CHRISTMAS 1996 In last year's message I left you with the Model T puzzle: Uncle Jim was traveling through rural Northern Wisconsin when a rock turned up by a front wheel punctured a hole in the engine's oil pan and all of the oil ran out before he could think of some way to capture it. Left with a pocket knife as his only tool and a bar of soap from a neighboring farm, how did he restore the car to running condition? From the surrounding woods, he found a piece of wood, which he carefully whittled to match the hole in the oil pan. Then he used his knife to convert the bar of soap into shavings, which he poured down the oil fill tube. Using his hands to form a cup, hc transferred water from thc ditch next to the road into the oil fill pipe until the float (the predecessor of the dip stick) registered FULL.This done, he traveled onward. The soapy water made an excellent lubricant for the Ford's bearings, and upon inspection at his father's farm, he said the bearings were not only in perfect condition, but he had never seen an engine with such a clean interior.
Of the people who volunteered answers, cousin Roy Steffeonsen was the closest. Of course, Roy had an advantage, having owned several Model Ts in his youth and having taken them on long trips. On one occasion he said that loud banging sounds came from the engine and hc was forced to stop. Having brought enough tools (unlike Uncle Jim), he was able to dismantle the engine (he saved the oil!) and discovered that the babbitt material had disintegrated, destroying the rod bearings. With remarkable ingenuity, he removed his leather belt and cut it into pieces, which he soaked in oil and used to replace the bearing material with good success, hc reportcd. He did not say what clever strategy he used to hold up his pants for the remainder of the trip. On another occasion, he said that one cylinder froze and the engine would not turn. Again using his tools, hc dismantled thc engine, used a hammer to drive out the stuck piston, then procecdcd with only three of the Ford's four cylinders. 'The Model 'T' was never noted for its power, but with only three cylinders, he said it barely crawled over steep grades.
Brother Je/rry also owned a Model 'T' when he was in high school and he had stories that I'd forgotten. Jerry's Ford was in deplorable condition: it had no brakes and hc and a friend wired the engine so it would run ,but had no way to turn it off. I recall helping them push-start the carthen jumping on after it started.Traveling at a walking pace, Jerry announced that something was wrong with the steering, and I recall saying "I'm leaving!," and jumping off. I watched as they Ieft the road, went through a field, and smashed into a neighbor's picket fence. The impact stopped thc Model T, but knocked down the fence. I didn't stay to see what happened next; being older, I knew I'd be blamed. Jerry said that fortunately the neighbor wasn't home, so he and his friend propped the fcncc to its former position and pushed the car home.He later sold the car to Ray Dolby for $3.00 (the same Dolby who has research laboratories in San [ rancisco and England, and supplies movie theatcrs with the Dolby Surround Sound System).
A recurring theme this past year has been jobs. One group of politicians says that our economy has created millions of new jobs; thc other group says that these jobs arc mostly minimum pay, service sector jobs and don't provide enough to live on. When I was young, during the Great Depression, adults gave me the impression that everything paled when compared to the JOB. After Europe became entangled in war in 1939, thc governmcnt sponsored war industry began to pump money into the U.S. economy, and jobs began to appear. Then when we entered the war, jobs were suddenly available everywhere. At one point, I had a job, graveyard shift, working in Kaiser's magnesium plant in the hills in back of Los Altos. The job was part time, a few nights on then an indefinite time until I would be needed again. Thepay was great; I was to be paid full time full time even though I was to lay bricks only half the time. The job consisted of laying graphite bricks in a retort—a vacuum carbon arc furnace with an inside dimension about eight fcct in diameter and a floor to ceiling dimension of about five feet, about a foot too low for someone to stand erect. The retort was heated to a high temperature by means of an electric arc, supplied through three 24-inch diameter graphite rods. To gain entry into the interior, the rods were withdrawn from three-foot thick top of the retort. A slender, ten foot long ladderwas dropped through an electrode hole, and you snaked down the ladder (a really tight fit) to get to the interior. Eroded graphite bricks were replaced using a mortar made of powdered graphite and water. We worked for 20 minutes, then got out for 20 minutes while an alternate crew took over.
But these were the good features of the job. The bad part was the walls of the little room were very hot. If you touched a wall or the ceiling with an ungloved finger, you'd get an instant burn. Accordingly, clothing consisted of layers of sweat shirts, overalls, a thick woolen cap, and heavy shoes with two pair of heavy socks. It was important to tie your shoelaces around the bottom of your overall legs to make a tight connection with the tops of your high-top shoes because the floor was covered with several inches of extremely hot graphite dust, and any dust that got into your shoes would immediately begin burning. A huge fan occupied one of the three electrode holes and blew a blast of eold air, but even so, the air temperature was about 140 degrees. It wasn't unusual to lose consciousness, so steps were taken to improve the survival rate: we went down in pairs, never working alone, and a young person was paired with an older one. We also had a rope tied around our waist, with the other end fastened securely far above the retort, so if one of us passed out, the other one could help stuff him into the access hole so that the attendants above could pull him to safety. We were not given protection for our eyes or lungs, unthinkable today. Bricks and mortar were lowered in a bucket. A single 250 bare light bulb provided light, and one vivid recollection was when we took a step, the high velocity air stream caused a graphite cloud that would obliterate the light, so we quickly Iearned to pause after eaeh step until we could see again.
Twenty minutes seemed like an etemity; the attendant carefully watched the clock, then pulled on the rope tied to our waist. The procedure was to quickly move into the cold night air and remove most of our almost too hot to touch clothing so we could get super-cooled before our next 20 minute session. We were allowed to quit a half hour early to clean up. All exposed skin was absolutely black and we were provided with hot showers and plenty of soap. After the third wash and rinse, your skin appeared normal, but this was an illusion: when you rubbed with a towel, your skin again fumed black from the graphite in your pores. I finally settled on blotting myself to retain my skin color and gave up on getting clean.
I was 18, so they paired me with the oldest man, a small man in his 60s, Walter Veneer. I remember shivering, half naked in the cold night air, and loudly condemning the job, comparing it to the medieval version of hell. Walter listened quietly, then said in a soft voice that he once had a job that was worse. I told him that I couldn't imagine a job worse than this, so during the following cooling off sessions, he told me about it.
It occurred around the tum of the century when Walter was a young bricklayer working out of the San Francisco local. 'The union hall received a call for a brick mason to work at the glass works in South San Francisco. Walter took the train and, to his surprise, was met at the station by a posh carriage and a liveryman who loaded his tools and took him directly to the office of the president. The president himself ushered him in, seated him in an expensive leather cnair, and offered him a cigar. He told him that he had arranged accommodations at a good hotel, and that he would be his guest at a nice restaurant. He would be paid for today, but he didn't have to start until tomorrow at 8:00 a.m. Walter began feeling uneasy when the president said that if he worked out well on the job, he would see if he could arange a date with his daughter.
The next morning, Walter appeared with tools in hand. 'The glass works made bottles by machinery, drawing molten glass from a large container. Beneath the container was a coal furnace lined with firebricks; over the course of time, the firebrick lining had failed and needed to be replaced. But if the furnace were allowed to cool, the glass would solidify, destroying the container and ruining the machinery used to produce the bottles. The procedure for replacing the lining was explained to Walter: he was to remove his clothes, then several helpers would dress him in multiple layers of gunny saeks, covering him except for two slits for his eyes. The attendants would submerge him in a horse watering trough that had been moved to the front of the fumace for this purpose. At the foreman's signal, the furnace doors wore opened and the hot coals were quickly raked out. 'I'he foreman yelled "GO" and one workman got Walter out of the water, another put his trowel loaded with fireclay in one hand and a firebrick in the other, then directed him into the white hot firebox. Walter rushed in, laid the brick, and rushed out. The workmen grabbed him, the outer part of his gunny sack garment already beginning to smoke, and submerged him in the water of the horse trough. Simultaneously, another group of workmen shoveled back the hot coals, added more coal, and slammed the fumace doors shut. Fifteen minutes later, the process was repeated to lay another brick. Walter stuck it out until mid-afternoon when he began developing burns on thc soles of his feet. When he told the foreman he was quitting, he was told to stop in the president's office for his pay check.
The president apologized and said that they couldn't think of another way to save the factory.He gave Walter an extra day's pay on the condition that he not mention the working conditions to other members of his local. The president told Walter he had lasted longer than more of those who had preceded hirn, and that with luck there would be enough unemployed bricklayers to finish the job. I agreed with Walter that his job at the glass factory was indeed worse than our current one. By the way, I only lasted one night and later decided that this job was the best incentive I was to have for concentrating on my engineering studies.
Jim (aka "Fat")