There was an era in this town when it was nearly impossible to live here for any length of time and not have worked for one of the automakers or their suppliers.
In high school, I joined my mother in a parts plant at Wyoming and Schoolcraft, and stayed there for five years, through college, shaping my classes around my shifts.
We made soft parts from fiberglass and fiberboard, mostly firewalls and glove boxes.
As a nonunion contractor, I didn't get an hourly wage, but instead was paid for each piece I produced.
If I showed up ready to work, if the hi-lo driver kept the stock coming, if the machines didn't break down, I could make really, really good money.
It was brutally hard work. I hand-bent the firewall backings on a table edge along scored lines, perhaps a million of them over five years. The steps are still committed to my muscle memory.
I'd walk out black from the fiberboard dust and coughing up goop, and I developed an allergic reaction to fiberglass that lingers yet.
There was a stamping press in the plant that ate fingers like they were cocktail weiners. I can still hear the hair-raising screams of a poor soul who didn't pull her hands out of that hungry press in time.
Like others who were maimed, she was offered a couple of thousand dollars for her loss and a "lifetime" job in the plant. (It closed in 1978).
It was not a place I wanted to spend a lifetime.
But that job made it possible for me to go to college, and I actually took a pay cut when I left to come to the newspaper.
What I gained most from my time in the plant was an insight into Detroit and its people.
We don't box up the things we make here and ship them faraway, never to be seen again.
We admire them everyday on our streets. I knew which vehicles my firewalls went into, and it always stirred a bit of pride when I spotted one on the highway.
Many of those who will come to Cobo Center for the North American International Auto Show over the next couple of weeks will be bringing their families and friends to point out the cars and trucks that carry the products they made, designed or assembled.
It's a Detroit thing. And once upon a time it was something most of us shared. You might work on the top floor of the headquarters building now, but somewhere in your past you spent a summer feeding an assembly line.
I wish more people could experience that today.
Temporary and part-time jobs in the industry have pretty well dried up.
New wage scales make the plants a not much better choice than a fast-food restaurant for a kid looking to pay for college.
Technology has wiped out most of the unskilled and brute labor. I can't imagine anyone is bending firewall backings by hand today.
But I'm glad I did, for what it taught me ? good and bad ? about making cars in a city where making cars is all that matters.
nfinley@detnews.com
(313)222-2064
Follow Nolan Finley at detroitnews.com/finley, on Twitter at nolanfinleydn, on Facebook at nolanfinleydetnews and watch him at 7:30 p.m. Fridays on ?MiWeek? on Detroit Public TV, Channel 56.
Source: http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20130113/OPINION03/301130303/1007/rss07
Wonderful story. Indeed, technology has somehow taken work away from people's hands. Pretty soon, people will face unemployment problems because of the machines taking over. You had a great experience though and it is through these experiences that you can truly say that you have lived.
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