College Degrees
I’ll start with some generalizations on the damage that higher education has done in America.
Education used to be for everybody. Now it seems to have devolved into two classes: those with college degrees and those without.
In fact, a college education now is the route you take if you have enough money to do it, and you don’t want to touch anything solid, as concrete, steel, lumber, or copper wire.
If you can’t make it through college to get that degree, you must deign to get your hands dirty handling real substances, other than paper. And you will be deemed a lesser being, with no chance of improving your lot in life until you get that degree.
So society has been bifurcated into two classes: one who is qualified to rule from upper management positions with a top salary and good benefits, but is incapable of constructing a house, repairing their car, or fixing a leaky faucet in the shower.
But when something constructive is required, they have to call on one of the non college educated but handy people who know how to do the actual work. Civilization depends on these folk, but they are now having trouble feeding the family because college educated elites have busted their unions, driven their wages down, destroyed good retirement plans with defined benefits, and made medical care so difficult and pricey that only the rich and well insured can afford it.
I lost a girlfriend once years ago, because she insisted I finish college and get my degree. I would have liked to, but my father left my mom when I was eleven, and I had to work to help us survive. I already had automotive mechanic skills I had learned in his shop before he left. I was busy working on vehicles and making money to survive.
She went on to get her degree, and found a nice job working at the courthouse helping with the paper work for the lawyers and judges.
But when her car broke down, she still called me to come and fix it.
I am actually pretty lucky. I took an apprenticeship with a union company in Southern California, and learned the machinist trade on top of the mechanical skills I already possessed.
After a couple of years working for small machine shops, learning how to make anything the customer needed, my wife and I decided we wanted out of California. So we quit work, bought some food and a pup tent with two sleeping bags that sewed together into one big one, and we went homeless for nearly a month. We drove across Nevada, Utah, and part way through Colorado, staying in campgrounds and National parks, before I stumbled on an ad in the Grand Junction newspaper. The local electric generating company was looking for a machinist!
I drove to the office address and applied for the position. They sent me for a perfunctory medical examination, and then gave me two tests, one one mechanical and mathematical skills, and one on psychological traits. Because of my experience and a year of engineering in college I passed with flying colors. The psych test was pretty easy to figure out. Since the power plant was way out in the woods away from cities, a question like: Would you rather: 1. Speak to large crowds, 2. Shop in a large mall, or 3. Go fishing? was pretty easy to figure out. Never hooked a fish in my life, but not too old to learn, if that’s what it takes.
I worked for nine years at the little Nucla Power Generating Station in Colorado. The crew at the plant were leery of my abilities at first, since there was no back up. Either you could do the job or not. It didn’t take long to show them I could make any part and fix any machine on the site.
There was no division between the workers and the one guy with a college degree, the Plant Manager. We all appreciated our separate skills, and cooperation and camaraderie was the rule.
After four or five years the maintenance supervisor retired and we got a new one, who had been an operator before. All of us on the maintenance crew were apprehensive about working for an operator who was not familiar with our skills. We shouldn’t have worried - he was a genius. He was probable the best boss I ever had.
The first day he called us all together in the coffee break room, and we discussed what was needed. Up front he told us, “I am not a welder, I am not a machinist, and I’m not an electrician. My job is to provide the time, tools and material for you to keep this plant running.”
He made it plain that we didn’t need to ask if we saw something that needed fixing. Just go ahead and fix it. If we could design and build a better machine, just do it. If we needed anything, he would try to get it.
Of course, we all knew where the high maintenance items were, and we got them replaced or repaired. That old reciprocating air compressor that kept one mechanic busy full time got replaced with a quiet rotary air compressor that never broke down.
When the pump intake got filled with mud in the spring, we designed and built a pump out of an old heat exchanger body that could suck up mud, sticks and even fish to clear the intake again.
When it looked like they were going to shut the old plant down in 1981, I started scouting out another power plant to continue my career. I found a brand new power plant being built near Valmy, Nevada. I found the address and sent a resumé.
Very quickly, within a couple of days, they called my home. My wife answered, and they said they had a mechanic position available, but the machinist slot was filled. She said she didn’t think I would want that, but when I got home and she told me, I asked, “Did you ask about the pay?”
No, she hadn’t.
So the next day I called back and talked to the people in the office who were trying to staff this new plant. I told them I might be interested if the pay was right, although I really wanted the machinist job. They told me the pay scale and the mechanic job paid $0.80 cents an hour more than my machinist job in Colorado. They were a union shop, with full retirement, full medical coverage, and other benefits like vacation days and sick leave.
They were so desperate for experienced men that after I aced their tests and got hired, they offered to buy my house in Colorado so I could get moved to Nevada faster.
I told them I had just bought a new mobile home. Could they just move it?
Sure, they said, and they gave us a week in a motel to find some property to buy to put the mobile home on. We found thirty acres for twenty five thousand bucks, with power, septic, and water well in place. In time, that became our home - The Jackrabbit Ranch.
All of the new crew were excited to be working in this brand new plant, as the company had treated us like kings in the hire in process. The company had bought several homes in other states to let them move quickly and allowed them time to find new homes in Winnemucca or Battle Mountain, Nevada.
The first disappointment came when the first unit was started and was out of balance beyond limits, probably due to the move across country by rail. Since we both had experience with multiplane balancing, the machinist and I both went up to the turbine deck to see what we needed. We were chased off the deck and told to go back below, as they had professionals
with degrees from headquarters in Reno coming to balance it. We were pissed, and they didn’t get much work from us the rest of that day.
A year later, during the first inspection, the data from the seismic probes on the bearing indicated the turbine needed alignment. Sure enough, we were told they had professionals coming from Reno to do the job.
We hung around to watch as one man in a suit and tie started to set up a precision transit to observe scales with .010” markings mounted on each part of the machine. After he screwed the head on the tripod, he tried to level it. It soon became apparent that he had never done that before, and had no concept of how the screws on opposing sides needed to be adjusted together to make those little bubbles stay between the lines.
After watching for probably half an hour as he flopped the transit head back and forth, the whistle blew for lunch. The professional, who we found out taught engineering in the University of Nevada, Reno, split out of the room for lunch.
The machinist and I went over to the transit and quickly leveled the head. We realized that the tripod scooted around on the polished concrete floor, so knowing that it had to remain unmoved during the operation, we chiseled little dimples in the floor with a center punch and resting the tripod legs in the little craters, we leveled the transit again. Takes less than a minute, if you know what you’re doing.
To his credit, when he came back and found the transit level and solid, he didn’t mess with it. He went on like he had done it himself.
Eventually the company decided that they needed an engineer at the plant full time, so we got a young, newly graduated engineer in the front office. We quickly became friends, since by this time I had moved up to the machinist position, and I knew we would be working together a lot.
The first time he sent me a blueprint for a part to make, it was immediately obvious he had overlooked some things. So I went to his office and gently got him to make some revisions so the part would work. I also suggested that anytime he needed a part made, just come on down to the shop and talk, and we could get it right the first time before he made the blueprint.
He soon came to realize that those of us in the shop knew how the plant worked and were a vital source of information on any machine or system in the plant. Even though he had the degree, we became an integrated team and we worked together to solve the problems that came up.
After the first year, the management in Reno chartered a special train to bring the “suits” out to the plant to celebrate their new plant. They had picnic tables with catered food out in front of the plant, and speeches by vice-presidents and such. It was a gorgeous affair.
Those of us who had kept the plant running for a year were not allowed to leave the building and be seen by the big wigs. We sneaked up to the top of the boiler building and peered over the edge at the festivities.
I had never seen such a stark division between the college elites and the people who made the machinery work. I am afraid the gulf has only widened in the following years.
It has about destroyed the Democratic Party, as the college educated elites have taken over the party from the traditional working class, and their heads are so far up (in the clouds) that they can’t understand why working people have abandoned the party in droves.
The disdain that I see between Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Shumer, and Joe Biden toward Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez hurts me.
I am baffled when I hear people my age, living on Social Security, proudly praising Republicans and decrying “Socialism.”
I shake my head in wonder at Democrats who are too modern to talk about Franklin D. Roosevelt, who was only the second most popular president in history, right behind Washington. What modern Democrat could win four elections in a row?
I worked at the Valmy Power Plant for twenty five years until I retired. I could write a book on the battles of the elites in the front office against the workers out in the shops.
If the disparity continues to widen between the classes, I see no future except for violent revolution. That seldom works well for anybody.
But people will not stand by and watch their children starve.
