My Class and My Life

 This will be long, and I’m not sure where to start. I’m sure I will be doing a lot of editing, and I may have to split it into two or more parts.

 I was raised working as a small boy in my Father’s Kaiser-Fraser auto repair shop until he left the family when I was eleven. I was already by then a fairly skilled auto mechanic, and with the help of my relative and close friend Gleason Appling, who was studying diesel mechanics, we were able to keep the cars running, at least.

I studied a college prep curriculum in high school, taking every math class they offered, aiming at becoming a Mechanical Engineer. I graduated in 1961, but didn’t have the money to go directly to college, so I stayed out one year and saved my coins.

I was accepted at Walla Walla College into an Engineering major, and had trouble immediately, due to my rusty math skills on the year I was out working as a ranch hand for money. However, I enjoyed much of the classwork and practical skills taught in that school. Part of the trouble was I was having to work afternoons as a machinist helper to supplement my funds to pay tuition. While I learned a lot in the machine shop as a helper, it did not count toward my credits.

After the one year of college, I found work in a carburetor rebuilding shop in Fremont, California, due to the efforts of my cousin Jim Russell, who lived in San Jose. I worked there for about a year, becoming familiar with every kind of carburetor that ever existed, and getting a little practice on the Clayton dynamometer that they used to test each carburetor before boxing them up for shipment to various parts stores.

I quit that job, moved back to Merced, and went to work for Montgomery Wards, in their repair shop as a gas engine mechanic, working on mowers, chain saws, and rototillers. In my spare time I helped the TV repairman put up antennas, or assist the refrigeration guy install air conditioners.  

At the beginning of 1965 I was told by the management that they did not want to train me for the new year, because of my 1-A draft status. When my unemployment ran short, I went down to the Selective Service office to find out when they were going to draft me. I knew it was inevitable, because the war in Vietnam was escalating daily. They told me I could request to be moved up the list to the top, and said I guess I better do that or starve, since nobody would hire me.

I got my Greetings letter from President Lyndon B. Johnson in just a couple of weeks, and I started Basic Training at Ft. Ord on April 7, 1965.

The base was nearly empty, as they had had a spate of spinal meningitis cases with several deaths in the months before and had closed the base for training for six months. I was in the second training company after the restart, and we were quarantined to the immediate barracks area the whole eight weeks of training.

I first got to use some of that college training before the first company inspection. We were instructed to have our field equipment arranged on a towel in front of our foot locker in a certain configuration, but the instructions were kind of vague. I suggested to my sergeant that I could draw a picture to make the layout clearer, and he said go for it. I used the year of Engineering Drawing I had acquired to sketch out how the articles should be arranged for inspection, and after the sergeant suggested that I change the label “washrag” to “washcloth”, he took it to the company commander. He was duly impressed and made enough copies for every soldier in the company.  He shared it with other company commanders, and I found that my drawing was being used all over the post. Of course, we got top marks on our inspection!

At the end of Basic, they posted the orders for every soldier on the company bulletin board, and the vast majority were destined for more training - AIT - Advanced Individual Training. I wasn’t on the list, so I inquired and was told because of my skills and experience, I was going to an engine repair depot in Granite City, Illinois, directly bypassing any more training.

However, they offered me Officer Candidate School, because of my high scores on the battery of exams they gave me, but I turned that down because I didn’t want obligated to be a Commissioned Officer until 65 years old.

They also offered me a chance to go to Ft. Rucker, Alabama, and become a Warrant Officer and helicopter pilot. I would have loved to become a pilot, but the prospects of surviving over the jungles of Vietnam in a helicopter were not enticing, so I turned that down, also.

I reported for duty at Granite City Army Depot to the 185th Engr. Co. (HM) and in a couple of days they sent me out to the shop for an interview with the shop officer in charge. He brightened up when I mentioned my dynamometer experience, and asked what kind of dyno? I told him a Clayton 250, and he just about jumped out of his chair. He told me he had three of them out on the floor, and only one soldier qualified to operate it. 

I was assigned to one of the dynamometers, with a Specialist 4 as my assistant. Since I was still a buck Private, I was a little nervous, but after we were introduced, I showed him the third dyno and let him know he would soon have it for his own, with a little patience.

For the next couple of months I spent eight hours a day testing newly rebuilt engines, and setting hot valve lash on each when done testing on an hour and a half card at different loads and speeds. Most of the engines were flat head Dodge sixes for 3/4 ton weapons carriers, but we did a few GMC truck engines and even tried a a 1260 hp. Allison engine for the M-60 tank, but all we could test was startup and idle. 

In the fall of 1965 we got word that the whole company was being moved overseas to get closer to the action in Southeast Asia. All our men and equipment were loaded aboard the old troopship Gen. J. C. Breckinridge and chugged across the Pacific Ocean to Okinawa. There we opened up a base that had been mothballed since the Korean War. It had originally been a Japanese airfield during WWII.

There were several big hangers that were divided up between the different sections of the company. One was the Fuel and Electric Section, and that’s where I was sent, to become the carburetor tester. My Military Occupational Specialty was 63Golf, which is Fuel & Electric Repairman, so my job was pretty obvious.

However, the immediate problem for me is that they had lots of carburetors coming in for testing from lots of different engines, and we only had two engines to test them on, a small GMC and a large Chrome Moly. (I don’t remember who made that one). The shop officer said they were going to try to find other engines for carburetor testing. I asked if they couldn’t just make adapters to fit any carb to the engines we had.

He replied that they didn’t have that kind of ability in the shops on base. I volunteered to design and make patterns so the fabrication shop could just cut and weld the parts together. He seemed a little skeptical but he gave me time and a drafting table, so I designed three different adapters for four barrels to two barrel, two barrels to one barrel, and one with a 90º bend to test M151 side draft jeep carburetors. It took me a couple of days to finish. I made cardboard patterns outlining the shapes and hole details, and in a week or so they had cut, bent and welded them together beautifully, and even painted them OD to match the engines. They worked wonderfully well, and I was presented with an award for “Zero Defects”. I still retain the certificate in my military papers.

Not long after we started testing the M151 carburetors, the shop ran out of parts. The accelerator pump was a diaphragm and spring affair in the bottom of the bowl, and when the diaphragm failed, the fuel flooded the vacuum port to the manifold and the engine would not start. They told us that the whole vehicle was made to be disposable, since they lost a lot of expensive Jeeps in the Korean War, and so the carburetor only had two moving parts - throttle and choke - and all the rest was diaphragms. Since the carb itself was disposable, we weren’t supposed to have to repair them, but they needed them in Nam, and no replacements were available from the manufacturer. 

So I asked the shop officer to check locally for diaphragm material and rivets to match the ones we needed and we started manufacturing parts for these little carburetors. We were able to put out several thousand repaired carbs this way, and I am pretty sure our parts were better than the originals.  

When I was separated from the US Army in 1967, I wasn’t able to find work in my hometown of Merced, California, so I went down to Los Angeles to find a job. I applied for a job at the West Coast Racing Division of Champion Spark Plugs down by the harbor near San Pedro, and although he liked my experience, he said he couldn’t give me the job because they were looking for someone with a college degree. 

That was the first time I realized that it wasn’t your qualifications they were looking for, it was was your certification from higher education they wanted. My class disqualified me, even though I could do the job. It wasn’t the last time I ran into that wall.

With the help of a family friend, John Price, I found an apprenticeship opening in a large manufacturing facility in Downey. The job was training as a Maintenance Machinist. The name of the company was Olympic Screw and Rivet Company, but after I left, I found the owners had changed the name to Fastener Specialties Company, after they heard too many jokes about being on the Olympic Screw Team.

I had only worked there about a month, when I got a call from Milheim Motors, a Pontiac agency in Merced, where I had put in an application for a job. They needed a Tune-up man, and were paying more than a dollar an hour more than where I was. The next day I went to my supervisor and  gave him two weeks notice, and explained why, since I loved the work in the machine shop.

The next day I was called into his office, and my foreman was already there. My supervisor explained that my foreman had told him I was the one he could send out to a broken machine, and I could diagnose the problem, make new parts if needed and repair the machine without needing a lot of help. He offered to move me up in the apprenticeship schedule two years and raise my wages well above what the Pontiac agency was offering.

I accepted the offer and called Mr. Milheim Pontiac that evening. He wasn’t surprised, and laughed as he told me to call anytime I needed more help in negotiations.

I stayed there for two more years until I topped out and was rated Journeyman. Not long after, I became unhappy with the LA life and quit and next found work at John Kimzey Welding out in the country in Woodland, California. The pay was much less, and the benefits were nil, but the work was varied and challenging. I repaired and machined parts for everything from tractors, airplanes, ditch diggers and trucks. Each day was different and exciting. 

I had gotten married before leaving LA, and taking on a family was requiring a little more care in moving from job to job. Even though I liked the work, I had to quit and look elsewhere for a better job. I didn’t find it right away!

My next job was in Silver Springs, Nevada, for Sierra Rotary Engine Corp., a small shop that was making experimental engines for an inventor, Bill Turner, who had patents on twenty seven different engines, he said. Some were steam driven, and some were internal combustion engines, including a scissor piston engine that looked intriguing to me. 

The pay was even worse, but was offset by the cheaper rents in the area. We found a cheap house for rent a hundred yards behind the shop, allowing me to walk to work and save on gas, too.

I don’t think I ever worked in a place that valued my contribution to the company as Bill Turner did. He would explain in the morning what we needed done that day, and was always surprised when I finished the work before he expected. He was almost joyous when we got the machine assembled and rotating at last. (Or maybe it was that fifth of Black Velvet he drank every day!)

He had a dynamometer installed for testing, but unfortunately, due to errors in the design materials, we could not start the engine on the evening he announced it to the investors. Bill told me the next Monday that there was no money in the bank, and he couldn’t guarantee a paycheck at the end of the week. I thanked him for his courtesy and went back to LA, where I knew I could find a job quickly.

I found a job the next day at M-K Products in Santa Ana, as a production machinist making hundreds of small precision parts every day for dental drill motors. I could handle the work, but I hated it. After a month of making the same parts every day, and contending with the LA lifestyle and traffic, I quit and started looking for work someplace else, outside the city. 

After a month of homeless camping in national and state parks across the west, I found an ad in the Grand Junction newspaper for a machinist in Hayden, Colorado, at a power generation plant. I went into the headquarters in Montrose and inquired, and they asked me to take a test to qualify for the job. I had no trouble acing the skills test with my years of experience and training. Then they gave me a psychological test to see if I could stand the isolation. I loved this one as there was nothing I wanted more than to get far from the big city. 

After a perfunctory physical by a company doctor in Montrose, they sent me up to Hayden to interview the next day with the plant manager. We dipped into our meager funds and got a motel room for the night in Craig. We both needed a bath in a bad way!

When we awoke the next morning, my wife Carolyn said her nipples were sore and she didn’t feel like eating breakfast due to nausea. I told her it sounded like she was pregnant. She was shocked but happy, since we had been trying for four years to make that happen. Things were about to turn around in a big way for us.