Excerpt
My interest in aeronautics as a career evolved during my High School term in the 1924-1928 time period. My unorthodox technical interests compared with my school mates, who all attended New Utrecht High School in Brooklyn, surfaced when I elected to attend the new Brooklyn Technical High School for those with an aspiration for vocational or engineering careers. In 1928, when I was accepted for entrance to the Guggenheim Aero Engineering School of NYU, only 23 of many applicants were admitted because of the limited capacity of wind tunnel and associated laboratories, as well as the matter of very personal attention by the faculty. At that time the country was enjoying a heady and prosperous growth, with the aviation industry offering employment opportunities in new and rapidly expanding companies.
Only one year later the often-referenced depression of 1929, arrested the countries industrial growth and wreaked inestimable hardships on communities and families. In my own case, I had completed my freshman year at NYU with tuition paid by my father, a prosperous woolens jobber in New York. The Bank of U.S., in which my father had all his money, closed. There was no deposit insurance, such as we now have and take for granted. Not able to pay his bills, my father went bankrupt, the business was liquidated, and after some time he was able to find a job with one of his competitors. Since his pay was a draw against commissions, he earned barely enough to survive. That summer of 1929, I worked as an apprentice mechanic in the service department of a Ford dealer earning enough to make a deposit on my sophomore college tuition while seeking a scholarship. Fortunately, the scholarship application was successful and my tuition for the sophomore year assured. One day in midterm, returning from the almost two hour subway ride from school in the Bronx, I was startled and shocked to see our furniture on the street in front of our house-victim of a sheriff foreclosure by the bank for nonpayment of the mortgage. Again, this period was before the advent of amortizing mortgages and when first and second mortgages were common. My father borrowed rent money from a neighbor and found a small house approximately ten blocks away. A local junk peddler then moved all our furniture and belongings in his horse drawn wagon in payment for junk my mother gave him. The shock of the depression did not abate until Franklin Roosevelts election to the presidency in 1932 and the enactment of the social legislation we take for granted today, like Social Security, bank deposit insurance, and unemployment insurance. Roosevelts program included many short-term acts such as the WPA and the National Recovery Act.
My sophomore year involved good grades, participation in interclass sports, the collegiate debating team, and being a founding member of the Quadrangle engineering magazine. I was then able to find a summer job, through a cousin, as a laborer on the construction of the cross-town Houston St. subway. When I reported to work a 7 oclock in the morning, the foreman I was assigned to described my job on the rock and muck gang. The rock mounds to be broken up by pick and shovel resulted from the droppings of poured concrete into the forms of the subway retaining walls. The muck, comprised a mud from the seepage of water into troughs at the foot of the retaining walls, had to be shoveled from the troughs into specialized trucks.
At the end of the first morning on the job, I ached all over despite my youth and athletic activity in college. The foreman, Passinetti, who had been observing me at work smiled and shook his head knowingly as he approached me with the words, You obviously have not been trained for this work. Whereupon he lifted the pick over his shoulder, swung it down hard on the rock pile but at the moment before impact loosened his hands from the pick handle so as not to receive the jar of the blow. He then proceeded to demonstrate how the pick is lifted at its center of weight and slung with a minimum of effort. A like demonstration followed with the shovel, the accompanying explanation of his movements stressing conservation of energy by utilizing the weight and momentum of pick and shovel for the work. He ended by emphasizing that to accomplish a days work, I would have to practice these techniques until they were mastered.
Since it was now time for lunch, Passinetti invited me to join him at a lunch room which offered filling meals to the laborers. He ordered for me and I received a foot long hoagie of ham, lettuce, and tomatoes, and a quart of milk. We sat outside at the curb where we slowly devoured the very filling lunch before going back to work, where I tried to follow his directions. From time to time, Passinetti would return to observe and adjust my form until he was satisfied that I had mastered the pick and shovel.
The shift was over at three oclock at which time I washed in a nearby water barrel and walked to the subway for home. Passinetti had advised that for the first week I take a hot salt bath before dinner to relieve the aches from muscles that had not previously experienced such exercises. He was right. Following an early dinner, I took a nap and did not awaken till the alarm clock rang the next morning. After a month my body was conditioned to the daily routine and I slowly began to meet with friends and resume a normal life away from school.
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