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May 19, 1992

After about two years I decided there wasn't any future in Windber and the $99 bucks was getting to be a problem. I got a job in the Plant Engineering Dept. of PSB which was the parent of Philco. I was located at their manufacturing plant in Kensington.

Shortly after I started at PSB I received a call to contact Rohm and Haas about a job at the Bridesburg plant. I turned it down because I didn't think it was right to leave PSB without giving it a chance. Bob Reitinger then got the offer and that is how he got started at R & H.

My interest in radio and sound made my job very interesting. It introduced me to mass production and radio construction. I designed electrical systems and followed through on the installation of production lines and plant expansion in these early days of radio. Automobile radios were getting popular and I worked on the factories for their production. In the early years the radios were separate units mounted under the dash and the antennas were metal bars mounted under the running boards.

One of my early interesting jobs was the removal of a wooden TV antenna tower from the roof of the elevator penthouse on the sixth floor and replacing it with a modern prefabricated steel structure.

There were opportunities to buy radio parts and test models from the salvage department and I added a lot to the junk I'm always squirreling away. In fact, I'm sure I could still find some of the junk. One of the items, an old Philcophone, I used it to find a short in an underground cable years later at R & H.

As usual I was interested in the good looking girls and a secretary at the cabinet plant, Loretta "Penny" MacPhail was my favorite during those years. The cabinet plant's methods were useful in my later years when I supervised the Plexiglas fabrication.

After about two years it came to an end when PSB had a major strike. Plant engineering employees were about the only ones working. It was part time and I finally decided to move on.

During the strike my Dad got into an argument with the strikers at a local bar. They came to the house and told him to knock it off. After the strike, Philco never regained it's original place in the industry.

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