When I hired in at the Flying Tigers LAX hangar in January, 1968, I thought I was in the midst of mild chaos. I had come to Tigers from having worked for a crop duster up in Santa Maria the previous 7 months but before that I had worked for United at LAX and United was the picture of organization. For a while I wondered what I had gotten myself into.
As time went on, though, I got to know my fellow mechanics and even felt comfortable after a while. There was always a lot going on, maintenance wise, with the CL-44's and the B-707s that consisted of the Tiger's fleet at that time. There was also the Vietnam War going on, which Flying Tiger's heavily supported, flying cargo and military passengers, over and back. Even though the war wasn't that old, many of my fellow workers, myself included, were already veterans of the conflict.
It seems that there was always a heavy check going on in the hangar, lots of panels open on the airplanes a lot of maintenance personnel involved and lots of equipment utilized in the maintenance check. There was a lot of assignments given to us, as mechanics and a lot of responsibility was accepted during the accomplishment of the many tasks done to finish the check on time. Lots of hard, dirty, work, blood and sweat were given up to get the job done.
But all, was not always so serious, there was always good times, joking around and sometimes playing tricks on guys you knew well and worked with. But just as well, you sometimes had to know when to stand up and toe the line and other times, when to turn the other cheek and walk away.
On the hangar floor, we the mechanics and our leadmen were hourly employees and paid for each and every hour we worked. Our time on the job was tracked by a time card that we would get from a rack, punch the time we arrived on the job in a time clock and do the same thing at the end of our shift. For the newbies, we took a blank time card, wrote our name on it, punched it in at the beginning of our shift and punch out before leaving. After a week or so there would be a time card with your name printed on it, which you would use to track your work hours.
One of the funniest things I remember right after I hired in, with many other new mechanics, was hearing over the PA system, the names of what I thought were two new mechanics, Dombrowksky and Stutz being called to the Foreman's office right after the start of the shift. Night after Night, I was working Swing Shift, this went on for about a week, about 15 minutes after the start of the shift, you would hear the names, "Dombrowsky, Stutz, report to the foreman's office." After the announcement was made, the foreman that made the request would go stand in front of the office door and look out into the three hangar bays and look for Dombrowsky and Stutz. He would stand in place for a few minutes, looking from one end of the hangar to the next but, Dombrowsky & Stutz would never show up and they never did. As soon as the foreman turned around and walked back into the office to repeat the scenario, several times, the certain few mechanics in the know, would be howling in laughter and delight because an unknown mechanic was taking blank time cards and writing in the names, Dombrowsky and Stutz, at the beginning of the shift, just to keep management a wee bit off balance and keep humor in the workplace. We all thought that was one of the funniest things we had ever seen. That was my intro to Flying Tigers and I thought, "This place might be alright, I think I can handle mild chaos." Of course, we all knew who was doing the time card trick.
Ernie
