The Bonanza Year

This is a continuing series of stories about growing up in the magical village of Tarrytown, New York during the mid 20th century, and my life at 27 Cottage Place.

Previous blogs covered a genealogical trip to Italy to search for our Italian ancestors who settled in Tarrytown.  This blog features the General Motors Chevrolet plant which used to be on the river.  The plant was within walking distance of 27 Cottage Place, and many days, I walked to work to make a ton of money during my college years.

I used to make good money working at the Fisher Body Division of the Chevrolet Plant down by the river.  My Dad was a foreman there and I was lucky enough to find summertime employment while I was home from college.  I worked night shifts mostly, but sometimes the midnight shift.

We used to get a premium for working the night shift.  It was more pay than I would have made working on the day shift.  I worked in the materials department unloading the freight cars which were hauled in and out of the plant on the railroad tracks along the loading dock.  We would unload floor pans, doors, instrument panels, and all the parts of the vehicles.  The most difficult freight car, believe it or not, was the freight car which contained the cushions for the automobile seats.  They came densely packed in brown paper containers and they were difficult because they were so large and unwieldy.  

On the midnight shift, there was an even larger premium to your wages.  Here, while the assembly line was quiet, we used to roam about the plant counting all the parts.  Knowing how many pieces of each auto part were in the plant was an important part of the factory planning, especially at the end of the model year.

Anyone remember the old Chevy L6

The work was hard and demanding, but the pay was fabulous.  Often, when working on the midnight shift, you could stay in the morning to fill in for absentees on the line.  That got us "time and a half".  I made gobs of money which I simply handed over to Dad to help with the college costs.  In turn, if I ever needed money for a date or anything else, Dad would give it to me.  Life was good, but it became even better in the "Bonanza Year".

I don't recall the year.  It was either 1964 or 1965.  I made enough money to cover my entire tuition.  It all began with a strike.

When automobiles came off the line, they were quickly loaded onto car carriers.  The Anchor Motors Freight Company would then haul them off to different dealers on the east coast.  This year, the Anchor Motors drivers went on strike.  It wasn't a few days later that the company's lots were full of unmoved cars.  They had to either find a place to store the 50 or so cars coming off the line every hour, or close the plant down.  

General Motors management made a snap decision.  They rented a huge dumping ground up north in Croton.  Management then arranged to drive all the cars coming off the line up to Croton.  They had to hire extra people to drive them there and park them on the dirt ground for storage for the duration of the strike.  

The strike went on for several weeks, and by the time I got out of school for the summer, rainstorms had rendered a staggering mess out of this temporary lot.  Cars were buried in mud.  Cars were not where they were supposed to be.  Cars had been tampered with.

When the Anchor Motors Company finally settled with their drivers, they were forced to hire an army of people who worked with the GM people to try to untangle this mess.

The result was that when I got off my midnight shift from the plant, I was able to work another 8 hours in the Croton mud field.  We used to board a bus in the morning and drive up.  Our job would be to locate specific vehicles and drive them to a makeshift loading ramp where they would be placed on car carriers.

The cars were either covered with mud, or sunk so deep, that it was a project to dig them out and get them going.  In at least one incident that I know of, a car was found missing its engine.  In another incident, a car actually fell off the loading ramp and was damaged.

To this day, I wonder about the dealers who received these cars, and even more, about the people who purchased them.  To this day, I can't believe the money I made.  I am certain that in that two months of summer work,   I made more money, in equivalent dollars, than I made when I retired from my engineering job.  It was a sad day when the plant closed its doors.

Life was really good in those days.  Can you imagine a youngster today, making an entire year's college tuition slinging burgers at McDonalds?  We were, indeed, fortunate to grow up in Tarrytown.  I count my blessings every day.  I hope you do to.

Pictures curtesy of "GM Tarrytown, an Autobiography" published in 1996