I worked on a blendback machine at columbus Coated Fabric for a sharp guy who told me "some day you are going to look back on these days and laugh".
We had a black gentleman who mixed paints, but, although warned often, drank the unpotable alcohol. Many times he went to the hospital. Another big guy would get off the first shift and his tiny wife would meet him with her umbrella, rain or shine, and beat him all the way down the street and he would take it like a brow-beaten man.
I worked for Bill Harley in the shipping room at Williams. We shipped shoes all over the world then and now we receive them from all over the developing world, including China. Ockie Prater then was one who brought shoes up (sixth floor) from the production lines and unloaded them into the model racks for us shoe pullers to pull qnd load lnto rolling racks and take to the front end for the checkers and the shippers to box and ship.
Annie was a dear Kentucky lady working as a checker. Jack "Furlough" Mershon used to mock her teasingly about her saying so and so is down on 'yen end' meaning the other end of the floor.
Some truly fine people worked there then, Phil Goodman, Bennie Bowling, oh, I wish I could better remember the names. I have always said that God made nothing better than people and I have been so fortunate to meet so many of them throughout my life.
A story I haven't forgotten was a discussion which nearly became an argument and a fight at one break time. We had a thin fellow who loved to talk politics and another big quiet guy who was a township trustee who hardly ever said a word. I don't remember the exact topic, but the thin, talkative one got right up into the face of the big, quiet one who had just told him to shut up. He pointed his finger at him, thought on his feet suddenly to keep from being demolished, and said: "Don't you worry! I will!"
Thanks for the memories, Frank.
Sam
----- Original Message -----
From: "samgabe"
To: "Sam Kegley"
Sent: Sunday, April 19, 2009 10:18 AM
Subject: Columbus Coated Fabrics and Williams Mfg. Co.
Hi Sam,
Just reading over some of your blog and noticed we have had some paths that almost crossed. You mentioned Columbus Coated Fabrics. They provided summer jobs in Columbus for those of us staying over during OSU years. My frat house (Phi Sigma Kappa) provided summer rentals for some outsiders and through one of them, I was hired on as a catalog maker. It involved perhaps thirty or more people lining up and each grabbing one sheet of sample fabric. We would then place our sheet on a stack which would then become a complete catalog of sample oil-cloth.
You also mentioned Williams Mfg. in Portsmouth.
It was late in the summer of 1955 before I realized that my plans to got to Ohio State with the rest of my PHS classmates just was not going to happen. I had wasted the summer on the tennis courts and now I had no funds to attend school. My parents were not in any position to help either. Someone suggested that I start applying for work somewhere. I don't know how many places I applied to but anyway, I got started. Then my dad (who was a brakeman for the N&W)found that there was a clerk job opening in a week or so at Clare Yards in Cincinnati. Whoever was doing the hiring told him that I could have the job for sure when it opened. Dad really did not want me to have the job because it involved standing close to moving freight cars and copying information from each one. He felt it was a dangerous job, but he relents and arranged for me to sneak aboard a caboose for transportation when the job became available. So about a week later, the job opened and I was to go aboard with him the next day. I was happy and spend the rest of the day playing tennis as usual at Mound Park. As evening came, I saw dad approach the courts. Now he never ever watched me play, so I wondered what was up. He told me the trip was off. In disbelief, I asked why. He said Williams Mfg had called and I was to start with them instead of the N&W clerk job.
So I went to work in the basement sole department pushing carts of soles up to the 4th or 5th floors and bringing down empties. Or maybe it was the other way around. I was making ninety eight cents and hour. About four or five months later, I was given the job of servicing the two platform lines with wedge heels. I was now making over a dollar and hour. I kept my eyes open for an assembly line job which paid even more. One came open as a heel-slotter right behind the Beamer (cutter) operator. The stack of small women's heels came down the line at an alarming rate and I shoved each from the bottom of the stack into the horizontally rotating blade. I was just getting onto the rhythm when the d__m thing kicked on back out into my thumb. Hurt like heck, but I didn't let on. Then a few minutes later, wham... did it again and my thumb was black and blue and beginning to swell. This went on all morning. My thumb was done. I went to the boss and pleaded for my old job back. He kind of laughed and said sure. Seems like swollen thumbs were part of the job. If you wanted the pay, you put of with the pain. That explained why the Beamer operators were without a few fingers.
I spent 10 months there and was laid off just in time to prepare for the school year at OSU.
