Compare and Contrast

The book and movie Gone With the Wind had a great influence on me in my teen years. In my formative mind, Margaret Mitchell’s idealized antebellum south was summed up in dialogue between Ashley and Melanie at the Twelve Oaks Bar-b-que

Melanie: I like to feel that I belong with the things you love.

Ashley: You love Twelve Oaks as I do.

Melanie: Yes Ashley--- I love it as more than a house. It’s a whole world that wants only to be graceful and beautiful.

Ashley: It’s so unconscious that it may not last forever.

I grew up in Lockport, New York. Lockport is located on the Erie Canal at the set of locks which allow a change of some 50 feet of water level. When the Erie Canal opened in 1825, the locks at Lockport, were one of the wonders of the engineering world.

The many industries located in Lockport afforded a sense of stability that was over the years considered a birthright. Good paying factory jobs were plentiful. Students graduating from the Lockport schools knew they could walk into a secure blue collar job upon graduation. The ominous words of Ashley, “It’s so unconscious that it may not last forever” applied to Lockport as well.

Harrison Radiator, Lockport’s General Motors Plant, produced all the air cooling and heating systems installed into GM cars. It was my workplace first starting in 1974 until I transferred south to Tuscaloosa, AL in 1998. Little did I think I would be witnessing the slow death of General Motors and industrial Lockport when I was called back to work in February 1976 after being laid off for all of 1975.

That security we once enjoyed and took for granted has long since shattered. My journals chronicle many of my personal experiences in the factory through that difficult time.

In the book The Savage Factory Robert Dewar gives an accurate description of the environment I worked in.

Back in 1979 a hated supervisor attempted to have me fired. What I endured on the shop floor, grievance proceedings, and a visit to a labor relations lawyer forever changed my “work view” towards my job and GM. How I wish I were able to thank that supervisor today. Through that experience, I learned what was really important in life. Just because a lesson is hurtful does not mean you can’t learn from it.

I began planning and saving for my retirement in 1979. I was determined to not spend one second longer on the job at GM than I had to. When I first began the paperwork for my retirement at the Corvette Assembly Plant, the human resource people remarked they had never seen anyone as prepared as I was for retirement.

If I ever do get my journal together into some kind of a book, I planned on a page like this as the foreword.