I think
this is the newest song on my Zune, bought from the Zune Marketplace. I don’t have any idea what the rest of the
album sounds like, I only bought the song. Kind of like buying a single at the
Ben Franklin back in the day. (For you young whippersnappers out there, the Ben
Franklin was a five and dime store, kind of like the Dollar stores of today,
but they also sold 45 rpm singles as well…”What’s a 45 rpm single old man?”
“Shut up”)
I
absolutely love this song, I don’t know why. It gets multiple plays every time
it comes on the Zune and I sing along every time as well. I don’t know what
it’s about, or what the lyrics mean, but it has a great chorus, perfect for
singing loudly in an echoing room…
“I
hear Jerusalem bells a-ringing,
Roman cavalry
choirs are singing,
Be my mirror, my
sword and shield,
Missionaries in a
foreign field…”
Meaning:
Huh?
It reminds
me of a specific time, March-August 2009. In March, the company I worked for in
Cary, Bartlett Manufacturing, went belly up. The owner gave up and shut it
down, throwing 60+ people out of work. This was about 5 months after we took a
28% pay cut (which I am still trying to climb back from) to help keep it
running. He had entered into an agreement with the owner of another shop in
Round Lake Beach and they were supposed to keep Bartlett open for 3 months
until the work there transitioned to Round Lake, but he decided to just give up
and shut it down, blaming the Chinese.
Most of the
supervisors and managers at Bartlett had been offered positions at Round Lake,
but I had not. I had worked there (Round Lake Beach) five years earlier for 6
months until one day I was fired. The explanation was that I had “blown off” a
customer in for a visit, but I am still convinced L.S. (see Update posting) had
something to do with it. I had asked another manager to cover for me with the
customer as I had a particularly tricky corrective action to finish for their
biggest military customer. It was for an issue that occurred a year before I
got there and was very serious. I thought the CAR (corrective action report)
was more important than the customer visit. I was wrong.
Regardless,
I was not expecting to get an offer to go to Round Lake. But on the very last
day of Bartlett Mfg., the owner of the shop in Round Lake asked to talk to me.
He started by apologizing for my getting fired (I had been fired by his
President, not him), saying he had been told what they thought he wanted to
hear, which he subsequently came to believe was not the whole truth. I was
floored. He then offered me a job with his company, but not as a Quality
Manager, since he already had one, but in a position TBD.
This led to
one of the most interesting periods in my career.
At first, I
helped the QA manager at Round Lake as a quasi-quality engineer, helping him
put together PPAPs, FMEAs, and Control Plans (a bunch of paperwork gobbledygook
required by Bartlett’s automotive customers, which Round Lake had no experience
with at this time)
After the
closing of Bartlett it quickly became apparent that since none of the people
from the punch press department took positions in Round Lake someone would be
needed to run orders out at Bartlett until the presses could be moved to Round
Lake, to a 17,000 sq.ft. building down the block being prepared. Among those
who took jobs in Round Lake only the former president of Bartlett and I had
ever set up dies and run the punch presses. The former president only stayed
for a month before he left to open a rep firm, leaving me.
I had not
set up or run a press in about 15 years, when I had helped Gary Kelly (see
#1-mmmm.mmmm) build boards in a small shop he set up in Elgin, less than a mile
from where we then lived. I worked at Dynacircuits during the day, and then
worked 4-5 hours every other night for cash at Gary’s, setting up and running
silk screening, setting up and running a punch press, and doing some visual
inspection.
So, for the
next 5 months, as the Bartlett building was being gutted around me, I would
drive from Elgin to Cary to run the presses, and then run the finished boards
up to Round Lake for inspection and shipment. There were only 3-4 other people
in this 73,000 sq. ft. building, and I was by myself, pushing 500 lb. dies
around and setting up 110 ton presses, running the presses, listening to my
Zune in the huge echoing (thought I wouldn’t explain that, huh?) punch press
room pumped through a stereo boom box I found in the abandoned front office.
The phone system was disconnected so the only contact with the outside world
(and the others in the building), should something happen to me, was with cell
phones.
I was 54
years old, with a bad hip, doing more physical work than I’d done in years. And
it was fun! And “Viva La Vida” was a great accompaniment.
Note: If
anyone out there knows how I can link some video I took of myself (I put the
video camera on a ladder as I struggled with dies and ran punch presses)doing
this work, I’d greatly appreciate it.
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