Blog

I started this little biography by mentioning my hometown of Marion, Ohio, and the Tecumseh factory where I worked and where my sister had been a union steward. While I was in college, the Tecumseh plant ended up moving to Mexico. Pollock Steel, Marion Power Shovel (made the crawlers for the Apollo rockets and the shovels that dug the Panama Canal), Dresler, Fischer Body, Eaton, the Erie Lackawanna turntables, et cetera… all closed. Several really nice downtown hotels that had operated since the 1920s, all closed. The last one, the 5-star Harding Hotel, was saved by community efforts. It was finally converted to elder housing. Honda opened a plant nearby in Lima, Ohio, and Marion got a Yutaka plant that makes the gas tanks for the Hondas. My sister ended up a security guard at that plant. She took me through it. All the managers were from Japan. It was completely automated. It was eerie, a factory filled with robots moving by themselves. Fewer than 30 workers operated the entire plac...