I am back to reflecting on the long list of jobs that have both paid me and shaped me. I could probably also make a list of all the things I said I would never do, that I ended up doing. After my stint of making piston in 1968, I swore I would never spend another day on an assembly line. I was also never going to: work in the local church, have anything to do with dead people, quit drinking, live in the country, live in the suburbs, run a marathon, become vegan and write a blog. Those are just the things I can think of now.
So I got a summer job working at the General Motors plant in Kansas City. A guy named Bill was the personnel manager at the plant, and a family friend. The job paid 15$ per hour and in 1969 that was gold. So I became a union member of Auto Workers of America and began my career as a spot welder in the “hole”. This particular plant made Chevy Malibus, El Camino trucks, and Buick Skylarks. As a car which was being made came by every 55 seconds, I spot welded the wheel wells on the driver side. It was hard work.
I have a very distinct memory that I revisit from time to time. Occasionally, when the spot welds would be applied, there would be a minor explosion caused by an impurity in the sheet metal that made up the body. There was a guy working just down the line from me who had recently come back from Viet Nam. At least four or five times when the POP with sparks would go off, he would hit the floor. I realized he was carrying memories of Viet Nam that were beyond my imagination. We often had lunch together but talk of the war never came up.
After about a month in the hole the plant supervisor came to me and told me I was being transferred. There was no discussion, just a walk through the plant. I soon realized I was headed to the end of the side of the plant where the bodies were constructed. They moved along all painted, with windows installed. They were headed to the “Marriage Machine” where the shiny new body met the chassis complete with engine, tires etc. The last function that the bodies were subject to was a ‘water test’. Before entering the water test good old fashioned ‘duct tape’ was applied to every hole where things like wiring, etc., were installed after the “marriage”. The function of the tape was to keep the water out. The very last thing to happen before the body would head up the ramp to get married, was the removal of the duct tape. I became the tape removal expert. There were 10 places where the tape had to be removed. It required no skill. The fun part was, you could work your way up the line and get the tape off about eight cars and then go sit down and wait for the next cycle. Now about the tape—imagine three shifts a day, 55 cars an hour—that’s a whole lot of duct tape. Imagine a used duct tape ball. After about a week it would grow to about two feet high. It was removed only to start over again.
I thought the remainder of my summer would be dedicated to being the “Tape Worm”, but believe it or not, there was one easier job at the end of the line. In 1969 headrests had become mandatory in all cars. Anytime a new function comes online there has to be a negotiation/job description with the union for that model year. The headrests had to have their vinyl covers pulled over the foam pillow and put in a rack to be installed. The job called for four workers to get enough headrests ready for a shift. What was clear is that in about two hours enough headrests could be prepared for 500 cars. What that meant was that the four workers that did this would bust their butts, and then be free to do whatever for six hours. Guess who got moved for the final four weeks to the headrest station—it pays to know the boss.
These guys had the system down. I was filling in that last month for a guy who was on sick leave. The lead of the four workers was a man I would never forget. He was a character named Harold J. Manlove. He took a liking to me. After we would load up the racks with fresh new headrests, Harold would walk me around the whole plant. Everyone knew him. He would brag to me he “always had the best jobs in the plant”. What he meant was jobs like NOT working in the spot welding hole. I learned a bunch from him.
One night we went to the end of the line. This is the spot where the car is started and someone drives it out the door, and into a huge parking lot where the cars wait to be shipped to dealerships all over the country. Every 55 seconds a car driven off—it was fun to watch. Mind you, about every 15 cars there was a 1969 Chevy Malibu SS 396 driven into the dark of night. That car, and the El Camino truck, were, and still are, one of the greater cars ever to fire the gear head imagination of any Twenty something.
In my anthropology class the next year, I wrote about this experience in American auto production. To sum it up it went like this: The Union workers hate the company, the company hates the workers and everybody hates the cars. I went on to make a case for a collaborative approach where profits were shared, hard work was rewarded, and designing and engineering focused on making the best cars possible. My professor Bob Rhodes wrote me a long response. Essentially it said, “Mark, this is brilliant, it wont’t happen here but it is starting to take hold in Japan”. I think the companies’ names were—Nissan, Toyota, Honda.
Onward and Upward,
Mark
Lyfting Me Up 