Machinists 1942

In the year 1942 may father had a Machine shop in our Basement. There was a war on and we mad aircraft parts for the Glen L Martin corporation which was later Martin Marrietta and still later Gruman Martin Marietta. My Brother was serving his machinist apprentice ship at Bethlehem Steel Company. When he finished his four years he went into the Navy as a Machinist Mate.  All of us kids worked some in the shop and made a little spending money.  My father worked part time at home and full time as a machinist at Bell Telephone. The Government froze him in his job for the duration of the war so he was not able to work full time at home.  It was possible to go to prison for leaving your job.  At the very least if a man were young enough he would be drafted into the service.  No one complained as most thought it was their patriotic duty to work at their defence job as they were called. Everyone was required to work six days a week and got paid time and a half for Saturday. Everyone had a big bank account as there was not much you could buy with the money.  At the end of the war everyone bought a new house and a new car.    
The narration on this video is a bit hokey but it was made for school children. Still for any who are interested in the machinist trade this may be interesting.

Sailing Ships and Sailing Men

As a boy in the 1930's, I knew sailors. Most came home and swore off sailing ships for ever.
Drawn to a wild Baltimore waterfront life, they blew their wages on booze, women and gambling. They were shanghaied or signed onto a ship just to have a home for a time. It was not the sea they were drawn to, but instead, family.
A man, known to do his share high up on the yard arms, had respect.
On land, they were lowly and even tramps. Upon the sea, each a respected seamen! To stand his watch, furl canvas in rain and sleet then lend a hand on the bitter end of a sheet a new boy on board rose to man and mate.
Good people these, though not in a way most of us would recognise.
Among us modern sailboat sailors we may swagger and tell of hanging on with one hand and reefing a flogging sail with the other.
You could with effort, drag the same story from these square rig sailors, though they wouldn't say they were high in the air above mountainous waves reefing and tying as they rounded the notorious capes, driven by snowy squalls. To be 200 ft in the air in gale winds with a sails snapping and booming making every attempt to throw the watch to deck. Cut from heavy cloth, these men who worked, lived and died at sea.
A seaman I knew and was influenced by, was a Mr. Outabridge who fell from the main yard cracking his skull. He supervise the repair of it and inspired the character Doc in the Novel, Of Mooncursers and Other Spun Yarns By Douglas G. Pollard Sr. on sale @ Lulu.com .
My mothers brother Talmage Williams right after World War one was shanghaied aboard a sailing ship in to the far east. After a two year stint when his ship had not made a U.S. Port. He signed aboard a steam ship to Baltimore. Left in port at Tripoli where he had gotten drunk and spent a couple weeks in jail for getting into a bar room brawl. That was his last duty under sail. Arriving home he lost his seaman's papers for a year for jumping ship. During world war two he stayed at sea almost constantly. He made the one and only Mermanske run through the North Sea hauling gasoline. They were close on the German coast and suffered bombings for several days. Talmage said they watch ships burning in the distance every night and all hands fully expected to die on that trip. IT was by luck that they were not attacked by German dive Bombers.
To find men like these today you have to look to our men fighting on the sands of the middle east. So, every Generation has it's men.

Berlin Part I act 2 "for the sake of God there goes I"

During these years when this film was made you could not tell Berlin from my home town of Baltimore Maryland except for the spelling on street signs. The people look the same they dressed much the same and they went to work by street car and walked busy streets with a friendly nod here and there. There was a difference though. The people in Berlin did not have the American constitution that gave them the same status as the king of any country. They were not sovereign.   In the united states, the states are sovereign as is each and every person. Our Federal government not sovereign Under our constitution we as individuals have more power to run the country than does our Federal Government.  WE are more powerful that was Nero of Rome each has ultimate control over hydrogen Bombs and jet fighters. Few other people on earth has a document that demands under penalty of impeachment in a trail before the Congress.  Held by the Chief justice of the supreme court with the intent to convict any tyrant failing to do his constitutional duty to uphold the constitutional rights of each, and every American.
The German people as  result were willing to trust an individual to benevolently run Germany and protect their rights. To protect their rights? Can someone protect your rights for you?  Should we be willing to forestall such an outcome here in this American land.  We have a duty to stand and yell "God Bless America for we are it".   How can we possible be embarrassed to stand on a street corner and proclaim this statement of love of country.

A symphony of video portraying Berlin in 1927 This was the early years of the Third Rich.  The German Government was splitting off into a kind of dangerous socialism called Fascism The world and the United States in it's innocence was soon to loose that innocence and would see an explosion of Faschism.  German trust of Government and a supposedly benevolent socialist Leader Adolph Hitler would soon become the Angel of death to much of Europe the Jewish as well as Polish people.   Some of the slightly older boys I grew up with in the 1930's would loose their lives and the future family's they and their sweat hearts would have had. They were left rotting in the ground.     There is no sound but the video tells the story without it, of a gentle people who handed over their freedom to elegant sounding political figures and they lived and died for their weakness while carrying their guilt to their graves. A rich proud people were bought for a few Government gifts that they themselves paid for. .

The last of the Pufferbelliest

WE were at war! The Japanese had bombed Perl Harbor and Germany declared war. It was 1942! We were loosing in North Africa and we were being Driven back in the Pacific. We were melting down everything metal we could find. We kids collected aluminum pots and pans and turned them over to the fire department to be used in building airplanes.

The Baltimore News Post put a story on the front page that Steam locomotives would be towed to the steel mills to be melted down to build guns and ships. On that day hundreds of people walked down the streets to the railroad crossings to watch the locomotives being pulled through town.

America was well attached to it's steam locomotives.  Lionel and American Flier toy trains were the most popular toys around every Christmas. Engineers were our heroes. We looked on steam railroads in aw.

There was more, we were watching the end of an era and everyone sensed it. It was also the approaching end of a way of life but we didn't sense that and it didn't come for may years. Our American love of machinery would one day become a love of cheap electronic toys. The highly skilled American craftsman was soon to be equated to the low level white collar worker and his skill and years of education and training was lost in a single generation.

Only thirty years later another long line of machinist, mill wrights, tool makers and die makers all tramped there way to big box stores to greet customers.

The pride of a nation, the machinery that provisioned a war on two fronts and overcame odds that the whole world thought America would succumb to was sold to the Chinese for pennies. We have been reduced to making electronic toys and calling this failure, progress.

Today we send our children to get a degree and become nothing more than specialized word smiths. Few thus educated have the ability to think outside their narrow area of their study.

It is the experienced mechanical Engineer that has gone with the machinery. The kids come out of college knowing nothing of real know how and there is no factory to gain the needed experience to become a truly qualified engineers. They don't even know they are lacking.

The Locomotives were only the first to go. Our lessor Gods, the production line would follow.
Our Children are educated to look back on those years  of the assembly line worker as the dirty industrial years.  Of course they were the years where America earned it's wealth to give our youth their educations. God Bless the machinery.

Doug

In Defense of the Republic

Doug Pollard
I am a proud Tea party member! In spite of what most pundits say, I am not angry and I am not fearful. I only want to insure that this land remains the one of the sovereign individual American. This is a task that arises every now and then to test us all while the world watches in complete bewilderment. I don't care about health care, the economic downturn or carbon taxes or credits. These issue are important but they are only issues. They may collectively be a danger in that they further European style Government socialism over our individual sovereignty that we free Americans enjoy. These smaller issues may solve a problem or not, but they are definitely attacking our American individual liberty, We in the Tea party and Republican party are allowing the left to call us an extreme wing of Americans. We are moderates lined up against the political left who has been chipping away at our Constitutional rights and Our sovereignty. Almost all the American people I come in contact with are in agreement with the tea party principals and concerns about our individual rights. There is still a silent majority out there with little voice in America. They will stand up with the Tea party and shout so that we can all come together for the freedom of our grandchildren and the millions of people to come who could feel the harsh boots of socialism. Then finally uncontrolled fascism that these leftist forms of Governments lead to. The only thing between us Americans and dictatorship and despotism is our God Given rights and our Constitutions recognition of those rights and the American experience that has allowed us our extreme independence. For the sake of America's future, we the American States and "We the People" should never, now or in the future except the buying of our souls by federal Government with security and safety nets less they become spider webs of captivity . We should not pledge our allegiance to our Government but instead it should pledge its allegiance to us and our individual sovereignty, for past, present , and future Americans.
Remember it is this Government that shouts "It's the economy, Stupid" as if someone would give us a token of wealth we would all shut up. This is what our present Government thinks of us. Do they hold us in contempt? You Betcha! Doug

Who is running the country and who is dragging it down

We Republicans shout no to everything and the Democrats shout yes to everything. At a time when the the Government is as underwater as the housing market. Is no to everything, the better response?
We in our arrogance decided to let manufacturing go abroad. Superior education could design new high tech products to sell worldwide. Engineers learn to design new products while working in industry, using basics learned in school. With the manufacturing in China there is no place to train young Engineers. We are losing the race in manufacturing our specialty in high tech. Manufacturing down 30% to 10% college Graduates go to wall street. Through Innovation there they create there own jobs. The housing crash, may be the product of innovation. The present Government is willing to take money from the damaged United States industry by taxation and apply it to Wall-street, banking and political economic segments. Highly educated Greeks sat around in their togas and impressed each other with their learning. They failed to put it to work. The Spartans and Romans ran over them. With out Manufacturing for our bright young people to apply their education to, we may well find ourselves in decline. Only manufacturing, construction, wall street, services, and banking can improve the economy. It takes nearly equal parts of each. A government that is against any segment of these ,such as manufacturing is moving our nation towards failure. This is where the present Government stands. Manufacturing is the industry that wags Wall street, Banking and the Governments tail. All should take heed of this. An Artistic Holly wood has impressed Washington with its glamor and hatred of the dirty manufacturing segment that has supported us all for so may generations. Doug