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KENNESAW STATE UNIVERSITY ORAL HISTORY PROJECT COBB COUNTY ORAL HISTORY SERIES NO. 56 INTERVIEW WITH KENNETH P. AND FRANCES E. YOUNGS CONDUCTED BY THOMAS A. AND KATHLEEN S. SCOTT WEDNESDAY, 10 MARCH 1999

Cobb County Oral History Series, No. 56

Interview with Kenneth P. and Frances E. Youngs

Conducted by Thomas A. and Kathleen S. Scott

Wednesday, 10 March 1999

Location: The Youngs residence, Marietta, Georgia

Mr. and Mrs. Youngs worked during World War II for the Bell Aircraft Corporation in Buffalo, New York. Later, they both worked for Lockheed at the plant in Marietta, Georgia.

THOMAS SCOTT: I'm interviewing Ken and Fran Youngs about their experience with Bell Aircraft and also Lockheed. Let's begin with some biographical information. Why don't you tell me when and where you were born, and did you grow up in Buffalo?

KENNETH YOUNGS: Yes. We were both born in Buffalo, but I lived most of my life just outside of Buffalo in Kenmore Village. I grew up and went to high school in Kenmore.

TS: You were born in Buffalo also?

FRANCES YOUNGS: Also. And one street away from Ken.

KY: And didn't know it.

FY: Didn't know it.

TS: Didn't know it? [laughter] What year were you born?

KY: December 4, 1914. So I'm eighty-four now. And you were born. . . ?

FY: July 3, 1919.

TS: All right. So you were born a block away from each other, but then you moved out at a young age to Kenmore?

KY: Yes. To Kenmore, New York.

TS: Now, this is not the farm.

KY: No. That's later. Way later. During the War.

TS: So you're still living in town or is that considered suburb?

KY: Well, it's a village. Up North they call them villages and not towns. Small places.

TS: And so you went to school?

KY: And grew up in Kenmore.

TS: What kinds of jobs did you have before you went to work at Bell Aircraft?

KY: Before I went to Bell Aircraft, I worked a little while for Goodrich Company after school, after I graduated. Then I went to Curtis-Wright Airplanes, and that's in Kenmore, too. I happened to know the manager across the street. So I asked him for a job, and he said, "Sure, come in next Monday." And he gave me a job at Curtis-Wright. I worked there. My third year they wanted me to learn the aluminum spot welding business, because it was very new back then; there wasn't much experience. I had a buddy that left Curtis that I knew, and he went to Bell. He didn't want to stay at Bell; he went into a technical school in Buffalo. So then when he left, he talked to the aluminum welding engineer and he told him about me, that I had been doing this work for about a year now, learning at Curtis. So I got a call from the engineer--not the employment manager, the engineer--and he asked me if I would like to work at Bell. He said it would be a little more money; and I said, "Well, it sounds good to me." He said, "Come in for an interview. We'll have to fill out an application." I said, "Okay." So I did go over and see him; and he, after learning what I knew, after learning what I knew to tell him, he was very encouraged to have me go to work right away. [chuckle] I said, "No, I can't do that. It's a policy of Curtis-Wright to give them three days' notice, so that they can make out their papers and the rest of the pay and everything." So I gave Curtis-Wright a one-week notice. Then I went to Bell. They did the application and filled out forms and things. Then he took me into the plant and showed me the area that I would be working in. It was a very small department at the time. They only had two machines. Of course, they didn't know too much about them. The Sciaky machine is a French-made machine, and they didn't know too much about them. So I started there working on their machines and showed them how to set them up and how to weld aluminum.

TS: What kind of machine was it? What's the name of it?

KY: Sciaky. Then we went from day-to-day working on samples and testing and started to teach some, a couple of other employees, how to do the work. It grew from then on, because they had no one that didn't know how to do this work. It was new to Bell; so as the department grew, we got more employees and it grew. Why, in four weeks they wanted me to be foreman of the department. [laughter] It was small, of course, that was all right with me. As time went on, we just expanded right out. I think people started coming in to teach people how to do this work.

TS: Let's back up just a little bit. Curtis-Wright, what were they making in Kenmore?

KY: The P-40 airplane, P-40 pursuit airplane.

TS: Let's see, Kenmore wasn't the headquarters for Curtis-Wright was it, or was it?

KY: Yes, it was their main place, at that time, before they moved to Gennessee Avenue. They had a plant in Gennessee Avenue later on, but this was the main plant that I was in, Kenmore.

TS: I see. How large a place was that?

KY: Oh, it was a pretty big plant. It was a little bigger than Bell on Elmwood Avenue.

TS: Really? How many employees?

KY: They had about 18,000. They employed a lot of people.

TS: Wow. So they were much larger than Bell then.

KY: Yes, at that time.

TS: Okay. Then Curtis-Wright was making the planes, but I was trying to think; didn't they make something like an engine for the Bell Aircraft Company too, later on?

KY: Not Curtis. I'm trying to think of the company, was it Writon-Dixon? Writon-Dixon Motors, I think they had. Allison engines.

TS: You're right.

KY: That was for the P-39. Now, Curtis didn't use those, but Bell did. We were building the first pursuit airplane. It had a fifty millimeter cannon in the nose. It could follow up an enemy's plane and shoot it down. It was the only plane in the country at that time.

TS: And in your job now, working with aluminum, what exactly were you making on the plane?

KY: We were making component parts, small parts, large parts, wing parts. We had to spot weld all those parts together. We had jigs to hold them. As we grew more and more we had more jigs so that we could do the work more easily and save time.

KATHLEEN SCOTT: Was the objective to have aluminum, as opposed to some other element, because it was lighter?

KY: Oh, yes.

KS: So that you were trying to make anything aluminum that you could.

KY: That's right. There were people that could do steel work, but not aluminum. That was different. It had to be done different. It had to be treated different. You had to have it degreased real good and then cleaned with steel wool and rubbed down before you could weld. We made samples out of little strips. We'd weld strips together to see how the machine should be set up for that particular thickness of the material, because there's thirty-two thousandths, forty-thousandths, and so on.

TS: So this is something pretty new then, I guess.

KY: Yes, it was new, it was a new field. That's why they wanted me to start to work right away, because they had nobody to do it.

TS: Now, when you go to work at Bell, it's on Elmwood Avenue that you're working.

KY: Right, the Elmwood plant.

TS: I was by there last October and it's a pretty sizable place, although small compared to the Niagara Falls plant.

KY: Yes.

TS: But still it's not a small place.

KY: No. They were more congested. They had everything in there.

TS: There's a Home Depot that they've built next door to it now.

KY: Oh, is that right?

TS: And it's much larger than you're typical Home Depot store, to say the least. There's a little shopping area around there and Home Depot and parking. I've forgotten what's in the Elmwood plant now, but it's being used for something other than making airplanes. But, at any rate, when you went to work there what year would that have been?

KY: 1939 I went there.

TS: Thirty-nine is the year that the Germans invaded Poland and World War II began in Europe.

KY: Yes.

TS: But before we got involved in World War II. Were you making planes that went to the British in those years?

KY: Yes. And later on it was Russia too. The British and Russia. We didn't build the whole airplane there, did we? I can't remember. An assembly line.

FY: That was in '42.

KY: I think they did, yes. They had no other place. They had to do it at Elmwood.

TS: Well, you know, the plant in Marietta in World War II was mainly an assembly plant; but it sounds like you're making the parts as well as assembling them.

KY: Yes. Well, not for the B-29 Bomber. Bell made it, Marietta made the B-29 Bomber. So everything had to be made at the bomber plant over here, the [current] Lockheed plant. When we were operating, they sent in people from here up to Buffalo to train in our department to learn the aircraft work. So that's how I happened to end up at Lockheed, because of that.

TS: So you were actually training people?

KY: Yes. Training people to do aircraft work and teaching how to make all these component parts and small parts for the airplane. I think it's a good time to mention the [Georgia] boys. I took a couple of the boys out to the farm that I had, Georgia boys, and they saw how the rolling land was where I had my farm southwest of Buffalo. Then in later years when Fran and I left Buffalo, we went to Florida and had a small place down there, a little motel. A Georgia boy, one of them, George Hayes, who came from Jasper, Georgia, he stopped in to see us. I think he stopped twice, but the last time it was Christmas of 1950. Fran mentioned that we wanted to get out of Florida; she didn't like it. He said, "Why don't you come up to Georgia?" And she says, "Oh, I wouldn't want to live in Georgia." And he says, "Why not?" She says, "All those swamps up and down the east coast and old rickety bridges." And he said, "Well, have you ever been to Atlanta?" We said, "No." He said, "Well, it was rolling country just like your farm." He was at my farm, you know. Of course, that brightened her eyes up a little bit. We were glad to hear that. He said, "The Lockheed [Corporation] is taking over in 1951." That was the '50 Christmas; so that wasn't far away. So he said, "You guys could probably get a job up there." So we thought, "Well, after the tourist traffic lets up we'll go up there in March." He said, "I have a garage apartment in Vinings." A lot of Atlanta people used to go to Vinings in the summertime. So he said, "You're welcome to go up there and stay and go to Lockheed and see if you can get a job." So that's what we did, we went there and we met him on Peachtree Avenue. He lived on Peachtree Avenue in a big, homey room there--he was single or divorced, I don't know which it was--and so we followed him to Vinings. We thought, "Where are we going?" It wound around and around. So then the next day, we enjoyed it so much we didn't even go near Lockheed. We walked around the woods--do you remember how your mother liked that? So then the next day, after that, we went to Lockheed. They wanted me to go to work right away being the foreman at Bell. We couldn't do that, so we had to wait till a later date in April.

TS: Well, we'll get back to that in just a minute. That's a good story. Is he right that the land was very similar in north Georgia.

KY: Terrain, yes.

TS: Not the soil, but the terrain.

KY: The terrain, it was rolling. My farm was rolling country like around here.

TS: But no red clay up there.

KY: No, no red clay, it was all black.

TS: Now, how did you get that farm? You didn't have it when you were growing up you said.

KY: No, I bought that after I was working at Bell. We used to go to Rushford Lake. It was right next to a lake, I and my friends; and we heard that this farm was for sale; it was right near the highway. I got interested in visiting the farms around there; so I bought the farm, because it was for sale. Then I put beef cattle on it. I raised beef cattle during the War while I was working at Bell.

TS: But you didn't have any farm background for it; so you must have . . .

KY: No, but I learned pretty fast. My dad, he came out there and helped us hay. I had the tenant that I bought it from. He was willing to stay there and work for me. For fifty dollars a month he worked for me. He planted crops: beans, corn, wheat, and oats. Of course, I learned all of that too. After I moved to the farm, after the war when we quit, I went out there and lived for a year. I did a lot of plowing for the man next door with his tractor. He had the tractor and equipment, and I plowed for him, and I plowed my own land and grew crops.

TS: How many years did you work for Bell Aircraft? You said you started in '39.

KY: Five years.

TS: '39 to '44?

KY: '45.

TS: Till the War ended?

KY: Yes. Then I went to [the Bell plant at] Niagara Falls and worked for a few months. I didn't like going back and forth there; so I quit. I said, "Well, I'll go out on the farm and see what I can do."

TS: Well, Bell Aircraft was certainly growing during those years that you were there.

KY: They certainly were.

TS: Could you say a little bit about that? How many employees were there when you started, would you say?

KY: In the plant?

TS: Yes.

KY: Oh, I imagine there were 1,200. There were well over a thousand. Because they were small when I went there in '39. They were just really getting organized.

TS: How many did they have when you left? Well, I guess they were beginning to demobilize by the time you left anyway, weren't they?

KY: Oh yes, when I left.

TS: Maybe I should ask, at the peak, how big were they in Buffalo?

KY: You mean right in the center of the War?

TS: Yes, I guess they opened up the Niagara Falls plant sometime during the War, didn't they?

KY: That's right. I just can't remember when they opened it, but it must have been around '41, '42.

TS: So I guess lots of people went to Niagara Falls at that time. But you stayed at Elmwood.

KY: Yes.

TS: So Elmwood maybe didn't grow that much, but Niagara Falls is where the real growth was?

KY: No, the plant at Elmwood had more people than they did at Niagara Falls.

TS: Well, how many would you say? Ten thousand? Twenty thousand?

KY: It was about twelve thousand.

TS: Did your job change as the War went along or did you continue to be a supervisor?

KY: I continued to be the general foreman. When the War broke out we had to serve three shifts, and we had three hundred employees. I had other sub-foremen and lead men. Fran came in my department every day, and she'd asked me sometimes to approve a time card, if they didn't punch in or they forgot to punch in. So I'd have to approve the card, and that's how we got acquainted. She came through there every day and checked every employee in our department.

TS: Well, maybe we need to ask Fran about your experience at Bell for a little bit. What year did you go to work?

FY: Forty-two.

TS: So you were very young at that time.

FY: [chuckle] About twenty-three, I guess.

TS: Yes, I guess you were a few years out of school by then.

FY: Yes. I worked in the armament plant. Of course, they closed that in about '43.

KY: They didn't close it really, they shipped it up to Burlington, Vermont. They didn't want all those things in the same plant in case of being bombed or anything. So they moved that whole division up to Burlington, Vermont. And I don't know, '42 was that?

FY: Yes. I was in shipping and receiving. Then they transferred me to purchasing. After that plant closed, I went over to the main office as a time keeper. That's when I met Ken.

KY: She was a time keeper in my department.

TS: Now what exactly does a time keeper, what all does that involve?

FY: Well, every morning and afternoon we had to spot check people to make sure they were at their job. Then we also checked the time cards--they don't have that any more--but we'd have to be at the time clock also to check. Especially when they left for home.

TS: To see if they left when they said they did.

FY: Yes. In between time, I worked in the office on their time that they put in. Then we'd pass out the pay checks at the end of the week. It was office work.

KY: I could understand why the

FY: That's why they had spot checks.

KY: Cheating the government, it caught up with him.

TS: Well, one of the things I learned from my interviews that I did up in Buffalo is that some of the people down at the Georgia plant who had come right off the farm didn't know anything about a time card. I was told about one man that, I guess, his first week on the job at any rate, he punched in on Monday morning and didn't punch out until Friday evening. [laughter]

KY: That's when the foreman has to sign the card and fill it in and approve it.

TS: He thought you were just supposed to hold on to the card.

FY: Yes. [laughter] It's all changed now.

TS: I guess it is now. But it's automatic at any rate that you punched in and then it recorded your time and then you punched out and it recorded your time.

FY: That's right.

KY: Yes.

TS: And then the question was whether you were really there when you said you were there.

FY: That's what the time keeper does, checked on everybody.

TS: Did you find very many people who weren't there?

FY: No, no. They knew better.

KY: Right. They knew they were being checked.

FY: They knew they were being checked. They must have had trouble in the past to have done that, I mean, to have spot checking, but it was interesting.

KY: Or they learned that from Curtis-Wright maybe when people used to try to cheat and have somebody punch their card in and out. Get paid for it and not even be there. That part was a hand-me-down to Bell.

TS: Was there much of a problem with absenteeism?

FY: No. Not that I remember.

KY: I don't either. Our employees were real steady.

TS: And people showing up on time?

FY: No, I don't remember having any trouble like that.

KY: Very seldom somebody'd be late.

FY: I thought Larry Bell went to Curtis-Wright.

TS: No, he had nothing to do with Curtis-Wright. He was with Fleet; Reuben Fleet had a company called Consolidated before. I guess, Bell worked there from maybe 1928 to 1935. Then Consolidated moved to San Diego, and that's when Bell started his own company. Let me ask a few other questions too about the War, about women working at Bell Aircraft. At the Marietta plant, about 37 percent of the work force was female by the end of the War. What about up at the Elmwood plant? Were there lots of women who were working?

FY: They were coming in gradually.

KY: Lots of women.

FY: People didn't think much of women going into a plant to work; but the pay was so good that they came in, in a hurry.

TS: There was prejudice against it, you're saying, at the beginning? When you went there?

FY: Yes. TS: Did you get any criticism for working?

FY: I didn't care. [laughter] I was too poor to care.

KY: The ratio was about the same, I believe, as down here. We had lots and lots of women. I had lost a lot of good men in the department. This man right here, he had three children--Smitty--he was married. I went to Florida--I used to have to go to the board often--and tried to get him released from being drafted, and they wouldn't do it. He was a married man. Here I was single, and the neighbors didn't like that in Kenmore, that I didn't go. I was willing to go, but they wouldn't let me go. Bell wouldn't let me go.

FY: I don't know if this is important or not, but the women didn't wear nets when we first started. I can remember seeing a woman get her hair caught in one of those machines. It was traumatic. After that they had to wear nets.

KY: It was a lathe machine. A woman's hair twisted right up into it. I forget what happened. She was damaged pretty bad. Her scalp was all torn up.

FY: Oh, yes.

KS: It gave you a respect for the machines, didn't it?

KY: A lot of things happened at first during the War with women in the plant.

TS: You referred earlier to a man named Farnum Smith and an article from January, 1943. Was this the Bellringer that this was in?

KY: Yes. It was in the Bellringer paper.

TS: It's entitled: "All-American Team Work." The caption to the photo says, "Ken Youngs, foreman Elmwood Department 50, examines reversible hinge for marking fixture which won Farnum Smith, sub-foreman, a CDS award.... Ken is a three-time winner of foreman awards."

KY: Construction Design Suggestions award. I had won quite a number of them, because I was interested in helping them design things.

TS: So that's January, '43 of the Bellringer. Did you keep up with your Bellringers? Did they give everybody one?

KY: Yes, everybody got a Bellringer.

TS: But you threw them away?

KY: That's right. Couldn't keep them. I think we got them twice a month, I believe it was that we got them. They had a lot of information to write up.

TS: Let me ask Fran a few more questions about your job. In the unit that you were in, I guess it was mainly women that were working?

FY: Oh no, it was men and women who were timekeepers.

TS: And what about supervisors? Were they men or women?

FY: They were men.

TS: Were they?

FY: Yes. Still.

TS: [laughter] Okay. What about the pay? Was there equal pay for equal work when you had men and women as time keepers?

KY: Not at first.

FY: Not at first. I don't remember what the men were making, but I just know that my pay doubled when I went there from where I had been in the department store office.

TS: So you weren't about to complain about it, regardless.

FY: No, and double time on Saturday and Sunday.

TS: But you don't really know what the men were making?

FY: No, I have no idea.

KS: You said you were working for a retail store?

FY: A, M & A's.

KS: A Buffalo Adam, Meldrum, and Anderson.

FY: Yes. In the office.

KS: That's a retail department store like our Rich's.

FY: A big department store in Buffalo.

KY: Back then they only made about $27.00 a week.

FY: Oh, I think I was making $33.00, without overtime. And that was good.

KY: You didn't get paid much back then.

FY: Well, that was big money for me.

KY: One hundred dollars a week--that was big money back then.

TS: Thirty-three dollars a week was about double of what you were making in the department store?

FY: Yes.

KY: That's right. It would be.

TS: What about for a foreman? Is that up like $100.00?

KY: Yes, I was making $100.00, and that was big pay back then.

TS: And that's without overtime too?

KY: That's without overtime.

TS: And so if you work on Saturday and Sunday, it's double time?

KY: No. Not for salaried, and I was on salary. We got time and a half though.

TS: Did you?

KY: Yes.

TS: And how many were you supervising?

KY: Well, on days I don't know. How many people did we have on days? There must have been well over a hundred. About a hundred.

FY: That you were supervising? Not in your department.

KY: Well, yes, I had assistant foremen and several supervisors under me. And I think there were over a hundred people. I remember there was three hundred in the whole department near the end. The graveyard shift was quite small. The second shift, as they used to call it, the evening shift, that was a little smaller than the day shift.

TS: So your title stays the same, but your responsibilities grow, it sounds like.

KY: Yes.

TS: You have more sub-foremen working under you.

KY: It did.

TS: Did wages go up as the War went along or was there a freeze on wages?

FY: I can't remember getting any more raises.

KY: I did. I got a few raises during the War, but not too much.

FY: Did you? Well, I thought we didn't. [chuckle] Really, three years you don't get too much of a raise. That's how long I was there.

TS: I want to ask something that I haven't been real clear on. I gather that, once you took a job during War time with a company like Bell, it was kind of hard to quit.

KY: Right. It was. You'd be drafted.

FY: The men, not the women.

KY: If you quit, the men, right. They had to stay put.

TS: So that's the reason, just the draft. But otherwise, like somebody fifty-five years old, they could quit any time they wanted to? There wasn't any stipulation that you had to stay there since you were in the defense industry?

KY: Well, no, you couldn't leave. I don't think they would leave. They tried to keep them as long as they could, because labor was very scarce back then due to the men going to War. So we made all efforts to keep them there.

TS: I guess you had female employees that you were supervising since you said that it was hard to find the men.

KY: Oh, yes.

TS: In your department, about how many women would there have been?

KY: Oh, I think we had about eighty women. Yes. I mean, the whole department eighty women.

TS: Out of the three hundred?

KY: Yes. Maybe there was a little more.

TS: So that would be about twenty-five percent then, I guess.

KY: Yes.

TS: They were doing the same jobs that men were doing, I gather.

KY: Yes, they would assemble component parts and did a lot of cleaning--you had to do a lot of cleaning for aluminum spot welding. They did a lot of the cleaning. We had a cleaning section, an assembly section . . .

TS: I see.

KY: It was broken up like that.

TS: So cleaning parts, you might have somebody that just has a job to clean parts?

KY: Just to clean all day long. A lot of it was steel wool after it was degreased in the tanks. Methyl-ethyl-ketone--you know what that is?

TS: No.

KY: A degreaser. About ten feet long. MEK they call it. You can buy it at Home Depot. They still have it. You have to be very careful not to breathe it. You might get drunk jag.

TS: We have an interview with a woman down in Marietta that was cleaning things, and she didn't quite understand what she was doing, apparently, but she was cleaning parts, it sounded like.

KY: Yes, that's probably what it was for. Aluminum welding.

TS: And she wasn't sure whether they were actually strengthening the parts or just cleaning them.

KY: Cleaning them. You had to have it shiny; in order to weld them, they had to be clean.

TS: Yes. I guess Larry Bell's office was out at Niagara Falls; so was he around very much in the plant?

KY: No, we did see him once in awhile; but then, of course, when they opened that plant, he was in Niagara Falls most of the time. We had a factory manager to take over the plant.

TS: Who was manager? Do you remember?

KY: No, I can't think of his name. I got to know him real well, and I didn't hesitate to go up to his office to discuss things. At that time, also now, it was very secretive. We were trying to make the jet airplane, and it was a hush-hush program. We were making parts that we didn't even know what they were for. But I knew the factory manager for the Jet program, A. (Art) J. Brodnick. They called that a separate factory, the jet program. During the week, we'd have to take time off to go play badminton for recreation. We all had to do that, department heads, and he was a factory manager. So we played badminton together in Buffalo. That's how I got to know that it was the jet airplane, and these parts were being made for the jet airplane.

TS: Was he supposed to say that?

KY: No.

TS: [laughter]

KY: No, it was a hush-hush program. Very, very secretive.

TS: Now, this was in the Elmwood plant?

KY: The Elmwood plant. Making parts for the jet airplane. See, there were no jet airplanes at that time. But the United States had got the jump on this thing, and they were designing jet airplanes.

KS: Now, was the badminton to relieve stress?

KY: That's right. If we were titled, we had to go.

KS: Did they have stress management for the clerical workers?

FY: No. [laughter]

TS: They're the ones that were causing the stress. [laughter] So, where they're designing the jet airplane now, were they totally closed off from everybody else?

KY: Yes. Closed doors. People couldn't get in there. Only the ones that were working in there.

TS: Oh, I wanted to ask you, I heard they had these badges in Marietta Bell plant. I just wondered what you had out there in Buffalo. But they had these little badges they had to wear, and there were different colors on them. If you had one color, you could go to this part of the plant; and if you had a different color, you could go to another part; I think, if you had a black circle around it, you could go anywhere in the plant that you wanted. One guy I was interviewing had a half black circle which meant he could go into about half the plant.

KY: Here's our badge. Everybody in the plant had that badge.

TS: Right.

KY: Department foreman right there.

TS: Okay. So, it says, "Bell Aircraft Corp."; and it's not a round badge, it's a square badge.

KY: They gave us all rectangular shape.

FY: And you had to have that on when you went in.

TS: It says, "Bell Aircraft Corporation" and then it says, "K. Youngs, Foreman" and then there's a number 50 and it looks like a different color where the fifty is and that's your unit too, wasn't it?

KY: Yes, Department 50. And here's the badge that you had.

TS: Let's see, now that looks like a round badge there though, doesn't it, that you have on in this picture?

KY: I don't remember it really.

TS: Okay.

KY: Fran knew Farnum Smith, too. He stopped to see us in Florida.

TS: Fran, did you wear a badge?

FY: We all had to.

KY: Everybody, oh yes. To get into the plant.

TS: Did you go through a gate to get inside?

FY: Yes.

KY: Right. Turn-style.

TS: So they read your badge when you went through.

FY: Yes.

KY: Yes, just so they can see it.

KS: Did you have dog tags to wear?

KY: No.

TS: The only thing you had was your badge?

KY: Yes, just our badge. We didn't have the card; now, at Bell we had to have a card but not at Lockheed.

TS: And you said that Bell wouldn't let you leave for the draft.

KY: That's right.

TS: Well, this was probably of greater importance than anything else you could be doing since you had the skill; and so, in effect, if you worked for the defense industry, that's top priority stuff.

KS: That's why you weren't drafted.

KY: That is correct. I was twenty-six years old when I was a foreman, the youngest foreman in the plant. They told me, when they made me foreman, not to push too hard to get the work out; but you had to use some diplomacy on how you did it, in telling people to do things.

TS: Told you not to push the workers too hard?

KY: Right.

KS: In terms of management. Not to be overbearing, because he was so young.

KY: Right.

TS: Did you have a union in the plant?

KY: Not during the War. I can't remember.

FY: I don't think so.

KY: I can't remember a union during the War. We had a union at Curtis before the War, but it was very mild; it was nothing like the CIO was.

TS: So you didn't have to work with the union, as you recall.

KY: No.

TS: But did they give you training on foremanship?

KY: Oh, no end of it. We had to go to meetings and we had to speak. Yes, we were training a lot of the time. How to Win Friends and Influence People, we had to read that book and use it in our work. Yes, they had lots of different training classes.

TS: I was reading in one of the Bellringers about the school in Marietta where, I guess, the teachers were all women and the gist of the article was the men going back to school to female teachers. Part of what they were learning, it sounded like things like How to Win Friends and Influence People; but they were also teaching them how to do electrical harness work and all kinds of skilled tasks.

KY: Well, they taught blue print reading too. Of course, I didn't need it, I knew blue print reading from Curtis-Wright. I wasn't forced to do that.

TS: So how often would you say you had to take one of these classes?

KY: About every three months.

TS: Really?

KY: Yes. I can't remember all the classes that I went to. But I went to a lot of them.

TS: When the War ended, when did they close down the Elmwood plant? Was that right away?

KY: Let's see, when was V-Day? May?

FY: '45.

KY: Yes, it was after V-Day, May, 1945. Of course, they had a lot of things to dispose of, and they shipped things to Niagara Falls. They had sales too that you could buy parts like rivets and bolts and nuts and watches and all that. I still have some out there. A lot of washers, little washers, from Bell Aircraft, not Lockheed but Bell.

KS: Brass parts, any brass parts at all?

KY: No.

KS: All aluminum or steel?

KY: No, I had some aluminum rivets, but you can't rivet without being in the plant, so I disposed of those. But there are a lot of other things that I had.

TS: Now you met Fran while she was coming around to get papers signed on whether people were actually working or not?

FY: I was checking on his department.

KY: Yes. I don't know whether she had to check me or not, maybe she did.

FY: [laughter] I don't think so. I checked you out!

KY: Yes. [laughter]

FY: There weren't very many single men left.

KY: No. We didn't date until near the end of the... Well, I guess it was one year, you were working the last year there, I guess, we dated.

KS: Was there a frown on that kind of fraternization in the plant?

FY: They didn't know.

KY: They didn't know.

TS: But you were different departments, I guess.

KY: Now, Lockheed, it was different.

TS: Really? Even in different departments?

KY: Yes.

FY: Yes, see we were in different departments.

KY: You had to be careful.

TS: At Lockheed. But Bell, they didn't care if you were in different departments or they just didn't know?

FY: I think it was all new to them. See, there weren't too many women working with men back then; so there were a lot of things that were new. And now it's altogether different.

KY: We had women that we trained to spot weld on the machines; they worked the machines and had to set them up. Well, when you read some of these things, we had a lot of jigs and things that we made, and that helped them to be able to weld the parts.

KS: Because they didn't have to hold the tools all by themselves with the muscles; it was the jig that held the tools, is that right?

KY: Right, right, in many cases it was, yes.

TS: Well, World War II is what really seems to make the aircraft industry.

KY: That's right.

TS: Lots of new things are learned.

FY: It changed the world. [laughter]

KY: Let's see, what else can you say about Bell?

TS: Did you feel like it was an exciting time to be there?

KY: Yes, very much so. I had a friend, a close friend; he was older than I was, Bill Gunderson. He come in the plant after I did as an employment manager, and so I could get people jobs. In fact, my dad's brother-in-law, Uncle Emmett, our uncle, I got him a job right away. He was in a bank or some place, and he needed a job. So I just called Bill; and he said, "Tell him to come in."

FY: He was a time keeper with me. I knew his uncle before I knew Ken.

KY: Yes, how about that.

TS: Now which uncle is it that you're talking about?

KY: Emmett Luedeke.

FY: But he also had the orchestra in Buffalo at Lowe's Theater.

KY: He was a Lowe's director.

TS: Now, whose uncle was he? He's your uncle?

KY: Yes, my dad's sister's husband.

FY: He was a prominent man in Buffalo.

KY: Oh, yes. And he had to come into the plant.

KS: And he had worked for a bank?

KY: Yes.

KS: Was he laid off?

KY: I don't know how that turned out. He was, of course, like we told you, the director at Lowe's Theater for great years, and he did work in a bank, too. I don't know whether it was on the side or when it was; but he was forced out and had to come into the aircraft work.

TS: Okay. Well, let's switch to Lockheed.

KY: To get to Lockheed, that's why we're here. When the Georgia boys came up to Buffalo and trained, [George Hayes] came out to the farm, and he stopped to see us in Florida.

TS: Right. Now, how did you get down to Florida in the first place?

KY: We just packed up and moved.

TS: Okay.

KY: That's a long story.

FY: It is a long story.

TS: Had you heard from somebody that Florida was the place to go?

FY: From the farm, your friends at the farm had gone to Florida.

KY: Yes. That's right, friends at the farm right not too far away went down to Florida every year.

KS: And you went down to visit them?

KY: Yes, that's right. We went down to visit them. They got us a trailer that we could stay in, a regular trailer. I was on vacation.

FY: Well, no, to work. We were going down there for one month to work. Ken thought he'd get a job but, see, they wouldn't allow him.

KY: They didn't want a Yankee. They just wouldn't give me work.

FY: So I worked in the "5 & 10" in Bradenton.

TS: I was going to say what else was there in Florida [other than northerners], but maybe this is before then. You say this was before there were a lot of northerners who had come down to that Bradenton area?

KY: Well, yes, but a lot of them that came down there were just down there for vacation and just stayed for the cold weather.

TS: Oh, they didn't want them to work?

FY: No. They didn't want them to take the work, at that time.

KY: They didn't like other kinds of people.

TS: But, Fran, it was easier for you to get a job?

FY: I just went to the "5 & 10" and got a job, and that supported us for the month.

KY: Yes. Well, from there, we took a ride over to the east coast. Now, you know where Bradenton is on the west coast; and Stuart, Florida was on the east coast. So we made the loop, went over there, and foolishly we saw a place for sale that was a couple of little buildings for starting a motel. So we thought, "Gee, maybe that would be a good idea. Buy that and make some money."

KS: Was this like really a tourist camp rather than what we would call today a motel or was it. . . ?

KY: Separate buildings.

FY: Well, actually these were little efficiency apartments.

KS: And each number was a separate living unit?

KY: Yes.

FY: He had visions of building a circle, I guess.

KY: All the way around. There was a little lake; and I thought, "Oh, we could beautify that and build all the way around." And I had to finish--two apartments did I finish?

FY: Yes.

KY: Yes, I finished the one apartment. I had to plaster.

TS: But you decided that wasn't for you?

KY: We were starving to death. In the spring and summer, at that time, there was nothing down there.

FY: We were a hundred miles north of Miami. People didn't stop in Stuart; they went right on down to Miami.

KY: Yes. We didn't know that, that they wouldn't stop. Until they got full and things got all filled up, then they would stop.

FY: We were in the wrong location.

KY: Just the wrong location.

TS: At least you were warm there.

FY: Right! [laughter]

KY: We would go to Miami once in awhile, when we lived there, and come back. We were forty miles north of West Palm Beach. You've heard of West Palm Beach a lot.

TS: Yes. So Florida didn't work out, and that's when you decided to come up to Georgia.

KY: Well, no, we bought equipment, ice cream equipment. You know, we were in the ice cream business, manufacturing ice cream. And that wasn't flush enough.

FY: Well, the real estate man that owned the property was the one that was making the money. Because we paid big rent for our place.

TS: I see.

KY: Yes. We paid big rent for our store. You never saw pictures of our stores, did you?

TS; So he had a guaranteed income, and you didn't.

KY: Yes, we had Youngs Ice Cream; we had at one time. Then we had Ken's Ice Cream and changed the name a couple of times. It just didn't work out. So we sold that in 1950, just before our friend came down there that Lockheed was opening up. So we were free of that.

FY: We almost moved to Richmond. Ken's sister lived in Richmond, Virginia.

TS: What would you have done there?

FY: We don't know. [chuckle]

KY: I don't know. I could do lots of different work.

TS: Well, Lockheed, I guess, was ideal for you then.

KY: Yes. Lockheed was.

FY: It was a Godsend.

TS: Well, you were saying about coming up to Vinings and spending the first day out in the woods instead of going to see the plant.

KY: That's right.

TS: Then I guess the next day you went over to the plant?

KY: Right.

TS: It seems like it opened in January of '51.

KY: January of '51.

TS: Now, is this before then that you're talking about, now?

KY: No, I'm talking about after the first of the year. We went up in March after the tourist traffic let up.

TS: So two months after they've opened up.

KY: Yes. We went up in March to see them and investigate. I filled out an application. The Head House Number One was the employment office at that time; they didn't have one out in front, out on the street.

TS: Head House One?

KY: Head Houses, one, two, three, four, five.

TS: Okay.

KY: That was the employment office; so we went in there, we both did, I guess, and filled out an application.

FY: No.

TS: You didn't?

FY: No.

KY: I did.

TS: And how long did it take you to get the job?

FY: Immediately.

KY: They wanted me right away, seeing the experience that I had; they wanted me right away and I couldn't do it. We had our place, our property down in Florida. So we went back down and got our friends to take care of it. I told them we'd get back in April; and we did, we got back. We came back up to Marietta in April; and our friends took care of the property to sell it and take care of it for us, which they did.

TS: Well, when you started working at Lockheed, what did you do at first? What was your first job?

KY: That's a good question. There was about twenty of us working at (benches). They were trying to get us to make up some form blocks and file them and smooth them, just to keep us busy, give us something to do. Then as more people came into the plant in April, the end of April, they saw my application and everything and wanted to know if I'd--they'd rather give me a supervisor's job. We were going to remodel the B-47's. And so the super--it was the superintendent of the plant--asked me if I would take a group of men and clean parts. They were all colored boys, black boys. He said, "How many do you want to start out with?" And I said, "Well, give me ten. I believe we can clean up a lot of these parts." They were consoles, radio parts, and instruments and things, because they were dirty, they were bad, we had to clean them all up.

TS: Because they'd been stored the last five years?

KY: Yes, and we had to clean all those up. Then I did have a couple of white men. One of them was Tommy Rich, whom I knew. I made him a lead man. He knew how to handle colored people. Of course, I didn't have any problem, because I was soft and easy with them, soft-spoken, and they worked hard for me.

TS: Were there any black workers at Buffalo?

KY: No, all white in our department.

FY: Yes.

TS: Pretty much in the whole plant too?

KY: So as time went on, they gave me another area along with this area, the paint shop area. I forget what the other area was. As things cleared up, we got finished; and we got these parts all going in the airplanes. Well, then the department foreman saw I was riding my bicycle, going back and forth, covering my areas; and he wanted to know if I'd come and work with him. I said, "Oh, as long as we can arrange it, yes, I'd be glad to." It was a department called 1807. It was the biggest department at Lockheed, and I started working for him. He was the type of person that if something went wrong he'd flare up and he'd cuss people out and make them feel like a little . . .

FY: Inferior.

KY: Dork. Inferior. People started to report him to top management, and they wouldn't allow that. So they had to yank him out of there. Then the superintendent of the plant asked if I would--the department wasn't going too good--he asked if I would consider taking it over to see what I could do. So they made me foreman of that department, 1807. That department, not at the time I took it over, it got to be 600 people; it was the largest department in the whole plant under one head. Of course, I had charge of three shifts. And, well, in six months' time it improved. They came back and told me that they were satisfied about the way it was being run. After that, I worked another six months in that department. I worked there a little over a year, and things were turning out fine. We had a lot of people coming in and getting into the C-130 program, and we were making fabrications, they called it, parts, all kinds of parts--not assemblies--but parts for the airplane. So then he came around, and things went so well that he asked me if I wanted to go to engineering, research and development. I said, "Yes, I would like to go over there and try it out." So I went to engineering, and that was a combination there. I went to engineering, experimental research and development, it was. That's where I worked the last ten years, and I made more money as a supervisor in engineering than I did as a department foreman. I was flabbergasted; I couldn't understand that. I thought that the department foreman should be more. But I made more money as a supervisor.

TS: You received a commendation certificate from Lockheed, dated 19 March 1958. It says, "This is to commend Ken Youngs for exceptional performance in connection with his assignment during modification of YC #1001 airplane as a test bed to C-130B configuration." Is YC-1001 a type of an airplane?

KY: The number of the airplane. 1001.

TS: Oh, okay.

KY: It's one of the first airplanes built that we modified.

TS: I see. Okay. But this is a C-130 airplane?

KY: Yes.

TS: I've got you. C-130B.

KY: That put a feather in my hat, the commendation. It concludes, "It is also commendable that actual hours expended were appreciably below estimate in budgeted hours." And that was in engineering. He was a big wheel at that time there, Lou Bauer [the department head of Research and Development Engineering, whose signature appears on the commendation certificate].

KS: Now, was this type of work easier than having to manage those 600 employees?

KY: No, I had to go to a lot of meetings in engineering.

KS: Was there more tension in engineering?

KY: I think so.

FY: You had to evaluate the people.

KY: Oh yes, but that's a side issue. I had to evaluate people.

FY: It bothered you.

KY: Supervisors, and it was a little more strain on you. I think it was because I was more natural at the department in the plant.

TS: Now, are you classified as an engineer at this time?

KY: No, no, worked in engineering. Supervisor.

TS: Supervisor in Research and Development Engineering.

KY: Right, Research and Development.

KS: As a supervisor, did you supervise engineer types?

KY: People.

KS: Okay. So was maybe part of the tension or the stress because you were supervising "higher-skilled workers"?

KY: Right. I had some engineers that worked under me.

KS: So there's more tension there, resentment?

KY: That's right. It would be for me.

FY: They had more education.

KY: Yes. You could feel that.

TS: The commendation is dated March, 1958 and you say you stayed in that department about ten years?

KY: Ten years. While we took care of duplexes and houses and things like that--we did that on the side.

FY: Mobile home parks.

TS: So you're buying houses and renting them out and such.

KY: Right. We'd buy houses, and we worked hard, Fran and I did.

FY: Fixing them up and then renting them.

KY: Then I left in 1964. They were just starting the C-5 airplane, and I wanted to get out.

TS: Well, let me go back and ask you about a few things. I'm intrigued, for instance, when you first started there that they put all these black employees under your charge. I guess the plant was totally segregated at that time, wasn't it? Or was it?

KY: No, no it wasn't; but they gave the colored people some of the harder jobs, cleaning up and things like that. It wasn't really segregated; you worked with colored people, black people.

TS: So they're working side by side but different jobs?

KY: Yes, they sure did.

TS: What about the cafeterias?

KY: That was mixed. You went to the cafeteria; you'd have colored people next to you going through the line.

FY: There weren't any in our department.

KY: Well, maybe not in yours, you worked in tech data filing.

TS: Now, you worked at Lockheed?

FY: Yes, one year. I didn't go with him to put my application in.

KY: No, she fooled me.

FY: He didn't know I put my application in. See, my mother was with us . . .

KS: Were you pregnant?

FY: No, I had Gordy, Gordy was nine months old.

KY: He was [born] down in Florida.

FY: So I went over on my own and put my application in, and he never knew about it.

KY: No, no I didn't.

FY: But anyway, I worked in technical data files for one year. Then I left on a leave of absence, because my mother was sick, and I never went back. So it was only one year.

KY: She worked in engineering. She dealt with engineers all the time. Technical data files.

TS: Well, how would you compare working in Georgia to working in Buffalo?

FY: It was very hot.

TS: Oh, no air conditioning?

FY: No air conditioning in some of those old--what would you call those buildings?

KY: They were military buildings, what did they call them?

FY: They were just like old wooden type buildings.

KY: Barracks, old barracks.

FY: Yes, and it was hot is all I can say, because I can remember one day I took my slip off. We didn't wear slacks; we wore skirts back then.

TS: I should have brought some pictures with me of the plant in Bell Aircraft days; but right behind the B-1 building were the administration buildings; and they kind of look like barracks.

KY: You mean the Lockheed?

TS: Yes, the Lockheed. But Bell had the same facilities. Lockheed took over Bell's buildings.

KY: Yes. They were there. Bell had them.

TS: So that's what you're talking about?

FY: Yes. Like old barracks.

TS: What I think they called the B-2 building, that's where you were working?

FY: Yes.

TS: So no air conditioning.

FY: No.

TS: And none in the plant either?

KY: No.

FY: No trees.

KY: It took time; it took, oh, I guess, about eight, ten months to get it in the plant, to get started.

TS: Okay.

KY: It was terrible. And, of course, when I started there, the basement--I don't know if you've ever been in the plant or not--but the basement was full of equipment, all black stuff. All that equipment and machinery had to be shipped out and cleaned. They had another company that cleaned all that over there--I can't think of the name of it right now--and they had to clean that whole place up before they could really work.

TS: Well, I know during World War II, the cafeterias were all downstairs. There were eight of them down there. I guess there were some other things down in the basement too.

KY: During the War, they had offices down there.

FY: I took my lunch. I don't remember going to a cafeteria.

TS: Really?

KY: Oh, they had them, they had them.

KS: What about air raids? Did you have air raids, and did you have to have special things like that going on?

KY: No.

KS: You never had any air raids?

FY: During the War at Bell. Oh yes, we had air raids, black outs.

KY: Yes, during the War.

KY: But not here at Lockheed. That was after the War.

FY: No.

KS: So no civil defense, getting in cars and going places or anything like that?

KY: No. Not when they opened up and took over the plant.

TS: Well, other than the heat, is there anything that stood out? Were the workers different in Georgia from New York?

FY: My job was altogether different, again. So I worked mostly with the engineers coming into the company.

KY: Well, there's a difference in workers. The southerners didn't move real fast, you know. They're more leisurely, and they took their time. Of course, they finally got into the swing of things later on; but the northerners, they were more active and worked harder. But that all developed later on, I guess, and the southerners were the same thing.

TS: Were there lots of people who had worked at Bell who were working at Lockheed?

KY: Yes, quite a few.

FY: Lots of them.

KY: Yes. Lots of people that worked at Bell Bomber plant came to Lockheed to get a job. Of course, they took them right away because they were experienced.

FY: Well, they had been working down here at Bell.

KY: Yes, right. Just like the one that I had; but some of those people came to Lockheed and got jobs.

TS: What about the pay at Lockheed back in the '50s?

KY: It started out slow; some of it wasn't even a dollar an hour. It ran around eighty-five, ninety cents.

FY: A dollar an hour?

KY: It didn't run a dollar an hour when they first started here at Bell. I think I started with $1.51 as an hourly employee for the first, well, it was only the first couple of months.

FY: I can't remember that at all.

KY: I got paid a dollar and a half for an hourly employee. Of course, other employees, other people got the same thing. Of course, as you graduated to a higher job, you got more money.

TS: Right.

KS: Come back to Bell a minute. We talked about black people and white people working together at Lockheed, but let's go back to Bell. Up in Buffalo, there seems to be more ethnic differences rather than color differences. Did Polish people work with Russian people work with English people? Talk to me a little bit about that.

KY: Yes. There was a lot of that.

KS: What were the differences?

KY: We had Italians in our department, and we had Polish people, and who else?

FY: Mostly Italian, Polish.

KY: Yes, mostly that. My assistant foreman, he was Polish; but he was a good man; we're still friends, still friends after all these years. We write, and he called me on the phone the other day. I've been at parties at his house, Polish parties, yes. [chuckle] And Italians, they were good.

KS: Any Germans?

KY: Oh, yes. There were German people, right. A mixture of everything.

FY: Buffalo is everything. [laughter]

KY: Buffalo, of course, they were full of foreigners.

KS: Were there conflicts at all between either one of the ethnic groups?

FY: Not that I know of.

KS: Did any certain ethnic group work in a different department?

KY: No, we didn't have that. Had a lot of Jewish people too. I had Jewish people at Lockheed, quite a few Jewish people.

FY: I never even thought of it, you know.

KY: No.

KS: That's how you grew up.

FY: I know one thing. There were so many Polish in this department that I could remember their numbers better than I could how to spell the name.

KY: Jejuwitz and, of course, Kuwalski, that's an easy name.

FY: Kuwalski was easy.

KY: Oh, the names.

FY: A lot of Polish.

KY: Very hard to understand. Whoo. [laughter]

FY: That was a good question.

KY: Yes, yes it was.

FY: Because that's what we dealt with more was the ethnics than the black and white.

KY: Yes, but people didn't object to each other. We had Polish and Italians; they got along friendly. The Italians, I think, were more jovial than the Polish.

TS: Was it difficult getting accustomed to race relations in the South when you were at Bell and had black workers?

KY: Not for me it wasn't. It wasn't for me. It is for some people. I just went along with it.

TS: Any problems, that you were from the North, getting along at Lockheed by that time? You were talking about how it was hard to get a job because you were a Yankee in Florida; what about at Lockheed?

FY: Well, that was a little different.

KY: That was a little different. People coming from California, a lot of people, the higher-ups or the managers and things came from California to get the plant started.

FY: But that was altogether different from a tourist town. From the working class. We didn't have any problem. There was a mixture when we got here, too.

KY: Yes, that's right.

KS: Now, what was the difference between the people from California and the people here?

KY: They were more outgoing.

FY: More sophisticated.

KY: Yes, sophisticated. Some of the southerners did not like California people. But they had to get along with them. We had that problem.

TS: I guess the guys that were running the plant were actually southerners, because you had Jimmie Carmichael; and then Dan Haughton was from Alabama.

KY: Yes, that's right. But he was from California, too.

TS: Yes, he came from California.

KY: Those people travel around and work in different states. They were a different type person.

TS: Of course, he was working for Lockheed in California; but he really was a native of Alabama.

FY: Milt Brown came from California; that was your first boss, wasn't it?

KY: Yes, I had a boss, Milton Brown; but they called him Milt, Milt Brown. He came from California and I worked for him for a while.

FY: We liked him.

KY: Yes. But I think the southerners sort of rejected a lot of them.

FY: Resented them.

TS: What was it about them that they resented, do you think?

FY: Northerners are more bossy, more aggressive. Much more. [chuckle]

KY: Yes.

TS: What about Californians? Are they bossy and aggressive too?

KY: Yes, they are.

Y: They started after we left, didn't they? The unions?

KY: No, he's talking about Lockheed right here. They've been here ever since they started, I guess. After the plant was going for about a year, it got stronger and stronger and stronger.

TS: Did you have to, as a foreman, have any dealings with them?

KY: Sometimes, yes, with an employee and the union steward. If he didn't like what they were doing or they would maybe do something that they weren't supposed to do. It didn't amount to anything at all, but they didn't want them to do something that somebody else was supposed to be doing. Of course, the supervisor, the foreman, they couldn't touch anything. We couldn't touch a job or do anything about a job.

KS: Are you talking about cross-training or are you talking about one person doing a job and helping another person finish his job?

KY: Yes, yes. Well, no, that's all right, but you have so many different types of jobs that one man should do; and another man, he's not supposed to do that work. So you have trouble there if this man went and did some of his work. You couldn't have that.

TS: Why did you leave in '64?

FY: His wife told him to. [laughter]

KY: It just got to be sort of a hassle with going to meetings and things. I started to get a bad breath; and Fran says, "Your breath smells." It was just tension, too much tension. So we tried to live one solid year; we didn't use any of my pay. It all went into savings.

FY: We kept track of every cent we spent.

KY: Kept track of every cent. The rental property was giving us our living. So then I quit.

TS: You knew you could do it.

KY: Yes. So that's how we retired.

FY: It wasn't worth him getting sick.

KY: No.

FY: And I could see it was changing. You've got to be careful. He was fifty years old, right, forty-nine, fifty years old when he left.

KY: Forty-nine when I left, retired.

TS: Well, it was a good time to be buying property anyway with the land values going up.

KY: It certainly was. Oh, I should say it was. We saved, we saved every cent we could save.

KS: But that was great discipline, because a lot of people couldn't give that up.

FY: No, they were buying new cars.

KY: New cars when they were working there.

FY: New furniture. All that money they were making at Lockheed, they spent it.

KY: They made fun of me for being so tight. I wouldn't buy a new car. They said, "Why don't you buy a car?" But we saved money. Instead of buying a car we said, "Oh, we'll buy another duplex." [laughter] We didn't buy a car.

FY: But your friend Newt got you started on the duplexes.

KY: Yes, I had a friend, Newt Shirley he was.

KS: I didn't know that.

FY: Oh yes, Shirley started him.

KY: He was a southern boy from Calhoun, and he sort of watched over me. He wanted us to be in a duplex or rent it, rent some of it. That was his first offer; he said, "Live in half and rent the other half." But we bought a house in Jackson Circle, 143 Jackson Circle, we bought that house and at 420 Lakewood, that house on the same day, April 1.

FY: Well, that was only $750.00 down. [laughter]

KY: Yes, $750.00 down for Jackson Circle.

FY: Can't even buy a car for that any more.

KS: No. [laughter]

KY: The payments were $46.00 a month, and they were relatively new houses. They were only about seven years old.

FY: Yes.

KY: They were nice houses.

FY: They were pretty well built, those little Jackson Circle houses.

KY: We got some good buys on duplexes.

TS: Well, is there anything I should have asked that I didn't?

KY: I can't think of anything right now. We got off of our track.

TS: [laughter] Anything that really you wanted to say about either Bell Aircraft or Lockheed that we haven't covered?

KY: No.

FY: We had car pools.

TS: Car pools?

FY: Car pools. Yes, that's the way I went to work.

TS: At Bell Aircraft?

FY: Yes.

KY: That was in Bell, yes.

FY: In a car pool, I rode with about four men.

TS: Did you?

FY: I'd stand on the corner, and they'd pick me up. They called me "farmer" because I lived out outside Buffalo. Picked up the "farmer." [laughter] T

S: This was because gas was rationed, I guess.

FY: Yes.

KS: Maybe it would help if we had gas rationing now. It would force people more into car pools.

TS: Well, that might be the only way.

FY: I'd have my snow shoes on in Woodlawn, and by the time I got to Buffalo it was clear. We seemed to get all the snow out around Woodlawn, more so than Buffalo sometimes.

TS: Because you were on the lake there?

FY: Yes.

TS: Did you car pool?

FY: Oh no, no. He lived very close to the plant.

KY: No. Never. You can't do that when you're a supervisor.

TS: Because you don't have regular hours?

KY: That's right. Oh, I had regular hours; but when I was Department 1807, the big department, I sometimes went in there at nighttime to straighten things out; or if they had trouble, I would go help out and straighten it out. I would go at nighttime, the evening and come back.

FY: They have more competition up North. I mean, you have to be fighting for your rights all the time, where down here it was more easy-going. There's always so much competition up there.

KY: That's right. It was different in the South.

FY: And out west they were easy-going. But we came from Buffalo, New York. I mean, they had to fight for their jobs.

TS: What about unions? I guess the plant was unionized at Lockheed, wasn't it?

KY: Yes, the Machinists Union, they called it.

FY: They started after we left, didn't they? The unions?

KY: No, he's talking about Lockheed right here. They've been here ever since they started, I guess. After the plant was going for about a year, it got stronger and stronger and stronger.

TS: Did you have to, as a foreman, have any dealings with them?

KS: Are you talking about cross-training or are you talking about one person doing a job and helping another person finish his job?

TS: Why did you leave in '64?

FY: His wife told him to. [laughter]

FY: We kept track of every cent we spent.

KY: Kept track of every cent. The rental property was giving us our living. So then I quit.

TS: You knew you could do it.

KY: Yes. So that's how we retired.

FY: It wasn't worth him getting sick.

KY: No.

FY: And I could see it was changing. You've got to be careful. He was fifty years old, right, forty-nine, fifty years old when he left.

KY: Forty-nine when I left, retired.

TS: Well, it was a good time to be buying property anyway with the land values going up.

KY: It certainly was. Oh, I should say it was. We saved, we saved every cent we could save.

KS: But that was great discipline, because a lot of people couldn't give that up.

FY: No, they were buying new cars.

KY: New cars when they were working there.

FY: New furniture. All that money they were making at Lockheed, they spent it.

FY: But your friend Newt got you started on the duplexes.

KY: Yes, I had a friend, Newt Shirley he was.

KS: I didn't know that.

FY: Oh yes, Shirley started him.

FY: Well, that was only $750.00 down. [laughter]

KY: Yes, $750.00 down for Jackson Circle.

FY: Can't even buy a car for that any more.

KS: No. [laughter]

KY: The payments were $46.00 a month, and they were relatively new houses. They were only about seven years old.

FY: Yes.

KY: They were nice houses.

FY: They were pretty well built, those little Jackson Circle houses.

KY: We got some good buys on duplexes.

TS: Well, is there anything I should have asked that I didn't?

KY: I can't think of anything right now. We got off of our track.

TS: [laughter] Anything that really you wanted to say about either Bell Aircraft or Lockheed that we haven't covered?

KY: No.

FY: We had car pools.

TS: Car pools?

FY: Car pools. Yes, that's the way I went to work.

TS: At Bell Aircraft?

FY: Yes.

KY: That was in Bell, yes.

FY: In a car pool, I rode with about four men.

TS: Did you?

FY: I'd stand on the corner, and they'd pick me up. They called me "farmer" because I lived out outside Buffalo. Picked up the "farmer." [laughter]

TS: This was because gas was rationed, I guess.

FY: Yes.

KS: Maybe it would help if we had gas rationing now. It would force people more into car pools.

TS: Well, that might be the only way.

FY: I'd have my snow shoes on in Woodlawn, and by the time I got to Buffalo it was clear. We seemed to get all the snow out around Woodlawn, more so than Buffalo sometimes.

TS: Because you were on the lake there?

FY: Yes.

TS: Did you car pool?

FY: Oh no, no. He lived very close to the plant.

KY: No. Never. You can't do that when you're a supervisor.

TS: Because you don't have regular hours?

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Updated on Augsut 23, 2000