Walking The Hardwood

Walking the Hardwood : Serving the Fleet from 21st and Arlington 1942-1996

by Barbara Biersdorfer, Deborah Edwards, et al. | Jan 1, 1997

This is a small but mighty book that tells the story of manufacturing for the Navy as the United States entered World War II.  In the landlocked State of Indiana and in the capital city of Indianapolis, a huge building housed the mostly men who ran the manufacturing machines to make the precision parts that went into many different pieces of equipment for the U.S. Navy.

For some fascinating reason, that book came to mind this week as we face a National election that will also impact history.

My father worked in that factory.  He volunteered to join the service when war was declared, despite having a wife and three children at the time.  He did not pass the physical and mourned that for days.  Nonetheless, he served with honor as an expert machinist making precision metal parts for a wide variety of equipment for the Navy.   The plant was an incredibly special place.  When you bring a huge bunch of large metal processing machines into a building you have an almost unsolvable problem.  How to stabilize the machines.   The ground they stand on must be stable.  These machines must be guided to make perfectly ground and shaped parts to within infinitesimal margins.  Nothing can be moving around.

The floor was the key.  Layers of hardwood traveling in different directions and polished to shine created the surface necessary for this precision and the stability that would guarantee perfection.

As we go to the polls to vote on our next President, I experience the ground shifting and shaking.  The earth is not stable.  The product that will result is not precise.  This one piece of government is not finely honed or prepared to work smoothly and carry our nation to a better place.  No one is walking the hardwood.

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