When I was 20 and finishing my second year of college, my brother let me know about the summer job he had just landed at a factory in Jackson. He was going to work on an assembly line putting together oil pumps, and make good money doing it. I think the pay was around $7.50 an hour, which was great for 1988. Since MSU was on the quarter system, I didn't finish the school year until the beginning of June. This meant that there were no day shift jobs available when I got out, but they did offer another MSU student and me a second-shift job, which we took.
The other MSU student used to stop by my house and drive me there. He was a leadfoot, and he told me the reason the frame of his SUV (Ford Bronco, maybe) was bent was because he had rolled it once going too fast around a curve. I believed him.
The factory was set up up with a number of different assembly lines, each with a big steel tub full of iron blanks at one end, and a big steel tub of finished pumps at the other. The blanks were roughly the outer shape of the finished product, and were solid iron.
There were a few lines that had huge machines at the front - they were operated by the most senior guys. The operator would put a blank into the machine, clamp it in, then push a button. The machine would spin to the right and take the blank to its first stop, usually a milling machine or a drill press. As the new blank spun to the right, a blank which had been passed through several other stations arrived back at the operator's position and was removed. This pump was removed and passed down the line to the next person.
Depending on the demand, we were assigned to a different line. We might spend two weeks on the same line, or sometimes only a day or two on a line before being moved. If someone called in sick or was on vacation, someone would be pulled over to fill in.
We did a lot of different things with the pumps as we assembled them - we sometimes put them on a lathe and pushed a button, and the lathe would automatically cut out a perfect stalk for the pump to attach to some other part. We had compressed air booths where we sprayed the shavings out of the newly-milled spaces. We put gears into the holes, then pressed them onto motorized stands to spin the gears together and seat them to the bottom of their compartment. We put springs inside holes and pressed caps onto the holes. We used compressed air wrenches to bolt the tops onto the pumps. We clamped the pumps into little booths that had multiple machines that worked on the pump at the same time - one from the top and one from the right.
We had to clean up the floor at the end of the night, since it was covered with iron shavings. We filled wheelbarrows with shavings and dumped them into a big bin at the back of the shop to be picked up by the iron recycling truck. Any bad pumps that hadn't been finished or weren't done to the right specifications were thrown in here as well.
The fact that there were a number of college students at the factory in the summer annoyed some of the full-time employees. They felt a little like the students looked down on the them, so they would challenge the students to bolt races. Starting with a pile of pumps, you would have to mount one on the bench, put a top on it, and put 4 bolts in. The guy with the most pumps done was the winner. In order to put the bolts in, you first had to start them with your fingers, and after having handled thousands of bolts, I can start a bolt better than the average person.
I never saw a college student beat a full-timer in the bolt competition. I was smart enough not to accept a challenge in the first place. I knew I'd never win.
They also played tricks on the college students. One guy brought a piece that had left my station and told me one of the holes was too small. He said I need to go ask the foreman for a Hole Expander. I went over to the foreman and said "Someone's playing a joke on me, but I can play along. I'm supposed to ask you for a hole expander." I pointed to the hole and held it up for him to see. He laughed at me, and told me to go back and keep working. The guys on the line were satisfied they had tricked me, and I hoped that the trick-playing was over and they'd go after someone else next time. It was in good fun, of course, and overall the employees were really nice guys. Many of them supported their families with their job, and they were hard workers and understood how important it was to pay attention to details and safety.
It was a very hot summer that year, and rained very little. The full-timers told us if the temperature on the floor got to 110 degress, they'd call off work for the day. It never did - they were always able to get a fan running or open the doors to get the air moving. It was plenty hot, though. Working around all the machines, and wearing jeans and boots, there was no way to stay cool. The first couple of weeks there, I lost a lot of water weight from sweating. I came home with rust all over my shirt - lots of sweat, combined with tiny bits of iron flying from one machine or another. It made an interesting pattern.
When I would come home from work, I'd shake out my hair outside the house, then take a bath. In retrospect, I should have just hosed myself down outside and changed into new clothes in the garage. There were some ways we could keep clean if we wanted - there was a white cream of some kind we rubbed on our arms which prevented the real grime from taking hold - at the end of the shift, it was easy to clean off, and it kept our arms and the backs of our hands clean for the most part. Some of the guys went to the little bins of kerosene that were posted at various places and used it to clean out their fingernails. (I don't remember why the kerosene was there, I think it was to rinse off parts. I never used it for any of the positions I worked.) In the final analysis, there isn't much we could do to stay clean, though. It was a hot, dusty place, and dust finds its way wherever it wants.
It was a noisy place too, and Melling provided little foam earplugs. Some people didn't use them, of course, but I knew I should. I learned to put them in halfway - enough to block out the real screeching noises, but not so far that I couldn't have a conversation with the person next to me or across from me.
When we worked on the same line day after day, we would rotate jobs. Each day we would move one space down the line and man the next station. We would look forward to the day we would use the compressed air to spray out the pumps - that was easy, and you didn't even have to look at what you were doing. Some of the jobs were tough - putting the gears in, meshing them, then putting them on the motor and running them was something that was hard to do consistently. The guy who gave me a ride to work missed some time that summer because he had pushed down on the gears while the motor was running, and tore up the palm of his hand. We all gave them a tap with our palms to get them to seat properly while the motor was running, which we weren't supposed to do, but he didn't tense up his hand enough to keep the skin out of there. Some pumps didn't have gears that meshed in the middle, and those were no problem to put together - the gear just dropped in.
When we rotated jobs, we'd ask the last person who did it if there were any shortcuts. They would tell us the trick if there was one: "Put that part in first, hold it with your finger, then put the other part in." Or: "Put the left gear in first, let it drop, put the pump on the motor, then put in the right gear." There were a few guys who didn't want the advice - they preferred to struggle along and figure out their own tricks. I didn't understand them then, and I still don't.
It was a men's world for sure. There were no women in the shop, except for once a week, when the cleaning ladies would walk to the back to empty the garbage can or something. Even though they did not resemble the women you'd typically expect men to whistle at, a lot of the men whistled at them anyway.
The Melling family, or the Melling companies, owned the car driven by Bill Elliott, who, at the time, was the best driver in NASCAR. He won the Winston Cup Championship that year. They brought over his car, or one just like it, to the parking lot and we all got to go out and Ooh and Ahh over it. I know very little about cars, so I just Oohed and Ahhed at appropriate times and left it at that. We were all given two free tickets to MIS to see a race, so my friend, Craig, and I went out to MIS, accompanied by a few packs of foam earplugs. Craig and I yelled at the top of our lungs to each other for a few hours (one cannot talk to one's friends at a race), got massively sunburned, took a nap in his car to wait out the traffic, then went to Ella Sharp to do some golfing.
Working 40-hour weeks was new to me - I had worked some long days at my previous job at Wendy's, but never like these. Working at Wendy's did prepare me somewhat for the heat, though; standing between the grill and the fryers on a July day was not for the feeble. I think I surprised myself at how well I held out, and how much stamina I had at that job, standing all that time in boots, and putting up with the heat. When you're 20 and healthy, it's not that hard.
I didn't go back the following summer - I landed a programming job instead at MSU and stayed there.
Stay tuned for the next verse of "When I Was A Young Warthog".
2 comments:
If I had known Melling was such fun, I would have gotten a job there myself.
I don't remember saying it was fun...
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