Smitty, my buddy since 8th grade, read my blog and wondered if 1951 wasn't the year we both took jobs at GM Rochester Products Division, and I have to admit that he's right. I was off by a year. So much for memory retention.
What happened in 1951 was that he and I went to be interviewed for jobs at RPD by a friend of my parents, who hired us. Night shift. I was at the end of the assembly line where I made up boxes for the inspected carburetors, then packed them for shipment. Well, the night shift interfered with my social life, so I quit after about a week. Not too long after that, I went to work for Kasiner Hobbies, a local retail shop and wholesale distributor owned by Norm and Marie Kasiner.
Norm and another fellow, Bill Kashler, had started marketing their own line of model railroad passenger car kits in O and HO gauge sizes. One of my jobs was to pack the parts in the kits, which I did in between waiting on customers. A while ago I saw one of the kits for sale on eBay, so I bid on it. I won and paid through PayPal, but the seller never sent the kit. I sent him an email that he had sold his soul and reputation for less than 10 dollars. I subsequently heard from another person that she had been taken by the same guy for over $200, so I didn't feel too bad after that news. But I hated to have him get away with it.
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That job was crucial to me for getting back to Stillwater in September. It also made it possible for me to get a job there the next summer as a milling machine operator. Without those two summers at RPD, I probably wouldn't be an OAMC grad.
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