I believe it was in September of 2012 that I received a letter from Craig saying that they could no longer function using me as a “part time” engineer, and they wished me well in my retirement. The wife and I had been on vacation and the letter was in the mail when I got home. I was quite upset, as I thought this was a cowardly way of rewarding me for 21 years of service. Of course, they never hired a full time engineer to replace me, they just limped along for the next couple of years, until 2015 when they declared bankruptcy (actually, I think the bank foreclosed on them). The last machine tool builder in the valley. In the end, Landis Grinder bought the Bryant product line and moved everything to Maryland. As far as the rebuild business went, that was slowly being phased out during the Bryant buildup anyway. The auction that the bank conducted cleared everything out of the building; it is now owned by Springfield GMC, and is used to clean and prep new and used cars for sale.

In conclusion, it has been quite an adventure doing these write-ups, and I hope everyone has enjoyed reading them. This project was the result of a group of retired J&L engineers sitting down at the Harpoon Brewery in the summer of 2014 (like many worthwhile projects, beer WAS involved!!). The initial thought was to write down just how J&L was structured, how the various departments interacted with each other, and our various personal adventures / tribulations over the years, both serious and humorous. Although not earth shattering, these essays will allow future generations to get a glimpse of how it was during the Machine Tool Heydays of the 60’s and 70’s. I have been told that it was pretty much the same in the other shops.

Many people contributed to these essays, and I would like to take the time now to thank them. I decided to continue to write about my experiences after J&L closed, as I was lucky enough to be able to continue working in my field as a design engineer, mostly in the Springfield area, except for two years in Lebanon, New Hampshire. Because I only worked at each of these later companies for a couple of years after J&L, my knowledge of their processes was not as in-depth as it was at J&L. But I tried to outline their histories as well. They are all gone now, even New Jersey Machine, which was bought up by a Canadian firm.

There are, I’m sure, many more stories out there, and I may be back occasionally with another essay or two.  I need to do some research in a few areas first. I hope to write some in-depth stories about the effort to unionize the J&L office staff (by the United Steelworkers, I think). This led to the establishment of an in-house negotiation committee, to try to get some office improvements made and head off the unionization push (many of us were NOT pro-union). In the end the union drive failed, but my memory is fuzzy in the details.

As our sales continued to drop, the inevitability of furloughs hit a lot of us, me included. I had been on furlough for several months when, approaching my 63rd year, I decided to apply for Social Security. This was in the spring of 2008. After I started to receive my checks, I was called back to work; because I was now on Social Security, there was a limit as to how much I could earn each year without affecting my S.S. check. The company wanted me back full time, but I decided that could not happen. I wanted to enjoy my “retirement”, so we settled on a three day work week. It might have not been an ideal setup as far as the company went, but we made it work.

There had been many significant changes made while I was on furlough; because our expenses were outpacing our income, management decided they would no longer contract for rubbish removal (we had a dumpster in the rear parking lot). The foreman was put in charge of garbage disposal. He would assign various mechanics to truck our refuse to the recycle center. It is amazing just how much trash a small company like ours generates. And it is labor intensive to run our own garbage in the back of a pickup truck. If anything, I am willing to bet it cost us more in the long run to do this. Another item that was discontinued was the shop rag service. most shops in the valley would contract for cloth shop rags, the dirty ones which were turned in every Friday for laundering. Having clean shop rags was a very important part of building machinery; clean rags were vital for wiping down parts AND the mechanics hands. But it was announced that each mechanic could “supply their own rags” . A ridiculous idea, as these varied in quality from old towels to denim to skivvies. The third blow was the announcement that the company would no longer provide uniforms to the mechanics; wear whatever you wanted, and it was up to each individual to wash these grease and oil stained garments at home. I’m sure the wives loved this…………

It had become plain to see that The Company was struggling. During the last several years we had not seen any sort of a pay increase; the annual “merit reviews” were discontinued; everything revolved around production and shipping to maximize our income. Any cost cutting idea was evaluated and implemented. We laid off people; some left of their own accord, as they found employment elsewhere or saw the writing on the wall. I was fortunate during all of this, as I had already eased out of full time work, and had adjusted to the smaller paycheck.

Working part time had some downsides to it, though. I was not kept in the loop as to the daily developments, which affected my job as the Fluid Power Guy. There was an ongoing project to change significantly the design of various Bryant machine parts, including wheelheads and slides. A lot of these changes were questionable, done in the context of “research”. We did not have sufficient engineering knowledge to accomplish much of this successfully. These changes wreaked havoc on the supporting fluid power items that I  had ordered.