My wife Risa and I recently spent three weeks at my daughter Sarah’s home in Northern California, the privilege of the working-less class striving for family connection.
My teenage granddaughters were there, and to my surprise, they too cared about connection with us, hopefully not just because they saw it as fleeting.
A few days before we left, my oldest granddaughter, Eliana, and Sarah cornered me for a storytelling session in the kitchen that they recorded on an iPhone.
They wanted to know about my parents and growing up on the south side of Chicago. I told them about friends or the lack of them, what it was like to go to a grammar school with 48 in a class, seating arranged by how we scored on standardized tests.
Then my granddaughter wanted to get an understanding of how I got into davening every morning, a Jewish prayer ritual that I still do today, and why I still do it.
I told them that my interest in Judaism stemmed from an identification with my parents and their identification with their tribe, even if they never seemed particularly spiritual to me.
When I was in my teens, I began to take an interest in the Holocaust in Europe. It had still been going in 1944, while I was lucky enough to be born in America. Yet the emotional trauma of dreaming about the emaciated Jews headed to gas chambers and crematoriums, while I had the luxury of spending my time practicing my jumpshot on the basketball hoop my father built in our backyard, had a strong effect on shaping who I was becoming. I was always the loner. I never quite fit in with any group.
They also asked me about my college life, and I told them how much I enjoyed writing for the Michigan Daily. I told them how I was shocked when I was not appointed the sports editor for the daily when I was the best writer. Then I explained that I just wasn’t as friendly as the guy who got the job, although I ended up being the editor because my competitor did not come back for his senior year.
They wanted to know why I did not become a professional writer. I told them that I could have, I sold several freelance pieces to magazines, but I could not imagine myself in a newspaper setting where I would have to please other people. I just did not have that knack.
My father offered me the chance to work for him and his partner, Aaron Pinkert, in the used machinery business. I had worked for him for seven summers, and to my surprise I loved the competition with the other dealers and the possibility of traveling around the world looking for what in our mind were undervalued machines. And there were not a lot of other people to please in a small family business. I thought I could make a difference in a hurry.
I met my wife Risa in college and she married me when she was 19 years old. She continued college and grad school in Chicago while I learned from my dad.
Were my father and I the perfect team? I doubt it, but we were a team, loyal to each other and family, and determined to make the unusual used screw machine business successful. My dad and I argued a lot. My brother Jim joined the business and we made it work.
In the ‘80s and early ‘90s I started a small zine called the Graff-Pinkert Times. Then around 2000, I started a full length B2B magazine about the precision machining industry called Screw Machine World, which eventually took on the name Today’s Machining World. It was a financial failure, but an artistic success. It morphed into this Blog, and Noah joined me in the latter 2000s, lured in by the prospect of making video editorial content.
Eventually, Sarah’s camera ran out of battery, but it was a story worth telling. If you read this to the end, perhaps you have a better sense of why I still write this weekly blog and look for interesting machine tools to sell, more than 50 years after starting at Graff-Pinkert. Maybe nobody but family could “get me.”
Question: What events led you to do what you do?
12 Comments
Keep writing, Lloyd. You always have something thoughtful to share.
Very nice article. Congrats on a successful life ( not just monetarily ).
Agree w. David. keep writing.
Lloyd – I suppose it goes back to being taught that there is no such thing as a free lunch. Starting with 2 paper routes, the now-defunct Cleveland Press and Cleveland Plain Dealer, to United Parcel Service from high school through college, to Warner & Swasey’s 18-month sales engineering apprentice program, to Hutchins Tool and Brookdale Associates in Massachusetts, to founding Concentric 34 years ago, I understood the value of a dollar and the result of hard work. My father died when I was 20. His example, along with my mother (a true saint), my wife, together with countless mentors along my journey have led me here. I also believe that Divine Intervention guided my way. And today, here I am!
I ended up in the screw machine industry because my gramma liked me better than my brothers and sisters and she thought I could run her shop…. she told me Matty, please don’t let anything happen…..that was 35 years ago….a promise made is a promise kept
I had a small dairy herd at home when I graduated high school. Needing money to buy a farm of my own after working odd jobs for a summer I took a job at a screw machine shop. After a year I found I enjoyed the machines, and decided to sell the cows instead. 35 years later I still enjoy the screw machines. Fascinating how a well tuned machine can produce like nothing else can, and a machine with some seemingly small details missed will not run at all.
Hi Lloyd,
I have enjoyed your writing about our machining world for a long time. So the writer in you has had expression here. I started my company in 1976 and am 82 years old and still running G.B.F. Enterprises, Inc. and still excited and interested in all things manufacturing. Keep on keepin’ on, you are much appreciated.
With best regards,
Keith
I enjoyed your article and have a writer living in my heart under a pile of screws, blueprints, and quotes.
This has inspired me to do something and give writing a chance. thank you and enjoy those grandkids, that’s a massive blessing.
Always enjoy your thoughts and writing. As we age we look back and realize how fortunate some of us are to have found productive work that pays the bills, contributes to society, and is mostly enjoyable to us. There is no reason to stop doing that work as long as we are still able to contribute and to care for those we have responsibility for.
What a joy to read the comments you hsve chosen to share. Few people enjoy the “high” of having an appreciative audience which is willing to share.
Hi Lloyd
I am certainly part of that appreciative audience. I love your transparency, your warmth, your vulnerability, your Jewishness and your wide range of interests.
You certainly enrich my life and so does Noah.
Keep up the good work,
Kind regards,
Peter
Dad was trained a toolmaker at General Electric, and then went directly on to IU for elementary education. He taught and ground tools to raise 6 kids with my homemaker mom. We all brought home our school papers and put them in a box, and dad sat on the couch with each of us once a week to go through them with us. I think that built accountability and some love of learning. Our TV broke and didn’t get fixed for about 6 months, so I read. They had me cut grass, and I always saw the results of my work, did the best job I could, had to be right so I would be proud of it. As I got older they insisted that I choose extracurricular opportunities, my choice but had to choose something, which helped me learn to succeed in groups. Thanks to their foresight, wisdom and example, I became a hard worker and a good employee. I’ve been slow at becoming a good manager, and I’m still learning.
With an engineering degree, I spent 15 years in defense electronics, 4 years in gas pumps, and 22 years in a captive screw machine and assembly shop. Lots of variety and learning, which I still enjoy. Mostly I thank my parents for doing a good job.
I think there are alot of us who “get” you Lloyd! In response to your question, I was mentored by an elementary school art teacher. He ran an art studio out of his home, to which he invited me to attend. Mr. Smith had been in the Marine Corps and had landed on the beach on D-Day, June 6, 1944. As a result of shrapnel from a blast, he had large chunks of flesh missing from his arm and his leg, but it never slowed him down. He was a great teacher, and was well respected. At some point in my later teens, he realized I would never make a living as an artist, (surprise!), so he set up a drafting board in the studio, and proceeded to teach me mechanical drawing. As a result of his encouragement, I went on to become a mechanical draftsman, designer, project manager, and salesman for a materials handling company. 46 years later, I am still working for the same company.