I worked on some different units off of BAC-1-11 jets and FH-227 turbo props. I recall landing gear actuators, PRV valves and other valves using Skydrol fluid. It was a mess working with them because the Skydrol fluid was an irritant and you didn't want to get any in your eyes or on your clothes. It would eat up polyester! Nobody liked working with that damned Skydrol! The old Convairs, Martins and DC-3’s used M5606 Hydraulic fluid that was easy to work with. But time marches on…

The Fairchild used a pneumatic system for its gear and it was a lot cleaner to work with. But it was a different ball game using air on everything, even the deicer boot system (just like the old DC-3’s). In the winter we would always have pneumatic units freeze up due to water condensation freezing when the aircraft sat around at night.

Mohawk was still using their CV440’s and I was assigned to bench check prop governor units. I would get a unit, clean it of all the thick black engine oil (made a mess of your hands and nails), then stick it on a Hamilton standard test stand and run a check on it. It was a very noisy job and a little messy, but by bench checking the unit and keeping the good ones, it would save a few bucks for Mohawk. Charlie Wilson and I were he only guys who did these prop governor checks. It was fun!

During our lunch period, we started playing volleyball on the hanger floor. Every day we would rush down, set up the nets and play like maniacs. We (the Accessory Shop) would generally pick up a game among ourselves with five or six guys to a side. Then after while we even had tournaments against the Instrument Shop. They had a couple of big guys like Ripley and Bill Howe and they would usually win. During these games the rules were hardly observed, with a lot of hitting over the net and even through the net. It was a lot of fun and even though I got a couple of fingers jammed and rope burns on my arms and wrists (from hitting over the net), I used to look forward to these games. We would play during our half-hour lunch, then go eat our lunches at our workbenches for another half-hour or so. We weren't supposed to do that, but most of the time we would get away with it. AH, life was good!

Also while in the Hydro Shop during this time, we had an incident which we called “The Case of the Shiny Shoes”. One morning I went to the men's room and while I was doing my thing at the urinal I happened to glance down at a shadow that was moving on the floor. It came from the toilet booth where a guy was sitting on a john. From the shadow I could tell that a guy was sitting in there masturbating. I couldn't believe my eyes! I didn't know who it was but he had black shiny shoes. I went back to the Accessory Shop and told Pete Falcone about it. He rushed right over to the men's room with me and sure as shooting the guy was still in there whacking away! I guess he didn't realize that he was casting a shadow for all to see.  It took all our self-control to keep from laughing out loud! Pete and I couldn't tell who the mystery man was so after we left the men's room we stationed ourselves in the corridor and waited to see who came out. Well, to our frustration, about four guys went in as a group and we couldn't tell who the guy was that had the shiny shoes. We went back into the men's room but all the guys were gone so we weren't able to identify the culprit. The whole day Pete and I kept looking for shiny shoes. We suspected some guy, from purchasing because their office was right across from the men's room, but we couldn't find anybody with the same shiny shoes. We had a good laugh about it and figured we would never identify the guilty party. We were mistaken! About a week later I went to the men's room and there was the shadow of a guy masturbating again! I quickly ran out and got Pete Falcone and we watched the men's room door like hawks. This time nobody else went in and after about 5 minutes Mr. Shiny Shoes came out! We felt embarrassed when we recognized the guy. He was an older guy who worked in the credit union and also worked two or three extra jobs besides the credit union. We thought it would be a young purchasing guy and that we would have fun teasing him about it. But when it turned out to be someone else it wasn't funny anymore. As a matter of fact, it was really pathetic.

Pet Falcone used to play little games with our foreman Al Batchelder (everyone called him Batch). I remember one time Pete made believe that the fainted. He was sitting at his workbench and then suddenly collapsed and fell off his stool. His bench was near the foreman's office and Batch came running out to see what happened. Everyone told him that Pete fainted so Batch called an Ambulance. Batch knew that Falcone liked to play little games with him but he couldn't take a chance in case Pete was really sick. So the ambulance came and took him away! Pete had to fake everything otherwise he would get into trouble. Pete expected Batch to come out of his office but didn't expect him to cal for an ambulance. We all knew that he was faking and we all had a good laugh when he got carried away!

Pete was a very good athlete and played softball, baseball and other sports. He was always getting hurt though. We would come to work the next day and put in for an occupational injury. I even helped him fake an injury when he ruptured himself at home one weekend. He asked me if I would be a witness to his getting an occupational injury - which I agreed to! We tried moving his workbench and Pete yelled that he ruptured himself. So we told Batch all about it and filled out an occupational injury form. So Pete got his rupture fixed at Mohawk’s expense. He had more balls to do it than I did! He knew how to beat the system.

There used to be a lot of stroking and ball breaking in the Accessory Shop. A guy could never tell anyone what he really liked or disliked because then the guys would be after you like a pack of wolves doing everything that they could to get a rise out of you. It wasn't only in the shops that this ball breaking went on but all over the whole maintenance department. To survive you had to act as if nothing interested you or concerned you. Some guys would really take the heat and get pissed off. An example would be that in the 60’s or later the hottest trend was to tell Polack jokes and to try to get the Polacks all pissed off. I am a Polack and I would go along with the joke and never get mad. In fact, I thought some of them were pretty funny! Some other guys of Polish descent would really get mad about these jokes and be ready to fight. This fell right into the ball breaker’s laps and whenever anyone wanted to stir things up, they would wander next to this guy and start telling Polack jokes .So it was best to be a ‘don't give a shit’ type of guy.

I remember this lead mechanic in the electrical section of the Accessory Shop - Lenny Keith. He was an Army Veteran from WWII. He was in the infantry in Europe and liked to tell stories about those days. One story was that they captured a German soldier and tried to interrogate him unsuccessfully. So not wanting to take a prisoner along with them, the squad leader thought they ought to shoot him. No one was willing to do it except Lenny Keith! According to Lenny, he went up to the squad leader and told him, “let me at ‘em, Sarge! I’ll get him to talk and I’ll shoot him too!” The squad leader wouldn't let him though. When Lenny told this story to the guys in the shop the ball breaking really started! Everyone was going around saying, “let me at ’em Sarge!” for weeks! Poor Lenny!

Another guy, an electrician named Kenny Kipp was also a WWII veteran who loved to tell stories about his days in the China- Burma theater. The guys would (innocently?) ask him about being in the CBI theater and as Kipp would start telling his stories they would start ripping them apart, finding flaws in everything he told. This would piss him off and he would embellish the stories even more. The guys would start questioning him more and more. He just didn't realize that they were trying to get his goat. He would just go on with his adventures. The fact was he loved to talk about his war days and couldn't resist talking when someone asked him a question. He was too naïve to recognize the ball breaking at his expense. It was funny!

Another Accessory Shop character was another electrician named Nick Slobodian. He was a single guy and was a big union guy. He was a contract negotiator for the union. He would come to work late at least three days a week. He just didn't seem to care if he got in on time or not. Batch, the foreman, got tired of it and decided to punish him for his continual tardiness. I think he sent him home and told him if he came in late again he would be fired. Well Nick called the union and they made a big case out of it. The claimed the company was harassing Nick because he was a union negotiator and, by God, the union won. All the guys in the shop knew Nick didn't give a shit about his job and felt the company was right in getting after Nick. So poor Batch got his authority shoved up his rear and Nick just kept coming in late as usual. There is no justice!

Mohawk Airlines had a system of punishing employees called “Discipline Without Punishment”. As I recall it was in three steps. The first time an employee screwed up he got a letter of reprimand. The second time he was sent home with full pay for the rest of the day. The third time he was fired. Being sent home with full pay  was supposed to give the employee a chance to think over if he wants to stay with Mohawk or not. That's why the third step was firing. The company felt that the employee who goofed the third time didn't want to stay anyway. Of course if a guy was caught stealing he was fired right away. I can recall four guys being fired for stealing. One guy was a lead mechanic on the line named Bidlack. He used to take the fuel truck home and fill his vehicles with gasoline and then drive it back to the airport. Another time, two mechanics, one named Taylor and another whose name I can't recall, stole the whole liquor cabinet off of a FH227 that was RONing at Syracuse. They caught them red handed and were fired. The last incident was in the UCA where this mechanic, whose name I also can't remember, on the midnight shift would drive over to the gas pumps and fill up a Mohawk truck and a couple of five gallon cans he had with him. He would drive out to the parking lot and put the five-gallon cans of gas in this trunk. He was caught during a Sheriff’s stakeout in the parking lot. The company must have asked the Sheriff to do this. When the mechanic started putting the cans in this trunk, the Sheriff’s men cam over and asked him what he was doing with the gasoline. The mechanic said he was just taking some drained off, unusable fuel. This gas was kept in 55-gallon drums and was the fuel drained from aircraft fuel tanks when they had to be emptied to work on. The sheriff asked the mechanic to show him the drum he took it out of. When the mechanic took him over to the drums it turned out that all the caps were so corroded that you couldn't open them. He was fired. These incidents are the only I ones I can personally remember.

I stayed in the Hydro Shop until about 1967 when the company decided to put more guys on afternoon shift and I was one of them. To avoid going on afternoons I would have to bid out on another job. Well a bid for an instrument mechanic came on the board. I didn't bid it because after the strike in 1965 I tried to get in the Instrument Shop but was not qualified, so I figured why bother. Well a buddy of mine, Zeb Roberts, who also worked in the Hydro Shop as a mechanic bid the Instrument Shop and got it! Zeb and I had the same qualifications. I even had seniority on him. I found out that Zeb worked part time for the lead, Bernie LaTour, in a motorcycle repair shop. When Zeb bid the Instrument Shop, Bernie took him as a trainee for the job. Well that opened the door. In the next few weeks another bid came up for the Instrument Shop Mechanics which I then bid, and got.