ralph piore
Ralph Piore was a little old Italian cleaner that everybody used to love to tease. He claimed he knew the Mafia in Utica. As a matter of fact he said he saw them shoot a guy one night in Utica. Ralphie used to go talk to Butterfield (the head of maintenance) and if anybody would give him a hard time about anything he would say: “I'm going to see Butterfield about that!” So the guys used to call him ‘suckhole’ and make kissing noises behind his back. This would infuriate him! Some of the guys even got on the public address system and made kissing noises that would go all over the hangar.

joe somers
Joe Somers (possibly spelled Summers) was another eccentric cleaner. He used to dress in old-fashioned 1930’s style clothes with wide brimmed hats. It was said that he ran a nudist camp somewhere around Utica. He was a hard working guy whose specialty was polishing the bare aluminum skins of the airplanes until they really shined. He used big buffers and I think he was the one who really started the shining jobs, though I could be wrong.

eddie bielawa
Eddie Bielawa was a mechanic in the Check Crew who lived with his mother, while she was alive, and never married. He liked motorcycles and liked to wear World War II officer's pants. He had a tape of a DC-3 taking of and as a joke he played it real loud outside the break room. As the sound of the engines got real loud, as if it were taking off, he turned the tape off suddenly and everybody came running out of the break room expecting to see a DC-3 crashing. That was quite a joke. Eddie was also called Eddie Bow-Wow.

ed kalin & herbie parsons
Ed Kalin (Nasty Ed) and Herbie Parsons were two live electricians who worked the midnight shift. They had a weird sense of humor. Their little thing was to act as if they were to homosexuals and try to get some poor new guy to believe they were gay and looking for new conquests. I believe some new hires actually quit because they thought these guys were queer and trying to put the make on them. These two thought that was funny as hell. I thought it was stupid!

mike zelsnack
Mike (the Hose) Zelsnack was a mechanic in the Mechanical Assembly Shop. For years as a junior mechanic, he ran the machine for making hydraulic hoses. That's where he got the nickname “Mike the Hose”. Nobody else wanted the job because it was dirty work. Mike was also a pilot and flew the Mohawk Airlines company plane for a while until he got into trouble for flying into restricted airspace. Mike is quite a colorful character and there are some other stories about him. Like the time when he took his wife ‘to-be’ up for an airplane ride. As they were flying along, Mike suddenly had to do a bowel movement, so he told his girl to take over the controls. He climbed into the back seat and did his dump into a burp bag! It's hard to imagine, but that's the way it was told to me. Mike used to live in a house just off the end of the runway at Oneida County Airport. To go to work at the hangars, he used to ride his bike on the runway. He would phone the tower and they would give him permission to use the runway and taxiway. That Mike wasn't so dumb after all!

connie, cookie...
Connie, Cookie, and some other women cleaners on the midnight line. They used to clean the interiors of the planes as they were parked all night. They were mature women and not exactly raving beauties, but the midnight mechanics would hang around them like they were 21-year-old bathing beauty contestants. There were more than a couple of times that guys would be caught making out in the back seats of a darkened plane! I couldn't believe it when I first heard of it. Maybe at 3:00 a.m. or 4:00 a.m., anything looks good in the dark! Connie’s nickname was “Super Connie” because she had two huge breasts. I remember Bob Shaw, a lead, calling me over once and grabbing one of Super Connie’s breasts saying, “How would you like one of these wrapped around your neck!” I felt embarrassed for Connie but she was a good sport and laughed about it. Now days a woman would scream “sexual harassment” and file a legal suit. Times do change!

billy appleton
Billy Appleton started working at Mohawk as a cleaner and worked his way up to a flight line manager. He came in drunk one night and tried to sexually attack one of the midnight cleaners. He was arrested after the woman resisted and started yelling. He was fired! The dumb part was that Billy had a real attractive wife and the cleaner was no raving beauty. Midnight must be the witching hour. Strange things happen! Billy Appleton must have the knack of survival because he turned up at Allegheny Airlines as a supervisor. How about that!?!

oot
Oot was a mechanic in the Check Crew and also the Line. He is famous for being the butt of the slogan “Oot Sucks”. I don't know how it started, but the phrase “Oot Sucks” started appearing everywhere - inside of wings, in the tail compartment, on hangar walls etc. It resembled the “Kilroy Was Here” craze of WWII. It was all over Mohawk, then Allegheny and later, USAir.

willie williamson
Willie Williamson was a mechanic in the M.A. Shop. He had a sever case of arthritis that affected his whole body. He was hardly able to walk. His wife would drop him off in front of the hangar and it would take him about 15 minutes to walk about 30 yards. He was a nice guy. The work at Mohawk was the only thing that seemed to sustain him. I guess he felt as long as he could work, he could stay alive.  After the merger with Allegheny, they wouldn't allow him to work and he passed away. It was a tough existence for Willie, but he never seemed to let it get him down.

mickey worden
Mickey Worden was an electrician in the Accessory Shop. He was a little Irish imp. He was always stirring up trouble! He would always get into fights and come to work with black eyes. He liked to drink and when he had a few, he would get nasty. That's when he got his shiners. He didn't know when to shut up! He was a very goosey guy who would jump at the slightest sound. His drinking affected his family life. He had a pretty wife and a lot of kids but couldn't resist stopping after work for some drinks instead of going home.

bill deecher
Bill Deecher was a lead electrician in the shops. He was an alcoholic. He just couldn't quit drinking. He used to bring in a big thermos of milk laced with booze and would always be going out to the parking lot to drink from his thermos. He died from cirrhosis of the liver not long after the merger with Allegheny. A waste!

ernie root
Ernie Root was a lead radioman on the line. A very smart guy but had a gambling and drinking problem. He was a short guy and sort of an Asiatic cast to his complexion. He told a story that he was picked up during WWII because they thought he was a Jap. I believe it too! He loved to play the horses at Vernon Downs. That's where he would blow his paycheck. He had a three-way system of borrowing from banks and the credit union. He started out with a loan from a bank and would not pay anything on it until it was due. Then he would go to the credit union and get a loan to pay up his first loan. He would let the credit union loan go until it was due, then he would get a loan from a third bank to pay up the credit union loan. He knew how to hold off each banking institution so it wouldn't affect his ability to get another loan. And he would always complain of being broke.

bill malpezzi
Bill Malpezzi was a mechanic in the Check Crew and was also the Local 75 I.A.M. chairman. He developed leukemia and passed away at an early age. He was in his 30’s. I remember he used to say he liked to work overtime. If he was sick and they asked for overtime, he would joke by saying, “Carry me to the time-clock boys, so I could punch in on the overtime!” He tried being a foreman for a while but came back as a mechanic when they laid off some foremen. That's when he became active in union work. It was very sad when he died. Everyone thought he was going to be okay because when he would get a transfusion, he would be his normal self for a couple of weeks. But gradually the time between transfusions shortened until his body couldn't take it anymore and he passed away.

freddie dittrich, albert becker &
walter schlebusch
Freddie Dittrich, Albert Becker and Walter Schlebusch were three mechanics who were in the German army during World War II. Freddie and Albert were real Teutonic types who after working in the USA for a while couldn't understand how Germany lost the war. Walter was just the opposite. In fact, he acted like he was an American all his life. Everybody liked to tease these guys all the time by shouting, “sig heil” and “Jawohl” and other German words. Albert and Freddie would take the heat and get mad, but Walter used to go along with the crowd. I recall one trick the guys used to pull on Albert Becker. It seems that Albert had a favorite work stool that he used to keep all the time. When his shift ended, he would even chain it to his workbench! After he went home, the guys on second shift would hacksaw his chain off and hide his stool. Albert would come in the next morning and would start yelling that someone took his stool. He wouldn't start work until he found it. Sometimes it would be an hour or so before he found it. It was funny! Guys would go up to Albert and ask him if he found his stool, just so he would start ranting and raving.

joe piatkowski
Joe Piatkowski, a.k.a. Booneville Joe, was a mechanic in the Instrument Shop from Booneville, NY. He was a big bull-shitter that everyone liked to tease because you could always get a rise out of him. The guys used to pull all kinds of practical jokes on him. They would turn his toolbox upside down or hide some of his tools or his lunch. Joe would yell, “I don't get mad, I get even!” One time after he called in sick for a day, the guys wrote a phony letter of reprimand from personnel saying that Joe was using too much sick time. The letter stated he was developing a pattern of days off sick and the next time he called off sick, he would need to see the company doctor before he would get paid. When Joe saw that letter he really hit the ceiling and went tearing out to see the boss. Naturally the boss didn't know anything about it and called personnel. They didn't know anything about it either So, if finally dawned on Joe that it was another practical joke. He came tearing back to the shop saying that the company is going to fire the guy who wrote that letter for impersonating a boss. We all acted innocent and denied knowing anything about it. It was hilarious!

Joe was engaged to be married. The Friday afternoon before the scheduled Saturday wedding we had a little party for him in work and things got carried away. Two guys grabbed Joe and held him while tow other guys pulled his pants down and spray painted his genital area with red paint.  Boy Joe was really mad and I don't blame him. I thought it was a stupid trick to pull! Joe quit when he had to move to Pittsburgh.

gil morczek
Gil Morczek was an electrician in the Accessory Shop. Gil was one of the first guys in the area to buy a snowmobile. He called in sick on the first day he got it and everybody figured he was out driving it around. As a joke, one of the guys called his home and made believe he was the Mohawk Airline company doctor. His wife answered the phone and was told that everyone in the Accessory Shop had called in sick. This was so unusual that the company doctor is sending out the company nurse to visit everyone's home to seed if there was some common ailment for the guys in the shop. She was going to be at Gil’s house at about 1:00 p.m. Then we hung up! The next day Gil came to work and I told him that the doctor called me up and was sending the nurse to visit me, but she never showed up. Gil said that the same thing happened to him! Then one of the mechanics spoiled the gag by teasing Gil and laughing at him. That made him realize the gag and he got mad! He threatened everybody in the shop but nothing ever came of it. That was a funny practical joke though. Even if Gil didn't think so!

dean vidler
Dean Vidler was an electrician in the Accessory Shop. He was an older man, very quiet. He never got involved in any of the grab-assing that went on in the shop. I only saw him get mad once and this was how it happened. The company decided to start an afternoon shift and the normal procedure would be to assign the junior guys to work the afternoons. As a joke I took a piece of company stationery and wrote on it that the following senior guys would have to work afternoons so the shop could have a balanced crew of experienced mechanics on both shifts. Dean Vidler’s name was on the top of the list to work afternoons. I put this notice on the bulletin board while everyone was at lunch. Nobody noticed it for about an hour. Then, as soon as they did, the shop turned into bedlam! Dean ripped the notice off the board and ran into the supervisor’s office wanting to know what's going on. The supervisor stirred up the pot by saying he told the foreman not to post the notice until he approved it! That really got Vidler steaming and he got the union president, Don Cutter, to come to the shop. As soon as Cutter saw the letter, he knew it was a joke. But instead of making a big stink about it, he just said it was all a mistake and calmed Dean Vidler down. I never admitted to putting up that letter and to this day no one ever figured out it was me (though I think Cutter knew it was me all the time). It was fun while it lasted. I never saw Dean get so mad again!

martin domalga
Martin Domalga was the first guy that I remember retiring from Mohawk. He was a sheet metal man who specialized on stainless steel mods (modifications) Convairs.