Document text
Roaldus Richmond
Recorded in
Writers' Section Files
r)ATE:14.e....L1
FIVE YEARS MOPE?
"We make granite -working machinery and tools mostly,"
Harmon said. "We turn out other machines too, but being loc-
ated in Barre it's natural that most of our stuff is for the
granite sheds. The shop is on the riverbank near the stone
sheds across from North Main street. It's that long red build-
inE you see coming into town from the north. Fart of it dates
back to 1640, the date is on the wall, and that was the orig-
inal foundry built by Joshua Twing. Almost across the way
from the machine -shop is the Tying house, that old red brick
house built about the same time. It sets back beside the
Venetian Garden, with a gasoline station on the other side of
it. This section of town was called Twingville in the old
days. The settlement Erew up around Twing's foundry and his
home. The house was quite a mansion for those times; it's
still a good lookinE house. It's one of Barre's three Georgian
Colonial brick houses; the others are the Wheelock House at
the center of town, and the Padlock souse on South Vain. They're
the oldest houses and the best examples of architecture. They
look kind of lost and out -of -place today with beer joints and
department stores and service stations all around them.
"This part was called Twingville. Then there was Gospel
Village, built up around a churoh at the middle of town. And
Jockey Hollow was what they called the flats at the south end
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where they used to race their horses. Those were the three
sections of the old original settlement. Barre was just a
little country village then, scattered along the valley, and
granite had never been heard of around here.
"One of Lucioni's paintings shows the old foundry and the
river as it looks today. Luigi Lucioni is making quite a name
for himself all right. :e started painting here in barre, I
think. His pictures are very good, especially in detail; his
detail is perfect. He's careful and exact, a good craftsman.
A machinist like me can appreciate Lucioni's work, it's so
clear cut and clean lined. Some say it's too much like photo-
graphy, but I like it. •nere's nothing sloppy and smeared
about it, and none of this crazy modernistic stuff. Lucioni
is clear and honest as a blue -print.
"I've been working here about twelve years now. I'm sixty.
I've always been a machinist. I learned the trade after I left
high school. Yy folks wanted me tn go to college but I wanted
to go into the machine -shop instead. I liked machinery, and
I wanted to do things with my hands. I couldn't sit around
in an office all day... I didn't graduate from high school.
I was in my last year when I had a fight with the principal.
Ye slapped my face and I knocked him down. That was up in
Newport where I was born. I could have gone back to school
if I'd apologized got up and apologized in front of the
whole school. But I wouldn't do it. It wasn't my fault in
the first place. Ye had no reason to slap my face, and I
couldn't take that from anybody. So I never went back to school.
I went into the shop and learned the machinist trade, and I
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learned it from the ground up. You had to in those days. Now
they don't have any apprenticeship system, and pretty quick
there won't be any more skilled madhiniSts left. Some of the
big machinwrnshops know this and are starting schools to train
young men in the trade. Of course improved machines take the
place of lots of men now, and they keep on improving them all
the time.
"I remember there was one job they wanted us to turn out
in six hours. Well, at first it took forty hours. After a
while we worked it down to seven or eight hours, and that was
fast. They made "jigs" for it, jigged it up so now it can be
done in forty-five minutest Jigs are what we call special manu-
facturing tools or equipment that speed up the process. Yrom
forty hours to forty-five minutes sometimesi You can usually
figure that improved machines cut about 76 per -cent off the
time. The hell of it is we have to make the jigs ourselves,
the jigs that take money right out of our pockets and throw
men out of work. Men smiting the maz-lAnes that wal put them
out of work, sooner or later. lbat's irony for you.
"I was in the army during the Spanith..4merican 6ar. We
spent most of our time in Chickamauga kirk, and it was nothing
but a goddamn fever swamp. They lost more men there than they
did in Cuba, a hell of a lot more. They died like flies at
Chickamauga. +iust because it was a battle site and a park
they made it into a military camp and it killed off their own
troops by the thousand. All the fighting we did was in rough..
and -tumble street brawls with the southerners, still fighting
the Civil War. We had some tough battles with them all along
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the line* They still hated Yankerql, especially Yanks in uni-
form. My father had been in the Civil War. He was wounded
at Cold Harbor, and that probably saved his life. Thf, rest
of his outfit was wiped out, killed there or taken prisoners
and died in prison camps.
"During the World tar I worked in Boston in a fflunitione
plant, making guns and parts of guns, big guns and machine guns.
That was the best money I ever earned, but I've always done
pretty good. I sent two boys through college, and my girl
through nurses' training. T guess I'm still earning more
money than any of them. But somed9y, if tires ever get better,
they'll go way ahead of me, of course. They should go higher.
But the way things are now it's pretty tough going for them.
I have to file an income tax report, my salary ran just over
twenty-five hundred last year. And that's not bad for a sixty-
yeer old machinist.
I'My wife and I are alone now and we live in an apartment.
It's nice and comfortable, plenty of room for us, and room
enough for the kids when they come home to see us. I just
turned my car in for a new Plymouth. It's the first brand-new
car I've had since I was in the garage business, back around
1912... I lost money in the automobile game that time. My
partner left me holding the bag. I should have stayed right
in the machine -shop, I'd have been a lot better off.
"We live a pretty quiet life here. We don't go in for
social stuff much. We have a few good friends and they drop
in once in awhile. My wife and I both read a lot, valve always
been groat readers, and we go to the movie* maybe once a week.
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In the summer what we enjoy most is driving around the country,
seeing new places, exploring back country roads. Vermont's a
beautiful place in the summertime. We used to go to all the
ball games when our boys played for the high school teams, but
we've lost interest since they got through playing.
"Yy ,lob isn't a hard one, physically, but it's very fine
close work. :Everything has to be dead -accurate to the smallest
fraction of an inch, and the least bit of a mistake spoils
the whole piece. When I first came here I ran a planer; now
I'm on the borIng mill. I r't a good start learning the trade',
and l can handle about any kind of machine you'll find in a
machine -shop. Of course I'm oh my feet all the time, and that
makes me pretty tired. Never used to bother me," but I'm sixty
years old now..."
r7armon was a man of medium height with wide sloping shoulders
and a compact strength. His scarred and broken hands had once
been graceful in their power. Ms face, lined and shrunken a
little, was still strongly -carved, gravely intelligent. The
eyes were mild and brown, and his smile was charming, almost
boyish. Ps spoke in a pleasant well -modulated voice, and good
blood was evident in his quiet dignity. It was not surprising
when rYarmon remarked simply that his family was an old English
one, and his sisters had ma!e quite a study of geneology and
the Parmon line. It was rather odd that such a man should have
chosen thr machinist trade, but Eamon said? "I like machines
and I like to work with my hands."
"Between stoneoutters and machinists," be said, "there's
a certain understanding and respect. Its nat-ml•al enough,
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think, between two groups of trained skilled workmen like that.
Each side may feel that its work is the better and more import-
ant, but still each side can admire the work of the other.
Some of my best friends have been stonecutters. A lot of them
are dead now. It makes me feel pretty old sometimes. re used
to drink and talk together. Now some of them have been dead
ten or fifteen years, or more.
"Our shop depends on the cranite business, and our work
fluctuates with theirs. But as long as the shop is open I
get in full titAa. The rorce,en kind of depends on me, you see..
Pe says I'm the best machinist he's got. If I am it's jUst
becau3e I got a better training in the beginning. I learned
the trade from some real old-time machinists, and they made
sure 1 cot everything.
"The war in Purope ha l made the machine business boom in
this country. The shops in Springfield are running day and
nicYt, mostly to fill orders in urope. I worked for J and L
in Springfield myself, and sometimes I wish I'd stayed there.
It's a good outfit to be with. But I was on the night -shift
there and I couldn't get used to it. T4 made more money than
the day -shift, but I couldn't seem to get rested, I lost a
lot of weight and was feeling pretty low, so I gave it up. I
Know a lot of men working down there, and they tell me they
can't fill the orders they're getting from England, and other
countries over there. They :pot shipped thirteen machines to
England at *28,000 per machines to make fourteen -inch aerial
bombe, I think they said. Prance had a $147,000 order to be
delivered in September, 1941, and paid tLe 25 percent deposit.
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They won't be needinL that order now. That's big business down
there in Springfield. The big,..est thing in this state without
question. That one biL plant probably did a five or six million
dollar business lust yearj and after the Federal tax was paid
Vey made a net profit of about 25 percent. Now witll America
finally ready to get prepared there'll be plenty of business
right here for. the machine -tool industry.
"A follow down there told me a funny one. It seems that
the orld janitor in the shop is a deputy sheriff, and he makes
about fifteen dollars when 7e picks up a vagrant and puts him
in the county jail at Woodatock. !Told sent this one bum there,
and venen tie bum got out he looked the sheriff up right away.
He wanted to go back to jail. The sheriff went to a grand juror
in Springfield aid told him he might as well make out the papers
and gcA the foe. Put the juror said: II can't do it. I've
gone my limit already.' So the sheriff told the bum to go to
Ludlow and he'd drive over and pick him up there. P e even got
the vag a ride to Ludlow' The sheriff drove over and the bum
was waiting. Took him up to court in Woodstock, and the hobo
landed back in jail. When his pals saw him come back in they
said, 'You lucky bastardt' The sheriff collected his fifteen
bucks and went home.
"Well, I hope I can work five years more, and T guess I
can. Then I'll be sixty-five, and if this old-ae pension
amounts to anything I'll be eligible for that. don't see
any reason why that pension shouldn't become a permanent thing,
and a damn good thing for the oountry. A man can't go on work.-
ing forever, and sixty-five is old enough. And not very many
a.
men oan put aside enough to retire on. Not the way things are
at the present time.
*I've worked hard all my life. I want to hold out for
five years more. I can't hope for much longer than that, I
don't want to. I get pretty tired sometimes now... But I do
want to keep going five years more, and if nothing happens I
will.,,