A Brief Work and Job History

I’m writing a brief history of jobs that I have had in my lifetime. Most of this, I have already posted on the blog before. The order of my jobs may be mixed up at times in this posting.

On the blog, I have told you about being a paperboy and then I worked for Western Union, delivering telegrams on my bicycle. With that job, I would go to the offices of workers and sing a telegram to them.

I worked in a box factory making wood boxes.

I worked for General Electric in San Francisco, winding coils for large electric motors

I worked at the shipyard in Richmond, California. One of the ships that I helped to build was the fastest ship that was ever built.

I worked at the shipyard in Alameda, California, making floating dry dock ships.

I told you about going into the Navy during War World II and about going to boot camp in San Diego. I did training with the marines on landing crafts at Oceanside, California. Then I told you about my life aboard a ship for a year and a half. After the war, I was discharged out of the Navy and we lived in Oklahoma.

I helped build a home for J. Paul Getty, the richest man in the world at that time.

I worked on the dormitories for the University of Tulsa.

I worked for another company installing attic fans in the hot summer and floor furnaces’ in the cold winters of Oklahoma.

Moving back to California, I worked in Oakland and Berkley on building eight story telephone buildings and a number of home construction jobs.

I worked making parts for peach and pear machines for canneries, and then I worked in canneries, keeping them running.

I went to canneries in Stockton, California changing the gears in the gear boxes after the canning season was over.

I drilled the holes in one of the nose cones of the first rockets that the Government sent up into space.

I machined and drilled large valves for ships and oil refineries.

I machined parts for large engines to go on ships and emergency power supplies at hospitals, if the electric went off.

The pistons in these engines were the size of large 30 to 40 gallon garbage cans. I would have to use a crane to get them into the machines to machine them.

I worked for Peterbilt Truck Co. making parts for trucks.

I worked for Hazel Atlas Glass Company. My job was to work at the end of a conveyer belt hauling the bad glass out. As ladies filled boxes with good glass, I would stack the boxes on a pallet to be hauled away.

I worked for United Can Company making parts for machines that made cans.

In Pennsylvania, I worked in a machine shop making parts for the grove crane trucks and for oil well pumps.

In another machine shop, I machined weights for barbells.

I was also a maintenance man in a large complex in Pennsylvania.

One year I worked for Donald Ray Nunley. We built a large house on the side of a mountain in Sebastopol, California.

I was a maintenance man and assistant manager for three hundred and thirty-six apartments in Cupertino, California.

When my wife, Ruth died, I went to work as a maintenance man in an apartment complex in Fremont, California.

I worked for my son, Keith as maintenances man for Redwood Chapel and school.

After years of all my many jobs, I rejoiced when the day came for me to retire.

Dad