For a long, long time I have resisted the thought of writing my life story and still do. Tonight though, I wish I had my dad’s version of his. Now I have to piece it together from other sources except for the nuggets I already managed to get from him.

 

He and I never worked together at the same employer, but we did have similar skills and temperaments for our time in the trades. He retired as a millwright, despite the claim on his death certificate that simply said, “welder”. For twelve plus years I was employed in metal fabrication shops but his stay spanned his entire working life.

 

That title is no small thing though. Think about it, “welder”.

 

Welding is the bonding of materials via mixture in a melted puddle. It’s fascinating the number of ways that have been developed to bond metal via welds. We each learned the craft a different way. I’m pretty sure he picked it up at Skookum on the job, whereas I attended the community college and got a one year course with it’s certificate of proficiency.

 

A bit player in our store of expertise was spot welding. That was never in either of our everyday fare but we had occasion to do it. As I recall, two thin sheets of steel (it must work also with aluminum, since that appears to be one of the bonds that holds my Land Rover skin together) are pressed together between the electrodes and then current is applied and they melt together at the place where current passes through one sheet to the other from one electrode to the other. It all happens in a snap. Bzzzzht-tah! Done.

 

A common type of welding that I associate with dad is called Stick.  My experience was with standard rods, all of which he was well familiar with: 6010, 6011, 7018 and 7024. 

 

Wire welding was more my area of expertise, and thankfully very little of that was short arc. Mostly spray arc (called hardwire), flux core, and sub arc. We also both did tig.

 

Dad, because of the nature of his work, probably did much more than I with cast iron repairs and it was just as well. Repairing cast iron is vexatious. Sometimes, it actually works.

 

He also did more pipe welding than I, which was maddening work for it’s precision and awkward positions. We brazed occasionally also. I have a brass belt buckle he made for me and that’s how he affixed the tang that fits into the belt hole and the loop on the back. And we both did time with the carbon gouger, acetylene torch and plasma cutter.

 

The point is, we both were welders for a living. We both also were nearly killed while doing it to provide for our families. The last time Dad sustained life threatening injuries he came out of it determined to restore peace to his home life by removing a major source of distress.

 

Classic welders sayings:

“I can weld up anything but the crack of dawn and a broken heart.”

“No one notices a perfect weld.” (I actually suspect that one is original to dad and it’s as deep a concept as anything from a philosper)

“A puddle is a puddle”.

 

Part of it was learned and most of it was just his nature, but he was a peaceable man.

 

He told me about a hard lesson learned from the wash basin incident which involved two men at the steel mill who despised each other. Thankfully, they worked different shifts. Dad had regular contact with them. He told me that each was eager to hear bad news about the other and independently would ask, “what did that so and so say about me this time?”

 

Dad would pass on whatever caustic message had been given him until that day when they both met at the wash basin where they were at opposite ends of their shifts. One was leaving, the other had just arrived for work.

 

Tensions ran high. Dad told me he never anticipated the explosion of passions that got them both fired that day after they came to blows and indulged in a genuine man fight.

 

Dad learned from it. Two families went without income because of that miscalculation and he felt genuine regret. It ceased to be amusing.

 

There were other upsides of being welders. We made things. He was advanced beyond anything I attempted. Though I’ve temporarily removed a foot from two of the legs of the swing set I made long ago, it’s still with me and still useful. I modified it to assist in removing the body off my Lotus chassis and had to cut it down to fit in the garage. When I get a welder here at home, I’ll weld those legs back on and come up with a better attachment method for the swing seats. Meanwhile, the gigantic threaded attachments of the screw on legs still works flawlessly for me. That feature allowed me to transport the three wide swing set in my VW Squareback.

 

Meanwhile, my father built a PTO cable winch for his pickup truck. It was ugly, but absolutely ingenious. As usual he did his research and the unit was soundly engineered even if it was made from scrap.

 

And I’m surprised that I own the “Fenimore” sign that he welded out of scrap some time around or before 1970.  It was very well done and he gave it to me many years ago. It was mounted on the porch when we resided near the county fairgrounds in Ridgefield. I built a railing on the porch of my first house and placed the name over the entrance at the top of the stairs. It’s never had a fitting home since those days, but one day it will again.

 

But back to the reason I considered it fitting that the title assigned to his mortal vocation be “welder”.

 

Dad was a unifier rather than a divider. He held things together. He mended and solidified lives. He certainly did his part as a father.

 

Only one person I can think of would want to disagree about him being a unifier, but the fact that he remained married to her as long as he did does nothing but bolster my view of his good character.

 

The standard features of welding metals applies to relationships as well. There is electricity involved, concentrated and fierce.

 

Like the rod that brought all the elements of welding together, dad gave. He didn’t stand aside and talk, he actually got involved and gave of himself. He was no meddler, but where he was invited into peoples lives, he proved a true friend.

 

His marriages ended unhappily, but that isn’t so strange when one realizes that some materials simply don’t weld. They’re just too different.

 

When I asked my mother how it was that she and dad came to be married, she told a story somewhat at variance with dad’s version. Then she lingered on the way the union came to it’s end, unsuspectingly bolstering my view of his decency.

 

He’d just emerged from the worst industrial accident to befall his long time in the trades. It left him certain of his course of action, and according to mom he was not unkind in his explaination.  He could have been more precise about his reasons, and justifiedly accusative. True to his kind nature, he didn’t go there. 

 

Any welder knows that the best joints are made with clean metal and clean surfaces, and failing that the metals have to at least be complimentary for the joint to hold.

Thus it is.