George Dixon and Delco-Remy

I hope to do a separate posting on the history of Delco-Remy in Anderson. After all, both of my grandfathers, my dad, three of my four uncles (including Uncle Bob Wellons, my mom's only sibling), one of my two brothers and at least one cousin worked there.

But I have questions about the work that my grandfather performed before his retirement at age 65.

Uncle Don gave me a brief description of his job:

Dad's GM job was machining die cast iron starting motor housings on a lathe.

Seems like a simple, direct answer... but I'm a teacher and school district administrator. Too embarassed to tell uncle Don that I didn't understand what he was talking about, I asked Jay to take a look at Uncle Don's reply and interpret for me.

Now that Jay has replied back to me, I still need interpretation... but Jay sure seemed to know the details of what my grandfather did at work.

Jay's job took him all over the GM plants. He was a millwright. He fixed things... from buildings to machines... and both installed equipment and took down equipment.... and I think he also moved a lot of equipment. That part of his job reminded me of the ulitmate husband, with the bosses deciding every few minutes to move the sofa to the other side of the room.

It was interesting to get different views about GM over the years... my dad, and Uncles Don and Jim were managers. Most of the rest were skilled tradesmen and union men. Not necessarily hard-care unionists, but never doubting the importance of the union to their livelihoods. Bruce was both a worker, and later a production supervisor.

Here's how Jay described our grandfather's job:

Grandpaw Dixon worked in Dept 309 in plant 3. This department machined rough cast iron nose housings that were poured using liquid cast iron into molding machines in the plant 5 foundry.The foundry was located on Noble Street, south across the railroad tracks from 23rd Street. Grandpaw would pull these rough castings from drop bottom tubs, orient them in a turret lathe ( a machine that would rotate the casting and had a multiple spindled tool head that would machine one surface of the casting, then could be rotated to another tool to machine another surface and so forth). I believe the turret lathe he ran had six tools so the operator could machine six surfaces without having to reposition the casting. It was a dirty job as cast iron is very dusty when machined and hot chips would fly constantly. I worked on this lathe a few times (maintaining the motor and drive belts) for probably thirty years on and off after Grandpaw retired. An amazing fact came to light one time when I was sent to remove the motor on this lathe one night. I couldn't figure how to get the motor off. After removing all of the bolts, it wouldn't move. We called our foreman down to take a look and he brought the lathe manual (instruction book) and I noticed the date that the lathe was made was 1917!

So I'm getting the idea that "machining" is sort of taking the rough edges off of a newly cast piece... in this case with a lathe ( I sorta know what that is from shop class, although that was a wood lathe). Somebody has to explain "nose housing" to me! And I believe the starter motor is what fires the engine so we don't have to crank the engine like in the old days!

There was a lot of talk about strikes over the years, and there actually were a few strikes. But mainly just talk and then the sides reached agreement. Back in the day, there were some serious, classical owner-union fights. Lock-ins and such. I wonder if George was at the company during these years and ever talked about it. I never heard about it.

I know our family's financial security was very much tied to those GM jobs, salaries and benefits. It still is, even though the company and union are both facing very difficult times. Even those of us who didn't work there were and are still positively impacted by the GM boom in Anderson.

The great picture above was taken at my grandfather’s retirement celebration at Delco. Back then, you retired at 65 and they made a pretty big deal of it. What’s great about the picture is that my grandmother is their along with their three sons, all of whom worked at Delco-Remy also. They are “in uniform” as salaried workers.