Chapter 8
Repair Yard
The river has gone back to its normal bed, and the repair yard carried on its duties. The 250-HP Z-drive was in the prototype phase and, as there were no serious troubles during assembly, I have got other work to do. One of the fields has been quite new to me, but in a short time I would become a specialist of that topic in the trade. It was the calculation of torsional vibrations in the propulsion systems of ships.
On the launch-site there were three objects at that time. The second one of a series of passenger boats, the first push-boat built by reconstruction from a normal tug-boat and the first new R-M-D canal barge. For the last one the 250-HP Z-drive has been designed. It would be necessary to check vibrations later, but we had time. The most urgent task has been to do the calculations for the 2,000-HP push-boat.
For an engineer with a calculator of the mechanical type, it took two weeks. I have just finished it with favourable results, when we found that the engine factory had made modifications on the engine. Time has been too short to repeat the calculation. There was only one solution: the state company for information technology (it was the ‘60s and PC was still a topic for the distant future) could prepare a computer program for the job, and on our data they can repeat it twice a day if necessary. We did it with a great success.
Later I would develop a program of my own for a different computer, but it would not be utilized too much, before it would become obsolete by new generations of computers.
After several attempts in the university, the design of propeller screws was only partly new to me. My first job of that kind has been the check of an existing screw for a different boat. In my five years on this place six to seven new screws have been made on my drawings. This experience I would carry to my next employer and, as the push-boats and other products would be exported to the Soviet Union, hundreds of spare screws, made on Russian engineers’ copies of my drawings, would be mounted as replacements of broken original ones.
The design of propeller screws is a scientific, as well as a practical work. The best specialists of the field in Britain, Germany and America a hundred years ago, began to create towing-tanks for model ships and screws. On their track the Dutch in Wageningen did the same for modern needs. In the days of PCs and Internet such a task is a child’s play to do. But it has been 30 years ago I write about.
To get a proper propulsion the screw is the key-element. Getting it, you had to appreciate first the conditions, to select a nearly optional one. When its diameter, number of blades – also very important at torsional vibrations – and pitch has been known, it would be actually designed by vortex theory. The third stage is to have it towed in the tank. The results of the experiments would generally suggest slight modifications, and then the truly optional propulsion can take reality. After that only God can help.
The design of propulsion shaft systems was a fine occupation and a big challenge. After a year in the bureau it became my field and later, also at my new employer this task would find me. Knowledge of the topic would help me at the design of engine room arrangements. Around that time a new colleague came to our design office, an engineer, who has not been unfamiliar to me. He had been making his practice as a 4th-year student during my time on the low-draught tug. We had a good relationship and, until my leave from that place, we met at our homes, too. He, as well as his wife, had been members of a vocal in a religious society and had been singing in churches.
Our home has not been open to strangers. My wife and me enjoyed being together and being left by others. During the first three years of our married life she has been learning to get her secondary education. After that it was me, almost constantly studying something. Beside relatives we have received almost nobody.
My brother-in-law and his wife has frequented us at the beginning, as they have been living similarly in a rented room. Chatting with Julius was very useful, he has always been a great fan of radios and TVs, he knew all about the topic. Her wife has been a busy-body and she did not change to this day. It is not too hard to remember something of that. One evening we found that there was no coffee for the percolator. My wife took the rest of raw coffee beans brought by me from Vienna long before, and I went out to the kitchen to roast them. We have not been very well equipped, instead of a wooden spoon, as we have not had any, I used our only fork. My brother-in-law and his wife have arrived unexpectedly.
My wife risked the question if they were hungry and she lost. Of course, they were. Our whole stock has been two eggs and a piece of bacon. J.’s wife decided to help. She got a pan – accidentally we had another one – and began to prepare scrambled eggs. I have not finished yet, when she came to take my place at the electric stove. She said:
"It is hard to help you, as you have only one fork and you are roasting coffee with the ,other one’.”
That large quantity of food has been devoured without a hitch.
Another instance for her desire to help. They were with us, invited all right, not unexpected. We have sipped our coffee and she wanted to help my wife in washing up the dishes. Two of the special cups have been, since that time, repaired with glue.
Those cups have come to us from my aunt H. Before our wedding we were visiting her and she said:
"I have so many fine porcelains. I want to give you some for a start.”
We were grateful. She gave us, among others, a set of porcelain mocca cups and saucers, incomplete, because she had bought it at the factory in Pecs, and there was no pitcher or sugar pot. The cups and saucers are wonderful: the cups are tiny pine-cones, the saucers maple leaves. It was a rare thing to get something from her, as she had not been friendly with us too long for the following reasons.
During the time after our wedding, before I got into work, the young man I mentioned, Emery, was preparing to his graduation exam. My aunt wanted me to leave my wife alone and help him in the Russian language. I refused. At any subject I would have helped him, but to memorize foreign words can be done better alone. Since that time until her death many years later I will have been the bad boy for her.
I mentioned that as students we were going frequently to the hills for excursions. After our wedding we have done the same with my wife. We could travel everywhere in the country cheap, as my employer provided me with the booklet for buying tickets on railway and boats at a 10-percent basis. On Saturdays in the summer we caught a train to the lake and my aunt E. was happy to receive us, as we eased her solitude. We took a swim before going to her, and Sunday morning said her good-bye. The afternoon train took us home, all the time we spent on the lake.
Sometimes we took the express train to the town of Miskolc, where my school-time girl-friend I. had been living, and then the narrow-gauge railway, up to the hills of Bukk. There were small falls in the forest and caves, some of them with anthropological findings. The recreation place called Grand Hotel was our base. The forest around it and all along the narrow-gauge line has been majestic.
From the country-side we would have seen much less, had we not had the chance for cheap travel. Also, if we have had a proper house or apartment, we would have left it fewer times. But our small rented room, although it has been our home, and being together in it has been a pleasure for both of us, could not keep us inside, when the weather was good.
Devices and utensils purchased on our trip in the GDR helped us to improve our property. A small car vacuum-cleaner served us for at least six years, and I was able to avoid the torture of shaving daily with terrible re-sharpened blades as I have got an electric razor. Most useful has been the gift of our friends, a set of stainless steel utensils. We could even roast coffee and fry eggs at the same time. The immersion water heater has also been a useful thing to prepare tea.
Our financial state was slowly improving. Beside my salary, I could undertake excess work, as the company had a lot of new projects in mind, and the capabilities of the office in normal working time have been limited. A lot of extra designing has been done in overtime work: harbour lighters for the Hamburg port, a dredger for the national gravel miners, floating belt-conveyor for a cooperative in the country, supplementing the lost documentation of a tug, etc.
The extra money would not have been enough for large savings to buy a flat of our own, but we could live comfortably and could save up some money for the reception of our German friends. We were expecting them in the year following our trip to them.
As we had no acquaintances or relatives who could have accommodated them in the capital, we agreed with my mother-in-law that in the few days, they were here, we would spend nights with them, and our friends would sleep in our room. Our host has agreed, too. In the country we would be welcome with aunt E., and in a resort home, not far from the town of my secondary school, we could also be together with them. The resort home belonged to a friend of the husband of my sister-in-law.
About our plans there were some arguments with my wife’s brother and his wife. They knew about our savings and, as they had the opportunity to buy their apartment through their employer, but didn’t have the money, they wanted us to lend them our savings and postpone the trip of our guests. We could not do that, everything had already been settled. Anyhow, they could get the needed credit from somewhere else, as they bought their flat. (In two years the same situation would be repeated, only then it would be we, who would look for any possibility to collect the deposit.)
We needed our savings not only for the costs of the holiday, we had to buy a cupboard-wardrobe to furnish our room. There were some unexpected factors to take a part of our savings from us. In that year the system of municipal transport fares was reformed, unchanged for twenty years. The fares grew by 100 percent overnight from June to July. The monthly tickets cost even more in comparison.
As an engineer I have always been interested in technology and science. May has always been the month for our international fair in the Municipal Park. The company provided us designers with the possibility to visit the fair free. In that year we had a long-lasting experience in the fair. Just as we were leaving the grounds we became aware of a boy of 12 going up and down crying. His speech as he turned to us has been unintelligible to me, but somehow sounded familiar. Using German I questioned the boy and he said at last "Holland”. I tried to convince him there was no problem, we could find his relatives. We were looking for the studios as we heard through the loud-speaker that his parents were waiting for the boy at the studios.
When we met them, their joy has been enormous. The parents were elderly people, the boy must have been a late joy of life for them. To express her gratitude the mother could not do anything, but give us a coin as a souvenir, a two-and-half gulden one. We have changed addresses. The next month my wife has got a small package through mail containing a headscarf with Amsterdam symbols.
For about ten years we remained in correspondence, it was a little hard, as they have always sent their letters in Dutch. First I could only send my reply in German, but later I would answer in English. The boy became a truck driver and we always hoped he would visit us, but he would not.
My wife could do fine this year in her school with my help and she finished her second grade.