Iron Man of the Month: Harold Fleisch
(Page 4 of 5)
July/August 1971
Joe Fahnestock
It was in the heavy-laden tool storage room that Harold Fleisch proceeded to show off the gamut of heavy drill bits and babbitting forms which Pence Machine Shop had accumulated over the decades since the year 1905.
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“We’ve got every size drill, all the way from an eighth on up to two-and-a-half inches,” said he, grabbing a few of the largest ones to emphasize the claim. “And these on the shelf are bottom cups for babbitting engine bearings.”
“The weight of these tools on some of these old wooden shelves has them sagging like hammocks,” I mused, my memory going back to the old “Out Our Way” cartoons by Williams, showing baggy-overalled shop men, their cheeks bulging with tobacco cuds, groping for tools in dingy, over-stocked factory store rooms.
Escorting me to the opposite and far end of Pence Machine Shop, Harold Fleisch stopped to inspect the cutting out of a smoke-box ring for the front of the old Frick engine which welder Phil Price and Maurice Miller were finishing in the rough. Price and Miller, both sons of farmers, represent the rising, captain of industry echelon of youthful day-shift employees at Pence with sufficient roots in the past to eliminate the so-called “generation gap.” And the job they were finishing off appeared to be a most enviable coalition of geometric torching.
Meantime, “secretary” Cliff Neff was waiting once again with time-book in hand, to latch onto Harold Fleisch as he “flashed” by. Another problem having developed that required the master’s touch.
“You fellows don’t believe in pretty young secretaries in mini-skirts. Pence Machine Shop is definitely a man’s world,” said I to Neff. “What kind of work over the years has caused you to wind up as male-lib secretary to Harold Fleisch? Isn’t this man’s invasion of woman’s domain in the secretarial office a reversal of trends?”
“For years I sold big tractors and farm machinery even several of the big one-cylinder Rumely OilPulls, like the one sitting over there,” explained Clifford Neff with a wry smile between his jowls. “Also I was a farmer in between times.”
Here we have the combination big-implement salesman and farmer as the “perfect secretary” at the Pence Machine Shop. Either you had to be a machinist or farmer to get into the holy of holies with Harold Fleisch. (Women beware!)
“The only time we ever had a woman secretary was when one of the men secretaries was sick and Harold Fleisch’s wife came in to balance the books,” laughed Neff.
“I’m just old-fashioned enough to believe that even the small farm is going to make a comeback,” mused he. “I still farmed with horses up till just five years ago. Then one day a couple of Amish came by and ‘forced my hand’ at selling them my fine sorrel team. I even tried to bribe them to allow me to withdraw from the bargain. But they replied, ‘A word is a guarantee, you said you’d take five-hundred and we’ve given you the money. We’ve come to get the horses.’”
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