Pretend you're right here!

Me Grandpa Joe had a way about throwing himself into his work. Sometimes he literally threw himself into it. Or among it, between it; I'm not exactly sure how to describe what I'm about to describe.

I remember a day when I was just 16 and he decided I needed to learn how to back up a trailer. That was fair enough so far as it went. As I worked with him delivering welding equipment and we often delivered smaller machines with a two-wheeled trailer, it was a good idea. Yet his teaching methods left a few things to be desired.

Quiet and tact come immediately to mind. I love that old man and I miss him every day, but he truly subscribed to the concept that the louder he was the better you'd remember and the quicker you'd learn. Higher decibels equaled greater understanding.

The loudness of his screaming instructions did not seem to help me initially. Neither did his insistence on visual examples: I cannot tell you how many times he would jump right in between car and trailer as I vainly tried backing the trailer into place, each time yelling, "Pretend you're right here! Right here!" But you're right there Joe! Right where you're telling me to be!

As I recall, me Pops returned from wherever he was at that point and calmly took over. I soon mastered it, and I do mean mastered it. I could back up that old trailer perfectly into a space with four inches of clearance to each side. And I do wonder if maybe, just maybe, Joe's intensity actually helped.

I do know me Pops calm certainly didn't hurt.

Zeke's Bad Day

Northwestern Highway is a road which runs at a northwesterly angle away from Detroit. How urban planners determine road names is amazing. 

Several years ago me Uncle John who me Pops called Zeke had a bad day on that road.

He was bringing one of me Grandpa Joe's welding machines back from a job, towing it behind a car. As he pulled away from a traffic light, he felt the sudden jump of his vehicle losing weight. It had indeed lost weight: the machine he was towing had slid off its trailer and was sitting serenely blocking the right lane on Northwestern. All 2,000 pounds of it just sat there, quietly unconcerned with the world around it, just not caring one blip about the trouble it had caused.

Unbeknownst to anyone, the bolts which held the welder to its trailer had weakened and broke. Yet all was well...several hours later, after involving a crane, many police officers, an uncountable number of irate commuters, and an Uncle John happy to actually get home before dark. It could have been worse, I suppose, but it was not a good day.

Levanrd

About 20 miles out of Detroit on I-96 is Levan Road. The sign for the exit says Levan Rd. There's nothing unusual about that, is there?

Years ago me Grandpa Joe had a delivery driver, I'll call him Cloyce just to give him a name, who was a little slow on the uptake. Me Pops one day sent him out with a load of welding equipment intended for a place off Levan in western Wayne County.

About three hours after the scheduled delivery time, the company called asking where it was. This was the time before cell phones, so there was no easy way to track Cloyce. Dad had to wait to hear from him for an explanation.

Cloyce happened to walk into the old barn about ten minutes later anyway. "I couldn't make that delivery, Bill," he said.

"Why not? Pops demanded. "I wrote out exact directions." Surely the old man did, knowing Cloyce.

"Well, Bill, I drove all the way out past Ann Arbor (easily 40 miles beyond target) and I could not find Levanrd." Apparently Dad wrote the abbreviation for road too close to Levan.

With a heavy sigh Dad more precisely explained himself and sent Cloyce back out.

Golf Cart Shower

Joe Cosgriff rented welding equipment and me Pops worked for him. That meant the old man got to know a lot of folks in the construction trades. One such fella, I'll call him Cloyce just to give him a name, had a streak of Big Kid in him.

Cloyce was job foreman who ran many large jobs for the company he worked for way back when. He was known for being a bit of prankster too. It never interfered with his work though, and was always in good fun.

On the bigger construction sites it wasn't unusual for the company to have a golf cart available so that Cloyce could get around more quickly. One day him and me Pops were out looking for a particular guy for some reason; I don't recall what. When informed that he was on the other side of the plant where they were working Cloyce told Dad, "C'mon, Red (Dad was called Red back then because he had red hair when he was younger), let's hop in the golf cart and go find him."

Cloyce drove them outside the building to tool around to the opposite side; it would be easier than weaving in and out of machinery and what not inside. Pops said that as they passed beyond a corner there was a huge puddle, really a small lake, left in the parking lot from a thunderstorm the night before. He guessed it as better than a hundred feet wide. And he noticed a small grin on Cloyce's face, and a glint in his eye.

"I knew what was coming," Dad would explain in telling the tale, "So I figured I might as well enjoy the ride." Cloyce turned cart right towards the center of that lake and tore through it, completely inundating the old man and himself in the tremendous shower of water which their little vehicle created, both of them shouting like banshees all the while.

It happened that the man they were looking for was standing right in a doorway as the two approached him. "What happened to you guys?" he asked, mouth agape.

"Just ran into a heavy rain," Cloyce answered, as though nothing was out of the ordinary.

The man looked up at the blinding sun, then back at the two soaked golf cart passengers, merely shaking his head.

Fried Cloyce

Me Pops liked to tell stories of his days in the field as he put it, his days going out to job sites to work on me Grandpa Joe's welders. They are some great stories, not the least reason because so many are true. Life is fun.

He told me a few times of when he went to pick up an electric powered welding machine which had not yet been unhooked from the power source. He went to find the job foreman, I'll call him Cloyce just to give him a name, to get it taken care of.

It happened that day that Cloyce was in a mood. Everything had been going poorly for him, and that welder still being hooked up was another poke with a sharp stick. He stormed to the tool crib, demanding the crib manger give him a screwdriver. Cloyce was going to disconnect the machine himself. The crib guy smiled weakly as he gave him a screwdriver. Cloyce and me Pops went out to the welder.

Now it should be noted here that those old Hobart electric welders ran off 440, three phase power, about 4 times household current. They could kill you bad if you weren't careful. As such, insulation was important to your work.

Now, Dad had seen that Cloyce had been given a fully metal screwdriver, and the sheepish grin on the crib manager's face suggested that he knew what he had done. So Pops would have stopped Cloyce before anything bad could have happened. Still, he would let things play out.

Cloyce had walked a few feet before looking at the tool he had. Seeing it was uninsulated he screamed, "They're trying to fry me like a piece of bacon!" He stormed back to the crib, slamming that metal screwdriver onto the counter and demanding a new one. All in colorful language.

Pops and the crib manager just smiled.

Zeke's pep talk

Me Pops, you need to know (as many of you do) was the oldest of eight in his family. Me Uncle John whom we call Zeke was the youngest, and there were twelve years between them. Just in front of Uncle John at positions 6 and 7 in the family order were two other sons. The four of them at one time or another worked for me Grandpa Joe in his welding shop. Now you have all the information you need in order to understand my tale today.

Zeke was a young teenager and work simply wasn't going well for him one day. Try as he might, whatever he touched did not turn to gold. All turned to dust, maybe, and he'd even have to sweep that up. It was, according to me Pops, a rough day for the kid.

So Pops decided to do what a good elder brother should. When there was a break in the action, he sat down with his youngest sibling to offer encouragement. Ah, give it time, things will go better, stiff upper lip and all that sort of thing. Pops decided to finish the speech with a flourish. Waving an arm across the inside of the Shop he said, "And remember, Zeke, one day all this will be yours."

Uninspired by the sage words of me Pops Uncle John sat, dropping his shoulders a bit and becoming even more glum. "When you and Mike and Jim get done with it, I don't know if I want it." he said.

Until the last time he told that story, me Pops laughed loudly over it. Honesty can hurt. But it can be darn funny too.

Buzz boxes

Me dad and me 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.

The buried dog

As all friends and relatives would attest, as a rule Grandpa Joe had a less than subtle way of getting his point across. Still, there were times when he could be impressively restrained yet make his point well understood.

He rented arc welders. Some of these weighed 1100 or 1200 pounds, so when they were shipped they had to be loaded by an electric hoist or crane onto the back of a pickup truck or flatbed. They tended to swirl in a gentle circle as they were raised or lowered. Sometimes they would have to be raised several stories, and I had gotten into the bad habit of standing nearly under the machines as they were raised, simply to watch the twirl.

One day as a young teen while out on a job site with Joe, I was doing just that. Without a word he stepped near enough for me to hear. Looking up at the welder too as it rose he asked, "We used to have an old dog that would watch from underneath as we raised a load. You know what we did with him?"

"No, what?" I asked in return, only half listening and still looking up.

"We buried him."

As his point slowly dawned on me, and as he had already walked away, I took several steps from the action myself. Dummy me wasn't thinking that things can fall, and that half-ton things falling a long way can hurt you bad.

Point taken, Joe.