Manufacturing in America

SlamDunk

You understand it too, you just can't do the math that proves that gravity with no friction + velocity = a crash into the bushes!

347

Mad Dog, that explains alot, LOL,
Mico

Tim McElwain

You start your kids and their friends early in mechanical things. My son and my daughter and some friends of theirs helped me with my restaurant service business.My son was nine my daughter was 12. Both of them have worked since they were 14. My daughters son worked with me from the time he was four. He owns his own construction company today and has a college degree in architecture. He employs 40 people. My son went on to become a doctor and is CEO of a medical company with over six hundred doctors working for him. He also just installed his own heating system in a remodeled home in Maine, he did all the work himself.

Teach them early and work with them and they will be productive and hire others.

It has also been my joy to teach many who today are in a trade or own their own business.Some were from our prison system and had fallen through the cracks. They are all working today and doing well two of them own their own business.

I have also found that ex military make good students as they have learned to take orders and have good leadership skills along with a desire for things mechanical.

Manufacturers need to go out into the highways and byways and find the talent that is lying dormant sometimes among the homeless.

I have a college degree because a local college went into the streets and recruited ex military and with the GI Bill gave them an education. Manufacturers could do the same thing if they put there minds to it.

We have a work force out there just waiting for some company to care enough to train them and make them useful so they can contribute.

ChrisJ

All of these comments being made by the generation that started treating kids like this in the first place. Those born in the 1960s-70s.







That is all.

Fred

@SlamDunk , every bit of that is TRUE, plus, in our neighborhood, all of us kids would anticipate the city street maintenance crew, in the spring, to come by and use their tar buckets with the spout on the bottom to fill cracks in the street. We'd wait until the crew was a block or so away then we'd take a stick and dig the soft tar out of the cracks and chew it until all the flavor was gone, then we'd dig out more! It tasted like licorice.

DanHolohan

Fred! Where the heck was this? Bedrock?

ChrisJ

Fred said:

@SlamDunk , every bit of that is TRUE, plus, in our neighborhood, all of us kids would anticipate the city street maintenance crew, in the spring, to come by and use their tar buckets with the spout on the bottom to fill cracks in the street. We'd wait until the crew was a block or so away then we'd take a stick and dig the soft tar out of the cracks and chew it until all the flavor was gone, then we'd dig out more! It tasted like licorice.

ChrisJ

DanHolohan said:

Fred! Where the heck was this? Bedrock?

What's wrong Dan, you didn't chew hot asphalt as a kid?

Fred

DanHolohan said:

Fred! Where the heck was this? Bedrock?

LOL, right here in Dayton, Ohio! The subject came up a few months ago when my daughter in law thought it was absolutely crazy and several others at the dinner table looked at my daughter in law and said "What's wrong with you? We all did that!" Maybe it's a regional thing?

ChrisJ

Fred said:

DanHolohan said:

Fred! Where the heck was this? Bedrock?

LOL, right here in Dayton, Ohio! The subject came up a few months ago when my daughter in law thought it was absolutely crazy and several others at the dinner table looked at my daughter in law and said "What's wrong with you? We all did that!" Maybe it's a regional thing?

Well,
Now I'm starting to think the way children are treated now is actually justified.............

Thanks for putting life into perspective Fred.

Fred

Must be a regional thing

DanHolohan

We didn't eat it. We just pried it up, smeared it on our Keds and then walked on the living-room rug.

I wish we had know it tasted like licorice. Jeez.

ChrisJ

No wonder our taxes are so high with you meddling kids damaging the roads and all.

DanHolohan

Fred, little Nell, all grown now, sends her regards.

Fred

LOL, it actually didn't stain our teeth.

NY_Rob

You also have to remember... we had shop class in Jr. High and High School back in the day, so we were exposed to things modern students haven't been.

When I graduated High School, in addition to the "Three R's" I was proficient in woodworking, metal fabrication, welding, ceramics, basic AC electric, etc.

It's a shame that's all gone now... and look what's happened to manufacturing in this country...

Gordy

I think someone gave Fred hot tar, and told him it was licorice. From that point on he never knew the difference.....

Paul48

@SlamDunk
That was my childhood, as well. I'll add a couple. We went home to unlocked doors. Mothers and fathers, for miles around, knew who we were and where we belonged. We shared baseball gloves. We had snake season...mom didn't appreciate the work that went into filling a 5 gallon bucket with garter snakes. We always let them go.
These memories make it impossible for me to give up on America, or the American people. I'll never concede that this is the way it is, and just get use to it. I can't blame it on the American people, as easy as that would be. I've seen the American spirit, and have pity and hope for those that haven't.

ChrisJ

Merry Christmas @Fred !!!

Fred

Not the right texture @ChrisJ but thanks anyway.

Harvey Ramer

@Fred You realize you won't live this one down anytime soon. Lol
Eating tar is a whole other level from just sniffing glue or something like that.

Fred

Harvey Ramer said:

@Fred You realize you won't live this one down anytime soon. Lol

Eating tar is a whole other level from just sniffing glue or something like that.

Hey, all the kids did it. Ingredients were more organic back then

KC_Jones

Oil is decomposed plant life (and other stuff), comes from the ground so it is indeed "organic". Chew away, I wonder what the dentist would think about that?

Mad Dog_2

'67. Our big thing growing up was making ramps
And jumping them with our BMX bicycles play Evel Knievel. Knocked out cold once..stumbled home. My father said: "what's wrong with you Matty? from now on you better put on your football helmet and shoulder pads." no sympathy from a man who played semi-pro football with no face mask...ha ha. Mad Dog

ChrisJ

Fred said:

Harvey Ramer said:

@Fred You realize you won't live this one down anytime soon. Lol

Eating tar is a whole other level from just sniffing glue or something like that.

Hey, all the kids did it. Ingredients were more organic back then

Yeah,
Good old organic polychlorinated biphenyl.

Solid_Fuel_Man

I'm still trying to figure out why anyone would try chewing on said asphalt patch..... Picking it out is certainly one thing I would have done. But chewing on it another. Hmmm mm.

Hours and hours of building snow forts, tree houses, sliding down hills on metal flying saucers, and building bike jumping ramps. Oh and seeing how far you could skid with your bike, compared to all the other neighborhood kids. I wish I knew how many miles I put on a pedal bike of some type. Seeing how high up on something you could climb was also a favorite past time.

But I was born in the early 80s....

Taylor

Fred

Hey, You can't take back what you did 60 years ago!

bob_46

Ink wells, the smell of Mimeographs, blueprints that were blue, Detroit Lubricator gas valves, Mercoid stack switches, VanAukens,
Dagmar bumpers on Cadillacs.

Solid_Fuel_Man

Ah those purple mimeographs the teachers would have that petroleum smelling purple ink on their hands.

Taylor

ChrisJ

Here's something to chew on........
Yes, it's Canada but the USA is very similar if not identical in this regard.

BobC

I remember going to the beach every day with my cousin in the mid 50's, after that we would go exporing in the swamp or climb the300 year old oak at the edge of the field. We never had a parent with us but we somehow lived through it.

I can also remember getting into all kinds of hot water if Mrs Smith told my mother I was seen doing this or that. There was no "not my son!", punishment was sure and swift AND if they found out you were innocent they just figured you got your just deserts for all the things they never found out about.

We lived and we learned and we also became resilient. That resilience gave us what we needed to put a man on the moon just like JFK said we would.

Bob

Fred

@ChrisJ , according to that chart, I've been dead for 2 to 3 years, tar or no tar.

Paul48

@Fred
Don't take any trips to Canada!

SlamDunk

I always knew my wife would drive me to an early grave. Females ARE the stronger sex.

Gordy

Mad Dog said:

'67. Our big thing growing up was making ramps

And jumping them with our BMX bicycles play Evel Knievel. Knocked out cold once..stumbled home. My father said: "what's wrong with you Matty? from now on you better put on your football helmet and shoulder pads." no sympathy from a man who played semi-pro football with no face mask...ha ha. Mad Dog

I think I have more scars from ramp jumpin than the whole rest of my life......

Does anyone sled with the flexible flyer anymore? Waxing down the runners. Saw one the other day in the store. Every kids dream for xmas.

KC_Jones

I don't miss the smell of ammonia while making blueprints. I am quite content with laser printers.

Paul48

Yep......Still got Mom's words ringing in my ears.......IN OR OUT! That was usually after the 4th or 5th change of soaking wet clothes.

ChrisJ

Paul48 said:

Yep......Still got Mom's words ringing in my ears.......IN OR OUT! That was usually after the 4th or 5th change of soaking wet clothes.

Ah, so your mom wore the pants in the family eh.

BobC

There was a good size field / marsh across the street with a fair sized hill on the far side. I remember slogging up the hill with the flexible flyer and tearing down that hill. Whenever we had a mood tide the marsh would flood, it would usually freeze over pretty fast but many times I'd get 30 feet out on the ice and cut through the ice with the sleds runners. The water was only a foot or two deep but you'd be drenched through to the skin.

You would be freezing your **** off but when your 10-12 years old you thought nothing of it. Back to the house for a change of clothes (put the dripping wet clothes on the steam radiators to dry out) and back out the door again with my mother telling me "Get those wet and your done for the day". Be back here when the street lights come on!

Bob

Paul48

"Ah, so your mom wore the pants in the family eh"

No.... Dad wore them, when she said it was OK Like most households.