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chapter 5
the instrument shop 1967 - 1968

I started working in the Instrument Shop around November of 1967, I think. I had to buy some special tools like loupes. Loupes are magnifying lenses you stick in your eyes or attach to your eyeglasses. I had both kinds but liked the eyeglass-attached kind better. I also had to buy special curved and thin tweezers, miniature screwdriver sets and small soldering guns. After working on fairly large units like hydraulic pumps, fuel pumps etc., it took a little adjustment to handle small, delicate units. The way they worked it I the Instrument Shop was the new guy started on small simple units like transmitters, warning switches etc. and then worked your way up to more complicated units like altimeters, gyros etc. It was a good system because you had a chance to learn how things were done in the Instrument Shop. I learned not to rip the units completely apart like we did in the Hydro Shop, but to bench check the unit. If it works, okay, just clean it up and send it out again. At first I was a little lost working such small units, but gradually I got the hang o fit and really started enjoying the instrument work. The advantage we had in the Instrument Shop was that the lead mechanic ran it. There was no foreman assigned to our shop. The Radio Shop had a foreman, Pete Johnson, and we were sort of under his jurisdiction. He was a radioman and he didn't know much (and didn't want to know) about instruments. Our manager was also a radioman named Jerry Constantino. He didn't bother much with us either. Actually we ran everything in the Instrument Shop by ourselves. We knew which units would run short or which units needed more work to put out. We used to work a little overtime on Saturday. You could figure on a Saturday about every third week or so. If some rush job would swamp the shop the whole crew would work on Saturday. It was great! It was the best job I had in the airline! We had our own coffee mess and guys would even cook breakfasts at their bench. One guy was especially famous for being a chowhound. His name was Eric Ahrens. He had a weakness for food and could eat anything and everything. Guys would throw away sandwiches or halves of sandwiches from their lunch if they weren't hungry or if it didn't taste good. They would throw it in the garbage can and Eric Ahrens would dig it out and eat it! It was amazing and funny too! Once or twice a year the whole shop would go bowling after work. Just have a good time to raise money for our coffee fund, we sold candy, cookie and even boiled eggs pickled in vinegar. We had a whole cabinet full of these goodies and guys from other departments would come by to buy our candy. After a while somebody squealed about our candy concession and we had to get rid of it. It was great while it lasted!

Talking about our candy concession brings to mind the big donut sales that used to go on in the break rooms by the Sheet Metal Shop. A couple of the mechanics (Dick Topper) used to bring in fresh donuts, about 5 or 6 dozen, and sell them in the break room at the start of the shift and during the first break. They were nice and fresh and delicious. I used to go there every so often and buy some. They used to make money selling the donuts and once a year they would have a party in the break room paid for by the donut profits. It was great! I recall one other food incident. A baker would bring fresh apple turnovers in his truck and park it by the main entrance to the hangar just in time for the first break. He would sell these turnovers for a cheap price. (25¢ maybe?) Boy, were they ever delicious! After a while the food vendor that supplied the terminal and the machines in the hangar called the Oneida County Sheriff who chased the turnover man away the next time he came. It seems the airport vendor had the exclusive rights to selling food at the Oneida County Airport and it was illegal for anyone else to sell there. It was too bad because everybody really liked the turnovers and their price - but you can't fight city hall.

Well time passed and I started working on complicated units like altimeters, air speed indicators and various types of warning units, etc. Finally after I was in the shop for a couple of years I was assigned to work on flight data recorders - also known as the black box. This unit was very complicated and it was a very time consuming job just to do a bench check. When I first started working on it I thought I would never be able to fix all the different parts of it. But as time went by I learned more and more and after about a year I could fix any part of it. What I learned in the Instrument Shop was that a mechanic could fix any type of unit if someone would take the time to show him the right way to do it. In the Mohawk Airlines Instrument Shop, we had the people and the attitude that made a great place to work, learn and enjoy yourself at the same time. Too bad it wasn't destined to last.

It was such and easy-going place that I even brought my kids, Eric and Laura, in to spend a day with me in the shop. I was working overtime on a Saturday and I even had the kids play with some of the test equipment. They ran around the shop eating snacks and having a ball! I think they really liked that. I know Laura still remembers the Instrument Shop to this day!

We used to play volleyball every lunchtime, just like in the Hydro Shop. The games used to get pretty exciting at times and tempers used to flare when the games were close. I can still recall all the fun we had and it was good exercise too! I thought it would last forever!

The inspector of the Instrument Shop was a former WWII German Army veteran named Ferdinand (Freddie) Dittrich. I got to know him before I went into the Instrument Shop. He used to come down to the Hydro Shop and strike up a conversation with me about various subjects. We would talk about Mohawk, Germany, WWII, politics etc. When I came into the Instrument Shop I noticed there was a little animosity between him and the lead Bernie LaTour. I found the story behind this animosity. It seems that Freddie Dittrich was the lead mechanic in the shop or a long time. I guess when the airline moved from Ithaca to Utica, he was the lead then. Some of the guys in the shop resented him. Maybe it was because he is German, I'm not sure. Anyway, they used to get on him and give him a hard time by telling him he wasn't doing the lead job right and that he should do things so the shop got more overtime etc. Freddie sensed the guys were trying to get him into trouble and started to keep a dossier on all the mechanics in the shop. He would keep track o when they were late from break, when they went to the toilet and how long they stayed, when they were working on G-jobs (private projects for themselves) and a bunch of other data. He wrote it all in German in a little notebook he kept in the lead’s desk. One day when Freddie wasn't there, Bernie LaTour happened to be looking in the lead’s desk for a key and found his notebook written in German. Being curious he asked this radioman from Holland to translate the notebook. You can imagine the uproar when they found Freddie had been keeping a dossier on every mechanic in the shop detailing every little goof-up each guy had pulled! When Freddie came in the next day, he was confronted by the guys and by the union. He got mad and was embarrassed. A couple of days later he stepped down as lead mechanic and went on the bench as a mechanic. Freddie became convinced that he had been set-up by Bernie just so Bernie could get his job. I don't know how true it was, but to this day I think that Freddie Dittrich feels that way. Especially when Bernie started doing all the things that he bitched about Freddie doing when he was the lead. I think this animosity is still present. I talked to Freddie in 1997, 30 years or so after the fact, and he made little remarks about Bernie and also about Olney Anthony (Bernie’s co-conspirator).

About this time I read an article in a paper or magazine about this New York City policeman trying to get American Flags displayed on cars. I wrote to him and was so impressed that I decided to help him along. He sold small, three-inch by five-inch flags that you put on your car aerial antenna. He sold them at cost. So, I went all over the hangars and offices taking orders for these flags. I must have sold a couple of hundred of them. The parking lot at Utica looked like a real patriotic lot with all those flags on the cars .I felt good doing it!

Also I started making searchword puzzles. I got the idea from Pete Falcone and it seemed so simple that I decided to make some for sports teams - NFL, NBA, and baseball. I got teams like the New York Jets, the Baltimore Colts, the 76er’s and the Padres to use them in their game programs. Some even paid me money for using them! So I branched out and made puzzles for a couple of newspapers, the Catholic Sun and Canastota Bee Journal and the Holiday Inn Magazine. It was a nice little hobby and I got some tickets for the Jets and Colts games for nothing. I would take Eric, and sometimes my nephew Michael, to the games. It was great while it lasted.

Well things were going great until 1970 when the pilots at Mohawk went on strike. It was around Thanksgiving time 1970 when the pilots walked off the job. Nobody expected it to be a long strike because of Thanksgiving and then the Christmas holidays coming. But we were due for a rough awakening. It lasted for six months. When the strike started, Mohawk shut down all operations and laid off all employees. I got unemployment checks which were about $100.00 per week. As the strike dragged on, I got a job working on this potato farm in Chittenango, maintaining tractors. I did this ‘under the counter’ working for $1.50 and hour so I could still get unemployment. I used Jean's social security number for withholding taxes. This was a bleak time in our lives. The strike was finally settled around May 1971. But another shock was coming.

After going back to work in the Instrument Shop, I thought my life at Mohawk would go as before. I was wrong! Mohawk Airlines announced that it was going to merge with Allegheny Airlines after agreements could be reached with all the unions, shareholders and the approval of the board of directors. It took almost a year, but finally in 1972 Allegheny Airlines took over and Mohawk Airlines ceased to exist. I was sad to see it go. I must not have been the only one. Mohawk’s president, Robert Peach killed himself with a shotgun after the board of directors announced the merger! That's kind of a drastic thing to do! Looking back with hindsight, I guess it was inevitable that Mohawk Airlines would go under. One of the reasons given was the location of the maintenance headquarters at Utica was a poor choice. Syracuse would have been better because traffic demand in Utica was low and empty planes would have to be flown in to Utica all the time. I personally feel that the powers that be, like Agway and Chase Manhattan Bank, wanted to divest themselves of Mohawk Airlines and a merger with Allegheny Airlines was their solution. Probably in the long run it turned out better for me personally. I didn't lose my seniority and all my time counted for retirement. But I was sad to see the Mohawk signs come down!

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