Chapter 6
Launching a Career
When I arrived in the office building of the yard, I found the chief designer Mr Frank Kom. It was he whom my opponent mentioned some months ago. His name would give us the possibility to make a pun: in our language it is "Kom Ferenc”, pronounced similarly to the word conference. His briefings to us, as well as gatherings to celebrate something, have been called "comferences”. There was another funny coincidence in our names: it began the same way. And our writing was similar so, when I started to write my surname, it looked as his signature.
He was my senior, but only by ten years. He was a very dynamic man, and I liked to work for him. He made me sit down and cross-questioned me about everything. He wanted to know about my marital status, the diploma design of mine at the university and even about the scores in my final exam certificate. Both my answers and my remarks and details of my private point-of-view satisfied him. He was falling into silence and at last put me the question:
"Do you know Mr M.?” It was the fellow of my study-group with the problem of P, m and a.
"Yes, I do.”
"What do you think of him?”
"Well, he is a good guy.” I did not want to cover him with mud. But Frank was not to be satisfied with it.
"You are a fine diplomat.” He understood me completely.
"Why are you inquiring?”
"He has been here two months ago. I did not find him worth.”
"He is more a man of practice”, I wanted to save the situation.
"Unskilled practice”, he stated and the topic was finished.
At our conversation Clare, his secretary and the typist for our texts, has been present. Later she told me, my boss F. was beside himself hearing that the man, we were speaking about, had been given a job at the headquarters as a ship security inspector. The department of his place has not only been part of our company, it has been assigned to be part of the Ministry of Transport and Communications, too. It has meant, that man had become an authority for him in ship security questions. Much later things would turn even more perverse. That man would get an assignment as expert of justice and would establish an engineering design bureau. But that time Hungarian shipbuilding would already be almost dead.
In my career I have seen such cases repeatedly. Many times people, not worth doing work in a place, would tell people worth doing, how to do it. How did Mr Castro say? He who can do it, must do it, he who cannot, must teach it.
The repair yard had a fairly good site at the shore of a backwater closed at the upper end. All the facilities it had for its disposal, to repair or even build boats and floating special equipments. On its launch-site three boats simultaneously could be serviced. There were covered shops for machining, assembly or pipe-line manufacturing. There was a small training shop on the ground floor of our building for apprentices. Both the launch-site and the open space at the workshops have been serviced by cranes. About 800 employees have had their workplace there, 600 of them in manual jobs.
The construction bureau consisted of three groups, the hull, the engine and the technical developments (innovation) groups. I have been put into the last. This structure existed only for about two years, after that our group would be united with the engine group.
When I began my designer’s career, the activities of our group has covered two main fields. For 400-ton barges Z-drives have been created to provide them with the capacity of self-propulsion. That size-category has not been popular in the river transport for low efficiency in a towage. But the need to transport stone to water constructions in a navigational route with a rather low water level made them indispensable for that function. For this reason a propulsion, actually a giant version of an outboard motor, have been designed with a power of 100 HP. For about a year the group had been working on it and, after a two-month experiment with the prototype, the 0-series of 10 units has been in manufacturing.
The other field of activity was the 250-HP version for a new type of self-propelled barge with a 1,500-ton payload capacity. For that barge completely new lines, unfamiliar in our country, have been established. Main principles at the design of the hull outline were to have a maximum possible prismatic coefficient – at the low speed on rivers and in canals the resistance is almost independent on the form of a barge – for good efficiency, maximum breadth and a length proper for sluice sizes of the perspective Rhine-Main-Danube canal, as well as a possibility for prefabrication (sectional building). This latest principle meant to build complete welded 3D-sections of the barge in the covered area, and on the open launch-site only the connections between sections were to be welded. A barge of 500 tons of steel could be built of eight sections. Our hull group has utilized all novelties taken from technical literature all over the world.
All the engineers and other designers with technical secondary education have been a special selection for a quality design job. Our chief designer I have mentioned already. Alas, he would soon become chief engineer in the yard and, having an insoluble dilemma with the management of the company, he would leave. About him I have opportunity to write more.
The head of the hull group was an intelligent man, and after the promotion of F. he would take his place. The head of the engine group at my start would soon leave, and one of the designers of the group would succeed him. He was a good practical man, he had had at least twelve inventions of the minor kind, but he has always been against quick development and had a great talent to mismanage his people. With me, he could make it together. His name was Eugene D. with a French origin, and we would make a pun of his surname.
My direct boss at the head of the technical developments group has been George J. He was one year my senior. His main characteristic was being conceited. He has been of the type never to altered by any setback, he would at once convince himself of having been right and find a scapegoat in someone else. This failure of his would destroy all good in him and would make it impossible to cooperate. He was my direct boss for two years, and, promoted, he would remain my authority, until I would leave that place.
Of the colleagues I have considered Steve B. most valuable to me. He was a technical secondary graduate, but has had a good practical sense, both in his designs and equipments that went wrong. For his small son he has built a car on a motor-scooter engine. He was also the local representative of CYU, but he has not been very active, and it has been favourable for me, too.
George K. was an intelligent man, single, but not long, as one of the draughtswomen would leave her husband – or vice versa, I do not know –, and they would marry. He was a fan of the English language, and I owe my National Geographic interest to him. He has been the theoretician of the hull group and he would become its head in some years. With him we became friends, I invited him to us many times, but I would lose him from sight later.
The same group had another excellent man, Lesley S. He had beard and moustache, when I got to know him, but he was to have it erased after his wedding. He would not keep his promise, of course. He has been studying Russian language in the institute, where I would also get my language certificates. Why Russian? He said:
"I have tried in three schools, three times to learn the English language. I am not fit for that. This is why I study Russian.”
He was using a denture already in his twenties and sometimes did practical jokes with it.
Steve S. has been two years my senior. He had many brothers, one of them had married a girl from the GDR and had gone to live there. He had had the same problem with Saxon accent like me. S. has told me a story about him. Once he had been offered a manager’s job, but he had denied for not understanding that accent properly by phone. He would leave our team and go to the technical university as a lecturer. I would hear about him the following anecdote years later.
One July morning, opening his garden gate, he found a sack of wheat inside the fence. As it was not his, he went to the police and reported. The police caught the man coming for the sack, it has been stolen. About S. a gossip has been spread that he had been mixed up in a case of wheat theft.
He has always been a technology fanatic, his place was really at the university. And he has been there since.
John E. has been the friend of the young machinist I worked with on the shallow water tug. They had been school-mates in the secondary school. His life has had certain common points with mine. He would leave the place soon, we would be living on the same estate in neighbouring houses. He had been the key-man for the 100-HP Z-drive.
The older generation has been represented by four persons. Clare, I have mentioned. She has been single and a big admirer of younger men. Especially she was fond of John.
Vincent has been childish in manner and good at heart. His hobby was music. He had the most thorough knowledge of steel as a construction material, and there were no structures he could not undertake for design.
Gustave has been a Frenchman from the days of war. His wife was local, and he has never returned to France. He has been the most precise designer of steel structures, but somebody like G.K. had to oversee him, as he was inclined to put unnecessary beams into the drawing. Our boss, F., called him a steel-eater. His drawings could have been shown in an art gallery for their neatness.
The oldest person has been Richard J., better to say Uncle Ritchie, the controller. All our works came to him and he has found all mistakes. His method of checking has been to redraw them by free hand on the back-side of blue-prints. Very rarely, when there was no job for him, he sat in the arm-chair of the office in the boss’s room and slumbered. Once the guys made a joke of him: they left the bureau on tip-toes and he overslept by an hour. The other day he was in a fighting mood.
In connection with him I have also had a misdeed. Vincent and me had a sugar agreement, for our coffee taken twice daily we brought sugar in turn. Sitting beside the percolator "office” I kept our sugar in a glass can in my desk. Uncle Ritchie has constantly been helping himself to our sugar. Vincent advised me to put salt into the can and hide the sugar. Poor Ritchie would never come to us again for sugar.
He had been a man of importance before the war in the ministry. For some oral or written reports he had been fired. He had to start again from the bottom, working as a sailor until his retirement, but, as his pension has not covered his costs, he would work until his death.
There were four draughtswomen, but they changed often. Only Gabrielle who would catch G.K., Magdalene, a fiery plump divorcee and Maria, an unimportant young girl stayed longer. The father of Magdalene would come to us to work as an electrician. From that time on only he could clear up messes in electric systems – caused by himself.
My first task has been to prepare the complete calculation of the 250-HP Z-drive. At the same time, I prepared the drawings of the lower gearbox with the propeller. When it has been finished summer time has been coming.
When we with my wife were preparing for our wedding, we sent notice about it among others to Hans in the GDR. During our first married month we have received a small, but pretty wedding gift. For the half year I have spent on the boat I neglected them, but when I was transferred to the yard, I informed them how my life was turning. One day in early spring we have got a letter from them inviting us to spend 3 weeks with them on the Baltic coast in June. Both our families were against our going, but we decided to take the advantage of their invitation.
It has not been a cheap enterprise. We had to get money to buy our tickets. Also to purchase some gifts for all of them. And not to forget about the costs the next year to invite them in turn. Not to mention the trouble of getting permission from our employers for two weeks of unpaid leave. Against all odds, we succeeded in our proceedings.
I have mentioned somewhere that after my second trip upriver with the tug the previous year, there was no navigation, because of the extremely low water-level. For half a year there were no significant precipitations in the whole Danube basin. After New Year however a large quantity of snow fell in the Alps. During spring the rain caused troubles, but at last the river could be used for transport, if not very long. From May the water-level was equal to that of flood.
Work in the yard had to be reorganized. The vehicles under construction on the launch-site have been opened at the bottom to let water in, otherwise displacement forces could lift them off their blocks.
Fuel had to be pumped out of the subterranean tanks to save environment from contamination. Two days before our trip to the GDR I worked five hours at the pumps. For the next day another rise in level has been forecast, with it the water would be two feet on the premises. The forecast has been right. My last day before the trip it is recorded on photos taken by colleagues and me. When we arrived by foot to the yard, we could reach our office only by paddle boats. The workshop have been deserted, only our office was working. The next day the water was to rise again and my colleagues were ordered to take a room at headquarters for emergency.