Job at Formica Factory - 1977-1979
A nice thing was that the 7am-7pm Friday, Saturday, Sunday shift gave me four days free to attend American River College. At the time the plant was in the "middle of nowhere." But now it is just south of Thunder Valley Casino, and Rocklin has built up around it. It shut down around 2005. Google Earth of Formica Plant - Info on WikiPedia
The flow though the plant is left-right in the process below. On the left trucks arrived bringing rolls of kraft paper, decorative paper, and chemicals. The left-side of the plant treated the paper and cut and stacked it. The center of the building contained two large presses where about 264 sheet of Formica were pressed and cooked between sheets of stainless steel each hour. The right-side of the building trimmed edges, polished, stacked, and shipped, and trucks arrived at the right side to pick up finished goods. The main plant is in Cincinnati Ohio. But I understand it had multiple floors and goofy process flow. This one-way flow was more efficient.
I met some key friends there: Gene Rodman was a few years older - married with two young kids. I helped him build two homes in Foresthill California. He moved to Montana many years ago. Jim Kampmann was my age. We remained friends. He had a cherry 1977 Z-28 Camaro that we'd cruise Sunrise or downtown Sacramento in - these were big events - perhaps stemming from the "American Graffiti" movie - until they cracked down around 1980. Later we bought an investment house together, but that led to conflicts. One shocking thing while I was still on my 90 day probation my supervisor didn't show up. Instead police came and interviewed everyone privately. We later learned that she had been murdered, and I don't think it was ever solved.
The job involved bending and twisting. I hurt my back after a year and the formaldehyde fumes where making me sick. Once I got caught in the conveyor line and my leg cut up. I resigned in June 1979 and moved back to Reno to take a break. The following memo was posted behind glass. But I found it so amusing that I used something like a yardstick to knock it loose:
Here I was playing with a pin-hole camera and took a photo of the parking sticker on my 1974 AMC Matador
|
In December 1976 I moved to Sacramento to live with my father. I had worked in
restaurants all through high school, and wanted to earn more than minimum wage.
When I interviewed at 
