Carr, Adams & Collier/Caradco, 1947 to 1976, Office, Jobbing Divison

I started over in the special door department in ‘47, as soon as I got out of high school. I was in there I don’t know how many months, then I was transferred into the cabinet shop, and from there I got in the office—the main office.

In them days you could just go out and find any job and if you didn’t like it you’d go somewhere else. I know I had a couple—during the war I worked at the Adams Company. I’d get out of school at senior about one-thirty and I’d go home and get the bike and peddle down to the Adams Company. And then I worked on the railroad—I was gonna go for an engineer. You had to take a couple of student runs. One would be down to just north of Davenport and the other one would be up to around McGregor. Up that way. Well, one day I was sleeping and my mother woke me up and said, “Oh, they want you to take a run.” And I said, “I don’t want to do it,” and I gave it up on it. Gee, I probably should’ve gone. I’d have had it made by now.

I did a little bit of everything when I worked in the office. I’d pick up the mail and I’d communicate between the warehouse and the office and help do the billing. Jack-of-all-trades. My wife worked over in the office for a while, too. She worked in time standards. You know what that was—when you were working on a job they’d come out and time ya. They’d time how much production you made in so many minutes and all that to figure out the rates on piecework, you know. Yeah, she was in the time standards.

Later I moved to what they called the jobbing division—remember that? That was down by the bridge. I was with them until they sold it. What they did there was, they had salesmen out and they called the retail lumberyards to sell their product to them. There was about ten or twelve of us employed down there. I think they’re all dead now. There was a Cliff Kitchen, he’s dead, and Bob Bale, he was the head guy and he’s dead. There’s a lot of people I knew, but hell, most of them are all dead.

I liked it at Caradco all right, but they didn’t pay that much. Yeah, that was the only bad feature—the money.

What, are you gonna take a picture? Geez, if I’d known that I’d have worn a tie.

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