Part Four...

More background...

In September of 1965, my classroom training began for the electrician's apprenticeship program. Man, it took me five years just to get out of high school and I wasn't looking forward to resuming something I very much detested. School was only one night per week for 36 weeks for four years for four hours each night. And it was in Kingsport, so that much more traveling was involved. Rats! Although basic electricity was taught, the subject we were required to know very well at the end of four years was the National Electrical Code. The code is a set of guidelines and rules set up to keep everyone involved with electrical work as safe as possible, including the end users of our work. Along with school, I was required to have 8,000 work hours before I was allowed to graduate to journeyman.

Another thing about the Eastman; they had rules that their employees worked under, and we had to abide by them, too. One we didn't like was the full hour we were forced to take for lunch. Our work day began at 7:30 each morning, and ended at 4:30 pm. It meant getting out of bed no later than 6:00 am, showering, and getting to Kingsport before the gates were closed, putting in nine hours, and then fighting traffic on a two lane road until we got home again. It took us about twelve hours to get paid for eight.

Apprentices changed journeymen about every six months so we could get as much benefit from different experiences as possible. Most of my leaders were good men and good electricians. Two I worked and carpooled with were hunters. One time I talked them into letting me take them to Fall Branch on a rabbit hunt, to a place where I had killed many of the poor creatures. Well, we went, and not one critter showed himself all day. All that was killed was my hat, and it was blown to kingdom come by several shotgun blasts. No, I wasn't wearing it, but it was my favorite one. The price I paid for leading them on a barren journey.

This was the sixties, which fit my demeanor perfectly. I already had grown hair like the Beatles months before most Americans knew they existed. Being as skinny and tall as I was, my uncle told me not to stand in a corner very long, because someone might think I was a mop and start cleaning floors with me.

In 1967, I decided to grow a beard, mainly because it would give me an extra few minutes of the mornings to sleep. The Tennessee Eastman Company, being sole owners of their own employees' souls, decided to take mine too. If I didn't get rid of the beard, I was to be terminated. I took it to the union steward, whom in turn asked the union Business Agent (BA) what to do. I was told by them to get rid of the beard. Eastman provided employment for too many union members to take a chance on making them mad. So, I went home and pouted for a week. The BA called and said if I didn't get back to work immediately and sans face hair, I would be out of the program. So, facing the fact that I had a wife and now two kids to support, plus I wanted to get out my parent's house, I shaved and returned to work, but I was never again enthusiastic about my trade union.

Any journeyman whom worked at the Eastman did so for less than scale. They would pay $.25 per hour less than what he would make outside the gates. The journeymen had to accept the stupid deal, or face hitting the road as a tramp. Here it is 40 years later, and Eastman still employs union contractors, but they don't pay full scale.

In 1968, Carolyn and I had our first house built. It was 1300 sq. ft. with three bedrooms and my pride and joy; a full basement. Hot damn! My parents donated the land, Carolyn did the painting, and I did the electric.

Finally in September of 1969, I topped out, but continued working for the contractor at Eastman until early March, 1970 when they had enough of my "insubordination" and fired me, supposedly banning me for life from working there.

Next... hitting the road.

Part Three...

Some more background...
Tennessee Eastman Company at the time (1965) was a subsidiary of Eastman Chemicals, Inc., which in turn was a division of Eastman Kodak Company. Tennessee Eastman was and is a sprawling multi-building facility along the banks of the Holston River in Kingsport, Tenn. I mean a whole lot of factories in one huge compound. It was started around 1915 or so, and when I began work there it was on the construction of building number 255. This should give you an idea of how large the place is, and it is till growing.
They manufactured various chemicals, acids, and solvents for industrial use, plus such things as food additives and preservatives, synthetic yarns, and dyes for the textile industry. At the time, there were about 11,000 thousand employees working there, plus several thousand outside contractor workers. They were Tennessee's largest employer and had their own RR yard, complete with maintenance facilities that rivaled any in the free world. They had their own water filtration department and waste water treatment plants. They generated their own electricity and steam from three different multi-turbine power plants. They had their own fire and police departments, a refrigeration plant that was huge, two large cafeterias that served excellent food at prices that even I could afford on a few occasions, movie theaters and recreation facilities that were state-of-the-art, and much more. They had their own research and development labs and pilot plants that were larger than most normal factories. As an inside subsidiary, they had their own construction outfit called Bay's Mountain Construction Company that had the finest equipment and as well trained employees as any in the world. Eastman was completely independent from outside needs as possible, except for raw materials and coal to fire the powerhouse boilers. They also paid their employees a much higher wage and benefit package than any company around the area, and they gave them a bonus each March that could be up to $10k and often more.
Into this stepped a 6'5" and very lean 150 pound and twenty-year-old kid that knew exactly squat about anything. Ignorant doesn't come close to whom I was, and especially how I felt. Did I mention that I was extremely shy and self-conscious about being skinny and long-legged? My eye glasses with the black frames added to my nerdish looks. I was required to wear a yellow hardhat, and that didn't help my self esteem knowing I looked like a world class doofus because my head was always one or two sizes smaller than a normal persons. I suppose I looked something like Darth Vader at a starvation convention.
The first journeyman I worked with had just "topped out" from the apprenticeship program, and had never been turned loose on a job where he had all the responsibility. He was a very good guy, and he lived in Johnson City, so we were able to car pool with three other journeymen from Elizabethton. Well, he was a good guy except for one thing; he had a hell of a temper. When things didn't go like he wanted, he started throwing things. Hickeys (hand-held conduit benders), hand tools, even tripod pipe vices were sent flying. Only one time was I hit by one of his missiles; a section of half-inch conduit that wasn't bending to his will. The worst it could have done was knock me off the top of the eight-foot step ladder I was standing on, but it was a glancing blow and I figured no harm, no foul.
Damn, I'm having fun remembering and writing about this part of my life. Later on, my memory won't be so good because of the alcohol and drug fog I forced my brain to live in.

Part Two...

Back then—1965—there were two easy ways to get into the electrical worker's union apprenticeship program; be born into it or marry into it. Due to birth restrictions, I chose the latter. My father-in-law entered into the program through government subsidies after serving in WWII, and spent most of his apprenticeship at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory near Knoxville, Tennessee.
It took Carolyn's folks a year to decide that I was barely good enough to keep on as a son-in-law, and that mostly because we had a new daughter.
I left my job as a mill worker for Burlington Industries in July, and began what was to become a long and winding road through the rest of my life. I had been with the mill since January 1963, and had worked my way from $1.25/hr. to $1.60/hr., which included a nickel per hour extra for working the 4:00 pm til midnight shift. I went to work through the union for Kingsport Armature and Electric Company for $1.40/hr. Doesn't seem like much of a pay cut by today's standards, but twenty cents per hour was nearly enough to buy two tanks of gasoline at .23/gal. On top of that, I had to travel 25 miles each way and each day on a crooked two lane highway, so actually, I was taking an enormous hit in the wallet just to have a possible brighter future for the family. Another deduction came in a two percent assessment coming from my gross pay and going to the local union. Also, there was monthly union dues of $15 to be paid to the International Organization. Then there were the taxes to pay, and after all was said and done, I made enough money to make my car payment and buy gasoline. Fortunately, we were living with my parents and they, along with Carolyn's folks, supported us—all or in part—for several years. At the time, journeyman's scale was $3.50/hr., and that was big money for working people in East Tennessee. In the Ohio Valley—parts of which I would become very familiar with later on—the scale was about $5.00/hr.
After just a few days helping different electricians on small jobs, the company transferred me to Tennessee Eastman Company, where I was to work for most of the next four and one-half years.

The Eastman years are another story...