Newspapers / The Badin Bulletin (Albemarle, … / Oct. 1, 1920, edition 1 / Page 4
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( STOREHOUSE AND REPAIR SHOP Page Four The Machine Shop {Contiyiued from Page 3) over the job until called to the Narrows cement testing laboratory. His most fa mous epigram was, '^‘If you m-m-monkey w-w-with w-women you’ll g-g-get into t-t-trouble every t-t-time.” The anchor bolt business began to get beyond Uncle Jesse, and the repairs, pipe work, etc., attendant on a construction job increased rapidly, so the force had to grow, too. A string of new men came in shortly—Cleve Fultz and his dad. Bob Morton, Earl Evans, Ragsdale, Spraker, Billy Napier, Sr. and Jr., Hi Forrest, and Johnny Hearne, and they formed the nucleus of our present force. Then along in January, 1914, the cor ner and other stones of the present ma chine shop and blacksmith shop were poured by Patsy Ramard’s gang, with some of Uncle Jesse's anchor bolts in serted therein. The steel work was erected in due time, and April saw much of the equipment installed. Elmer Hagadone was the Master Me chanic during this period. Besides the machine shop, he had charge of the gar age, the dinkies, the “one spot” and “two spot,” the crane and other rolling stock of the French Company; looked after the installation of equipment in the Carbon Plant, and ^vas chief of the Fire Department. He was kept toler ably busy! Later he was relieved of his duties as chief of the Fire Depart ment, when “Pussyfoot” Muckean came to town to take charge of the Police and Fire Department. While Officer Muckean was not of the machine shop, the machine shop and the police departanen(t were often mixed, particularly after payday, hence a note or two regarding the officer should not be amiss in this history. Also please note that this period was in the good old days of the four-quart law. Officer Muckean was the hot cat, from Chicago, a city-broke cop who had never been south of the Southworks Steel Mills. He put helmets on his hired help, and pro vided them with a billy apiece. He then got a map of the town—Badin only ex isted on paper—and assigned a beat to each and every member of his trusty force. His office was in the laboratory, and its principal item of equipment was an enlarged crayon portrait of the officer in uniform, with a marvelous billy draped with blue cord hanging from it. Said billy had been a gift, and on second look one could easily ascertain why it had been given away. Officer Muckean’s squad would meet in formation in front of the laboratory daily. Chief Muckean would read them a bulletin regarding wearing collars, shining their shoes, or something, whereupon they would salute and depart for their respective beats, and could be seen patrolling back and forth over the cornfields from sun up to sun down, waiting for |the town to grow up and give them something to do. Erection of the electrode plant was started after the machine shop was well under way. It is a curious thing to BADIN bulletin note that the French people called the “repair shop” and not the “machin® shop,” and they got it well started befor® they trifled (much with the electro^® plant. This single axiom of theirs> “Build your repair shop before you buil^ your carbon plant,” would indicate that they knew considerably more about mak' ing carbon than some folks are wiH'^^ to give them credit for knowing. With the roof on the electrode pla^^’ the equipment came along, and was i’* serted by the trusty rigging gang- pan grinders, pumps, presses, cranes, fact everything discussed in the artic last month on the “Badin Carbon Plant>^ had long before been previously cuss- and recussed by the machine shop the erection thereof. Yea—it is thus—from the beginning to the endinSj from the cab of the mogul to the hoof of the muje, will you find the hum mechanic. This is a mechanical ag® The world spins, we speak of the chanics of writing, machinery of the la''^» the accountant compounds interest the sawbones compounds fractures, P tics are oiled, the pulpit puts the ski^^ under Satan, and down at the bottom the combined kinetic cosmos is the fhanic with his oil can and a bus Stillson—he can’t get a Wescott ^ the tool room because the Electrical partment cleaned them out months And so Uncle Jesse and Hagadone a^^^ the rest of the boys worried along? P ting in a gas producer here, a P there, a pan grinder over yonder, less gas mains, hydraulic lines, st® lines, a vile mess of buck stays, cast-i floor p’ates, reversing valves, water spouts, and peepholes, which was bricked in together and called a calci crushers, elevators, tar kettles, and ^ the rest of the stuff indicated on the b print. The firebrick work in the P ducers, flues, baking oven, and was done by a force of Italians, “ the direction of Louis Martinoni /old fat Frenchiman namedi whose conversation was limited at times to “Bon jour—dam hot—oUi> Yes, the old boy was some talker- y, served, maybe, some folks would from what he said. But it wasn , much what he said as the way it. He used garlic to punctuate ^ The Italians lived in Little It® settlement back of the carbon P They brought with them lots of jgji- Dago Red, Barreled Beer and other cacies that made Little Italy a Latin, a Bohemia, a Greenwich ^ and a Mecca for the tired lads
The Badin Bulletin (Albemarle, N.C.)
Standardized title groups preceding, succeeding, and alternate titles together.
Oct. 1, 1920, edition 1
4
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