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.

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.

Breaking the Silence

Alec Brough was a crony of me Grandpa Joe when they were both working on construction sites together. Alec would also rent welding machines from Joe once Grandpa had left field work behind. Alec was a mountain of a man, the kind who impressed you with his size alone. Added to that was the loud, brash, and demanding way he carried himself. With his physical stature and intimidating nature, Alec was called the Bear. I'm told that it was easy to see why Joe and Alec got along. A birds of a feather type thing, although Joe was more average in build.

There came a time when the Bear had developed a serious health problem. I don't recall what ailed him exactly, yet it required a lengthy hospital stay. Me Grandpa Joe, being a man who believed in things such as visiting the sick (for as rough as he was, I can't say enough that Joe did have a sense of justice) took time to call on his old buddy as he recuperated.

Joe went to the hospital, creeping quietly through the corridors trying to show respect for the place and its current tenants. Finding the Bear's room, Joe pushed the door open slowly and deliberately so as not to disturb anyone or anything. The Bear looked to be asleep, so Grandpa eased over to the bed.

After a second or two Alec whispered, "Joe? Is that you?"

"Yeah, Alec," me Grandpa relied.

The Bear rose up to full sitting position and bellowed, "Why in the world are ya comin' in here so quiet? How am I supposed to know it's you if you ain't raisin' Hell?"

Yep. They got along all right. 

Saved by a snag

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 snags on something."

Who says Joe didn't have a sense of humor?

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.

Understated Joe

Me Grandpa Joe could be, indeed he generally was, the kind of guy to go off on a dime. We expected it, quite frankly. He also had many uses for the world, 'hell', many of them actually rather profound in their employment. But at times he might actually be understated on both counts.

As a rule me Pops answered the phone for Joe's welder rental business. Joe only answered when Pops was out or otherwise occupied. One time he took a call (I don't know where Dad was) from an old but annoying customer, I'll call him Cloyce just to give him a name, wanting to rent a welding machine. It seems though that on Cloyce's last rental there had been issues with whichever of Joe's units he had. Cloyce decided to use the opportunity of having the boss's ear to lament them.

He made the mistake of calling when things were very busy at the Shop. Still, Joe listened, holding his tongue surprising well. He waited until a break in Cloyce's litany of woe to say to him calmly, "Well, I'm so busy right now that I don't know if I even want more more work. So you can either stop whining and tell me when and where you want a machine, or keep talking until I tell you to go hell and hang up this phone."

Cloyce shut up about the troubles and got his welder. Maybe he was reading between the lines, or rightly caught the undercurrent of me Grandpa's intent.

Christmas from Grandpa Joe

I'm actually way ahead of the Christmas curve this year. I have three of my gifts at the ready. Each of my kids will be getting a roll of black electrical tape.

Of course, there's a story behind that.

Back in the Seventies, Grandpa Joe found a deal on electrical tape. He took advantage of a very good price, something like a nickel a roll as I recall, and bought (I am not making this up) 6,000 rolls. That's a lot of electrical tape. The marked price on the rolls was 79 cents apiece by the way, so it was indeed a fantastic price.

To be fair and right by Joe, it wasn't really a bad idea. He rented arc welders, which meant he had miles of inch thick, rubber insulated welding cable which required maintenance and repair. I worked for him at the time, and believe me taping the cables where they were worn, cut, or spliced was an ongoing chore. Still, 6,000 rolls seemed an insane amount in 1975.

The welding rental part of our family business has long since ended. We used many rolls of that tape, sold some along the way to our plumbing customers, gave some away, took some home, and still use what's left for the occasional power cord repair on the drain snakes we now sell and service. After a solid forty year run, we are down to our last nine rolls.

And I am giving my kids one roll each this Christmas as one last gift from their great grandfather. I think Joe's getting a big kick out the idea too.

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.

Sage words from Grandpa Joe

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 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.

An uncle joke

For about 45 years, my grandfather rented welding equipment. This included arc welders which had either 4 or 6 cylinder gasoline engines hooked onto generators to create the heat needed for making a weld. They were portable; they could be towed behind a car or truck from job to job on tires similar to what you find on cars and small trucks. You've probably seen them and mistaken them for air compressors.

One day my Uncle John was towing one of them back to grandpa's shop. He had just noticed a vibration when his pickup ground to a halt. A wheel bearing had gone bad and a tire came off the axle of the welder. This made the machine drop to one side and act as an anchor, which stopped the truck quickly and suddenly. Uncle John looked in the rear view mirror, helplessly watching the disconnected tire bounce across 4 lanes of traffic until it slammed against a parked car, severely damaging it. He knew he would have to go find the owner and do what he could to get the guy's car fixed.

About then the owner ran from his house waving his arms and vigorously exercising his vocal cords, obviously and understandably upset at the incident. But all my Uncle could think was, "You picked a fine time to leave me loose wheel."

Good, huh?