In 1956, after a year-and-a half at Penn State, I went to Los Angeles to live with some friends from my home town. Most of them worked for United Airlines, but one of them got me a job working for his uncle in a pallet and hatch-cover manufacturing yard in San Pedro (Wilmington), California. The name of the company was Pacific Shores Sales and Repair Company. It was a good paying job for someone with no experience. It only employed about 10 people, with the owner's wife doing the book-work. Most of the employees were Mexican-Americans, hard working and a pleasure to work with. Among themselves they usually spoke Spanish which I understood little of at the time.

I joined the carpenter's union and paid dues for the year I worked there. It was an open shop, but the foreman encouraged me to join. Since we were in a seaport town there were longshoremen everywhere and, of course, they had a very strong union. We all had to do a variety of tasks, but it was all rough carpenter work: sawing, planing, nailing, etc. The principle product lines were two types of pallets, wooden trash bins, and hatch-covers for ships. The owner also had contracts to repair damaged pallets.

My primary job was nailing the small hard-wood pallets. They would get dunnage (boards used to shore up cargo on ships) and plane it on one side to a 1" thickness. The only dunnage they used was hardwood which came from all over the world. It was fascinating to see the different kinds of wood. It would also be full of nails which had to be pulled before the boards could be planed and cut to size. The nailing tool was a hatchet, not a hammer. The hatchet had a waffle-faced square head which made it hard to miss the nail, but if you did you flipped it around to the hatchet side to cut off the bent nail, usually without missing a stroke. The stringers between the boards were also hardwood. Since some hardwoods can be very hard, it was sometimes difficult to get a nail into them.

The heavier pallets were made out of 2" pine and were bolted together using 4" x 4" stringers between the boards. Repairing them was difficult because bolts had to be removed with a pneumatic wrench, new boards drilled and reassembled. Occasionally I had to work on these, but I could never match the Mexicans. They would work fast for about an hour, then take a 15 minute break. They would laugh at me working furiously without a break and never come close to their production.

We also made wooden hatch covers for ships. That was in the days when wooden hatch covers were still used. They were made from 3" pine boards, drilled through the side for the insertion of re-bar as a pin to hold them together. The holes were lined up so the re-bar could be driven through with a pneumatic hammer. Then two opposing corners had a circular counter-sunk hole about 4" in diameter with a piece of 1" steel or bronze across it for a handle. Finally, each end had to be banded with 2½" x 1/8" steel strap which had to be bent and welded before being driven onto the ends of the hatch covers.

In my spare time I built some things out of the good pieces of hardwood. From hickory, I built a cabinet for photo slides. From oak I built bunk beds for our apartment. I was the butt of many jokes for the beds. The top bunk had only about 18" between the mattress and the ceiling. They had to be taken apart and re-nailed and glued to get them in the bedroom. (They might still be there.) When I found a beautiful piece of walnut or mahogany I had to set it aside for some future project. The wood was usually green so it had to be stacked and air dried for at least six months before it could be used.

After a year of nailing hatch covers I began to see the benefits of higher education. So I returned to Penn State with much more enthusiasm than I had before.

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