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.

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.

Subtle Joe Cosgriff

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 while making 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 as a boy of about 15 I had gotten into the bad habit of standing nearly under the machines as they were raised, simply to watch the twirl.

One day 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.

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.

They'll do it every time, or, Cloyce and the sweet rolls

When me Pops were a young lad fresh out of high school, he became, well, sorta the dispatcher for Joe Cosgriff Welding Machine Rentals. While that sounds like an impressive job title, what it meant was that Pops had to be up ahead of any of the drivers to make sure they got on their way promptly.

Bear in mind that in the middle of the 1950s there weren't the kind of superhighways we all complain about today. When a delivery had to be made the driver had to bull through Detroit and then through every wide spot in the road once past the city limits. Have I ever mentioned that me Grandpa Joe's welders went all over Michigan and Ohio? That meant some very early starts when a unit had to be in Muskegon or Bay City Michigan, let alone Ashtabula, Ohio. And me Pops job was to be up early to hitch up welders (if they be gas drives, that is, driven by attached gasoline engines) or load electric drives (electricity powered welders) onto stake trucks in readiness for the drivers. Then he had to make sure the drivers got out on time. It meant a lot of 4 AM wake ups for Pops. But he did it, and he became a good man for it.

So there was this one driver, I'll call him Cloyce just to give him a name, who worked for Joe back then. As was his custom, me Pops always had hot coffee ready for the drivers, to help wake them in the wee hours. Several times in a row, when Cloyce would sleepily arrive for an early morning run, he would gratefully enough take a cup from Pops. And every time he would ask me Pops, every single time, mind you, "You don't have a roll to go with this do ya?" Pops would apologize as he said no.

After this happening frequently, Pops got ahead of the game. One evening before an early morning delivery he knew Cloyce had, he went to the corner store and bought a package of sweet rolls.

Along about 4:30 the following morning Pops got up and hitched a gas drive to a vehicle in anticipation of a delivery to Midland, Michigan, a good three and half hours from Detroit at the time. Cloyce soon appeared at the Old Barn and availed himself of the coffee Dad had at the ready. He and Pops chit chatted for a few minutes as they each sipped at their hot drinks, the previously opened package of rolls between them on a desk.

You know where this is going, right?

After a few minutes of Cloyce not taking one Dad pointed out, "There's some rolls there, Cloyce."

"Nah, I don't believe I feel like any this morning, Bill," he replied.

I doubt the old man ever bought him anything else after that, let alone a sweet roll.

Stretching A Buck

Me Grandpa Joe had his welder rental business, but he also owned a couple of rooming houses with single rooms as well as apartments for rent. With eight kids plus he and me Grandma Cosgriff, 10 mouths to feed and house and clothe required a decent income stream.

Joe's money rule was simple. He used the earnings from the welders to pay for the business. Me Grandma Cosgriff got all the income from the rooms and apartments to pay for the food and clothes and such for her and me Pops and his seven siblings. You know, the various household expenses. 

Now, me Grams was good with a buck. I'll likely go into more detail on that in another blog, but suffice it to say her reputation for handling money was well established. Me Grandpa Joe garnered no such accolades.

One day Joe was lamenting to his older brother, me Great Uncle Bill who me Pops was named for, "Boy, a dollar from the room rents sure goes farther than a dollar from the welders."

Uncle Bill replied simply, "Look who's spending the welding money and look who spends the rent income."

Joe couldn't challenge that judgement. He knew it was true.

Playing Let's Pretend at the Shop

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 somehow equaled greater understanding.

Yet 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! And I'm moving a car and a trailer as you leap in and out of that space.

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 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.

Saved by the cable

Regular patrons of this here blog know well that me Grandpa Joe rented arc welding machines, and that he trained as a welder. I've too lamented how he hated tangled welding cable, hated it with a passion. So it was quite a surprise one day when he told me that if he ever took a ride on an airplane, he'd take a length of welding cable wrapped around him.

Completely perplexed, I stammered, "Why would you do that?"

"Cause if I fell out of that plane it would save me. Welding cable always catches on something."

Who says the old coot didn't have a sense of humor?

The Gordian Knot of welding cable

Me Grandpa Joe rented welding machines, as many of you by now know. He really wasn't fussy about much, but one of those things was his welding cable.

Each machine typically had to have 150-200 feet of cable while in operation. These cables were copper coated rubber and were about an inch thick. He always made sure that they were rolled in loops which were easy for a man to carry on his shoulder. On this point he was very particular; it could take forever to unknot even one cable. That was just time wasted, he rightly believed. Coil the cables, tie them off, and stack them nicely when the job was through, that was his mantra.

Once Acme Steel Processors (not the company's real name) rented ten welders from Joe and had them for a couple of months. When the job was over, Joe himself happened to be the man who went to pick them up. He was greeted at the Acme plant with a pallet of unrolled welding cable. All his beautiful welding cable, more than 2,000 feet, was piled in a jumbled, knotted mess. His fuse, short anyway, was set.

About then the foreman came up to Joe and said, "There was trouble with one of your welders. The plant manager wants to talk to you."

Joe barked, "That's just dandy, because I want to talk to him too."

Grandpa stormed into the plant manager's office. The manager, I'll call him Cloyce just to give him a name, never had a chance to open his mouth about whatever issue he had. Joe lit right into him, a blast of emphatic, rough English, yet with no expletives more than Joe's liberal use of the mild one 'hell', explaining exactly how little he cared for discovering his cable in one God-awful mess. That was not how he delivered it, Joe vigorously orated. It was gonna take hours to sort out he, um, explained. I've been told it was quite a harangue. Those who did not know Joe must understand that when his dander was up, whole neighborhoods knew it. Hell, to use his favorite word, small towns were made aware.

As Joe was just beginning to wind down Cloyce did manage to say, "You don't have to be so loud, Joe."

"Hell yeah I do!" Joe bellowed. "I want everyone in here to know what I think and I don't want to have to tell each one individually!" And he was off again.

I don't believe Cloyce ever got to make his point. He was probably quite happy to get back to the mundane tasks of plant managing once me Grandpa left.

Cloyce and locks

That old employee, friend, and erstwhile compatriot of me Grandpa Joe, the one I call Cloyce just to give him a name, was, shall we say, dense. A few straws shy of a bale. A brick short of a load. A bubble off plumb. A good guy, just not particularly smart. He was as sharp as a bowling ball. He had a room temperature IQ. He...you get it.

Years ago, Joe had bought a new trailer for carrying welders, pipe threaders, and other equipment around. But he had nowhere to put it, and wanted it as safe as could be. So he decided that the thing to do would be to get a heavy chain and solid lock, and chain the trailer to a large elm in his back yard. He went to the hardware and purchased the necessaries. On return, he sent Cloyce to lock the trailer up. "Lock her up tight!" were he last instructions to Cloyce. Cloyce went off to attend the chore.

After work that night, Joe was sitting on his back porch with a smoke and decided to go admire his new trailer. He walked up to it, looked it over, and walked around it just for pleasure. When he was half way around it, he saw that it was not locked to the tree. The chain however was wound as tight as could be around the trunk of the elm, the lock glistening in the evening sun and forced right up upon the trunk itself. That tree weren't going nowhere.

Joe got the key and rectified the situation, stopping occasional to wipe the tears of laughter from his eyes.

Coil your cables

Me Grandpa Joe rented welding machines, as many of you by now know. He really wasn't fussy about much, but one of those things was his welding cable.
Each machine typically had to have 150-200 feet of cable while in operation. These cables were copper coated rubber and were about an inch thick. He always made sure that they were rolled in loops which were easy for a man to carry on his shoulder. On this point he was very particular; it could take forever to unknot even one cable. That was just time wasted, he rightly believed. Coil the cables, tie them off, and stack them nicely when the job was through, that was his mantra.
Once Acme Steel Processors (not the company's real name) rented ten welders from Joe and had them for a couple of months. When the job was over, Joe himself happened to be the man who went to pick them up. He was greeted at the Acme plant with a pallet of unrolled welding cable. But worse than that. All his beautiful welding cable, more than 2,000 feet, was piled in a jumbled, knotted mess upon it. His fuse, short anyway, was set.
About then the foreman came up to Joe and said, "There was trouble with one of your welders. The plant manager wants to talk to you."
Joe barked, "That's just dandy, because I want to talk to him too."
Grandpa stormed into the plant manager's office. The manager, I'll call him Cloyce just to give him a name, never had a chance to open his mouth. Joe lit right into him, a blast of emphatic, rough English, yet with no expletives more than Joe's liberal use of the mild one 'hell', explaining exactly how little he cared for discovering his cable in one God-awful mess. That was not how he delivered it, Joe vigorously orated. It was gonna take hours to sort out, he, um, explained. I've been told it was quite a harangue. Those who did not know Joe must understand that when his dander was up, whole neighborhoods knew it. Hell, to use his favorite word, small towns were made aware.
Before Joe could wind down Cloyce did manage to say, "You don't have to be so loud, Joe."
"Hell yeah I do!" Joe bellowed. "I want everyone in here to know what I think and I don't want to have to tell them each individually!" He was off again.
I don't believe Cloyce ever got to make his point. He was probably quite happy to get back to the mundane tasks of plant managing once Grandpa left.

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.

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.