Crossroads: High School Curriculum
Unit X: The Age of Franklin D. Roosevelt: 1933-1945
Lesson 2
RECOLLECTIONS OF A TEENAGER'S WAR YEARS
I remember the day we moved from Ballston Spa, a small village in upstate New York, to Schenectady, fourteen miles south, when my father could no longer find ways to travel from our home to his job at the General Electric Company. (The only car we had was a 1940 Ford sedan which dad totaled following a wedding reception just after Pearl Harbor was bombed by the Japanese.) His was a good-paying job, the first steady employment that I can remember my father even having since the big strike at the Ballston Stillwater Knitting Company. It was right after school had ended -- my freshman year in 1944.
My father worked in the Searchlight Division as an assembler. I remember my father telling us how stupid the engineer and draftsmen were who drew plans independent of one another so that one would draw drill holes in one place and the other would draw them someplace else. He was proud to be a laborer who made the "sensible decision" as to where the holes should be drilled to ensure correct assembly. I never realized how big searchlights were until I saw them being loaded on railway cars. My only recollection was seeing them in newsreels and movies, which always made them seem so small to me. It has always amazed me how you could make such a powerful light.
Schenectady was a big city to me. It had increased in size from 60,000 to over 100,000 during the war with the GE and Alco (American Locomotive Company) plants in full production of war equipment. It had been said that "If GE doesn't make it, it isn't worth making." It certainly was true during the war. My hope was that my father might secure a job in the jet aircraft engine division. But the war ended and he was let go.
At the other end of Erie Boulevard was where they made tanks. I had never seen a real tank until then. As with the searchlights, I had no idea how big and heavy they were until the day I saw them being tested on Aqueduct Road. It's a wonder to me there was any road left. I was truly awed by their power as I watched their slow and methodical movements. How anything could stand in their way was a wonder to my fourteen-year-old brain.
I didn't think about it at the time, but I now think of the marvelous capacity of those two industries to move so quickly from making large electric generators, light bulbs, radios, and steam and diesel locomotives to searchlights, aircraft engines, and tanks.