Burnin' Gas

This is going to be one of those entries which probably isn't as funny as I think it is, especially as I didn't witness the joke. Still, I'll give it the old college try. After all, I did graduate from an old college.

I went to work early this morning to get a machine done for a fella who wanted it five days from yesterday (let's see how quick he actually gets to the Shop for it) and as I was leaving to come home for a bit the guy across the alley was trying to get his old van started. This he managed, but boy, was that thing burning gas. You could smell it, strong and engulfing the air all around. It was an odor I hadn't come across in years. Since back when we had a couple hundred old Hobart welders in fact. The smell of a motor burning too much gas is one you remember.

Anyway, it reminded me of a time when old Amos Sheffield was working for me Grandpa Joe. Joe sent Amos out to pick up a gas drive, a welder powered by a gasoline engine. When Amos got to the job site he himself smelled that smell. He knew the Hobart would need work once back at the old barn.

The foreman sauntered over to Amos as he hitched up the machine to his vehicle (a car, because Joe at the time didn't believe in pickup trucks) and remarked, "The old girl worked pretty well, but it sure was burnin' gas."

"What?" Amos asked incredulously. "You got one of our machines to burn gas? How'd you manage that? I gotta let Joe know about it. I can't believe you made one of our welders burn gas," and on and on, as me Pops would tell it, until the foreman finally smiled and said "Get outta here," and went about his business.

Yeah, probably not that funny a story. But Pops liked it.

Lilac, not Lavender

We all daydream don't we? Dream home, dream vacation, dream trip; we all think those things eh? For some it's a dream car. My dream car is a 1967 Cadillac. A lilac one, because I will not call it lavender.

Me Grandpa Joe had one like that. The last car with tail fins, modest though they were. I have no idea where he got that Caddy, but I know he had it painted lilac because there was a sale at the car paint place.

I remember well the day we discovered Joe had it. We got back home from visiting Mom's folks in North Carolina and me Pops pulled up to park right behind that Caddy as we got home. "I wonder who's purple Cadillac that is?" He wondered aloud.

 He should have known.

That car became my delivery car. Joe being Joe, he had a hitch put on that thing for delivering Hobart welders. He put it in the fleet. And ol' Marty got to deliver them welders with it. Proudly, if in retrospect.

That was the car I drove through four feet of water in Milan. I'd link you to that blog but I'm feeling lazy just now.

A friend of Joe's joked that he once saw a line of welders a mile long bein'  pulled by a big purple Caddy. It was that Caddy.

And that's my dream car. A lilac '67 Caddy with modest tail fins. And maybe an old Hobart welder to tow behind it.

Strident Fatherly Advice

Me Grandpa Joe rented arc welding machines. The ones powered by electricity (we called them electric drives as opposed to gas drives, which had gasoline engines attached to the actual welding generator) needed 440 three phase current to run. 

That's one powerful current. It could kill you dead. Needless to say, even us Cosgriffs took a disproportionate interest in safety around those babies.

As circumstances might demand we could be working on such a welder at the Shop or out in the field. Me Pops most emphatic piece of advice to me and my brothers as we worked in the business was simple and to the point. "Don't ever take anyone else's word that the power is shut off on an electric drive you're set to work on. Make sure for yourself that it is. And I mean don't take no one's word. Not even mine! If I tell you that a welder's disconnected, go see for yourself."

When a man tells you not to trust even him under such conditions, he means what he says.

Cosgriff Jeopardy Prep

Did you know that in 1953, Joe Cosgriff Welding Machine rentals bought more new Hobart welders than anyone else in the country except Ford and Chrysler? Well, now you do. I'm not sure how many units that was, but it must have been a lot.

At its height I know me Grandpa had over 200 welders. In the 1970s, I remember them being numbered up to 210. That number, of course, does not include the total number of machines he ever owned. Things go bad; things get scrapped out or, horrors, stolen.

I'll tell what impressed me most, though: me Pops had every serial number memorized. If I asked him the 'Joe Cosgriff' number, say, JC-167, he'd rattle off the machine's factory assigned serial number. Right now kapow. I was awed by that when I was 12. I'm still awed by it. I mean, we're not talking simple little four or five digits with maybe a letter. We're talking 12CW5497 or 5DW68873. I remember the 5DW ones were 400 amp welders, so there was a code to it which could help memorization. But still, over 200 (likely closer to 300 counting machines out of use over time) committed to memory? Wow.

Now they're all gone. The last one we rented, fittingly enough, was the month Joe died, August 1991. The last ones we had we sold to a guy who shipped them to Nigeria. Yes, that sounds like a joke. But it's what the fella told the old man, and he paid cash. He could do whatever he wanted with them after that.
There. Now you're all set for when 'Cosgriff Welders' is the Jeopardy category.

Big Jim again

Among the various tools we used when working on the old Hobart welders of me Grandpa Joe's were crowbars. We might use them to inch a heavy part into place or lift one momentarily out of the way to access another part. We might even use them to check gas levels in their tanks as few of our machines had gas gauges. But you get the idea: we used crowbars, at times for genuinely productive purposes.

A couple of days ago I spoke about Big Jim. He was a huge, mountain of a man, but also a helpful and nice guy who liked to joke around a bit.

One day me Pops was out servicing a welder on a job that Big Jim was running. Dad finished the repair and went to let Jim know he was all set. He happened to have used his crowbar last, so he slung it across his shoulder as he made his way to the field office to speak to Jim.

He opened the door of the trailer and as it was winter closed it immediately to keep the heat in. Jim was sitting behind a desk looking over whatever, and he stopped when he saw Dad. Then a look of true terror spread across his face. Jim harshly pushed back from the desk and, holding his hands in front of his face and turning away, cried, "Hey, Bill, can't we just talk about this?"

Me Pops, temporarily forgetting he held a crowbar on his shoulder, puzzled about what Jim meant. Then he remembered the tool, and laughed along with Jim.

The fact is, me Pops would say later, he wouldn't go after Jim no way for no reason. But if he were, it would be with something more substantial than a crowbar.

Hobart sentiment

Sentimentality can really take hold of a man.

Knowing that I've needed a new torch set for awhile now, I resolved yesterday to buy one. Once arrived at the store, the Hartland, Michigan Rural King since you're dying to know that I bet, I went around to where they sell such things. Lo and behold, they had a nice set with gauges, hose, a brazing and a cutting tip for the torch, and even goggles and a striker to light it all up with. And, trumpet fanfare please, it was made by Hobart.

Hobart Brothers are a welding industry staple. What made that torch set special to me was that, of all the welding machines me Grandpa Joe rented for all those years, the overwhelming majority were made by Hobart. More than 200 in fact, and maybe approaching 300 if you factor in the number which were burned out and replaced over time. In further fact, Joe bought more new Hobarts in 1953 than anyone else in the country but Ford and Chrysler. That's rarefied air if you ask me.

So I'm tickled to have brand new Hobart products, indeed probably the first new Hobart products a Cosgriff has purchased since 1953.

There. I beat you to the joke. But I am incredibly happy about doing my part to keep a family tradition going.

Clomping and shuffling

As I took a drive yesterday I happened to pass by a building which was erected in the late 1970s. I know that because I remember being there as it was built, me Grandpa Joe having rented welders to a contractor who was working on it.

I still remember quite clearly my last day there, when I was picking up the last welder Joe had on site. We were cautioned that no one would be on premise for whatever reason but that it would be okay to get the machine. Joe sent me and another fella, I'll call him Cloyce just to give him a name, to fetch it.

The building at the time was complete yet there was still apparently interior work to be done. It was empty of furniture and furnishings, and Cloyce and I were left to wander the halls and rooms looking for me Grandpa's welder. That's when I first realized that Cloyce didn't pick up his feet as he trudged along. He literally shuffled.

This echoed throughout the place. Shhh, shhh, shhh, shhh, Cloyce shuffled along behind me. It was driving me nuts: shhh, shhh, shhh constantly. But as I was 17 and he was an adult, I was slow to ask him to pick up his feet. I was yet intimidated by adults and didn't feel I ought to complain, even vaguely, about what they did.

Yet after endless shhh, shhh, shhh bouncing off the walls I was ready to bounce off them too. Finally screwing up my courage I asked politely, timidly, "Uh, Cloyce, could you pick up your feet as you walk please?"

"Oh, sure, Marty, I'm sorry." I'm certain he didn't realize what he was doing and was genuinely concerned. So he started to pick up his feet as we searched for yon Hobart welder.

That may have been worse, because as it turned Cloyce was a clomper. Clomp, clomp, clomp now echoed around the empty building, fraying my already tense nerves. By then I really didn't want to say more. I didn't know what I could say anyway.

We eventually found the machine, at the far end of the building from where we entered. Cloyce volunteered to get the pickup and bring it around, for which I was eternally grateful. Nothing sounded better than his clomping dying out as he went to get the truck. It gave me a chance to calm myself.

Going by the numbers

Did you know that in 1953, Joe Cosgriff Welding Machine rentals bought more new Hobart welders than anyone else in the country except Ford and Chrysler? Well, now you do. I'm not sure how many units that was, but it must have been a lot.

At its height I know me Grandpa had over 200 welders. In the 1970s, I remember them being numbered up to 210, the Shop number painted on the top with the prefix JC. That number, of course, does not include the total number of machines he ever owned. Things go bad; things get scrapped out or, horrors, stolen.

I'll tell what impressed me most, though: me Pops had every serial number memorized. If I asked him the 'Joe Cosgriff' number, say, JC-167, he'd rattle off the machine's factory assigned serial number. Right now kapow. I was awed by that when I was 10. I'm still awed by it. I mean, we're not talking simple little four or five digits with maybe a letter. We're talking number and letter combinations like 12CW5497 or 5DW68873. I remember the 5DW ones were 400 amp welders, so there was a code to it which could help memorization. But still, over 200 (likely closer to 300 counting machines out of use over time) committed to memory? Wow.

Now they're all gone. The last one we rented, fittingly enough, was the month Joe died, August 1991. The last ones we had we sold to a guy who shipped them to Nigeria. Yes, that sounds like a joke. But it's what the fella told the old man, and he paid cash. He could do whatever he wanted with them after that.

There. Now you're all set for when 'Cosgriff welders' is the Jeopardy category.

Crowbar tales

Among the various tools we used when working on the old Hobart welders of me Grandpa Joe's were crowbars. We might use them to inch a heavy part into place or lift one momentarily out of the way to access another part. We might even use them to check gas levels in their tanks as few of our machines had gas gauges. But you get the idea: we used crowbars, at times for genuinely productive purposes.

A couple of days ago I spoke about Big Jim. He was a huge, mountain of a man, but also a helpful and nice guy who liked to joke around a bit. You can read about him here:

https://thesublimetotheridiculous.blogspot.com/2019/10/big-jim-and-heavy-cables.html

One day me Pops was out servicing a welder on a job that Big Jim was running. Dad finished the repair and went to let Jim know he was all set. He happened to have used his crowbar last, so he slung it across his shoulder as he made his way to the field office to speak to Jim.

He opened the door of the trailer and as it was winter closed it immediately to keep the heat in. Jim was sitting behind a desk looking over whatever, and he stopped when he saw Dad. Then a look of true terror spread across his face. Jim harshly pushed back from the desk and, holding his hands in front of his face and turning away, cried, "Hey, Bill, can't we just talk about this?"

Me Pops, temporarily forgetting he held a crowbar on his shoulder, puzzled about what Jim meant. Then he remembered the tool, and laughed along with Jim.

The fact is, me Pops would say later, he wouldn't go after Jim anyways. But if he were, it would be with something more substantial than a crowbar.

Copper question

Whenever me Grandpa Joe would scrap out a fried arc welder he would toss the stripped copper into a 55 drum. When the drum was filled, it was me Pops' job from early on to take it to the scrap yard.

The scrap yard they frequented was owned by an old gentleman. When Dad would go to put the drum on the scale the old man would ask him, "Young man, is that copper from the top all the way to the bottom?" He would motion with an upward pointer at the beginning, turning it down until he was pointing at the floor when he finished his question.

"Yes, sir," me Pops would always answer. He would add, "I can dump it onto the floor to show you."

Holding the palm of his left hand as though to stop Dad in his tracks the man would reply, "Your word is enough."

This happened every time, me Pops often related, that he took copper out to scrap. "Young man, is that copper from the top all the way to the bottom?" "Your word is enough."

Dad wondered if perhaps it was some form of ritual, simple habit, or the owner's way of letting you know that he trusted you while being sure of what he was getting. Or maybe he simply believed in believing in people.

Well, a man's word should be his bond, right?

Fun facts

Did you know that in 1953, Joe Cosgriff Welding Machine rentals bought more new Hobart welders than anyone else in the country except Ford and Chrysler? Well, now you do. I'm not sure how many units that was, but it must have been a lot.

 
At its height I know me Grandpa had over 200 welders. In the 1970s, I remember them being numbered up to 210. That number, of course, does not include the total number of machines he ever owned. Things go bad; things get scrapped out or, horrors, stolen.

 
I'll tell what impressed me most, though: me Pops had every serial number memorized. If I asked him the 'Joe Cosgriff' number, say, JC-167, he'd rattle off the machine's factory assigned serial number. Right now kapow. I was awed by that when I was 12. I'm still awed by it. I mean, we're not talking simple little four or five digits with maybe a letter. We're talking 12CW5497 or 5DW68873. I remember the 5DW ones were 400 amp welders, so there was a code to it which could help memorization. But still, over 200 (likely closer to 300 counting machines out of use over time) committed to memory? Wow.

 
Now they're all gone. The last one we rented, fittingly enough, was the month Joe died, August 1991. The last ones we had we sold to a guy who shipped them to Nigeria. Yes, that sounds like a joke. But it's what the fella told the old man, and he paid cash. He could do whatever he wanted with them after that.
There. Now you're all set for when 'Cosgriff welders' is the Jeopardy category.

The myth of the exploding arc welder

As a rule, Dad didn't let things bother him. He was very good at tuning out at the end of the day. He always said he could sleep soundly and easily because he had a clear conscience. Mom in reply asserted that what he had was a short memory.

Whatever the real cause, Pops rarely let things bother him. But he did, like all of us I believe, have his pet peeves.

As I've said many times, me Grandpa Joe rented welding equipment and Pops worked for him literally since he was about 10. Grandpa rented almost exclusively Hobart Welders. He bought more new Hobart welders in 1953 than anyone else in the country except Ford and Chrysler, so it was quite a good business back in the day. He bought so many machines that the Hobart company invited Joe to send someone to their facility in Troy, Ohio for a six week course on repairing their equipment. Grandpa sent his son, and Dad did so well that Hobart sent Joe a very complimentary letter about his boy's intellect and industry. Pops and Joe were both proud of that.

So then of course Pops became the go to guy to repair Joe's welders, both in their shop and in the field. He didn't mind the service calls; it was nice to get away from the shop on a regular basis. He had become friends with many of the ironworkers and millwrights over the years as well, and liked to get out and see them too. Yet herein also came one of Dad's pet peeves.

When someone would call for service Dad always tried to get an idea of the trouble. It helped him to know what tools and parts to take along. Most of the time the guys gave him decent answers when dad asked: the battery was dead, the motor would turn over but not start, or it was overheating, things like that. But a few guys were no help at all. When Pops would ask them what was wrong, they would tell him that the machine had 'blowed up'.

"What do you mean?" he'd ask in reply.

"It just blowed up," they'd repeat.

Dad would impatiently respond, "So when I get there, there'll just be parts and debris scattered all around where the welder used to be?"

"Well, no, no, it's just not running."

All right then, he'd continue, what exactly is your problem, and go from there. But it truly rankled him to be told a welder had blowed up.

The neurologically challenged mechanic

Grandpa Joe rented arc welders, some of which were powered by six cylinder gasoline engines. He had a mechanic, I'll call him Cloyce just to give him a name, who worked for him part time. Cloyce was a very good mechanic, to give him his due. He also didn't drive. He also drank profoundly. One day when a welder was on the fritz in Rochester, about 30 miles north of Detroit, and no one else was available, Joe had me drive Cloyce out to fix it.

We loaded some tools and a box of commonly used repair parts into a pickup truck and off we went. I was a rather naive young lad of 16 and had only been driving for a couple of months. Consequently I was slow to read the signals that something was going seriously wrong.

At first it wasn't much. Cloyce had begun, well, not quite slurring his words but drawing them out. When he would speak to me he would start sentences with, Mawr-ty, and then say whatever he had to say. It didn't matter to me. I was just doing my job. Then he said with an odd emphasis, "Mawrty", almost like a command. I turned and said, "Yeah, Cloyce?". He was pointing his cigarette lighter, which looked like a pistol, at me. He made the sound of a gunshot - pschew - as he pulled the trigger, lighting a flame at me. "Funny, Cloyce", I said. But at the time I needed more than a simple clue that things were amiss. I needed to be hit with a pile of bricks.

The bricks fell on me when we were almost to our destination. "Mawrty," I heard, "Could you pull over to that pawrty store so I can get some Coke to mix with this?" I looked over to see him displaying a half drained fifth of vodka.

"Put that away Cloyce! Do you know how much trouble that could get us into?" I half screamed. By us, I meant me. I was the driver who knew what the law said about open intoxicants. And then I remembered, I don't anything about fixing engines. He's got to get that welder running.

What to do, what to do? All I could think was to get him to the job and hope for the best. So that's what I did.

We arrived, and I made Cloyce stay in the pickup while I found the foreman. He came out of his trailer office and directed me to where the machine sat. It was on the other side of an eight foot berm. Great.

I drove over to it, got the tools and parts over to the welder and then got Cloyce and hobbled him over the berm next. He commenced to stumble around the machine, doing this and that and I don't know what while I prayed he would somehow get us out of the mess we faced. I faced. In a few minutes the foreman came along to check on our progress. He couldn't help notice the state Cloyce was in. He leaned towards me and whispered, "Is he okay?"

"Oh, yeah," I answered. "He's just got a neurological disorder." It was all I could think of.

The foreman looked at me with a skeptical raised eyebrow. But right then we heard the roar of an engine. Cloyce had gotten that welder running, Lord knows how.

The foreman pursed his lips and patted my head as if to say, all right, we're good, problem solved. He walked away. I got Cloyce and the tools and parts back over the berm and started home gratefully. But the next time I took Cloyce to a job, I made certain there were no hidden bottles in the truck.

The way to express an opinion

My dad and my Grandpa Joe got along well, despite the fact that Grandpa could be difficult to deal with (something which I will attest to from years of personal experience, and I really loved the old coot). Dad explained to me once that both he and his father had poor tempers, something I would never have accused Dad of having, but as Joe was here first, Pops had made up his mind early on that he would be the one to hold his tongue whenever he didn't see eye to eye with his old man. However, that didn't mean he couldn't get his point across when necessary.

Joe rented welding equipment and Pops worked for him. This was back in 1940s through the 1980s, before prefabrication, when a lot of fabrication had to be done right on construction sites. So Grandpa had for rent arc welders, torches, and things which I think were called buzz boxes. As that's good enough for the point of this tale, we'll leave it at that.

These buzz boxes were intended to make instant welds. As I recall, you would hold the thing up to a rivet on a steel girder and it was supposed to make three quick welds to secure the rivet in place. Supposed is the operative word here. The boxes were notoriously finicky, and it was Dad's job to go out to work sites to repair the them when they didn't work.

Pops hated them. They were as difficult to repair as they were to operate. Over a few years Dad learned to fully and completely despise them.

One day as he came in from a particularly tough repair on one of the buzz boxes, Joe could see that his son was not in a good mood. Pops could tell his father thought that maybe he could lighten things. He remarked with a slight chuckle, apparently trying to make a joke of it, "Those buzz boxes are tough to deal with, eh?"

As Dad told it, he replied quietly, firmly, and without looking up at his pops, "Old man, when you die, I'm selling those buzz boxes. Then I'll bury you." It's an old line, but used rightly, an effective one. Perhaps Dad had been holding it back, waiting for the teachable moment.

Joe laughed at it, but kind of nervously. The next day he began selling the buzz boxes.

Pops could let Joe know what he felt when he had to, and without the arguments Joe often had with others. And I think they respected each other because of it.

Nobody told me about ball hitches

When you try to write every day, you need inspiration. Sometimes it comes easy and sometimes it doesn't come at all. And sometimes it comes from unexpected sources.

One of the Christmas gifts I received last week was a book about a pivotal time in the history of Detroit. I began reading it last night. Chapter One among other things spoke about the Ford Rouge plant, an industrial complex which was the largest in the world at the time the book takes place, the early 1960s. It turns out that I know a bit about the Rouge, having had first hand experience with it. Why, in fact, it describes how I almost dropped one of Grandpa Joe's welders into the canal slip between the steel mill and the frame plant there.

The Rouge, you see, had I think 11 different plants in its complex. I know the frame plant, Dearborn Assembly, the steel mill, and the glass plant. This is just to offer you a taste of how ol' Henry Ford tried to put the entire assembly process in one spot. The canal slip was a long artificial river dredged deep enough that large ocean going freighters could moor within it for loading and unloading. On the day in question, I remember quite definitely, The Benson Ford was docked right near the incident I intend to describe.

Grandpa Joe rented arc welding machines. Many of them could be towed to a job site. You likely saw them and thought they were air compressors. He rented many of them to Henry's minions. He assigned them each of a number of his own. He made the mistake of one day sending my 16 year old self to pick one up after its services were no longer required.

This particular one had a ball hitch. I had never dealt with one of those before; every other machine I had handled, we just slipped a 5/8 bolt between the the holes in the 'tongue' (a U beam with a U hook at the end) dropped through a hole in the hitch of whatever vehicle you were given at the time, mostly cars, and 'locked' two nuts against one another (you'd screw both nuts up against each other and lock them by taking two crescent wrenches, turning the top one clockwise and the other counterclockwise as hard as you could to 'lock' them into one another). Consequently, no one ever told me that with a ball hitch you must turn a handle on the tongue of a unit (with a cap being slid onto a 1-3/4 or 2 inch steel ball bolted onto your car's hitch) in order to secure it to the towing vehicle. The ball was in place of the hole where you'd have put the 5/8 bolt. I simply slipped the ball hitch over the ball and figured I was okay.

And I was okay, until I was cruising along at around 25 miles per hour on the service road next to the canal slip. Suddenly I felt my old Chevy Suburban (irony in itself) jump, as though a load had lifted off it. Old number Ninety One; I knew it by heart, I did, the number old Joe had assigned it. I instinctively looked into my rear view mirror and saw that the welder had jumped off the ball and was sliding right towards the canal slip.

I cannot accurately describe to you the panic which coursed within my young brain at the moment of that realization. I was going to drop one of Joe's welders into the canal slip at the Rouge. I was going to have to call him myself and tell him that, with the sound of emergency vehicles shouting in the background, HASMAT teams surely on their way to contain the gasoline pouring from the welder's fuel tank into the water. An explosion would certainly exclaimate the event.

Fortunately, that did not happen. The welder stopped within 18 inches of the slip, and a kindhearted soul who witnessed it all came to the aid of the ignorant young boy and helped him hitch the unit properly to his Suburban. That sorry young teen then returned it to the old barn without further incident, and to this day without his Grandpa Joe nor Pops learning of the close call.

If that youngster goes to Hell, it will not be from having dropped a Hobart Welder into the canal slip at the Ford Rouge.

One very personal Independence Day

Today is Independence Day. 240 years ago the United States declared themselves separate and equal to Great Britain. But this day I find myself remembering a very different July 4th, one of the fondest memories of my childhood.

It was around 8:30 in the morning and I was 9 or 10, just goofing off in my backyard. I saw Grandpa Joe come out of his house (he and Grams lived next door to us) but he didn't see me. He walked out his back gate and up towards the old barn where he worked, the same old barn I have now. Naturally, I had to investigate. What could he be doing on a holiday?

I got to the shop right as he was opening the truck doors. "What are y'doin, boy?" he asked in that vague gruff manner of his when he wasn't in full on gruff mode.

"Wonderin' what you're doing," I answered honestly.

"Well, c'mon in then". Joe was welding something underneath one of the stake trucks he used for delivering the welding equipment he rented. I held a flashlight for him as he scoped out the job. Then he fired up an old Hobart welder he used exclusively in the barn, gave me a welding helmet with strict instructions to keep it on until he said I could remove it, and commenced with the repair on the truck's frame.

After a while he paused for a break. We went and got donuts ('vittles' he always called coffee break donuts or snacks) and ate them while we drank our coffee as he smoked a cigarette or four. Then he went back to finish the job, me wearing that far too big and heavy helmet and holding a light for him when asked. Soon we were done.

He shut everything down and did a quick clean up, and then locked up the barn. He turned to me and took a five dollar bill from his wallet and told me to take it. "You worked too," he told me to tell his son and daughter-in-law who might wonder how'd I'd come across such largesse. Five bucks was huge, to a 10 year old in 1970. I said thank you. In fact, I believe it was more like "Thank YOU, Grandpa Joe!"

"Aw Hell," he said back, as was his wont.

So I earned my first pay on a long ago July 4th. And I had a really good time doing it.

Pops and the Steel Mill

There was this bearing, see? It would not come out of the end of the armature of an electric drive, a 300, and it would not come out, even with the bearing pullers. Even with the sledge, okay? It would not come out. Then my buddy, he said to me, "I bet that would come out a lot easier after some cold lemonade, wouldn't it?"

So we went out onto the roof of that old building of the Ford steel mill at the Rouge plant. It was a hot day, but there was this ledge, and it had a picnic table, and the guys would sit there on their coffee breaks and enjoy the cool breeze on their breaks. And we had some lemonade. And it was good and it was cold. And it sure tasted good.

So then, I go back to that electric drive, and I put the bearing pullers in, and I hit them with the sledge. And they break loose. I pull the old bearing, I put the new one in, and that old Hobart works like a dream.

That was one of Dad's favorite stories. Simple, and to the point. He replaced that old bearing, which was sounding off like a banshee, after a break with some friends on a common job site. He liked the story well enough to tell me the tale many times.

I hope that I did it justice.

Pops expresses an opinion to Joe

My dad and my Grandpa Joe got along well, despite the fact that Grandpa could be difficult to deal with (something which I will attest to from years of personal experience, and I really loved the old coot). Dad explained to me once that both he and his father had poor tempers, something I would never have accused Dad of having, but as Joe was here first, Pops had made up his mind early on that he would be the one to hold his tongue whenever he didn't see eye to eye with his old man. However, that didn't mean he couldn't get his point across when necessary.

Joe rented welding equipment and Pops worked for him. This was back in 1940s through the 1980s, before prefabrication, when a lot of fabrication had to be done right on construction sites. So Grandpa had for rent arc welders, torches, and things which I think were called buzz boxes. As that's good enough for the point of this tale, we'll leave it at that.

These buzz boxes were intended to make instant welds. As I recall, you would hold the thing up to a rivet on a steel girder and it was supposed to make three quick welds to secure the rivet in place. Supposed is the operative word here. The boxes were notoriously finicky, and it was Dad's job to go out to work sites to repair the them when they didn't work.

Pops hated them. They were as difficult to repair as they were to operate. Over a few years Dad learned to fully and completely despise them.

One day as he came in from a particularly tough repair of one of the buzz boxes, Joe could see that his son was not in a good mood. As Pops saw it, his father thought that maybe he could lighten things. He remarked with a slight chuckle, apparently trying to make a joke of it, "Those buzz boxes are tough to deal with, eh?"

As Dad told it, he replied quietly, firmly, and without looking up at his dad, "Old man, when you die, I'm selling those buzz boxes. Then I'll bury you." It's an old line, but used rightly, an effective one. Perhaps Dad had been holding it back, waiting for the teachable moment.

Joe laughed at it, but kind of nervously. The next day he began selling the buzz boxes.

Pops could let Joe know what he felt when he had to, and without the arguments Joe often had with others. And I think they respected each other because of it.