http://members.tripod.com/chuckandlinda/

Teletype Corporation

I suppose from my thirty years plus working for AT&T the best times were at the 65th Street plant. Called the pilot plant and back on September 15, 1957 when I started to work they were still bringing in machinery and parts and putting in the heat treat equipment and plating room located on the west side of this small building. There were pans of parts scattered all over the front of the building to be put into the stock room still being constructed along the east wall. New people were being hired and maintenance crews were installing machines. The plant would manufacture the parts and then assembly side frames, function boxes, and the main shaft for the Model 28 printer. Of course the main Teletype Plant was located in Skokie, Illinois and we were to supply the components to complete the Model 28 machine. All the supervisors of course came from the plant in Skokie and the person that hired me was Lenny Morrow. This was his first assignment as a new supervisor and for some reason in the downtown office where at that time they were doing the hiring, I met him and was hired. Now the funny part, but was not to me, was Lenny hired me as a 19 year off the street and started me at the pay of a grade three at $1.30 per hour and Lenny would catch heck from his boss for his mistake.
For the most part we all were 18, 19, 20 year old boys and most of us had no idea of this type of manufacturing although I had one year working for McDonald Aircraft in St. Louis before being hired. But this is really about some of my memories of that time frame from 1957 until moving to the big plant along the Interstate in 1969. What a crew of young men that were gathered to start for a lot of us a life long of employment with one company. Guess it was a wonder that so many of us survived and weren’t fired during those first years although some were fired or quit.
We use to make a days wages during the time the two unions were trying to represent the employee’s from going to meetings between IBEW and Communications Workers unions. We would go to one meeting and then take in the meeting for the other union and they each would give you one day’s wages for attending. IBEW would be the representative of the employees and remember I guess the only strike of the Little Rock plant. This was in the coldest part of the winter and standing outside with snow falling into the night and walking a picket line was not one of my favorite memories. Burning old tires to try and keep warm and being covered with black soot at the end of your time on the picket line. Thank we got a 5 cent raise from that strike.
Fred Walker, J.C. Easter along with Merle, Al Ort, Harry Slingsby, Lenny, Ted Nixon and also George and of course Bob Rife were some of the management. Ted had some of the really wild and jokers all gathered in his maintenance crew. Remember they would tape banana peels under Ted’s desk and wait for the fruit flies to start swarming and watch Ted keep fanning the air above his desk. Ted had a small office at the back of the building and they would turn on his little gas stove during the summer heat and wait for him to enter his office. The day Jim Crowder filled Joe Days long rubber gloves over the alkaline tank with blue oxide and when Joe came back from break and rammed both hands down into the hanging gloves was instantly blue from his hands to his elbows. We found a dead rat and put it into Joe’s pickup truck and all gathered at the back windows after work to watch Joe get in during the heat of summer. But Joe fooled everyone as he just drove off with out throwing up until he was down by the box plant and fell out the side of his truck after stopping throwing up, but did not want to show us. Joe figured that Earl Laws was responsible for the dead rat and not long after and he was tearing down a concrete block wall, Joe loaded the blocks into a wheel barrel and all day carried them out to Earl’s truck and filled the cab from the floor board to the ceiling with the blocks.
Well guess I could carry on my rambling memories for awhile but these were just a few and in my 30 years and 6 months working there I made many close friends and miss those that have passed away but still retain my memories of them. For we had good times together and hopefully did a good job for the company formerly known as AT&T.
Now have lived in the Philippines for the past six years and enjoy the climate, people and my four year old son, Brenton Charles Smith.