<Begin Segment 20>
SY: I want to keep on this topic of this technical drawing because it was something that you had no experience in, but you managed for how many years to...
AM: I spent about fifteen years in aerospace.
SY: And you worked for whom?
AM: I worked for, started off with Catalog and Advertising, the place that was right by where I lived, and then I went to work and Cannon and Sullivan, another shop, and P.W. Voorhees. And P.W., well, I started, Catalog and Advertising, I started jumping up because they wanted me as a checker, then at P.W. Voorhees I met this lady who became a supervisor. She went to Litton Systems and she proselytized, is that the word?
SY: Proselytized.
AM: So I got invited to go to Litton.
SY: She wanted you to come with her.
AM: And then I blossomed more over there, and I started going out into the field and bid on a job and bring it back and show the people on the board, I mean, what we want, when we want it. Usually it was yesterday. [Laughs]
SY: So all of these companies, then, did these drawings for the aerospace industry, and that was their main focus, was doing this technical drawing?
AM: Well, they had some other things that they would do, writing technical books and things, but the field I was in was in the engineering field with disassembly sequence. We'd support the writers who'd write about it, and we'd make sure that it's in a pleasing disassembly proper sequence.
SY: Amazing. And were all your colleagues, the people who worked with you, did they have engineering training? Or what was their background?
AM: They must have gone to some school. They never told me what school they went to.
SY: But you had no engineering background.
AM: No. The only engineering background I had was going to school, night school, while I was at Litton.
SY: So you did pick up things by going to school while you were working.
AM: Yeah. That's what I did in the beginning, yes. But when I went to school while at Litton, it was an engineering class. And that's when I went to school without my supervisor knowing about it.
SY: And why was that?
AM: Well, my buddies were going to a school and they invited me to go to school, but I had to get my supervisor's approval and she turned me down. So I reported back and said, "Sorry, I can't go." But they told me to try the department head, and department head said, "Sure. Just bypass her and come straight to me." So without her knowledge, I went to school about four and a half years. Then she finds out one day, and she said to me, "Arnold, you have to write a job description because if you get sick we don't know how to, what you're doing to get the job and doing everything that you do." And so I swallowed it hook, line and sinker. I didn't even think that this a trick or anything, and within a short period, I was the first to go. And aerospace crunch came, I was the first to go. I couldn't find a job, and I'd go pick up my check as I was looking for work, and the department head said, "Don't worry. Just take your time, find a good job, and I'll keep you on the payroll until you get a job." That's really amazing.
SY: So he was more, he helped you out while your supervisor fired you, pretty much.
AM: Yeah. I think she was worried about her job. That's my thinking.
SY: You think she was upset that you were taking this class too?
AM: She was what?
SY: Upset that you were going to school.
AM: Yeah, against her wishes. But it wasn't her money. [Laughs]
<End Segment 20> - Copyright © 2012 Densho. All Rights Reserved.