Chapter 13
Wasp Nest
I got a job on the machinery department, in the engine group. It meant a total continuity of the tasks I did and would do. On our department, there were two other groups, one for pipelines, the other for deck machinery.
Our sister departments have been for the hull and steel structures and the other for electrical designs. The third one have been for handling documentation. Some time before that, the construction bureau has been led by the man from the jury at my final exam, my outside opponent, who wanted me to work for him. After the nomination of my former boss to chief designer, he took the job of his deputy. As he was soon to retire and, as his income would not be reduced, it was the same salary for less liability, a favourable change for him.
I have been put into an environment hostile in my direction, but, when I stood some hidden examinations by my competitors, I gained the sympathy of almost everybody. For some years I have had actually no enemies in the shipyard.
My department head has been a man of great experience and the owner of numerous inventions. Earlier he did the same work as I would for the coming years.
The chief of my group was another great guru in ship machinery. His various interests made his knowledge comprehensive. His intelligence earned him wide respect even with his modest manner. In more than one respect I was following him during my life.
All of these were great men for me, as during my study, especially in the finish, I had searched them many times for information. Many of them were members of the Scientific Society of Mechanical Engineers. For the branch "Ships” the chief of deck machinery group acted as secretary.
The year I moved to this place in September there were again plans for the shipbuilding conference. In the field of propulsion I have been given the responsibility of a lecture. Alas, for lack of time it became only a contribution in connection with another lecture.
But before that I had to concentrate my narrative on other things.
In March I was called to the institute of training in foreign languages to sit for my entrance exam in English to the 2nd year. I have found a sympathizer there on the oral exam in the person of a lady, who would lecture us in lexical knowledge about English speaking countries. Besides, in the two years to come, she would give me – I could say "us”, only I know that not all were listening – useful help by showing the lines to follow in my further training in the language.
On experiences I have got with this institute at learning Russian and German, I can state, that here language teaching has been on a proper level ensuring for students their success, if they themselves were diligent.
My employer, the shipyard, has belonged to a trust created 6 years before of the country’s biggest factories of that profile. Beside our yard, there was one on the other side of the Danube, founded about 50 years later than ours, and three others in the country. There was also a crane factory. Today the other yard and the crane factory does not exist, their place is occupied by the Danube Plaza market centre.
Our shipyard had been the first in the country, founded in 1835 by Count Stephen Szechenyi, the man named "The Greatest of the Hungarians”. The first activity of the yard was the assembly of a ship from units made in England. Because it had belonged to the First Danube Steam-Shipping Society (Erste Donau-Dampfschiffahrts-Gesellschaft m.b.H, DDSG) – an Austrian firm and so, a German one during the war –, the Soviets had got it for a period of 8 years. In 1953, it became again state property of our nation, but Soviet traditions could be felt still, when I went there to work.
Our yard was building ships and floating cranes exclusively for the Soviets. To this day those river boats, that have been built in the yard in large series, are still afloat. During the era of Soviet ownership, traditional steam paddle-tugboats had been built in series of more than 50. One of the boats, having burned out in an accident, remained in our country at the national shipping company. I have seen it many times in my mariner months. Those tugs had not been designed by our engineers, they had been built on original drawings from the S.U.
After it has come back to national property, the yard had retained the Soviets, as general customers. The first series of our own design has been a steam paddle-wheel passenger boat of a series more than 70. The only boat of this series, that had a similar history, i.e. had been burned out, has been delivered to the Hungarian trades union federation, and it has been making trips for recreation along the lower Danube. Later it became turned into a stationary floating hotel for the trades union.
That series has been followed by a two-propeller Diesel passenger boat, of which 100 has been built. Or rather 101, as – no burn out, however – one of this type has also been delivered to the trade union for the replacement of the older one. It has been built, when I was working for the shipping company repair yard, and there remained a very good anecdote about it, based on a classical grotesque novel.
Before the war there lived in the country an author of grotesque novels. He had used the name P. Howard to make his books more saleable. One of his characters was Dirty Fred the captain. He was stealing once a destroyer and, to make it unrecognizable, he was painting a new name on it: Well, What is the Matter with You, Mr Wagner?. In the book the ship is known as Mr Wagner.
As our yard built the boat for the trade union in 1967, the 50th anniversary of the Russian revolution has been celebrated. The trade union chiefs gave the name to the ship: 50th Anniversary of the Great October Revolution. As in history only one ship had had such a long name, this boat is known to this day as Mr Wagner.
That passenger boat series has really been a very fine design. Both the hull and the machinery has been well done. She had only 800 HP for the almost 210-foot hull, but she could do 15 miles per hour in dead-water. The cabins for two or four have been equipped with wash basins and good ventilation. From the line, when I went to the yard to work, the last two boats have been in delivery.
Simultaneously with the passenger boat a 1,200-HP Danube push-boat series had been launched. It was a very short boxer-type boat, only no tug, but a push-boat. Her main engines have been the same GDR-built Diesel engines from the SKL (formerly Buckau-Wollf) Works in Magdeburg, as for the passenger boat. A quantity of 100 boats have been manufactured in five years.
At the beginning of the ‘60s the Soviets began to develop their fleet of push-boats and ordered a few from the Korneuburg yard near Vienna in Austria. Either these boats have been too expensive, or there was no way to pay for them in barter, our yard could take over the series, together with the drawings. After adaptation the design became one of the most up-to-date in our country. About 80 such boats have been built, and their design has been the ground for the two push-boats built by reconstruction from tug-boats in the repair yard during my time there.
That series was also running out at my arrival. In the place of these, a new type of push-boats has been developed, the so-called Siberian push-boat. It has been designed on the Danube 2,000-HP series, but there were great differences. There was no need to lower and lift the wheel-house. The main engines came from the S.U., as did most of her equipments, evidently. They were to serve in Siberia and European machinery there were not to be serviced.
The prototype of the boat was under trial, when I went there to work. There were demands from the part of the customer for two basic modifications in the design of the object. First, from Diesel fuel they wanted to change to heavy fuel. It would take some years to create the conditions for the use of heavy fuel, as a complicated system of temperature control would be needed. Second, they wanted a ship to be isolated hermetically from the outer world for 48 hours in the case of a nuclear conflict. In the years of false thaw in the ‘70s it has been thought a necessary survival means.
It was a time of great expectations when I began my work there.
Almost 8 years before an employee of the trust, who was dealing with the fashionable network-programming of the production, discovered, that around 1970 they would remain without work because of constant mismanagement. On these news his boss did not arouse the people in charge, but ordered him to put his calculations as deep into his drawer as possible.
The drawer has not been opened yet.
The construction bureau was situated on the uppermost floor of the office building. There were different rooms and corridors altered many times in its 135 years of existence. The management of the trust agreed to give free hand for the reconstruction of the 3rd floor and, construction work was to begin in two months. In the new office also my place has been determined, but at the time of my arrival I would not get a desk there.
I have got a place in a separate room established originally for draughtswomen, but occupied then also by engineers. There were two draughtswomen and two designers crowded in, and I became the third of the latter. One of the girls has not been staying long, she left soon for another job. She was a conceited person, not a very pretty girl, but she had a good figure. She wore so tight trousers usually that one room-mate, Charles, once said:
"You have to keep it back, otherwise the bubble can be seen going down.”
The other girl was a unique person. Helen she was called and she weighed at least 220 pounds. But her wit and humour was without precedent. Her boy-friend was married, but alienated from his wife. He was so fond of H. that he would carry her rather on his palm. Her brother’s wife has been a Ukrainian and she understood Russian. It was very useful, as all the drawings had to be inscribed both in our language and in Russian.
One of the engineers, Steve, was actually a technical secondary graduate, but he could work excellently. He had eloped from his divorced father at 15, and has lived with his grand-mother. He had not wanted to follow his father’s manager career, at least not then. He became an apprentice in the shipyard’s training group as a turner. He became a good turner and, having done that work for years, he finished secondary school on an evening course.
When I moved there, he was preparing for his final exam. He would learn another year in a course, preparing students for the technical university, and after that he would be accepted there. During the time I have been in the shipyard, he would complete his study and become an engineer. He and H. took me at once under their wings and carried me along in tasks affecting my life afterwards a great deal.
The fourth of my room-mates has been Charles. He was my senior at least by ten years. He had never been sure of himself, this was the reason, why he was content with his very simple job, although in earlier years he had been doing well in a manager’s position. Why had he been fired? I do not know exactly, but his comments formed my belief so, that from the side of the party he had not been quite accepted. He had a broad view and thus, he was wise. I have always had him by my side as a good friend.
For some weeks, we have remained in the same room, but with the beginning of reconstruction the bosses moved there with their secretaries. We moved to the electricians’ department, and the rest of the office moved far away on the upper floor – actually an attic – of the tin-plate workshop.
In that workshop the younger brother of my brother-in-law had worked for at least 20 years.
Work has not been easy in the electric department. We were crowded, and the numerous girls in the room were chatting all the time. For lack of privacy you could not talk by phone without being listened to. Once my sister-in-law, E., called me and asked to do a little manual work in her flat. It was one of the periods, when her husband was away with somebody else. As she tried to find excuse for the man, I lost my temper and said her my opinion about promiscuity. In a very short time everyone around me seemed to know about the topic. Well, the community of people in that workplace has not been very prudent.
I had even greater problems with these bad conditions, as my boss, F., have given me a job to complete the documentation of a harbour-tug for an Arabic country. It has been an urgent task with a short lead-time. The hull has been completed, when I got the job to install the Caterpillar main engine and Scotch propeller-shaft system. The planned model workshop to make a mock engine room with pipelines in a 1 to 10 scale, has not been ready, I had serious troubles with the coordination of different systems.
The project manager for this tug has been a young engineer, Alex, from the hull department. He has not been a stupid man, but as he had no experience in machinery, I had to take his responsibility on myself often. For that work my boss would reward me by a business trip to the GDR.
Poor Alex, he was ill with blood cancer, and would die in the second year of my work there. He liked to do his work, but only as a hobby. He would not go far to find an occupation for himself. He said once about Saturdays off every second week:
"It is not worth anything. We needed compulsory Thursdays instead.”
H. and S., the draughtswomen in our room, tried to draw me in occupations for leisure time, sometimes even cheating me a little. First they drew me in Red Cross membership. The yearly blood donation for aid came in February. As the local Red Cross representative ran through rooms and people, H. said ours has always been a fully organized room, I was expected to join, too. I had given blood earlier, this would not cause me any concern. But later I learned that it had been a trap. I became the first to enlist. However, many others joined, and it was a good fun to sit at the tables of the temporary ward after bloodletting, and take a sandwich with a bottle of beer in a good company.
So I have become a Red Cross activist. The second of that line has been the Brigade Movement. In that time a movement was organized in our country to take fellow workers in manual work and colleagues in the offices together into small closed groups, whose performance could be evaluated as that of a unit. The groups were called brigades. For a year a brigade could not compete for any title. After that a one-year’s performance could be appreciated and the proper title given. The Socialist title was the first to be gained. In the first year it was the maximum. After that, depending on the performance of the brigade on different fields, e.g. culture, working discipline, etc., there were three titles: green, silver or golden wreath. Actually to win a golden wreath after the first two years, nothing special must have been done. A community of good workers, having good relationship with each other, could be on a top level constantly.
S. has been the brigadier in our brigade, and it was only the first year to win the Socialist title. I agreed to join the brigade, as it had nothing to do with my behaviour. Anyway, I think, I had a favourable effect, as every year after that we would be worth the golden wreath. And in the year after I left, there would be no wreath.
I have mentioned my joining CYU in the university. In my local branch at the repair yard I was wholly passive – only paying fee regularly –, I would not take part in the activities of the organization. I even began to consider myself too old for all of that.
On my new place S. has inquired, if I were a member of CYU. I said I had been, but as age limit was 26 I was too aged. He informed me, that age limit has been eliminated. He suggested me to come once and see their place. When I did, I was really amazed. The young people of the shipyard had built a fine two-story club for their purposes, from an old empty store-room.
At the first gathering, their enthusiasm caught my interest, and I became a regular visitor. It took generally very little time after work, as to improve the rate of appearance, our office with numerous girls and a manual worker team with young men kept meetings and the subsequent cultural event together and we began earlier. Sometimes my wife was also present.
I did not know at that time, but the CYU activists recognized me, as a potential leader of the CYU members in our office. To attract me, they called me once to a meeting of theirs, and questioned me about my experiences in CYU activities at other places. As my wife has not been against at the beginning, I accepted the role.
To the end of the summer, reconstruction of the office was finished, and all the people took their places in the new environment. Only one thing remained unfinished, the ventilators did not arrive in time. Vents have been assembled, but in the attic, work would be done later by our CYU members.
The previous year has been the first in a long line for the trust to go with a loss, and the situation has been too complex to make only that drawer the scapegoat. Even a complete change of the management, where the new general manager to our trust arrived from the ministry, could not solve it.
In our country, in 1968, a lot of reforms have been put into action. That package has been named, and since that time it has been known, as the New Economic Mechanism. Only those reforms and their results would make it possible, that two decades later our economy would be turned to the capitalist course, without a cave-in.
But those reforms caused a lot of unpleasant experiences for managers of large state-owned companies. Those dinosaurs had to be reorganized, and being put on incentives for a profit. There were very few managers that time, capable of understanding the situation and taking the necessary measures. One of them has been my boss, F., our chief designer. Frequenting the offices of the trust’s managers, he could convince them about the necessity of an aggressive, effective marketing system from the side of the company.
This way, our palette of products were able to develop, and beside the Siberian push-boat we took into project two types of floating cranes. One of them has been a self-propelled one for the open sea, the other an ordinary one for harbours. Both cranes would be ordered by the Soviets.
For the self-propelled sea-going floating crane, to design the propulsion has fallen on me. The principle has been taken from a Swiss ship, about which an article has been written in a technical periodical. It was water-jet propulsion. For the preliminary talks of the project with the customer I have made a calculation about the equipment, but later a two-step comprehensive design would be necessary.
I have been very busy that time. Beside my work, I had to prepare my lecture on the shipbuilding conference to be held next month, and our move into the new flat has also been planned for this month. And, as nature can do things without a plan, I had to face another difficulty. I mentioned my emergency visits at a dentist years ago. Now I began to feel the effects of an improper chewing organ. I missed some teeth in my mouth, and the gaps made the opposite healthy ones go wrong. Our shipyard had a medical polyclinic with its own doctors. The dentist has been a young woman, and she did a good work. Step by step she put my chewing ability into order, first repairing those teeth that could carry a superstructure. It has not been easy, and from some of them nerves had to be extinguished. Even some had to be extracted. The final solution in the upper jaw has been a denture, no thing to be proud of at 29. In two months she succeeded to put my teeth into order for twelve years.