We owned a couple ourselves over the years, it’s the only car I’ve owned that you needed an ice scraper inside to keep the windshield clear on a cold day. The heater / defroster was pretty dismal, especially if you had an older one with rusty heater boxes (which we did!!).

In November we were blessed with our third child, a son. We had lived in North Springfield for a little over a year, and all three of our children would eventually attend the North Springfield Graded School. It was an old fashioned, small school, with a sense of community. We were saddened at it’s closing.

Even though our “B” series TNC’s were the main offering, J&L also had larger versions of these lathes, with up to a 10″ thru-hole capacity spindle. These were “C” and “D” series machines, the “C” size comprised 4-1/2″ thru 8″ spindles, and the “D” size offered 6″ and 10″ spindles. These machines could mount very large chucks for those customers who needed them. The largest of the “D” size machines had a hydrostatic bearing spindle to be able to take the heavy chucks and high cutting forces generated during machining; instead of traditional ball or roller bearings, the R&D department had incorporated high pressure hydraulics and precise bearing areas, both in the radial and thrust direction. It did the job, providing very accurate machining capability for a lathe of that size. One of the critical requirements of a hydrostatic bearing is close oil temperature control, as the spindle is really floating on a film of high pressure oil with very small running clearances. Too wide an oil temperature range invites bearing seizure. We used a large commercial oil tank with an oil chiller (this unit was almost as big as the lathe). These large machines were usually bought by companies in Big Oil, machining threaded couplings and valves for use in the petroleum business. A lot of our customers were located in the southwest, in Texas and Oklahoma.

The “D” size machines were so large that the bed angle was steeper (by 10 degrees) than the other TNC’s. This was necessary to keep the machine narrow enough to be able to ship it on a commercial drop center flatbed trailer. The four-axis model had a three rail configuration for the slides.

Up until the fall of 1972 we had lived in a Harry Olney duplex on Prospect Street. We had been looking to buy our own house all summer, and had looked at a few in our price range. I was still in the Army Reserves and at summer camp that year, when the wife called me and said she had found a house in North Springfield on a dead end dirt road. We agreed to place a deposit on it so I could look at it when I got home. I believe we moved in at the end of September, and we have been here since then. The wife transported our five year old to the North Springfield school until we moved up from Springfield, a period of only a few weeks.

The basic house was a cape style, with an attached barn. There was also a separate two storey  gambrel roofed barn nearby. The owner was a retired J&L mechanic who was living out west. He had partitioned off the upstairs so he had two rental apartments. The yard was overgrown high grasses, with just a path mowed to the clothesline. Over the years we have converted the house back to a single family home. Even though the house is 200 years old, it had never gone thru the early “knob and tube” style of wiring. It had apparently gone from kerosene lanterns right into armored cable (with questionable integrity). The house had a 60 amp service and no insulation whatever. It was originally a center chimney affair, but that had been removed long ago (but I found out during our remodel that some of the main beams were charred from that!!). We had our work cut out for us, but it was what we could afford at the time (house payment $153 a month). Doing most of the work ourselves, nights and weekends, we now have a pretty decent home. But I wouldn’t want to do it again……………