大象传媒

Starting work in wartime chapter three.

The new machine.

One morning after new year 1945 amid great interest a new machine arrived, it was craned in through the upstairs door and duly installed, it was an automatic crimping machine.
The mainstay of the wire works were baskets and guards for machines of all sizes, they all involved using wire mesh woven up on the Loom floor. There were several Looms of various sizes to weave from the smallest to largest mesh sizes. The wire was put through straightening rolls then into a hand machine that crimped the wire. Crimping dimpled the wire in small V鈥檚 that when put together on the loom as warp and weft and knocked up formed wire mesh.
The big question was who was going on the new machine and my name was not mentioned. Arthur came on the scene and told me to work with the demonstrator. Instant uproar, Arthur who was not exactly diplomatic when his temper was up told them he wanted some one with brains not a ham handed idiot, that went down like a lead brick in a swimming pool, second and third bare knuckle fights followed to amuse the men while they ate their lunch time sandwiches.
The second fight much like the first with no win just two bleeding lads neither of whom would give up. The third something different. A lad I did not like started on to me, we had some 13 and 14 year olds working in the wire works and he threw his weight about among them, he thought he could do the same with the toffee nose from Norton and one morning I went for him, we were pulled apart and the arrangements made for the top floor arena at lunch time. He walked around telling every one what he would do to me later and insulted me my parents and every one connected to me. When we went up the stairs I felt an ice cold anger that seemed to focus my whole body on wiping him out. Bets were being taken, about even by now as they knew I did not back down. One lad who did not say very much shocked the bookie by saying Half a Crown on Frank, the bookie nearly wet his pants, half a crown was big money.
I had never felt like this in my life before, it was almost pure hatred and when they said go I went, he was on the floor so fast he did not know what had happened, the lads were not having that and pulled him up shoving him back in and I really took him down, this time when he went down I followed him smashing him as hard as I could swing. I was hauled off and he had the sense to stay down, it was over and as we walked away The quiet man who had won his bet said be careful you could kill some one some day, that shook me. That fight was burned into my memory and was the last I had against any one in the works.
The new crimping machine was not the doddle the others thought. You put a roll of wire on the back and fed it through the wire straightening rolls and into the crimping rolls, set the wire cutter and checked the correct wheels were on then set it going. You had to watch for the coil tangling up the wire being pulled through evenly the crimp had to be checked as the wheels could be jolted and moved it was concentration all the time and jolly hard work.
January 1945.
Arthur called me to the office and told me to train up another lad on the crimper as I was at last going down stairs. He introduced me to my new mentor Pa Forrester, his Father in law brought out of retirement for the war. Pa was a Boilermaker born and bred, built like a brick toilet and his nose had been well and truly broken at some time, people steered a clear way around him and did not antagonise him in any way, I never knew his age but he was the hardest worker I had met up to then.
Pa lived near me off Norton Green and we got the bus together each morning. The 鈥淥鈥� bus terminus was Norton Green so we got on an empty bus straight upstairs to the front. He would pull out a battered old pipe and stoke it up with his own smoke screen mixture far more deadly than the smoke screen generators that still stood on the Green. The bus would soon fill up and we sat amid noxious clouds of black smoke with all behind us coughing for England. The Conductress would make her way to the front and slam the window open, (we had front opening windows then) that was Ok for me it meant I could breath again having never smoked in my life, the passengers now got the smoke turbo charged by the wind through the open window and the coughing increased. All this time Pa would be sitting with an angelic smile on his face, I concluded he had a twisted sense of humour. Once off the bus he knocked out the pipe and I do not remember seeing it any more until the return home. And so started yet another set of adventures I was really enjoying work in a factory it was fun.
End of chapter.

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