Ancestors by David Bachman

Letter to Mark Kennet from David Bachman

Mark, I wanted to reply when I had some time. I included some relatives on this who may be interested in some of the discussion about our ancestors. I would have loved to see this work done in Lima. First of all, I have a lot of respect for craftsmen, especially in the construction trades. As you know our grandfather was a master electrician. The math involved in doing this is not trivial. At one point  one of the plants he worked in rated all the employees from 1-13 and he was one of only a few who got the 13 rating. Our Uncle Bob was a carpenter who built the house he and Aunt Else lived in until he died about the time we were born. I do not now how much you remember the house that Aunt Else lived in, but under the innumerable layers of Mudie clutter and dust, it was an impressive display of craftsmanship. He made some furniture as well. Unfortunately the only piece I have is a little end table that he made out of left over pieces. It has a pine top and oak legs. Over the years Deby has often told me to throw it out when we move. I always tell her “I can’t, my Uncle Bob made this!” Lindsay has always at that point accused me of making up the fact that I even had an Uncle Bob as a ruse to keep it. You mentioned block planes. A lot of Uncle Bob’s wood working tools ended up at Mt. Troy. When we moved Buff out of there I saved a lot of his and Granddad’s tools. Some, like picks I use. Others I have stored. If you or Joel want some as keep sakes let me now. Most of them are obsolete with the advent of modern power tools for everything.

In thinking of Granddad, as I am sure you will recall, he had it in for a lot of different groups. His views did not fit any political group very well. They were mostly based on his upbringing, the depression and his work experiences. Although an industrial blue color worker he hated unions. I suppose that getting rated a “13” and then being paid the same as someone rated a “7” caused this feeling. He accurately foretold the decline of American Industry a full decade in advance. He also hated government spending. He ranted on the construction of Three Rivers Stadium and the replacement of the two bridges at the point in Pittsburgh. Yet he was no party line Republican either. He hated Nixon, again accurately warning that he was not to be trusted although he died a year before Watergate surfaced. He also hated banks. I suppose that was due to them foreclosing on the Beechview house. (By the way, Buff has portrayed that differently in her later years. Growing up she told me that they lost the house to foreclosure, but the last time I took her to Beechview before she got too far gone she told me that they sold it. If anyone has some definitive knowledge on this I welcome it... Here is the welcome knowledge DEFINITIVE knowledge from Abbie--- No they did not foreclose on the house. They sold it, probably for a very low amount). But his hatred of banks and bankers extended beyond this one issue. I am currently reading “The Creature from Jekyll Island, a Second Look at the Federal Reserve”. It was given to me by a friend of John’s who is into the government conspiracy that both parties are in bed together with international bankers. The perspective of John’s friend is that this conspiracy actually flew the planes into the WTC.  I think the book is a stretch but there is some truth to its claims. I wonder if Granddad shared this disdain for banks and the control they have of our economy and therefore our lives.  

Back to your Peruvian craftsman, it is interesting that they used cedar, because cedar in the states while being very rot resistant is not a hard wood. The cost to do these repairs is laughable. We Americans are so spoiled with what we gat paid and how we live. In America, established professional builders lament the undercutting by smaller, somewhat illegitimate “Chuck in a truck” types. I can not fathom competing against “Juan in a taxi”. I admire guys like that just going out and getting it done. I hope I get the chance to go to Peru and see their work.

You raise an interesting point about comparing wages and capital. Even within the domestic housing industry there are differences. A month or so ago I was in Chicago with my builder group and a few of us were discussing the cost benefits of system and corposant building. As you can expect the use of roof trusses decrease the further south you go. I commented to my Houston builder that his market would be among the last to convert to trusses. Although their roofs are more complicated than ours, the lower relative cost of labor does not warrant factory produced trusses. Even in the North, with the recession causing labor to be plentiful, the time saving benefit of trusses is diminished. So we are seeing a temporary (at lest I hope temporary!) slowdown in the increase in systems building. There is plenty of labor to throw into the equation. Deby’s family’s business is facing a similar situation. Commercial bun and bread pans are not being hurt by the economy…we still are eating bread. So while they have plenty of work now, their main competitor is from either Brazil or Argentina. The quality difference has kept them ahead but they recognize that the difference in quality is shrinking a lot faster than the difference in the cost of labor. So they are spending a lot of money on modern equipment to take labor out of their pans. But the cost for the computer controlled robotic equipment and the training and operating costs are causing some of the older generation to squirm. They see the current pool of available labor as a reason to maintain the current balance of labor/capital. It is interesting for me to hear both sides.

One more comment on craftsman, and this is a bit of a question. As I recall, you took a year of so off in college to learn welding or something like that. I believe I remember you saying that is a Jewish custom to have a trade as well as a profession. I am in favor of professionals keeping and passing along trade skills for several reasons. One is that there is pride in doing work with your hands. There is a lot of Biblical references to that. Some of us like Erin, I, Liam and others get a lot of pride from our gardening activities. Marcin loves to work on cars. Trades are also good exercise. But more importantly, and I hope it does not come down to this, there may come a time when we need gardening, mechanical and building skills to survive. This was certainly true with me last year and into the winter. We were slow but I was able to spend a day few days a month pouring concrete and related jobs. The impact on our bottom line was amazing. Our current work load in bidding renovation work requires me to stay in the office, but the situation taught me that if times get desperate, I am very fortunate to have the trade skills I have and the health to keep doing them. Like I said, I shudder to think what would happen if a depression hit and some of the younger generation had no money to hire someone to fix their homes, grow their food, fix their car, ect. I presume that this thinking is at the root of the Jewish tradition I mentioned above. I do now that a lot of Jews survived the Holocaust because even though they were stripped on all they owned and their professions, they had enough skills to be valuable enough for the Nazis to keep them around long enough to survive the war.

Regards to all in Washington, David