During my summer at the Brown Street Mill, I worked a palletized conveyor and checked trays of oil-filled capacitors for leaks. Although I inspected hundreds of silver, soda-can sized components on a daily basis, I never really understood what they were for. In fact, it's quite possible that none of my coworkers did either. Still, as I glimpsed the gritty world of my grandparents, I learned a bit about factory life. So pull up your desk chair and get comfortable in your cubicle. The folks I'm going to tell you about were real flesh and blood, but their names have been changed to protect the innocent.
Davis, the department supervisor, had a middle-aged paunch and a thick, black beard. He walked quietly and entered his domain unannounced. Sometimes, you could see him coming, but the din of the machines made it hard to spread word of his maneuvers. I'm not sure if Davis was really an engineer. After all, he wasn't the kind of man with whom you'd have a long conversation. Still, he was a fair and decent supervisor, something that even the most cynical veterans of Sprague Electric were quick to note. If you got your work done, Davis left you alone.
Then there was Mickey, a thirty-something who wore Lake George muscle shirts and rested in the shade of the loading dock to relieve his hangovers. On good days, he'd pass his time indoors, reading the sports section of the North Adams Transcript whenever he could. If Davis, our supervisor, was busy with a morning's worth of meetings, Mickey would venture out to the parking lot and throw rocks at rusting barrels of PCBs. On a really good day, a large river rat would provide a convenient target. On a really bad day, human resources would ask Mickey to explain why he was late (again) for work.
After all these years, I'll never forget Charlie, Nick, and an older gentleman whose name I can't remember. Charlie lived all summer long for his one-week vacation. His face was worn from near-constant exposure to industrial chemicals, so none of us really knew his age. Nick, or "boy" as his critics like to call him, was a former high school classmate of mine who now ran the paint shop. His father, a long-time Sprague Electric employee, was allegedly responsible for Nick's choice position, and the older workers resented this display of nepotism with a quiet fury. "Boy's" chief critic, an old-timer who had manned a flame-thrower during World War II, would often regale us with tales of paint-shop mishaps and the attendant rework. If you've ever spent an afternoon inhaling xylene, you learn to hate rework.
Well, that's all for now. Part 3 of this industrial folk-tale will appear later this month. Part 1 is already on CR4. Part 4 is online, too.
Editor's Note: Many thanks to frankd20 for providing pictures of a couple of Sprague capacitors. There aren't many folks who just happen to have this stuff laying around in their cubicles. Hey, you should check out his blog, Workbench Creations, sometime.
Check out The Truth About PCBs, too.
Steve Melito - The Y Files
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Re: The Sprague Electric Company's Long Goodbye - Part 2
