After working in the Springfield area for 25 years, travelling to the Upper Valley was quite a change. But the commute was not that bad once I reached I91. One thing I did discover (to my surprise) was that New Hampshire kept their roads much clearer than Vermont in the winter. And some of the winter commutes were, eh, entertaining, shall I say? I did not possess a four-wheel-drive vehicle at that time, and I consider myself a “conservative” driver. But some of those folks who do have four-wheel-drive are of the opinion that they can do anything in ice and snow. I have since bought two four-wheel-drive pickups, and can say that they are handy during those seasons. But I still don’t think I’m invincible. I remember one particular morning commute, when it was snowing and blowing, someone passed me in a white, full size Chevy Blazer. After getting past me, they proceeded to do a couple of 360’s in the left lane, then slid off into the median. Luckily for them that the median had no ledges at that point. I just kept on going…………..

New Jersey Machine was a labeling and packaging outfit, and their base headquarters was in, well, in New Jersey. The company was founded in the early 1900’s, and initially they imported and sold labeling machines from Germany. Of course this all changed when WW1 started. So they were forced into building their own machinery, based on the German designs. Over the years their product line expanded, and when I joined the company they had several models of labelers, and also boxing/ packaging machines. There were a few people here from the Springfield area, some of which I knew personally. I ended up commuting with John Kingsbury, a former Fellows electrical engineer. John Lived in Baltimore, and we would switch off driving chores every other week.

One of the big differences between this industry and machine tools was that everything was stainless steel or aluminum, very clean compared with the cast iron castings I was used to. They had their own small machine shop and welding area, which took care of most of their needs. The assembly area was at the rear of the building, which was located on Etna Road in Lebanon.

The basic labeling machine they sold was called the “Mustang”. At that time most labels were paper, and they were attached to the bottle using a cold glue. So a basic machine would have a label magazine, and a cold glue applicator. The bottle would be passed by the glue station, where it would be rotated as the glue was applied; then past the label magazine, where the label would be picked up. A stationary brush would make sure the label was firmly attached. The pharmaceutical industry was a big customer of ours; I remember a particularly difficult job on a pill bottle, and having to attach a small, prefolded booklet to the bottle. The printing on this booklet had instructions and warnings concerning the drug, but you needed a magnifying glass to read it…………….

In 1989 I was invited to join the Hitormis Gun Club; this institution was originally started by a few Fellows engineers back in 1930 as a way to promote company morale. It also became an important sales tool; customers, and perspective customers would be wined and dined to enhance future relationships. In the early days there was a tennis court (still there, but in poor shape). Old dusty hunting trophies are mounted inside the building. In the beginning only Fellows employees (following an embarrassing induction ritual) were eligible to join this club. Because of the decline of the local industries, membership is now open to anyone who is interested (with no induction ritual).

I thoroughly enjoyed working at Fellows, and knew quite a few people there. I would occasionally take a walk out thru the manufacturing and assembly area to see what was going on. At one point there was a 100″ gear shaper being built for a company in India. When they were running that machine off, they cut a gear that had an 8″ or wider face, and because they used cutting oil for coolant (not water), there was quite a fog in the building from the hot chips coming off the workpiece. Pretty impressive.

The J&L comparator product line had been moved back to town, and was being built in this building in North Springfield. Richard Smith was the assembly foreman, someone I had known for years. His brother, Nelson, had attended VTC with me, and we were hired on at the same time in 1965; Nelson had gone to work in Comparator Engineering in Plant #2, I had been placed in Plant #1. After Textron moved the comparator product to South Carolina in 1980, Nelson left the company. He eventually bought into a machine tool supply company, Stewart-Hunt, specializing in fluid power.

As the gear shaper orders for Caterpillar wound down, our work load decreased dramatically. I started to feel somewhat exposed, being the “Last One Hired”. It was kind of the same feeling I had before J&L closed, so I decided to look around for something else. It took a while, but I finally found an ad from a company in Lebanon, New Hampshire, called New Jersey Machine. They were looking for engineering help, so I went up for an interview. At this time I had been cultivating a beard, and did not know how it would affect the talk. The personnel director who conducted the interview was getting ready to retire, so maybe he did not mind the beard; but after my hire, several of the employees told me that the guy did not like beards…………

Once the sector machine redesign was done, I was assigned to work with the tooling group. These people were responsible for all the work holding equipment that was necessary to hold the customer parts while the actual gear cutting took place. This might include chucks, cutter adapters, and anything else in the work area. Heading up this (small) group was an engineer nearing retirement age. We always referred to him as “Mr. Two -Tenths”, as his runout spec for many of the work holding parts was .0002″. In a way he was right, as any excess runout in these items may be cause for failing a customer runoff. The closer we could manufacture these parts, the greater chances of success. But .0002″ in some cases was overkill. The manufacturing people did the best they could under these circumstances. I really was not comfortable working with the tooling group, I wanted to get back into the basic machine design areas. But most of what Fellows was selling was existing designs; there was no money to spend on a lot of new ideas.

At the time I was hired in 1988, Fellows was investigating a computer-aided drafting system (CAD) for engineering. Most of us were still working on paper at the time, and I don’t believe the CAD system was implemented by the time I left two years later. As with most of the old-line industries, the Fellows drawings included the really old pen-and-ink linen variety using fractions, the somewhat later pencil drawings, and then the present drawings of current products. There was a push in this country back in the 70’s to convert U.S. industry to a metric measuring system; most companies resisted this. But to Fellow’s credit, they attempted to “go metric”, although with mixed results. Their drawings were a hodgepodge of styles that must have drove the machinists and inspectors crazy. And caused a lot of excess expense, too. They had “soft metric” drawings, “hard metric” drawings, some with first angle projection (the U.S. standard), some with third angle projection (the European standard). Because everyone at that time was used to reading (and measuring) in inches, working in millimeters was quite a handicap. I know I was never really comfortable thinking in metric. Today the U.S. manufacturing  industry has largely converted; I think all of the domestic automotive products use metric fasteners.

An explanation: a “soft metric” drawing was one that took existing inch dimension drawings and converted those numbers to millimeters (I.E. 1.000″ becomes 25.394 millimeters). A “hard metric” drawing dimensioned the part in millimeters right from the start (the mechanisms are designed using  metric measuring vs. inch). To aid the machinist in the shop, most hard metric drawings had a chart in an upper corner converting all the millimeter dimensions to inch, as most machinists still used inch measuring devices, such as micrometers. So these drawings, although thorough, were quite complex.

There were several former J&L people working at Fellows Gear Shaper, so I felt somewhat at home. Fellows was the second largest employer in town, now the largest due to the problems at J&L. At the time I was hired, they had been acquired by The Goldman Group, an investment firm. The on-site management team included a Mr. Joe Smith, a sour man who had some sort of disability, and got around in an electric cart. His wife ran the mailroom. There were some Goldmans there from time-to-time, but I never interacted with them. I was a new hire, an engineer from J&L, and I basically had to start from scratch learning a new set of rules and regulations. Each company has these, developed over the years to suit their particular industry and personality; Fellows was no different. So quite a lot of what I had been taught at J&L had to be suppressed, to make room for The Fellows Way.

Being within walking distance from my home was really great; unless the weather was bad, I walked every day. Fellows had a modern cafeteria at the plant in North Springfield, and they put on a great lunch. Engineering was located on the second floor, along with the sales department. Over the years Fellows was a leader in gear cutting technology; they not only sold gear cutting machines, they also had their own gear cutter department. Their cutters were considered the Cadillac of the industry, and a big part of their income. Every new engineer was required to attend a one week seminar that explained all of the components of a gear tooth; involute, pitch line, base circle radius, etc.. I still have the two workbook handouts from that class.

One of my first assignments after hire was to complete a design concept that had been started by a former engineer who had left the company. One of the products offered by Fellows was a gear shaper to cut coarse, variable pitch teeth on a steering sector shaft. These parts were used on recirculating ball steering boxes, found today mostly on trucks and large vans. These gear teeth were cut on an angle off the centerline of the shaft itself. In the past, a sector gear shaping machine would be built with the upright (the part of the machine that held the cutter), at the proper angle to cut these teeth. So that machine would be “dedicated” to being able to cut only parts with that one particular angle. If a company had several different sectors to cut (with several different angles), multiple machines would be required. This new design would allow for the upright angle to be adjustable. Because the cutting action of a gear shaper is basically all interrupted cuts, the adjustment and locking mechanism had to be able to hold up to the constant vibrations that occur. This feature was greeted with much customer enthusiasm, as one machine could now cut sector gears of multiple angles, using what were called “sine blocks” inserted and clamped for each angle required. I believe the first two machines of this design were sold to a Korean company.

Because most of todays cars have rack-and-pinion steering systems, these sector shapers are not as popular as they once were.

 

Our new company included some veteran J&L comparator people; Steve Bromley and Frank Jarvis were the travelling sales people, and Richard Searle signed on as inside sales engineer. Dick had many years of experience with the J&L comparator product line. Bill McGrotty was the chief engineer, and I assisted when needed. But it soon became apparent that my main duties would be on the assembly floor. Plus, I inherited the casting of the bases; setting up the forms, bending the rebar, mixing and pouring the concrete.

The heart of the machine was the slide assembly; a two axis affair that included some innovative “space age” bearing material. Instead of machining precisely aligned parts, the vertical ram bearing was poured from an epoxy resin called Moglice. It was a low friction bearing material that would conform to the OD of the precision ground ram, and hopefully give us a close running, no-shake fit. Lubrication was from a low tech oil cup. We soon found out that this material was difficult to predict; sometimes it would turn out beautifully, other times the fit was so loose that the oil just ran out of the bottom. It appeared that the results depended on the atmospheric conditions at the time of the pour; I.E. humid or dry? Hot or cold? In the end we never really could count on a 100% success rate. It was just the nature of the beast. So chipping out Moglice and repouring was sometimes necessary.

Because the base of the machine was concrete, the comparator was quite stable. There was a cavity inside the base that contained the electronics. We offered two size screens, just like the competition, 14″ and 30″, although the 14″ was the biggest seller. I learned quite a lot about setting up the optics from Dick Searle, but never really got excited about this machine. Compared to a machine tool like a lathe, it was a pretty static product.

About nine months into the job Bob Jones announced that our wages would be increased by $1.00 per hour, and we would start receiving stock certificates in the company on a quarterly basis. I decided that this job would be only temporary, so I hung in there for about two years until something came along that would get me back in the action.

I got a call from a former J&L engineer who was working at Fellows Corp. in North Springfield. He said they had gotten a big order for gear shapers from Caterpillar Tractor and they needed engineering help. So I went in for an interview, and got hired. It was just up my alley. Even though I knew little about a gear shaper, machinery in general is all pretty similar. And living within walking distance of the plant was a bonus.

In November we got the news that many of the company’s creditors were threatening to force J&L into involuntary bankruptcy and liquidation (chapter 7); the town of Springfield sued for back taxes. The company hired a “management crisis” firm to handle the legalities of a bankruptcy. According to a UE union newsletter, Ted Call (then the executive vice president), showed up at a scheduled meeting on November 4th with two new people,  Gary Travis and Robert Yanker. These people were put in charge of reorganizing the company under chapter 11 bankruptcy, which would allow the company to survive.

At this same time, Sullivan Industries in Claremont (also owned by Donald Hoodes) was on the rocks. The Cheshire, Connecticut branch was in the same boat, unpaid taxes, lack of insurance, etc.

While on my “off week” sometime in November of 1986, I was contacted and told that my presence was no longer needed at work. This seemed to be the end of the line for us who had hung on hoping for a miracle. At this point I lost track of any and all details of the company and their problems. All of us that “got the boot” ended up with moneys owed us; unreimbursed health insurance bills, as well as lost vacation pay for those who still had some on the books. My total concentration turned to finding another job. This was difficult given the state of the economy, but more so because I would be searching during the Holiday Season (few companies hire then). I took several job interviews, including one at Sylvania in Hillsboro, N.H. (light bulbs). I couldn’t imagine that commute, there really is no easy way to get there. Another company named Gloenco in Newport, N.H. (packaging / shrink wrapping) gave me a shock when the pay was discussed. I quickly discovered that I would come nowhere near the pay I had been receiving at J&L. But in the end, after being unemployed thru January of 1987, I got a call from John Jensen, a former J&L V.P., who had started up a new optical comparator company with Bob Jones, another former J&L V.P.. It was located in town, and they had taken the name Vermont Precision Products (VPP). Pay would be $10 per hour to start, quite a drop from my previous job. But that was the way it was, take it or leave it. There were several former J&L workers there, so I signed on. It was to be my first real involvement with a comparator.

My initial duties included some engineering, and our early days saw us located in the  Vermont Rebuild building at the end of Pearl Street. We had a couple of drafting boards upstairs, but it wouldn’t be long before we moved to a refurbished area next door (where Trout River Brewing is now).

As the new year dawned, working conditions continued to deteriorate. I am fortunate to have quite a few UE newsletters from 1986, into 1987 (thanks Bob Porter), and it appears that there were many issues that needed to be addressed; but at the same time, the new owners did not seem to be interested in living up to the union contract. We in the office only had a sideline seat to these events, as we were not unionized. The main issue (which affected us all), was the health insurance. There appears to be several instances thru out the year where the insurance policy lapsed. due to non-payment of premiums; and there were many cases of employees not being reimbursed for doctors visits. The union contract was due to be renewed in the fall, and negotiations were not going well. Of course, the insurance problems, including non-reimbursement, applied to the office workers as well.

Then there were other issues that the union brought up to management, beyond the health insurance (the status of the union pension plan was one). Another item that they were trying to understand was some sort of “secret” comparator project that appeared in Plant 2. Donald Hoodes had said that he would try to get the comparator product back in town, but this seemed to be a new “startup” product. The company claimed that this project did not fall under the union contract, which didn’t sit well at all. In the end, I believe this project died due to lack of funding.

None of these problems seemed to affect our participating in the NMTBA machine tool show in September, however. Quite a few of us were sent out, and we stayed in town, at a place called The Palmer House. I’m sure it was expensive, the nicest place I had stayed during a show. I really don’t remember just how many machines we sent, but they couldn’t have been anything special, as we weren’t developing any. They were probably some fancied-up lathes with some sort of special tooling, as we were working with some tool manufacturers to showcase their product. Rumor had it that Donald Hoodes had rented a yacht on Lake Michigan to entertain perspective customers.

Back home, the office staff continued to work on what orders we had; during the fall a new payroll policy was instituted; I do not remember the exact date, but we began being paid in cash, probably because the company checks were not trustworthy. We would line up out in the shop, across from the Shop Office for our pay.

At this point, many of us were working split-shifts, that is, one week on, one week off, coordinated with our co-workers so full coverage would be in place for customer service. As work continued to decline, more layoffs occurred. It was becoming difficult to do a satisfactory job with those of us who were left.

We who were still employed were hoping for a renewed effort to bring back the jobs that had  been lost. But this didn’t happen; without a Textron, and their deep pockets, there was no money to accomplish this. We stumbled on, selling machines that tried to take advantage of the parts we had in stock. We had purchased a lot of high-dollar items based on faulty sales forecasts, and now we tried to use them wherever possible. Research and Development was, for the most part, dead. Of course, when the word got out that the Great Jones and Lamson was on the ropes, our sales suffered. Our foreign competition had become firmly entrenched in this country, and their business approach of selling a “standard” lathe had gained many converts; customers who had been catered to by J&L over the years had quickly left the fold. Forgotten were the ties that we had build with them; it seemed that a lot more of customer business decisions were being driven by accountant-type people without any real engineering knowledge.

Our new president, Donald Hoodes, had brought in his “team”, the exact number I really didn’t know. There was some sort of marketing guy who, rumor had it, owned a horse farm. He wore cowboy boots and a western hat, and wandered up and down the outer hallway constantly. Mr. Hoodes reportedly put his wife and daughter on the payroll; the end of J&L as we knew it was near .

The summer of 1985 found us working on existing orders, and new ones that trickled in. At this time we were working with a reduced office workforce, mainly due to people leaving of their own accord. The shop floor was severely depleted by attrition and layoffs. The days of full parking lots was gone. But we soldiered on. These times are not very vivid in my memory, perhaps because they were not “good times”. Just a job. Income to raise a family. Our oldest child, Janine, graduated from Springfield High School in June of 1965, just a few weeks after the company was sold. We still had two more children in school.

The rest of the year is kind of a blur to me. I continued to be employed full time, but there were signs that things were not going to get any better. Our insurance benefits started to become somewhat of a hassle; claims were not paid in the normal timely manner; if we paid up-front, and expected to be reimbursed (as under Textron), there were delays. I remember that there were times when the insurance was on the brink of cancellation, being rescued at the last minute.

Some 1985 statistics: Average wage $22,100; a gallon of gasoline $1.09; U.S. postage stamp $0.22; Mikhail Gorbachev becomes Soviet leader; Nintendo game systems released; Windows 1.0 released (the first); CD music format is introduced to consumers.

The role of a good R&D Department cannot be overemphasized; the future of the company depends on it. To be able to bring fresh ideas to market is necessary for survival. But into the 80’s we were scrimping more and more on this function. Consolidation plans were front-and-center at this time, not the bringing to market new (and expensive) machinery. There were some collaborations made with cutting tool manufacturers to highlight their tools on our lathes, thereby sharing the costs. But these never got by the sales brochure stage, ending up usually with just one machine so equipped.

After the announcement of the move to Connecticut, the mood was sour; there were not too many people who wanted to leave town. Waterbury-Farrel continued to hold interviews, and tried to cajole people into relocating, but the effort was in vain. There were layoffs thruout the office and shop; a lot of our parts were now being machined at our parent plant in Connecticut instead of here in town. Then shipped up for assembly. At the end of 1983 about 60 additional union workers were given their pink slips. Merry Christmas. Only about 90 union workers remained at J&L into the new year. Business continued to decline. But the decline was felt thru out all the local manufacturers, not just as badly.

All thru this time, there were forces at work in the background trying to keep J&L open, and thwart the move. Bob Jones, a former VP of J&L, was behind one of the buyout attempts, but it failed. I was not privy to the details, so I do not know what transpired. I do know there was bad blood between the union and Bob Jones, so that may have been a factor. A perspective buyer named Donald Hoodes came into town and held several meetings with us. I remember one meeting at the high school where a lot of questions were thrown at him. But we were looking for a Knight on a White Horse, and he was the only one in sight. We didn’t know just what talent he and his people had to offer. It didn’t take long to realize that they had no real interest in the company, just its assets. I waited for an audience with some of the new owners, outlining some sort of plan. There were many people who bailed out, important people who should have been talked into staying; but nothing like that happened. I had a job offer at GE in Rutland, and told my boss. Nobody from the front office came around to change my mind. I should have taken the offer, in hindsight. But being comfortable with my job, and having a short commute, I stayed. Our insurance plan under Textron had been great, but soon the benefits would change, and there would be problems getting reimbursed for our medical bills. We all took pay cuts, shop and office. Turning J&L around in these circumstances was a daunting task.

It was early summer of 1985, and the Textron sale of J&L was done, Donald Hoodes being the buyer. At the time, 20 years was the rule for taking your retirement money out of the Textron Pension Plan. It had been 20 years and 2 weeks for me. I opted to “take the money and run”, and rolled it over into a 401(k) plan with a local broker.

The IMTS (International Machine Tool Show) is a bi-annual gathering held in Chicago. All the major machine tool builders strive to attend, and to bring their latest technology to showcase. This show had its birth in the 20’s, but not in Chicago; that didn’t happen until 1947. It was an important event that helped manufacturers gain recognition and drive sales. It was also a very expensive undertaking that required months of planning. The first thing we had to do was to determine just what machinery we were to show; then draw up a floor plan as to how we wanted to display them. We then had to contact the IMTS Show Committee in Chicago to rent the necessary floor space. I’m not sure if they determined where we would be located, and in which building or floor, but eventually we were given a “time slot” as to when our trucks had to be in Chicago for unloading. Because the show was held in several buildings (and not all in the same location), the IMTS planning board worked closely with the local Chicago “riggers” (those people who did the actual moving of all machinery). The machinery had to be unloaded in a certain sequence in order to fill each building from back to front. If you missed your time slot, it meant extra work to move your machine past spots already filled. These riggers were all strongly unionized, and did not take kindly to tardy arrivals (read extra $$$). I was not involved in any of the planning of these events, and only toward the end of my time at J&L did I attend the show (in 1982, 1984 and 1986).

Jones as well as the other local shops, had been attending these shows for years. We actually exhibited the very first NC lathe there, back in 1955. I remember some of the older engineers talking about the excitement that it created (they actually nicknamed the machine “Herbert”). But that was before my time in the business.

During the heyday of the TNC product line, J&L was a big presence at these shows. We had elaborate displays highlighting our machinery, and of course we hired our share of pretty models to help. Our sales staff were suited up properly, and we had all the necessary sales brochures to hand out to perspective customers. Wining and dining were the order of the day, and Chicago was the town to do it in.

But as the years went by, it was evident that our overseas competition was gaining ground. There were more and more foreign machine displays every time I attended the show. I do know that we were told that we were entering into an era of “Global Competition”, but it seems to me that the deck was being stacked against U.S. manufacturing by special interest groups who were successful in getting some of our fundamental laws rewritten to benefit them. As a result, our manufacturing base in this country has declined to a dangerous level; good paying jobs are scarce; we have killed the goose that laid the Golden Egg (the American worker, who made good money, and spent it on American goods).