WannaskaWriter

    By the early 1980s, I had done various jobs around town and ended up working evening shift at the toy factory with Pete, then a hefty bull of a young man with long reddish-gray hair, mustache and full beard that was sometimes festooned with bits and pieces of steel and aluminum shavings, little chunks of snus, or the crumbs left over from a sandwich. I learned quickly that Pete either liked you or he didn’t, and didn’t mince words otherwise. Thankfully for me, it was the former as we worked in close proximity to another for that year machining spindle housings on two ancient lathes with eight-foot beds. Each lathe had a brass plate that read: “Approved by The War Board” on it and lent us the notion that the toy factory spared no effort providing us with the best 40 year-old tooling money could buy. Even so, ‘Foog,’ (As in, ‘The Mighty Foog,’ his nickname derived from his last name) loved the old equipment and maintained it with a fervor only matched by h...

    My first job at the toy factory was, using a chisel and a hammer, to chop out distorted plastic bushings from a long aluminum channel that a heavy suspension rod went through. The job was outdoors, on the south side of the building, in direct sunlight. I worked alone, breaking those bushings apart so that new bushings could be installed. I recall my foreman diligently checking on me and bringing me water and potato chips to keep me from getting heat stroke. Though I sweated profusely, the heat didn't bother me too much as I was somewhat used to very hot summers, living in Iowa as I had most of my life to that point.      His concern impressed me for he seemed genuine in his efforts. He had lived in the area all his life and did various jobs in the community as a youth. After he married his high school sweetheart and started a family, he began working at the toy factory because it offered workers good pay and insurance. He had been there five or ...

    My dad worked at the Des Moines Cooperative Dairy for forty years, and I did too, if but just for nine, many years later . When I was a kid, my dad worked for a time in the main plant. It was only a block or so down the from where we lived, so I visited it frequently, taking him his lunch or for other reasons. The dairy environment then, was noisy, they sometimes used steam hoses and lots of hot water to sanitize stainless steel pipes, to wash down milk storage tanks, or flush the red tile floors. The dairy dried milk too, so there was the voluminous noise of air through giant duct-work. There were big dark-green boilers that roared ominously in the Boiler Room; the red warning lights blinking, maybe a loud shrill bell would sound to signal something. And then there was the Engine Room where huge electric motors, the size of Volkswagens, that I'd walk by within arm's length, that powered almost everything in the building. I was used to all that noise because I pr...

   This toy factory was started by two enterprising small town cousins for the single reason of building a machine that would get them into their cabin in the 'Big Woods' in the wintertime and back out again. They were successful at it, and in time, although they went their separate ways after a few years, they continued to assist one another's endeavors at the very time they competed with one another for market share, a n oddly friendly situation in what came to be a highly competitive industry that swept the country by storm. The cousins' invention unleashed the creative minds of a new industry.    Originally designed to be more of a utility machine, these shade-tree mechanics inspired enthusiasts and engineers to modify and improve on their basic model and make it into something fun that the whole family could embrace for generations to follow- - and follow they did, as the winter machines became mainstay objects in family albums; owners were photographed partici...

     I've worked in a toy factory for thirty-one years now. Very few of those years I've been happy in my work and many more of of those I've wanted to quit for one reason or another but stayed the course through it all. Good for me, eh? It's more than that, in the face of 40% or more attrition in the workplace becoming almost epidemic, when new hires, state-wide, quit jobs within a few weeks of starting despite dramatically increased starting wages and benefits. Thirty-one years on the job is unthinkable when so many people nowadays don't even finish out their probationary period.     I've not quit for the now old-fashioned reasons of: paying back the bank for money I have borrowed; having to support a family as most often the primary source of income; weathering the financial and emotional effects of two divorces; and, bearing the expense and responsibilities that rural landowners have.      Sometimes others in the family ...

    I've always liked physical labor, but I haven't always been able to do it. Born with asthma, or at least developing it soon after birth, during an era of no medication or inhalers, like Albuterol, my stamina and endurance was zero. I was a gangly, skinny-armed 'weakling' of a kid (not that I'm Mr. Macho now or ever have been) that couldn't run a block without being winded or push a reel-type mower around a fifty by one hundred foot city lot without almost collapsing or gasping for breath. I was pretty much a sissy during my childhood, last picked to be on a team, the whole bit.     My father, on the other hand, was a very strong man most of his life. I think I was a disappointment to him if only because of my inability to do anything requiring a lot of physical activity, athletically speaking. Oh, I could throw a ball a long ways, but I couldn't catch it on a reliable basis. Didn't have the desire nor ability for any school sports; couldn't run....

    I've been reading about my paternal Scots-Irish heritage in a book written by James Webb, "Born Fighting." The author takes us back two thousand years and describes the various folk in what was to become Scotland, such as the Picts: the large-limbed, tattooed, red-haired madmen, as well as the Irish 'Scotti' hordes. (That'd be 'hordes,' McDonnell, not 'hores.' Whereas there was a bunch of intermarriages i.e., "Scots- Irish " you have taken it out of context - - again. Read the book.) I haven't read other books about the Scots-Irish yet, but in reading reviews about this book, I'm  encouraged to do so as I'm curious about my ancestral past on my father's side. I want a overall perspective of who these people were, and how it may or may not pertain to me.     As I wrote in my earlier post, "Culturally Anemic," family culture nor history was discussed as I was growing up. Perhaps my father was wholl...