Wayne Eddy Affair interview with Jim Machacek, May 29, 2007, part 2 |
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Object Description
| Title | Wayne Eddy Affair interview with Jim Machacek, May 29, 2007, part 2 |
| Creator | KYMN Radio |
| Description | Wayne Eddy Affair interview with Jim Machacek, May 29, 2007, part 2, on KYMN Radio. |
| Date of Creation | 5/29/2007 |
| Minnesota Reflections Topic | Communication |
| Item Type | Sound Recording - Nonmusical |
| Item Physical Format | Broadcasts |
| Locally Assigned Subject Headings | Businesses |
| Minnesota City or Township | Northfield |
| Minnesota County | Rice |
| Contributing Institution |
Northfield History Collaborative KYMN Radio |
| Contact Information | KYMN Radio: 200 Division St. S., Suite 260, Northfield, MN, 55057. http://kymnradio.net |
| Rights Management | This image may not be reproduced for any reason without the express written consent of KYMN Radio, http://kymnradio.net |
| NHC File Name | 2007_05_29_2_machacek_jim |
| Collection Title | Northfield History Collaborative |
| Transcription (FullText) | Jim Machacek Narrator Wayne Eddy Interviewer May 29, 2007 The Wayne Eddy Affair KYMN Radio WE: Chitting and chatting with Jim Machacek on the Wayne Eddy Affair on KYMN Radio out of Northfield, Minnesota. This is a Tuesday, feels like a Monday, the day after Memorial Day, 2007, on May twenty-ninth. Here it is a beautiful day, sunny, we're sitting in our studios getting sunshine through the windows. Mr. and Mrs. Trench stopped by, they listen to the KYMN Radio Wayne Eddy Affair because they know most everybody, and of course you two started chit-chatting out there Jim, and you've got a lot of people in common that Mr. Trench knew, and you knew, softballing, and he said he's looking forward to hearing your stories about softball. And by the way we've got thank Mrs. Trench, she's an extraordinary photographer and they're both in their eighties I think, she's very active in photography and she gave me some butterfly pictures that she took. One's a pupae—is that what you call it? JM: Pupae. WE: One that opened its wings for the first time and then another one on a flower. Anyhow, let's talk about the fact that, what year it is now, the softball thing we were going to talk about? JM: 1947, yes, the only time that the foundry ever had a team, but we had a pretty good bunch of guys. Chuck Anderson was the pitcher, Bud Henrickson was the catcher— WE: Fast pitch? JM: This is fast pitch, absolutely. I only played two games of slow pitch and they were both against the North Stars, the hockey team, believe it or not, when they came to town. Bud West played and I played first base. WE: Both at the same time? JM: Yes, at the same time. Tommy Axelson played, Roll Kindem played, Lloyd Machacek played, I was playing shortstop because we didn't have a shortstop, and I'm a lousy shortstop because I didn't throw well overhand. I can't remember who played third. But anyway, we did real well. I wound up, first half of the season, leading the league at 848. WE: Wow. In fast pitch? JM: Yes, fast pitch. WE: Holey moley, that's amazing! JM: And then for the whole season I wound up at 620 or 626 or something like that. The interesting part of that was Don Westcott from Minneapolis came down to see me and offered me a chance to play on his team in Minneapolis, and Don Westcott is the only one from Northfield that's in the fast pitch softball Hall of Fame. He wanted me to play for him but I was a sophomore in high school and I couldn't even drive yet, so I was kind of out of the question, but I thought it was kind of fun because he was one of my idols. WE: For those of you who aren't aware of it, folks, hitting in fast pitch softball is, in some people's opinion, more difficult than hitting in baseball, and the speeds of underhanded softball pitcher is nearing a hundred miles an hour. JM: Hundred, hundred and ten. WE: I mean, it's just amazing to be able to bat over 500. That takes me aback. You could have had a hell of a career with Whitaker Buick or something. JM: Well, perhaps. We played Whitaker one year and we lost eight to one, but we were in the game. WE: Did you get the RVI on that one? JM: I didn't get it, no. I got about three good fouls off of him. He was Dutch Albers, remember that name? He was pitching for them. He only played a couple innings because they had somebody else, they didn't want to wear him out, but they came down to Northfield. There were several of them that came down that year. I think I played against two of the teams up in the Cities. But to have Don Westcott give me a recommendation, I really thought that was something. WE: The Minnesota Sports Federation has a Softball Hall of Fame, they're in their twenty-fifth year I think, but anyhow the first few years were pretty much dominated by fast-pitch people, and I remember a guy being installed, because I've been to every one of those banquets, being installed from Carleton College. Would that have been Westcott? JM: I don't remember who that would be. WE: A fast-pitch guy that was from Carleton College. JM: Did he pitch in a Twin Cities league? WE: I don't know. JM: Don Westcott was from Northfield, but he wasn't with Carleton, he was just a local kid. He moved up there and then I know he played Minneapolis Molene, had Red Anderson, who was very good, and I batted against him and got a hit, I think. The thing is we had some great Northfield pitchers, Russ Truax and Reverend Belts from Carleton College. Mel Fontaine from Castle Rock was a windmill pitcher, one of the few windmills around at that time, and there was just a wealth of good pitchers from Northfield so I had a good experience, going even way back to Drizzle Rosdahl before the war, who was a fairly good pitcher. He pitched with Don Westcott on that same Northfield team, they had a Northfield league team or something. WE: We're talking about your high school years, 1947, and the fact that you had this experience in the foundry, and even pouring and all that, can you imagine what OSHA would have done to your family if they would have been in existence? JM: Well, there is an out there, because you're in the family that's in a hazardous business. I was fifteen years old then and that was legal because I know Uncle Ole came up to me and said 'You're legal this year.' WE: 'This year.' Finally. [Laughs] JM: So that was the year, in '47, that I worked in the foundry, and of course they wouldn't let me carry iron because they had a lot of big guys carrying iron, of course I was big too, but I was skimming when I was like ten years old so I could do all the skimming and stuff. WE: What is skimming? JM: Skimming is when you have a ladle of iron in front of you, and there's dirt and stuff that gets on top of it, and you have a skimmer, which is a piece of steel with a bent end, and you push it back [the dirt] so it doesn't get in the mold because it can give you a problem. WE: This was melted metal? JM: It was melted, but this was the dross, they called it, the junk that forms on top of the metal and you try to keep that away from going in the mold. WE: I've got a really dumb question here for you, but you'd be the guy to ask. There's iron, and there's steel, and there's aluminum, and there's tin, and.... JM: Brass, copper. Brass is a formulation of copper and tin. WE: I always thought that iron was a cheap version of steel. JM: Well, it is, because it's easier to pour, because steel, to get a good mix, should be poured at at least twenty-six, twenty-seven hundred, and a lot of times they go over three thousand on that. Iron will melt at 2300. Aluminum will melt at 1300. Brass will melt at about 1800. Tin and lead and stuff like that is around 600. So that's your deal. WE: What is wrought iron? JM: Wrought iron is an iron that has slag mixed in with it. It's made that way. It was one of the early irons. They used to use that a lot when they did forging and stuff, because actually wrought iron will resist rust much better than iron or steel will, because it's got a non-metal in it, it's got the slag in it, which is an oxide. It was used in a lot of cases in steel that was subject to a lot of stress, it would last longer than conventional steel. WE: Okay, here's another question. If all this metal melts at, you mentioned steel at three thousand or whatever it was, what is the thing that holds the liquid steel? What is that made of? JM: It's made of clay. WE: And clay doesn't melt? JM: Clay doesn't melt. It's clay and then fire bricks. WE: But don't you have to heat clay to make it hard? JM: Well, you heat clay to cure it, yes. But yes, it hardens when you're using it in a ladle. It is hard because it dries out. In some cases, like for instance down at Northfield Foundry when we were getting ready to pour, we'd build a fire into the big bowl ladle which is underneath the cupola and then when you got ready to pour we'd dump the fire out and then the metal would go in. It was already warmed up quite a bit because if you had any moisture of any kind in there it would have a tendency to steam and maybe even blow up. So you always watched out about that. WE: So the simplest of materials is used to make the most difficult material to work with? JM: Yes, that's right. WE: Isn't that crazy? JM: Up at North Star Steel up in South St. Paul, or they're just north of.... WE: New Brighton? JM: No, they're right on 52 there. WE: Inver Grove? JM: Inver Grove, yes. They melt all their steel with electricity. They use electric furnaces up there, which are two big electrodes going into a pot and then all kinds of things happen on the bottom of that pot. WE: Little cleaner? JM: Yes, it's a way that if they want to put additives in, it it's an easy way to put additives in because you don't lose very much. In a cupola or a blast furnace or something like that you would lose part of your product going out in sparks. WE: How fast do you have to pour liquid metal into a mold? Did it have to be done instantaneously? JM: No, it doesn't have to be done instantaneously. All I can say is that it varies and the reason I say that is in 1980 I was down at the Gary Steel Works, looking at some stuff down there with a friend of mine, and they had these long wiener-looking cars that they would fill up with steel, send it across town by rail, and then empty it into the other plant's molds or making ingots that they would roll between rollers and stuff like that. It was out of there, I would guess, three or four hours, but it was still molten so they could pour it. The cars were made especially for that and they were tipping and that was quite a thing to see them load those things. WE: Dangerous. JM: Well, I would guess so, but they were used to it. WE: What about fumes? JM: There are some fumes from that naturally, but for the most part they use scrubbers and things on them to try to keep the impurities out of the air. They're not perfect at it but they're doing better and better all the time. Right next to this operation in Gary was also coke ovens, and of course everything that came out when they were cooking the coke, coking the coal to make coke, all of the by-products were being sold off of there, because there were various gases and things that came off of that that they were selling. The reason why the big furnace was running, which at that time was the largest in the world, was because they needed the by-products off the coke, which went into chemical items. It was a very interesting operation. I went down there to see a guy and sell locomotives to him, and here we saw all this other stuff, had no idea. I'd heard about it but I'd never seen it before. WE: You mentioned the foundry quit pouring. When was that? JM: 1947. Late '47. WE: What was the reason? JM: During the war they could run it that way but after the war it got a little too expensive and the folks made a deal with a Dotson down in Mankato to make the castings down there, because we had the Continental Machine Do-All Bandsaw project, there was a lot of weight involved, and that's what they were looking for was weight, because that's what makes a foundry go or not go, if you've got a lot of weight to make. WE: Weight is like product? JM: Product, yes. WE: What about the war? Did your foundry participate in the First World War? Second World War? JM: Second World War it was running every other day, it poured every other day. WE: What were you doing? Were you doing government contracts? JM: Yes, for woodworking machinery and also the Continental tables. From 1937 to 1957 we made 121,000 tables for Continental Machines. That means there's 121,000 of their bandsaws out in industry and they were for the most part metal cutting bandsaws. WE: Tell me if I'm right or wrong: some people are still using that product because it's a durable product. JM: Oh yes, I've got one in my garage and the foundry's got one that was built in 1943 and they use it every day, and you see them all over. Northern Pump had somewhere like fifty of them, building gun carriages during WWII. WE: And if anybody ever has an accident, lawyers try to go back to something made in 1947. JM: Yes, that's one of the problems with our industrial laws, it isn't quite as bad now but it was a big problem. One of the reasons people don't realize was because so many people went offshore, because those people offshore are not liable. German machinery's not liable, Chinese machinery's not liable, because they don't have it set up for that. So the Americans are the ones that got stuck on that. Northfield Foundry and Machine Company is the only one building that kind of equipment in the United States and there used to be twenty. WE: Isn't that something? JM: They had adapted themselves to do other things, their machinery's adaptable for cutting metals, light metals and heavy metals and stuff like that, so that's one reason they've been able to exist. WE: All right. Twenty-one minutes after ten o' clock on the Wayne Eddy Affair on KYMN Radio. My guest this morning is Jim Machacek and I just happened to think, I'm pushing a few buttons on this board, as we call it, in front of me, and tomorrow morning I'm going to sit in for Jeff Johnson and it's going to be quite interesting, you'll want to tune in to see how many mistakes I'm going to make. [Commercial 16:48 to 18:39] WE: Oh yes, 'Big Bouquet of Roses' on KYMN Radio, Jim is sitting here humming along, thinking, 'Who sang that?' Eddie Arnold sang that song. We're back, twenty-three minutes after ten o' clock on KYMN Radio. We keep going off on tangents because I have all this information I want Jim to pass along to me in regards to some of the stuff that is very elementary, but I always feel there might be somebody out there that is not as knowledgeable as I am. I've been called a non-intellectual in this community at one point in my life and I took it as a compliment. It is twenty-four minutes after ten o' clock, Jim, we've still got you down in New Mexico, graduating in January of '54, and then where did you go? JM: Well, before I graduated I taught in the Albuquerque School System for one year and it was kind of strange, the same Elmer Koon that I mentioned before lined me up with H. A. Burnell, who was one of the outstanding teachers in the Albuquerque system in industrial education, and actually from there went on to be a principal and superintendent out in California. But anyway, we were at Jefferson Junior High School which is in the rough part of town, in other words, we had a bunch of rough kids, but they were good kids. So I came over and I was going to work in the afternoons, I had put aside two or three hours in the afternoon to help him out there. I did my first semester there, which was what was required, and he gave me a five credit A. I was only the second one to get it—Elmer Koon got the five credit A the year before—because there's some people he just didn't get along with. He said 'Say, what are you doing next semester?' and I said 'I don't know, what's on?' and he said, 'Would you want to work for me next semester and help me out? I'm going to have a pretty big class and you can just do what you've been doing. We'll pay you and everything.' So I said, 'Well, why not?' because I still had my afternoons open at that time, so I actually taught in the Albuquerque school system for one semester, which was a total of a year when you consider the semester that I practice taught down there. And of course I was teaching at the university too, helping them. I was an assistant instructor at the university, that was an official title. But it gave me some pluses, because the whole geology department, because that was all petroleum area down there, everybody in that department was a doctor or better. They were taking courses in our department, in industrial education and industrial engineering, because they wanted to broaden their horizons. Two of them, Fitz Simmons and another one, talked me into taking geology too, so I said, 'Well, what the heck?' because I had to have another science anyway, so I talked to the dean of the college and he said 'Yes, go ahead, because we know what you can do.' So I took two courses of geology which were very informative, and that would have been a field that would have been an easy one for me to follow if I'd had the inclination, you know, but I learned an awful lot, because you learned how they looked for petroleum, for oil and gas and everything down there, because New Mexico is a big oil and gas producer. A lot of my friends that I was going to school with were working in the oil fields in the summertime, the chemical engineers, the geologists, even the archeologists, because it was all interesting to them, and it was interesting to me, so I did that. Another time I had to take a design course. Well, I didn't especially like the numbers and everything, so I went to the dean again and said 'What if I take my design courses in the art department?' and he said, 'Well, go ahead. I guess I'll allow that.' So I took two courses in the art department, and I had Raymond Jonson, one of the world's renowned artists, in one class. That was worth it. He was fantastic. He could start on an idea and in a half hour he'd have a masterpiece done, and then he'd show you how to do it and how he would do it, if he was doing it, and then he'd let you do it. WE: Are you talking paintings, or sculpture...? JM: No, this was all paintings. I didn't get in any sculpture. WE: So do you paint? JM: No, not really, but I did then. WE: But you can look at a painting and appreciate it more? JM: Oh, yes. We bought a few nice paintings for our house and everything, so we can at least understand it and get his perspective. In the other class I had Pat Julio, who wound up as a professor up at the University of Colorado, and I got along real well with him. WE: Do you know Mr. Jacobson here in town? JM: Oh yes, very well. WE: I imagine you two could chit-chat forever. JM: He was a dive bomber pilot. WE: I don't know if we got to that part of our interview. JM: He went through Cecil Field in Jacksonville, Florida, which was an auxiliary Air Force base where my wife was stationed during WWII, she was Aviation Storekeeper there, first class. WE: It's a small world, we've got all these connections going at at ten twenty-nine on KYMN Radio, the Wayne Eddy Affair out of Northfield, Minnesota. Jim Machacek's our guest, a longtime resident here in Northfield, born in 1933, did you say? JM: 1931. WE: 1931. You're ten years older than I am. Wow. And you thought I was older than you, didn't you? JM: Yes. WE: So, when did you come back to Minnesota? JM: I was back here in February of '54. The first day I took off and went with George Krippner, I don't know if he was working for Bob Doley or who he was, we took a truckload of sugar up to Turtle Lake, Wisconsin. WE: Where'd you get the sugar? JM: I don't know, he had picked it up in St. Paul someplace. So I helped him unload that and that just about killed me. [Laughs] WE: How do you unload sugar? JM: You just carry it the length of the trailer and drop it on a pallet. WE: So they were twenty-five pound bags? JM: No no, these were hundred pounders. There were three hundred of them in there. So I got a workout. I don't know how he would have done it alone. He was a good friend of mine, we went to school together. Then the next day I went to work, with a few pains, you might say. WE: At Northfield Foundry? JM: At Northfield Foundry, yes. WE: What was your job there? JM: For the first one and a half years I worked in the pattern shop with my grandfather. We were upgrading all the patterns and everything. He was eighty-three then. WE: Now did he know more than you? JM: Oh yes. WE: Because you're now educated, got your degree.... JM: No, he was self educated. WE: But would I be correct in assuming that, with the education that you had and the experience that he had, that the two of you could really come up with some solutions? JM: Oh yes, we did that. After about a year of me working with him, Shelly came to town, so we built the first polyethylene sidewell bag machine at the foundry. WE: And how did you two get connected? He's talking about Sheldahl. JM: Shelly? Well because Shelly came down to Northfield Foundry to get some tubers made, which is bag making machines that make tubes, so Barney Kalo was making the tubers for him in the shop. WE: Now what's a tuber? JM: That's where you take a piece of polyethylene and turn it like that and run a seal down the back and you've got a tube. That's the early polyethylene bag, and then Shelly came out with the sidewell bags, which pretty much was a death knell of the tube bag. But we built a bunch of tubers for him because he was running Herb Shelly up in Farmington at that time. WE: Can you maybe help us out with what kind of product would go in these tubers? JM: Vegetables, fruit, stuff like that. WE: Similar to the ones that we see in a grocery store today. JM: Yes, the ones you see today. Only he revolutionized that whole business, Shelly did. J. Thompson designed the original machine, he and Shelly, and it wasn't too long, well, J. left the company so Shelly needed someone to run the mechanical division, so Jerry Marcel and I were co-production managers of the mechanical division of Sheldahl. WE: So you left Northfield Foundry? JM: No, I was still there. I was making all the parts anyways. I just meant that I spent more time over at Shelly's. WE: So did you get two paychecks then? JM: Yes. WE: That's kind of double dipping, eh? JM: Yes, that was fun. WE: Double dipping without the government involved. That's pretty damn good. How long did you do that? JM: About a year and a half, until they hired Harry Carlson and Harry took that whole thing over. They looked quite a while to find somebody that had Harry's qualities. And then Jerry Marcel, he was their head draftsman, but he had worked real hard and he got a degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Minnesota in night school, which is almost impossible to do, but being as sharp as he was.... He also, in 1995, was the state motorcycle racing champion of Minnesota. He was nationally rated. WE: What did he ride, a Boltaco? JM: BSA, BSA single and BSA twin. WE: What were the CC's, about? JM: Five hundred CC's. Flat track. He was very good. I know out of Sturgis one year he beat Dicky Mann, Dicky Mann was the national champion. And that's where Joe Leonard was too, Joe Leonard was out there, WE: That's the Indie 500 guy. JM: Yes, Joe Leonard was riding Harley, he was a factory Harley rider. And then Paul Goldsmith was a factory Harley rider. I think I mentioned it before that one year, I think it was 1956, I knew four guys that were on the thirty three that started at Indianapolis. That was Paul Goldsmith, Joe Leonard, and the two Unser boys who were from Albuquerque. I used to go out to Unser's garage, which was at the west end of Central Avenue, which is Highway 66 in Albuquerque. I used to take the bus out as far as the bus went and then I walked five more blocks to get out to their place. Now that whole west mesa belongs to the Unsers, they've roads in there called Unser, they've got several hundred apartment houses that they own, it's quite an operation. And then Joe Leonard, it's interesting because he is the only one who was ever National Motorcycle Racing Champion and National Car Racing Champion, of course in different years, but he was that good. And he's still alive, I see his picture once in a while. WE: Now we're getting back to Shelly, or the G. T. Sheldahl Corporation, now are we sitting in the building that they started off in, down in the basement? JM: Yes. Shelly had some of the offices upstairs here, and then he had the north basement and the south basement. The south basement was where we were building the polyethylene sidewell bag machines and then the north basement Reuben Peterson had the tape division. He was making tape for different people, including 3M. I think they still make tape for 3M, one of their specials. WE: When did they build their building out north of town on Highway 3? JM: Well, they had the Shell Mile out there first. WE: The what? JM: Shell Mile. That was that big long building made out of plastic. WE: The quonset hut made out of like a balloon material. JM: We got involved at that down at the foundry because we made all the bows for that so in case they had an electrical problem the building wouldn't fall down and blow away. We had a bunch of hoops in there that kept it up. That's where they made the Echo Sateloon there, which is Northfield's response to Sputnik, that was 1960, Sputnik was 1957. That was a whole local project for NASA and they've got pictures of that around here someplace. WE: We can just call Gary Gilbertson and have him come in. JM: Yes, he could tell you all about it. WE: At twenty-three minutes before eleven o' clock Jim Machacek is our guest here on KYMN Radio, and Jim is a live historian and hopefully we're recording all this for the Northfield Historical Society to use in its future generations. Did you ever thing of that, Jim, that maybe somebody fifty years from now will listen to this interview and they'll say 'Holey moley, that was a long time ago'? JM: It's a possibility. WE: What's the deal with—I guess I don't know the connection. I remember when Glen Hasse was up by the VFW Club on division street with his Ryt-Way packaging machines, was that a spinoff from Sheldahl? JM: No, that was a spinoff form Northfield Equipment. WE: Oh, I didn't know that. JM: Yes, he was down in that quonset-looking hut down by the river that was taken down by the city, they bought that. See, when we started up Northfield Equipment and Manufacturing we also started up NemCo Foods, so we were packaging food here in town. We had Ready Dutch. WE: Dry food. JM: Dry food, yes, it was instantized powders. Chocolate, and regular milk, and then we also were doing instantized potatoes, and a few other items. WE: Now who's we? JM: Northfield NemCo Foods. Northfield Equipment and Manufacturing Food Company. WE: That was the spinoff from your company? JM: Right. We were buying the milk product from Glen's dad, Glen in Plainview, and packaging it here, and Glen was doing the packaging for us. WE: Now what did Glen's dad do? JM: He ran the Plainview Co-op Creamery over there. They were instantizing a lot of products. WE: In Plainview? JM: In Plainview. WE: They'd take the liquid milk and turn it into a powder JM: Into instantized milk, yes. WE: And then they'd ship it up here, and then you guys would package it. And you got your technology through working through Sheldahl, or your ideas, you know, and... JM: Not really, not that part of it, because John Hager had been in the instantizing business before and he's the one that knew about all this stuff, because he knew the Hasses and he knew instantizing because he was at Blaw Knox in Mora, Minnesota, and he helped develop the Blaw Knox Instantizer up there. We were using Blaw Knox instantized powders, packaging them here and for sale. WE: Under what name? Did you sell them to institutions? JM: No, just in the markets. WE: What was the name of the products? JM: It was Ready Dutch. WE: I remember that. What year would this be? JM: Middle sixties, '66, '65. WE: Okay. So an arm of your business after you left Northfield Foundry was packaging Ready Dutch, because you knew how to make the machines to package it and you had a connection with Glen Hasse Senior in Plainview, who would mix it and make it into an instant drink. JM: We did the mixing here. We had our own blender. In fact, I think Glen still has that blender at Ryt-Way. WE: So now Glen and Jerry come up to Northfield to package the product that you.... JM:Well, we just introduced it to the market is what we did. WE: But Glen packaged it? Not your machines? JM: Well, there was some of the equipment that we had that we built, home-built stuff, but there was packaging equipment available. We used some of Malt-O-Meal's stuff. Malt-O-Meal had a couple of machines there that we revised to use. WE: What do you mean, bought them from Malt-O-Meal? JM: No, they gave them to us, because we were doing stuff for Malt-O-Meal right along. The foundry was building stuff for Malt-O-Meal all the time, before they got as big as they are now. Now they can afford to buy the stuff. WE: So then Glen was the contractor that you worked with to bag the product that you decided was going to be a marketable product, so this Ready Dutch, you hoped that in your wildest of dreams this would be the Nestle's of the future and it would be distributed nationally. JM: We did some of that, but then our company got Northfield Equipment building spirals and we got too busy down there, so Glen took that whole thing over and ran with it. But the raw material came from his dad's plant down in Plainview. WE: That's how that all got started. Okay. Because Glen and I, I think are the same age, and I remember when he first came to town and I first came to town he was so doggone busy all the time, just couldn't get involved in the JC's and stuff. His brother Jerry did. Okay, I didn't know that Ryt-Way had a connection to you guys. JM: Another offshoot of ours at Northfield Equipment and Manufacturing is Northfield Automation, that used to be, when we had it, Northfield Custom Machine. The FMC wasn't interested in that division that we had, so Northfield Automation went on their own and they're over in our old building, building equipment for Seagate and people like that. WE: What is Seagate? JM: That's the big company up in the Cities that makes the heads for DVDs and stuff like that. WE: Oh, okay. And that's your company too? JM: Used to be. It was one of our offshoots. WE: So what did you know about the world of transistors and magnetized heads and all that? JM: Not a lot, but we had some guys that were pretty good. Of course, my middle son David has a master's degree in electrical engineering and also an MBA, and then my oldest boy Chuckie is a chief troubleshooter for Hewlett-Packard in Plano, Texas. He does everything from his home, he's got hotwires into his house and everything, and there's times that he'll be working with somebody overseas from his house, they'll be helping him. WE: Isn't that amazing? You used to have to get on a plane or a train and now they can just sit at their house. I remember when our engineer here at the radio station, we had a little trouble with our computer and so my program director, Rich Harris at the time, said, 'Well, I'll just call Tim Valley,' who's from Northfield, he said 'I'll just call Tim Valley and tell him to take care of it.' And I said, 'Well, he's always so busy, how's he going to get down here?' because he gave me a deal on it, which meant the service wouldn't be as much if I had paid him a billion dollars, but the bottom line is that he sat in his home in Apple Valley and fixed our computer down in Northfield and I'm going, 'How did he do that?' It's amazing. And you know you, being in the industry you were raised in, everything's physical, and then you sit there and watch all this stuff going on. JM: Well, it's like on our early freezing systems, we used pretty much mechanical devices for speed changing and stuff like that, and now they have inverters to do the whole thing, you just dial it in and that's it. Of course they kind of left me behind on that but in the old stuff, we had some very ingenious ways of getting the same things done. WE: So now we've got Northfield Foundry with the hundred and forty year old history in Northfield, Minnesota.... JM: Well, the family has a hundred and forty year history in Rice County. WE: In Rice County, excuse me. And then how long in Northfield? JM: Since 1920. Foundry's been here since 1920. WE: So eighty-seven years. Can you imagine in another thirteen years the celebration you guys will have? My goodness, you'll have great-great grandchildren there. So now we've got Northfield Foundry assisting G. T. Sheldahl which became a huge multimillion dollar corporation, assisting Ryt-Way packaging, which is now a multimillion dollar operation in Lakeville, and helping Malt-O-Meal, which is still here in Northfield, which is a multimillion dollar corporation, and there you are in the shadows. I'm just mentioning three here, are there any others that you kind of helped get started, did things for, got involved in? Were you involved in Computer Controlled Machines at all before you bought that building? JM: Not really, no. They had a big monetary problem over there and we were lucky that we were in there rending the north side of their building that they had put up in 1990. We were in there when they had their financial problem and so we just made a deal with them and took over the whole building and helped them out quite a bit because of that. WE: They ultimately came out okay, didn't they? JM: Well, they don't exist anymore, but we had some people last year who came to one of our seminars that were in the vegetable business, in fact they were in corn, they remembered everything about CCM and when we told them that this was the building their equipment was built in they said, 'Boy, we still have a couple of pieces of their equipment running.' It was Del Monte or somebody like that, because we have seminars about every four months where the customers come in to learn more about their machines that we built for them. WE: For those of you that aren't aware of it, folks, CCM was Computer Controlled Machines, the piece of equipment I remember is that they could take a cob of corn and take all the kernels off it and discard the cob and recycle that, and they were done in the bat of an eye. JM: They used vision systems to do that, they'd take a picture of the corn on the cob and then the machine would adjust automatically to strip it. It was a little more complex than that, but that's basically it. They were one of the first people in the vision area as far as I know. WE: That's amazing. Are there any other companies besides Malt-O-Meal, Sheldahl, Ryt-Way that you helped establish? What was that one you just talked about? JM: Northfield Automation. That was one of ours. Well, there probably was, I can't think of them right now. Down at the foundry we had a Northfield Supply Company that was sold, and we also had Southern Minnesota Oxygen, which was a welding company that was sold. My brother set those up when he got back from the Navy, and after they got going they chose to sell them. WE: You said Minnesota Oxygen? JM: Southern Minnesota Oxygen, yes. WE: Does that was oxygen analogous to welding? JM: Yes. WE: So only welders would know that? I mean, I'm thinking about the guys that walk around the casinos with the tubes in their nose. JM: Well, that's part of that industry. And then you've also got the oxygen being used in hospitals, that's a big thing, you've got oxygen being used for cutting, you've got nitrogen being used for some types of cutting, because we have an automatic machine on our place that uses a little bit of nitrogen too and uses natural gas for cutting steel. It's a pretty complex system. There's so many new welding ideas out there now that I can't even tell you all of them, because every time I go someplace I see something new. WE: Were you a welder? JM: Oh yes. I used to be, the old style, I used to be a gas welder and then I was an electric welder, using a stick and an electrode. My youngest boy Brian is an excellent wire welder. WE: That's a pretty good-paying job, isn't it? Welding? JM: Yes, if you go out and do it. WE: I knew a kid here in town, I'm sorry I don't remember his name right now, but he won Dakota County Tech's welding competition, went to Nationals in Kansas City. I never realized that they have that type of competition, and from what I understand he's never without a job, because he's an excellent welder. JM: A good welder can keep busy, no question about it. WE: I always think of welders on high-rise skyscrapers and on ships with the sparks flying every which way. JM: My dad used to teach welding too, that's one of the things he did, because the welding industry in the 1920s, when he kind of got going, was kind of new, so there was a lot of things to learn in the '20s and '30s because it was an infant industry, especially the electric welding area. I remember when they were welding pipelines going just west of town here with gas, back before WWII. I think they were furnishing some of the gas or some of the welding wire or something like that because I went out there a couple of times with my dad, and those guys were very good. Some of those old pipelines were gas welded. I see they're putting in a new pipeline in my Faribault now and I think that's automatically welded. WE: Speaking about that, the other day I was driving up Dundas on County Road 1 and I saw ground scraped on both the north and south side and it looks like a road is going to be running through there. JM: No, that's the new pipeline. WE: That's the new pipeline? JM: I don't know too much about it, but I came back that way yesterday from Faribault and I went along to see how far they were and the pipe is all strewn out there now. WE: That has nothing to do with the ethanol plant that's not approved yet? JM: Not that I'm aware of, but I couldn't tell you, I'm not a politician. WE: We're going to take a break, we'll be back to round up part three with Jim Machacek in just a moment. [Commercial 47:40 to 51:32] WE: Okay, everyone harmonize now. Bing Crosby on KYMN Radio, and “You Are My Sunshine.” You remember that one, don't you Jimmy? JM: You bet. WE: Jim Machacek is my guest here on KYMN Radio. This is the third time Jim has been on the show with me, and Jim, I don't know if I've mentioned this to you earlier, but you have been the most mentioned and requested guest of people who say, 'Hey, you know who you should have on the air sometime?' Your name has popped up more than anybody else. JM: Oh, interesting. WE: Well, you've got an unbelievable memory, and maybe that's why you did so well in your math and geography and geometry and all that stuff. Anyhow, we aren't even back really long from the University of New Mexico, and we've got a long ways to go. We keep going off on tangent because that's what I want to do, you say something and I think, 'Oh yes, what about this, what about that?' We only have a couple minutes left here and then we're going to invite you back sometime later on this summer. When did you get married, what year was that? JM: December 1957. WE: And you say that your late wife...? JM: Marilyn Christie Machacek. WE: Oh, yes. Marilyn. You say that she knew somebody in the Navy or something like that? JM: She was Aviation Storekeeper First Class at Cecil Field, which is a dive bomber school just out of Jacksonville, not to be confused with Jacksonville Naval Air Station. At the end of the war she was transferred there when they shut down Cecil Field, they didn't need the dive bombers anymore. WE: Was she a WAC [Women’s Auxiliary Army Corps]? JM: No, she was a WAVE [Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service]. WE: What is that? JM: Women Voluntary... W-A-V-E-S. WE: Something like that. And that would be naval? JM: That would be Navy, yes. WE: And then Mr. Jacobson, the sculptor, here in Northfield.... JM: He went through Cecil Field as a dive bomber pilot. Jim Crow went through as a gunner on a SBD. WE: Yes, I had him on the air. He's got a story. JM: And Time Shop Nelson was stationed there. WE: He just passed away. JM: He just passed away. Stewart Shaft's father was an instructor there, at dive bomber school. WE: Now where did you meet Marilyn? JM: At Jesse James Days, about 1956, '55. Her mother was from town, she was Eddie Boe's sister. WE: Boe Memorial Chapel? JM: No, Boe Bus Lines. WE: Okay. I don't remember him. JM: Well, anyway, well-known local person. Her other uncle, Alvin Boe, worked at the foundry as a machinist there for a number of years, so I knew her. She used to come down and see Alvin every once in a while. WE: Come down from where? JM: She was in Minneapolis. She was in the Navy and then she was in the Naval Reserve until 1949. I didn't know that until I looked at her discharge here a year or so ago, saw that she was in that long but she wasn't active. When she got out of the service she went to Northwest Airlines stewardess school. She was in Class Thirteen but that whole class was furloughed. WE: We're going to take a break here, for several weeks, and have you come back at your convenience. Rosie Riveter, remember that expression? JM: Yes. WE: Nellie Johnson's going to be a guest of mine. JM: Oh, great. WE: She was a Rosie Riveter. JM: I guess she was. That's great. WE: I always see these little connections back and forth. Well Jim, we haven't even gotten to the trains yet, but please come back and be my guest for part four, and we'll remember that we left off when you first met Marilyn at Defeat of Jesse James Days. |
| Language | eng |
| CDM Modified Note | 2013_machacek_6 |
Description
| Title | Wayne Eddy Affair interview with Jim Machacek, May 29, 2007, part 2 |
| Creator | KYMN Radio |
| Description | Wayne Eddy Affair interview with Jim Machacek, May 29, 2007, part 2, on KYMN Radio. |
| Date of Creation | 5/29/2007 |
| Minnesota Reflections Topic | Communication |
| Item Type | Sound Recording - Nonmusical |
| Item Physical Format | Broadcasts |
| Locally Assigned Subject Headings | Businesses |
| Minnesota City or Township | Northfield |
| Minnesota County | Rice |
| Contributing Institution | KYMN Radio: 200 Division St. S., Suite 260, Northfield, MN, 55057. http://kymnradio.net. Note that item is housed at the Northfield Historical Society, www.northfieldhistory.org. |
| Rights Management | This image may not be reproduced for any reason without the express written consent of KYMN Radio, http://kymnradio.net |
| NHC File Name | 2007_05_29_2_machacek_jim |
| Collection Title | Northfield History Collaborative |
| Language | eng |
| CDM Modified Note | 2013_machacek_6 |