Zeke's Nightmare

Me Uncle John who we sometimes call Zeke worked with me Grandpa Joe in Grandpa's welding machine rental business. At times the pressure of the job got to him.

Zeke came into work one morning looking frazzled. "You okay, John?" my Dad asked him.

"I didn't sleep well," he answered. "In fact I feel like I worked all night."

"How can that be?"

Uncle John explained, "I dreamed I was ill, so I called in sick. But we were so busy that Joe knocked out a wall to my second floor bedroom and had a ramp built up to it, so you guys could bring me welders to work on anyway."

Me Pops just shook his head. "You really need to separate your work and private life better, Zeke."

Joe's Freezing Dander

It never took much to get me Grandpa Joe's dander up. Still, some things, believe it or not, got his dander up to stratospheric levels remarkably fast even by comparison to his normal, uh, standard.

Joe rented welding equipment, as I think I've well established in these pages. And while you likely couldn't do it now even if you wanted as most water lines are nonmetallic, at one time you could de-ice frozen pipes with a welding generator. 

What makes a welder weld is that you complete a circuit when you 'strike arc', that is, apply the welding electrode to the items you wish to fuse together. Don't fret this too much if you can't picture it. Suffice it to say that when you weld, you're completing an electric circuit. When you do that, you create heat. Heating a metal pipe will then melt the ice which has formed within it.

You also effectively create a short circuit when using a welder to de-ice pipes, causing it to overheat. This will eventually, very eventually in Joe's book, destroy his welder.

Grandpa would fly off the handle even faster than usual when he'd hear of some numbskull using one of his machines to thaw pipe. If you believe he had a quick temper anyway, use his equipment wrongly. You'll find out that nothing really is impossible, even shortening Joe's profusely short fuse.

Name that Arc Welder

As many of you know, Grandpa Joe rented arc welders. What you may not know is that each and every one of them, almost 250 at the height of his business, had Joe Cosgriff names. Each was JC 1, JC 2, and so on. As a side note they each had serial numbers from the manufacturer, and Pops knew every serial number by heart. We'd test him often as kids. While dutifully standing beside a machine we'd ask, JC 135? Dad would immediately reply "5CW11276". It worked every time; we witnessed the proof. I've always been impressed by that.

Anyway, many of the welders had what amounted to nicknames. There was Old Number One, Joe's first welder, the one he started the business with. Nokomis was named after Nokomis, Illinois, the town where Joe bought it. He also had MichCon, acquired from the Michigan Consolidated Gas Company, and Gray Trailer, purchased from Gray's Rentals. I don't remember where that place was though. Interestingly enough, the machine was always painted gray.

There were two called long underslung, JC 27 and JC 33 respectively. Their carriages were made so that the welding machines themselves sat low into the frame which held the tires. This also made the entire unit about two feet longer. I believe it was an attempt to create a lower center of gravity on four wheeled trailers. Four wheeled welders were notoriously bad to tow. It wasn't unusual for them to veer all over the place behind a vehicle once you hit about 40 miles per hour. A lower center of gravity helped them tow straighter at higher speeds. I can say through personal experience that 27 and 33 towed much better than the average welder.

He had two Lincoln 600 amp electric welders which looked like large bombs. We called them A-bombs of course. 'Where's that A-bomb going Joe?' was a question which likely startled many a passers-by. There was snub nose, a snub nosed Hobart. Imagine that.

There's more but memory escapes me just now. I'll bring everyone up to speed soon though.

Old Oil

The things me Grandpa Joe used to have us do at the old barn make me shake my head these days. At the time I didn't think much about it, but looking back, I often wonder why.

The gasoline powered welding machines he had had long side panels which folded upwards to allow access to the engine and welding unit. These panels (which were as I recall where about four foot in length) had what amounted to long hinges. That they required occasional greasing I get. Joe did that with old oil.

We changed the oil in our own cars back then, and the engines on the welders needed changing too of course. Joe would save all the old oil and have teens like me at the time paint the gray, sticky goo across and into the hinges.

Suffice it to say, it left you smelling like oil. It got oil all over everything: your clothes, the entirety of the machine, and a lot on the cement. For days afterwards you would get a light spray of oil when opening a panel on the machine. It was simply one big, slick, greasy mess.

I understand his reasoning. He felt the oil penetrated well, that it worked itself more into the joints. But thinking back on it, I have to believe there were actual penetrating oils which might have been less hassle: WD-40 or something. But back then I was only a 14 year old doing as he was told. Thinking wasn't in my job description. Joe did that for me...for whatever that's worth.

Woodbridge Wagon Train

Yesterday I mentioned, in so many words, towing welding machines around the old neighborhood. It was one machine at a time, typically. Yet I remember one day having to move many smaller welders in a more unusual manner.

Gas drives were larger welders powered by gasoline engines. Hence, gas drives, as the welder part was driven by the engine. The smaller ones were electric drives, powered by either 220 or 440 three phase current. 

A gas drive (all of our welders were on wheels) could be hitched to a car or pickup or some such and moved around. Electric drives normally had to be raised by a hoist into the back of a pickup or larger truck for transport. That was fine at the shop where we had modern workhouse amenities. Well, relatively modern. We are, God love him, talking about Joe Cosgriff after all. 

That aside, we needed to move a couple dozen electric drives from a satellite garage (one we rented for storage but away from the main Shop) back to the old barn. Yet there was no way to load the units, which weighed around 1100 pounds, onto the bed of a truck. 

Yet me Grandpa Joe, inventive gent that he was, and I don't mean that so bad as you may think, found a way to work around that. We lined up 6 or 7 electric drives at a time, strung them together with chain and tow ropes and heavy regular ropes and, yeehaw, pulled them the several blocks to the old barn. I'd hazard to guess the lines were better than a half block long.

There would naturally be a bit of clanking and crashing among the welders, so we'd go slow, content to let them bang into one another but not tip or run into anything else. Too, we pulled them through alleys so as not to affect regular vehicular traffic. But we got 'em moved, no real harm, and no foul at all. They were Joe's welders, and if he didn't care about cosmetic damage to them, why should we?

Joe's Small World

For years my part of Detroit was vexed with one way streets. This caused certain minor and admittedly first world problems. We might, say, have to circle a four or six block area to come into the Shop or one of our satellite garages (at a given time we would have rented anywhere from 6 to 10 places smaller than the old barn to store welders and equipment) from a certain angle. Me Grandpa Joe called that going around the world.

"You gotta go around the world for that one," he'd instruct one of us once a welder was hitched up to a vehicle. True, it was a small world. But it was a nuisance, especially with a load, to drive five or six extra blocks when the trip might have been only one without dealing with the street directions which were working against you.

It gave Joe a chance to smoke a cigarette waiting for us. And I can honestly say that I've been around the world in record time several times. Even if you have to put an asterisk by it.

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.

My dream car

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.

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.

Insulated jokes

Sam Smith was a colleague of me Grandpa Joe. He was what Grandpa would describe as fractious. If anyone knew fractious, Joe did, God love him.
Sam owned a company which required welding equipment at times, and at such times he rented them from Joe. Once me Grandpa sent me Pops out to pick up an electric welder after Sam's company was through with it. Pops got there and the machine was still hooked up. Now, these things were powered by 440 three phrase current. I'm not sure how much that is but I know it's way more potent than house current. So Pops went to find the electrician to disconnect it.
Who he found was Sam, and Sam was already, well, feeling fractious. Apparently somebody or something had set him off for the day. Vowing to take care of it himself, he marched to the tool crib, me Pops in tow, to get a screwdriver.
"Gimme a screwdriver!" he demanded of the man, I'll call him Cloyce just to give him a name, who oversaw the crib. Cloyce, seeing Sam was mad, smiled and handed him a screwdriver. It had a metal handle rather than an insulated one, the kind he knew Sam would actually want. With the kind of power involved, you needed the insulation.
Pops, smiling himself as he had spied what Cloyce had done, and Sam walked a few steps before Sam noticed what he had been given. "They're trying to fry me like a piece of bacon!" he screamed loudly. He marched with great stomping steps back to the crib, where Cloyce was standing and waiting with the right tool. And still grinning too, but he had the sense to say nothing.

High tide in Milan

I drove past Milan, Michigan yesterday, and it reminded me of something I had long forgotten.

Back when I was a teen, I was there with Grandpa Joe picking up one of his welders. It was at a Ford plant when they were doing an expansion. It had apparently rained the night before, and rained hard. Although we were in a building, there was a large pool of water, about three feet deep and a hundred yards wide on all sides. The welder itself was land locked on the other side of that pool. And the only way to get to it was straight through that water. "You have to drive straight," a foreman was telling Joe. "If you drift to either side the water's about six feet deep." Joe got out of the car and told me to drive through the water to the welder just like the guy said.

Thanks Grandpa.

Of course I did it; you don't argue with your grandfather when you're 17.

I drove that old Cadillac he had right through that water, straight as a tack. In my memory the water came to right below the driver's side window; how the engine didn't stall is beyond me. I was nervous and scared. But I got that Caddy through the ocean and right up to that welder, slowly but surely. But then the powers that be decided that the machine was too heavy to be pulled through the water by a car. They would get a bulldozer with a long heavy chain and drag it through the water.

And I would have to back the car out through the pool, as there was no way to turn it around. I hadn't known that when I started. I have no idea how we were supposed to hook up the welder now that I think about it.

But I backed through it and lived to tell the tale. The tale I remembered after 40 years yesterday.