Business Ventures of Ann and Clarence E. "Jack" Reid, including Fahlin
Manufacturing.

by John P. Reid


Ann and Jack, my mother and father, were each in and out of various
businesses. Little of this will show in their employment records. I will try
to fill in a few of the details of these enterprises within the framework of
Jack's salaried employment.

Some of these business ventures were born of unemployment or the need for
added income. The details of this necessity were pretty well kept from us
children. We always assumed the family was financially comfortable, which
was not always the case.

Most of the time Jack had salaried employment and Ann was a mother and
housewife. Jack worked in the aircraft industry, mostly in purchasing or
factory management. This is an industry where management moved from company
to company frequently. Jack, like most others, built up a large network of
associates. Whenever someone in the network needed a job, another was likely
to help out.

Jack was a workaholic. All his working years he almost never arrived home
before 7:00 p.m. and late night sessions were common. Breakfast was the only
meal the family ate together. About his only hobby was the Sunday drives we
took without fail everywhere we loved.

He started in Connecticut at Sikorski Aircraft in the days of the flying
boats. Around 1934, he got a job with Nicolas-Beasly (sp?) Aircraft Company
in Marshall, Missouri. Penny Nicolas had started as a child selling day-old
bakery goods to stores in the black neighborhoods. Eventually he built a
fortune from various businesses that let him retire as a gentleman farmer on
property with a Gone-with-the-Wind-style mansion. We visited him in 1945,
and he even had a black servant pulling a rope to operate a huge fan hinged
from the ceiling while we ate a breakfast totally supplied from the farm.

Charlie Beasly was financial management type who Jack worked with at several
companies. He and his family lived in Radburn when we did.

By 1936, he left Marshall and joined Air Associates at Floyd Bennett Field
on Long Island. He stayed with them in various capacities, moving from Long
Island to New Jersey (Teterboro Airport) and then to Los Angeles near the
end of the war. Air Associates made or subcontracted almost any part of an
airplane from instruments and turnbuckles to propeller spinners and radios.
It was a major behind-the-scenes company, respected in the industry.

A sidelight. Labor disputes were not unknown during WW II, even in defense
industries. Air Associates had a very bitter strike at Teterboro. Marines
were stationed on the roof with machine guns to protect the plant. Ann was
even given a lead-weighted, spring-handled, leather-covered billy club in
case union goons came around the house. As management, Jack spent weeks at a
time at the plant. When the strike was settled, Jack was given a citation by
the union as the one member of management they respected. Jack often said,
"Labor negotiations are simple. The union walks in pointing to the sky and
saying, 'We want the moon.' Management points at the ground and says, 'You
get shit.' You settle for something in between."

Ann always had some small moneymaking scheme going. In Mineola, I remember
her setting up an elaborate backdrop and taking photos to sell to the
national tuberculosis society.

But in Radburn, New Jersey, she opened a gift shop. Radburn had one central
commercial building with a number of shops, including the only grocery and
hardware stores. Ann rented a store, bought stock, and hired help. I
remember going with her on all-day buying trips to the wholesale toy and
gift districts in New York City. She called it schlepping.  This business
did well enough to pay for a full-time housekeeper at home and presumably
made a little.

I think we kids were proud of our mother, but we hated the housekeeper.
Among other things, she was a southern cook. The idea of feeding a North
Jersey kid chicken fried steak! She also had some problems. Ann asked her to
scrub our black heel marks from the white stair risers. She used a strong
ammonia solution and burned her hands. Ann accused her of doing it to gain
sympathy.

Air Associates sent Jack from Teterboro airport in New Jersey to Los Angeles
to run the factory at Mines Field (now L. A. International). At the end of
the war, there was huge unemployment in the aircraft industry, including
Jack. He tried to set himself up as an aircraft parts broker, but the
enterprise was not successful.

Through the old network, he was enticed into joining and investing in Fahlin
Manufacturing Co. in Columbia, Missouri, in 1947. He supposedly owned 20% of
the company. I do not know if all this ownership represented money invested,
or whether some of it represented his expected management contribution. He
definitely was brought aboard for his management abilities. But after
holding major jobs all through World War II, it is probable he had cash for
such an investment.

The other active owner was Olie Fahlin, s freewheeling Scandinavian bachelor
who had built the company. There was also a partner who had only a financial
role. This may have been Charlie Beasly again, or it may have been Charlie
Buckner, another name that kept reappearing.

Prior to making his investment, Jack was told that the assets of the company
included a large number of archery sets ready for the Christmas market, a
large inventory of wooden skis, and millions of board-feet of
furniture-quality oak ready for fabrication. After some months of active
management, he determined that wholesalers were overstocked with archery
sets and they were unsalable, the skis were prone to warp and many were
actually returns, and the stock of oak lumber was no better than C-select.
The lumber had been graded and bought by Olie Fahlin on a southern trip
without benefit of a professional grader.

Another asset was supposed to be that Fahlins had become almost the sole
source of wooden aircraft propellers in the U.S. These were allegedly in
great demand by state highway patrols, which often landed their light
aircraft in farm fields and the like. A wooden propeller would break if it
accidentally hit the ground, thereby saving the crankshaft from being broken.

In truth, there was relatively little demand for wooden propellers. Further,
Fahlin's manufacturing capacity consisted of one ancient, home-made
pantograph shaper that could make a prop by copying another. There was also
only one man who was qualified to hand hammer and apply the sheet aluminum
to the leading edges of the blades.

Fahlin's main products during most of Jack's tenure were a line of hospital
furniture, mainly bedside cabinets, and a line of limed oak dining room
sets. Limed oak was fashionable during this period. Some of it went out as
"zebra" instead of limed oak. Before filling, the table was sprayed with
black lacquer. Then the pores were filled with white filler. Finally clear
lacquer was sprayed. Limed oak was the same except a pinkish tan replaced
the black.

The company was housed in the first two floors of a seven-story brick
factory building built around 1900. The upper floors housed a  garment
manufacturer. There was a railroad siding and a dry kiln. (The building
originally belonged to the Buster Brown Shoe Company, which picked up and
left Columbia when a union tried to organize the workers.)

The machinery was ancient. Some of the huge electric motors were museum
stuff. Most of the workers were farmers who had gone broke. A few were WW II
vets, who had part of their wages paid by the GI Bill because they were
learning a trade. Most workers made about $1.25 an hour. Many were on
piecework incentives and would come in early at no pay to exceed their quotas.

I worked in the finishing room the summer I graduated from high school. I
started at 55 cents an hour and rose to 65 cents. (The previous two summers
I had worked as a stock boy at the Missouri Store Company for 30 and 40
cents respectively. Federal minimum wage was 40 cents.) Being a minor, I
couldn't operate machinery or spray guns. I applied filler by hand and
sanded and waxed finished goods. Everyone knew I was the boss's son, but I
worked hard at a dirty job and had long since learned to fit in.

 Safety was awful by today's standards: unguarded belts and flywheels, no
guards on the cutting machinery, no control of volatile solvents. I saw half
a dozen accidents involving loss of fingers or parts thereof that summer.
Usually the victim was running wood through a double-spindle shaper and got
his hand too close. Two men in the finishing room developed "painter's
colic" from breathing the mist from sprayed lacquer. They eventually left,
and the company took some governmental heat for inadequate spray hoods
because they were veterans.


About the only safety rule enforced was that there was no smoking except in
the restroom. The factory was ankle-deep in sawdust and the finishing room
was full of flammable liquids and fumes. It was at Fahlins I started to chew
tobacco regularly, a habit Mary Jane decisively broke me of before we were
married.

Fahlins kept going for several years, but I remember discussions at home
about how close they had come to not meeting the weekly payroll. But the
inevitable finally came and bankruptcy was declared. The court barred Olie
Fahlin from the premises and appointed Jack to conserve the remaining assets
and liquidate them. This meant he got paid for his work. The investors got
out with very little, and the banks with a bit more. It all ended around 1950.

One little sidelight. The universal drill when taking a new job was Jack
went ahead while Ann sold the house, dealt with the movers, and got herself
and the kids to the new location. During the time the family was separated,
Jack often took flying lessons. He finally got his private pilot's license
during the Columbia move. Fahlins had a light plane, a Luscombe, which was
about the only all-metal light plane in those days. He flew it regularly on
business trips and sometimes took a member of the family.

Second sidelight. Jack was a sucker for a sad story. He hired one worker at
Fahlins who said he was a wounded war vet and had a tantalum plate in his
skull. We even had the young man to dinner several times. One day the FBI
came and arrested him at work as a deserter. Another was a man recommended
by the old network. Jack hired him as an accountant. He had an 18-inch
inseam and was quite a clown. He became a friend of the family until Jack
discovered he was embezzling small amounts from Fahlins. 

The Korean War was heating up and Jack found a job through his old network
with Pacific Fitting Company (if I remember right) in Long Beach,
California. I was in college and in love and stayed in Columbia when the
family moved. Pacific Fitting supplied military aircraft-quality nuts,
bolts, rivets, hydraulic fittings, and the like to airframe manufacturers.

During summer vacation in 1950, Jack had me set up at our Long Beach home to
take "floor sweepings" from aircraft factories, sort out like items, and
then send them for re-inspection. Pacific Fitting was the ultimate customer.
This was a test to see if it was a good business, and everything I did was
timed. I kept the profits and did quite well.

The tests were satisfactory. On Jack's advice, Ann formed a company called
Adco to do this parts sorting. Her brother Tom (who had just gone broke
trying to manufacturer and sell a crib that converted to a playpen and
folded for travel) joined her in the business. They hired women to sit at
work benches all day sorting nuts or bolts into various chutes and boxes.
Wages were low, but the piecework incentive was pretty good for anyone who
worked hard and did not go crazy. It was quite a crew. One woman was
supposed to be a prostitute who took the job while she got over syphilis.

During the summer of 1951, Mary Jane stayed with my parents as a house
guest. (We were married that winter.) She worked at Adco and was the only
operator who could tell the right-hand threaded end of a turnbuckle from the
left-hand threaded end. I worked there briefly, but soon moved to a machine
shop run by Pacific Fitting Co. I ran a turret lathe making hydraulic
fittings. The money was good.

Sidelight again. Jack had another crony named Jack Beane who worked for him
at a number of companies. He was always in some kind of trouble due to
gambling or drinking. At some point in the Long Beach period, Beane and his
wife sold one house and were buying another. Beane took the equity from the
first house to Las Vegas and lost it all. I remember Ann trying to comfort
the hysterical wife and daughter.

Adco pretty much died with the end of the Korean War. The Cold War meant the
defense industries kept going. Jack moved to Republic Aviation on Long
Island, where he did very well. He eventually took early retirement when
Republic merged with a helicopter company.

After retirement, Ann and Jack tried to turn their expertise and years of
antique collecting into a business. They bought a spacious old store with an
apartment above it in North Stonington, Connecticut, and opened an antiques
shop. They also did some shows. What they found was that they could not
stand shop sitting. Gradually, their vacation trips got longer and shop time
got shorter until they were not open at all. They disposed of much of the
stock and the building and moved to an apartment in New London. A few years
later they moved to Florida.

One successful part of the antiques dealer period was their doll collection.
Ann became expert in 18th and 19th century dolls, and Jack learned to repair
them. In the 1960s, they decided dolls were a good investment. They took a
six-week trip across Canada and bought about 600 antique dolls. They even
hired an import broker to get the dolls across the border with minimum duty.
This collection appreciated greatly in value in the next two decades, doing
far better than their stocks and bonds. Such success stories are rare in the
antiques world.

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