I have always been interested in understanding how machines work, and how to make them work again when they quit working. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, I had an opportunity to pursue that interest as an automobile mechanic, working in the service department of Burger Motor Company in Bentonville. Burger Motor Company, owned by Carl Burger, was for many years Bentonville's Chevrolet dealer, located on Southwest A Street in Bentonville, just south of West Central Avenue. The building has been used for several years now by Northwest Arkansas Newspapers. My work station was at the very southeast corner of the building, and today it is apparently a loading dock.
After graduating from Pea Ridge High School in 1957, I enrolled in college at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville as an engineering student, and engaged in studies there for two full years, until the spring of 1959. At that time I was pretty much out of money for continuing at the university, and had become quite uncertain about pursuing an engineering career. I was also wrestling with a sense of call to become a minister and church pastor, but at the time I was resisting that as quite a challenge for a shy fellow who dreaded any kind of public speaking. My thought for that summer of 1959 was to find a job, in automotive repair if possible, get some practical experience there, and to see how things went from there.
I had never had much mechanical experience on cars or trucks, most of my mechanical work had been on our farm tractor and the farm machinery at home. I did have some experience working on my own car during my second year in college. I had a 1949 Pontiac car, 11 years old, which my Dad had found for $200. As I soon discovered, it had a problem which caused it to burn exhaust valves. There was a crack in the engine block, right through one of the valve seats. As a result, I had to do a valve grind and valve replacement every six months or so, because the valve would burn at the point of that crack. The block crack also caused a small coolant leak into the affected cylinder, and the engine would miss when started, until it warmed up. I would keep using Stop-Leak until the leak was sealed, but that didn't stop the valve burning.
Early in the summer of 1959, before I got the job at Burger's, I had taken a correspondence course in auto mechanics. It cost me about $200 overall. I can just hear all the old-time mechanics snickering about the idea of taking a correspondence course to learn how to be a mechanic. Well, I'll admit that it didn't fully teach me to be a mechanic, but it did help me understand many aspects of the equipment on a vehicle, like the electrical system, brakes, automatic transmissions, carburetors, and so on. And, I'll admit that some of the practical skills, like diagnosis and troubleshooting, and little things like getting brake connections threaded together without stripping the brass fittings, or even getting a bolt started in a hard place as one reinstalls a transmission, all those are learned by doing, with a little advice at times from an experienced co-worker.
I felt that the bunch of co-workers at Burgers was top-notch. The shop foreman was Andy Greene. He started me at washing cars for the first week, then he assigned me that southeast work area, and started sending me cars to repair, tune-ups, brake jobs, king pin replacements, front end alignments, generators and starters, and valve jobs. There were no engine overhauls at first, it was less major stuff. Most of the automatic transmission work was done by Glen True and Ralph Patterson. Engine overhauls were mostly handled by J.W. Jordan and Jim Hutchinson. Our body repairman was Delton Cumpton, and on the lube rack was J.L. Latty. Soon after I started, Gerald Patterson was hired for car washing, so we had four men from Pea Ridge on the crew. Eventually, front suspension repairs and alignment became my specialties.
Mr. Burger had an interesting scheme for paying us. I started at $35 per week, plus commission, if any. We worked five full days a week plus Saturday mornings, so I was making almost $1 per hour. It wasn't great pay, even for 50 years ago, but it didn't seem too bad, and it soon went up as I got more experience. I eventually got up to $55 a week plus commission. The commission scheme was the interesting part. It went like this: If our work in the shop brought in more than twice our weekly pay, then we were paid half of what was over. If we were busy in the shop, that turned out pretty good. If we were busy, I could sometimes bring home $75 to $80 per week. The problem was, we weren't always busy at the right times, so the pay usually wasn't that great.
(To be continued, maybe...)
•••
Editor's note: Jerry Nichols, a native of Pea Ridge, is an award-winning columnist, a retired Methodist minister with a passion for history. He is vice president of the Pea Ridge Historical Society. He can be contacted by e-mail at [email protected], or call 621-1621.
Editorial on 02/04/2015