When I started in hydraulics, every unit that came into the shop had to be overhauled to an o time condition. This meant there was a lot of work to do. I think I worked prop-feathering switches for a couple of months. Then I worked up to fuel pumps, auto feather pumps, hydraulic pumps (both Vickers and N.Y. Air Brake), Fuel booster pumps, aux hydro pumps, fuel shut off valves and varied assortments of fuel and hydro s/o valves and check valves. When I worked in Overhaul I wasn't too content with the job and was always thinking of leaving for another job. But after working in the Hydraulic Shop my whole attitude changed. A bid came up on the board for Syracuse but after thinking about it, I didn't bid it. I made up my mind that I was going to stay at Utica in the Hydro Shop. We (my wife Jean and I) went looking for a house in Rome or Utica but couldn't find what we wanted. On the way back to Syracuse we stopped in Canastota and found a couple of houses for sale that interested us. We put a bid on them and ended up buying a ranch at 421 West Lewis Street. I intended to stay at Mohawk until I retired, in the Hydraulic Shop.  It's funny how my attitude changed when I started working in the Hydro Shop. I really enjoyed the work, especially working daylight shift with weekends off. It was great!

The manager of all the shops was a guy named Joe Fodderie. He was a no-nonsense type of guy who was only interested in getting the work done properly and quickly in all the shops. He really impressed me one day when the head of maintenance (Ed Butterfield) came into the Accessory Shop on a little inspection tour. He wanted to know how soon they could get a starter for an airplane that needed one. Then he complained that the shop was messy and should be cleaned up. Joe Fodderie told him that if he left the shop, the starter would be ready a lot sooner and not to bug the mechanics while they were working. Well you can imagine how this went over with Butterfield. The usual routine was that everyone would fawn over the big bosses and 'yes sir' the all the time. At least that was my impression of management at Mohawk Airlines. Joe Fodderie was the only boss I ever had who spoke up and told the big shots the real story. Unfortunately he didn't last. They got rid of him soon after that episode. Too bad!

He was replaced by a guy we called "thanks a lot" Olson. He was called that because no matter what anyone did to him or for him he would reply "Thanks a lot!" I remember filing a grievance about lead mechanics working overtime and when I told him about it he said, "thanks a lot".  It made me laugh! He lasted a couple of years. After about one year he was demoted from manager of shops to foreman of the Accessory Shop and then was let go. When I heard he was being laid off, I went to see him in his office to ask him what happened. His reply was that he just wanted to take it easy and retire. I think that was a bunch of bull because I heard he took a job as a salesman for some local company in Utica. I guess management just doesn't like to admit when they get fired. They try to make it sound like they just decide to quit on their own. I t looks better that way. After Olson we got Bob Kingsbury as foreman. He didn't seem too happy with the job and would hide whenever a problem would occur in the shop. When some big shot would drop in for a little inspection tour Bob would always go out the other door. It too, was funny! After Kingsbury we got Al Batchelder as foreman. He was used to working the flight line and when he came into the shop for the first time he really pissed everyone off by making a little speech criticizing the shop for putting out lousy work. He was going to straighten the shop out! Boy! That went over like a fart in church. Everyone, including me, really got on him and we started bitching about line mechanics not knowing how to trouble shoot and that good units are pulled needlessly etc.. He really took the heat from us and realized he should have just kept his mouth shut.

I can recall some other guys who came into the Accessory Shop later: Pete Falcone, Dick Buczek, Vic Italiano, Mike (Julius) Michalozo, Fred Sade, Bill Pickles, Lenny Keith, Davey Williams, Ron Grumboski, don Kesterson, Nick Slobodian, Zeb Roberts, Joe Cortese, Gordie Hurlburt. We also had inspectors in the shop: Don Cutter and Bob Wiley.

For some reason the shop seemed to collect some wild and crazy guys, like Mickey Wordon and Gil Morczek, who were real goosey guys. By that I mean they would jump a foot in the air at any loud sound or if somebody goosed them. Naturally everyone banged hammers or whacked their workbench or did something to make loud noises just to see these guys jump. It's not that everyone was just being cruel, Mickey Worden and Gil Morczek liked to pull practical jokes on guys themselves. It was sort of tit for tat! Sometimes thought, these little practical jokes would rub guys the wrong way and violence would ensue. It mostly used to involve Gil Morczek. I guess he just used to rub people the wrong way. Some of the memorable spats were when Gil Morczek and Zeb Roberts wrestled on the floor under a workbench because Zeb had dabbed some yellow paint on Morczek's ear.  And when Gil started choking Pete Falcone and Jerry Bates, Nick Slobodian and a couple of other guys started pounding Gil to make him stop. Also the time Morczek started choking Bill Pickles after arguing and the telephone rang. Bill Pickles answered it while he was being choked. That was pretty funny! Then there was the time when Gil threw a ball peen hammer at me over some argument. Oh, and when Pete Falcone and Davy Williams  (who was a small guy) had an argument about how Pete could knock Davy down with one hand behind his back. They went out back and Davy commenced to knock Pete on his ass three times straight. The last two while Pete was using BOTH hands. That was funny too! Mickey Worden, Nick Slobodian and Jerry Bates used to give the lead Eddy DePew a hard time. Eddy used to roll his own cigarettes using pipe tobacco  and Mickey and Nick would circle around Eddy and keep harassing him by knocking cigarettes out of his mouth. One time they even cut up rubber 0- rings and put them in his pipe tobacco pouch. He smoked the tobacco anyway! I told Eddy that he should give one of them a punch in the mouth or kick in the ass and it would end, but he was a nice guy and wouldn't do anything like that. So, he was harassed for years and finally gave up the Lead's job and went back on the bench as a mechanic. There were other incidents that occurred but I can't remember enough details to tell them here.

During the summer months we had some horseshoe pits outside the north side of the hangar. Every break and lunch period, we would run out and pitch horseshoes. The pitchers were Eddy DePew, Pete Falcone, Mickey Worden and I, plus some of the stock room clerks. There were always a couple of guys to take on the winners of a match. Like Charlie Wilson, Nick Slobodian, Jerry Bates, etc. It was fun!

After I was in the Hydraulic Shop for a couple of years, the shop itself was physically moved to the second floor in an are between purchasing and the radio and Instrument Shop. The area vacated was turned over to the stock room for  use as a tool room. In the new shop I had a workbench between Charlie Wilson and Ed Harter. Charlie was a black guy that everyone said was the token Negro. That was supposed to prove that Mohawk didn't discriminate in its employee practices. I don't know how true that was, but it brings to mind an incident that happened in about 1964 or 1965. The Mohawk president Robert Peach (a Republican) brought the Governor of NY, Nelson Rockefeller on a tour of the Mohawk hangars in Utica. When they came through the Accessory Shop, Peach and Rockefeller went right over to Charlie and shook his hand and said a few words of greeting. This sort of peeved the lead Eddy DePew because Eddy was the guy who started the whole Accessory Shop from scratch. It was his creation and none of the wheels even acknowledged  it. So everybody used to give Eddy the business about it. We used to tell him that if he were black all the big shots would be shaking his hand telling him what a great job he was doing. Eddy was peeved for a little while, but he calmed down right away. He just wasn't the type to stay mad long. Now Charlie Wilson also was a nice guy and he would take the ribbing good-naturedly.  He was a fixture in the Hydraulic Shop. I never recall him working anywhere else. He was an experienced musician. He played saxophone and had a band in Ithaca NY. They used to play at Cornell University fraternity parties. In Utica he played in the Utica Symphony Orchestra (I could be wrong) and he also played in a local marching band. I saw them in Canastota during a parade for a Fourth of July celebration. He had an attractive wife who also worked at Mohawk. She was very light skinned. As a matter of fact she looked like she was more Spanish or Italian. She was also a very nice person. I recall three things about Charlie. One: He and Jerry Bates were always sparring with each other. You would always see them around the shop feinting and throwing light punches at each other. I don't think they actually hit each other hard, just little loved taps on the arms etc.. Two: Charlie would always play checkers with Zeb Roberts. Zeb was a terrific checkers player and would win 99% of the time. But Charlie would never give up trying to beat Zeb. I tried too but Zeb was too good for me. Three: Charlie had a house in Whitesboro that was built on slab, with no basement. He decided he wanted a basement and for years he would go under the slab with a pick and a shovel and dig out a cellar foundation. He would work every night and weekends. All the guys said he was crazy killing himself like that. But by God, he got it done all by himself. He was quite a character.

Speaking of characters, Ed Harter was another one. He was very penny conscious. He could figure out what everything cost down to the penny, from groceries to automobiles. He would buy used cars and figure how much value he was getting. He could figure how much it would cost to run per mile and that's how he would select which car to buy. He was pretty smart but was also very eccentric and not too dependable. I used to car pool with him and a couple of other guys. We would meet in Oneida a the DanDee Donut shop parking lot. We alternated every day taking turns and it worked out pretty well until it was Harter's turn to drive. He would usually show up late and have some story about his cat getting out and he would look for it. Once he said he sat down on a chair not knowing the cat was sitting on it and squashed the cat so bad that it shit all over the chair and he had to clean it up. Many a time he would just forget it was his turn to drive and somebody else would drive in his place and he would show up at work saying nobody picked him up. He would also do stupid things when he drove. One time he drove into Utica to drop off some milk bottles to get the deposit money on them. This used to infuriate the guys in the car pool because we all wanted to get home as soon as possible. I recall the car pool members as being: Harter Don Cutter Art MacElerney and me. I finally gave up the car pool in frustration! Harter was also famous for one incident involving safety wire. Safety wire came in spools with a cardboard cover and a three-fourths-inch hole in the middle of the spool where the wire fed out. We were wearing shop coats in the Hydraulic Shop that had two side pockets and one day Harter was walking around the shop all day with one hand in a pocket all the time. Everybody assumed he had a cut hand or bandaged thumb or sore hand. Finally at the end of the shift somebody asked him what was wrong with his hand and he denied anything was wrong. After a little quizzing we found out he had stuck his thumb into a roll of safety wire and couldn't get it back out. So instead of asking someone to help him he spent all day trying to get it out by himself and hiding his hand with the safety wire roll stuck on it. Now that was funny! This story is now a legend wherever Mohawk guys reminisce about the "hanger days".

During this period (1961-1965), Mohawk airlines made its first profit for the year. One and a half million dollars! The company projected growth for the future years and went on a spending spree. They bought BAC 1-11 jets to replace the CV440's and a bunch of Fairchild FH-227B Turbo Props to replace the Martin 404's and CV240's. They built a new executive office building, a new training building, and even a motel at the airport (called The Horizon Hotel). Things were booming and the future looked bright. I was happy in my job and thought I was pretty well set for the future. But I was mistaken. In 1965 IAM Local 75 went on strike against Mohawk.

For years there had been constant bickering between Mohawk management and the mechanics union (IAM Local 75). There were even a couple of walkouts by the mechanics over some grievances. I recall one walkout occurred over punching out our timecards in our departments. The foreman in Overhaul (Bob Welsh) made all the Overhaul mechanics punch out in Overhaul and then punch out on the main clock. This pissed everyone off because it made everyone late by about five minutes. So the next morning all the Overhaul mechanics lined up and punched in on the Overhaul clock. This caused some guys being a couple minutes late punching in. The foreman got pissed off at that and was going to send the late guys home without pay, which really stirred the pot. The Union told every one to go out to the parking lot until the matter was settled. After a couple of hours milling around in the parking lot the Union told us to go home! It was kind of stupid but we went home and the whole matter was settled that afternoon. We came back to work the next day as if nothing happened. We were paid for that day off and didn't have to punch in at the department any more. There was another walkout during that period but I can't remember what it was about.

In November 1965 the Union and the company couldn't reach an agreement about a pension plan for all he union members and we went out on strike. Nobody thought the company would allow a strike because Thanksgiving was one of their big passenger travel days and they would lose a lot of money. How mistaken they were! In New York State, if people are on strike they are not eligible for unemployment compensation for the first seven weeks of the strike. After that you get your unemployment checks. So our motto for the strike was "seven weeks and you're dead"! We were encouraged to demonstrate in front of the Exo Building by marching around the flagpole chanting, "seven weeks and you're dead!" - a stupid, dumb idea that didn't accomplish anything. I used to picket about every third day. All the members were organized into picket teams with strike leaders assigning when and where you picketed. After a couple of times picketing in Utica, I was sent to picket in Syracuse because I lived in Canastota which was closer to Syracuse. I used to picket along at the main entrance to Hancock Field and it was miserable! Cold, snow, cars splashing you with slush and worst of all Mohawk planes were flying. It seems the pilots didn't honor our picket lines and they were flying as usual. That was really depressing!

After three weeks on strike we were entitled to strike pay form the union - $25.00 per week! I didn't get my first check at Syracuse because of a screw up at the union office. My strike leader told me I better go up to Utica and get the check before they send it back to the union headquarters in Washington as unclaimed. So after picketing I drove to Utica from Syracuse in a storm. I was slipping and sliding all over the Thruway but finally got there in one piece. When I asked for my check from the financial secretary, Jerry Sampson, he told me that I couldn't get it because my dues were in arrears. I owed nine dollars! So I gave him the nine dollars and he gave me the check for 25 dollars. I was so mad I felt like shoving that check down his throat! The worst part was that I didn't owe them any money but their records said I did.  Nothing I could have said or done would prove it to them.

The strike went through Thanksgiving and Christmas and finally when our seventh week was ending the company and the union reached an agreement. Every union man would get a free pension from the company and everyone who was already in it (I was) would get their contributions refunded. I was refunded 58 dollars.

During the strike I survived by working for Manpower, a temporary work agency, for a couple of weeks and then took a full time job at Chappell's Department Store warehouse until the strike ended. It didn't pay much money, but it helped.

When the strike ended Mohawk announced that 120 sheet metal jobs were abolished so a lot of bumping was going to happen when everyone reported back to work. The way you were called back was by seniority. I recall it was 50 mechanics at a time and it was spread over a couple of weeks. When I was recalled (by registered letter I think) you had to go over to the Exo building and there were lists of all the mechanics and the jobs available. You had to pick by seniority. I remember I picked the Instrument Shop ( I was told I was 'not qualified'), The Upholstery Shop ('not qualified'), and finally the Check Crew Daylight (I was finally 'qualified'). Because this bumping took time I think I worked in the Hydro Shop for a couple of weeks before I had to report to the Check Crew.