Many would say that the backbreaking, repetitive work in a grimy, overheated, dimly lit paint factory isn’t fun. These poor benighted souls were clearly not in my cohort of toilers on the four to midnight shift in the Cleveland, Ohio Glidden Paint factory in the summer of 1962. Since I was one of the lucky few to have been vouchsafed that opportunity, let me tell you of some of the hijinks that filled our days. I was just out of high school and I spent that glorious summer in the factory, dreading the impending drudgery of college.
We arrived just before 4:00 pm, clocked in and paid little attention as our shift boss read carefully and thoroughly, taking as much time as possible, the work orders that we were to fill. We then positioned the paint can filling machines under the proper paint tanks and adjusted them to fill pints, quarts or gallons as required. This took us until 5:00 pm when our supervisors left for the day.
Once alone, we rushed to the windows to ogle the secretaries leaving the administration building across the parking lot. For some of us, these lithe beauties represented our past. For me, a kid not yet eighteen, they represented an enticing future.
That took us a good forty five minutes, at which time we adjourned to sit on the wall outside the factory for a smoke break. I didn’t smoke, but felt it appropriate to join my fellows in worker solidarity. At about six thirty, we thought it might be, perhaps, time to fill a few paint cans.
My job was either to feed empty cans into one side of the machine or to take filled cans from the other side of the machine and stack them on pallets. These were very old machines that had been poorly maintained and very often slipped out of adjustment, not filling cans completely, not sealing the lids tightly, and, my favorite, mangling can lids that then remained stuck in the gears, requiring much cursing and a good half hour’s time to unstick. What fun!
Lunch break (at around 8:00 pm, but that’s what it was called) was spent again sitting on the wall outside the factory, hoping to see an accident on the busy road in front of us. Our boss, an older but still powerful man, would entertain us by crushing gallon lids with one hand. Conversation settled around the sexual positions that our boss and his wife favored, the fortunes of the Cleveland Indians, and, for the older workers among us, the laziness and incompetence of members of the Negro race. They were sure, always, to mention to Frank, our black co-worker, that they didn’t mean him. He graciously refrained from committing mayhem on any of us.
After lunch, it was time to fill more cans and play the prank of the day. My favorite was the one with the five gallon cans. We frequently had orders to fill five gallon cans with paint by hand, eschewing the machines. One of us would handle the paint hose to fill a can. Another of us would place a lid on the can and crimp it with a hand tool. A third would lift the filled can, which weighed between forty and fifty pounds, by its handle and set it on a pallet. The other three members of our team, usually the members with the most seniority, supervised.
As we got into the rhythm of the job, the third member of our team would get into a kind of groove, handling his task of lifting and palleting automatically. Once we felt that he was in this groove, the paint hose operator would refrain from filling a can, but the lid crimper would seal the empty can. We then watched as the lifter and palleter heaved the can, which he assumed was as heavy as the previous cans. The very light can, of course, sailed over his head and, if we were lucky, he’d fall on his back. Hilarity ensued!
As it approached 11:30, we cleaned up and headed to the time clock hut, where we’d tell stories and smoke cigarettes, waiting for the clock to tick midnight. One of us would position his timecard in the time clock and push it home just as midnight struck. Within seconds all of us had clocked out. We headed to our cars and passed the time until we were together again.