Lately I’ve been thinking about how the economy has changed and what my kids might do for work when they get out into the job market in about 10 years. I was feeling pretty low about that until I remembered Wilbur.
Wilbur was a funny guy. He lived down the road from us when I was growing up and taught vocational arts at the VTI in Portland. He had a ready smile, and a kind of a goofy sense of humor. He always had a sparkle in his eye like he knew the punchline to a joke that you hadn’t heard yet but he was sure you’d like.
I guess he’d been our down the road neighbor for a good while when he bought a Bridgeport milling machine. This was — oh — 35 years ago now, I think — I can’t remember if it was while I was in high school or after I’d gone into the Coast Guard, but right around that time. For those that don’t know what a Bridgeport milling machine is, think of a kind of stand-in-the-corner robot that you can program to carve things out of metal. Complex things. Very precise things. Gears, pump parts, trailer hitch balls. Anything, really. You figure out what you want to make, punch the program into paper tape, load a metal blank into the Bridgeport … it makes it. These are not cheap machines. In those days, a Bridgeport cost as much as a house.
And Wilbur had one. In his garage.
And he knew how to use it.
Before long he had a serious machine shop business going there in his garage. It seemed odd that a guy could work out of his garage and make enough to pay for the machine that cost as much as his house. But Wilbur had the niche. He knew people who ran Big Shops and they always had too much business. They couldn’t afford small runs of complex parts or they needed some peakload work done. They sent that work out to job shops like Wilbur’s. The local farmers soon learned that they could bring broken parts to Wilbur and his machine would make replacement parts in a day that they’d need a month to order. They cost a little more, but when you need to plow this week, havng a plow that works is worth a lot. And I think Wilbur didn’t charge his neighbors much over cost. It was the neighborly thing to do. The farmers would sell him a side of beef or a bushel of corn the same way. It was the way we lived there and then. Not barter, exactly, but … helpful pricing.
I don’t know if he ever got rich, but he had a great time.
So, I was thinking about Wilbur today and how a computer is a kind of Bridgeport milling machine. You can use it to make stuff. Stuff that people might want, or need. Stuff they don’t know how to make for themselves, but which folks with the knowledge can do pretty easily. You can’t use it to make pump parts or trailer hitches, but information, communications, and even toys and games flow from these digital milling machines like the stainless steel and aluminum parts came from Wilbur’s Bridgeport.
That made me feel a bit more optimistic about what my kids will do for work. They already have their own machines. They’re learning how to use them. Elder daughter is learning Python and is a wiz with photoshop already. Younger daughter has a gift for writing stories.
I think it’s going to be alright.
I ran into Wilbur last year at Dad’s funeral, which is why I was thinking of him today — Father’s Day. Wilbur, that is. He had that same sparkle in his eye and, even under the circumstances, he still had his goofy sense of humor. He was a lot older – aren’t we all – but it meant a lot to see him.