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Dad's Stories: Part 4-Moving Further On

Milestones Vol 28. No. 1

(Recollections from Leroy M. "Roy" Kelbaugh, 1910-1997)
Edited by James W Kelbaugh

 

The second oldest of four boys born to Frank "Pap" and Mabel 'Mum" Byerle Kelbaugh, Roy Kelbaugh was born in New Brighton and lived there continuously until 1976 when he retired to North Carolina. This is the last group of the many stories he often told about the family and his own experiences. (Part 1 - The Early Years appeared in the Autumn 2001 issue of Milestones. Part 2 - Growing Up appeared in the Summer 2002 issue. Part 3 - Moving On appeared in the Fall 2002 issue.)

Around 1931, Roy's father Frank began to experience unexplained spontaneous bleeding. His doctor diagnosed it as hemophilia, a condition that would prevent Pap from continuing in his job as a motorman for the Beaver-Valley Traction Co. To keep the family afloat financially, Pap arranged to buy a filling station business that was located just across the old Sharon bridge from the Traction Co., in the community of Sharon, now the northern end of Bridgewater. The main bridge between Bridgewater and Rochester was closed for major repairs at the time, and all traffic was being re-routed to the Sharon bridge, a situation that directly benefited Pap's business. But he still had to contend with his ailment.

In those days it was not unusual for a filling station to sell more than one brand of gasoline and oil, and Pap's was one of them. He carried both Gulf and Sunoco. At that time, Sunoco's advertising program claimed they had the "purest motor oil" in the land.

One day a representative from Sunoco stopped at the station and began talking up his product. "Why, this oil's so pure that a person could actually drink it without fear of being harmed." Then be proceeded to take a couple of swallows right there. Pap was impressed and wondered about that even after the man had left. His curiosity soon got the best of him, and he picked up a bottle of the oil and swallowed some of it himself. He didn't care much for the taste, but surprisingly the hemophilia-type problems completely disappeared after that, and soon he was able to return to his job with the Traction Co.

Early in 1941, probably after learning that he and Tina were about to become parents again, Roy began to look for a job that would pay more than he was making in his own small barber shop in New Brighton. His first attempt was to hire out as a barber in the big city of Pittsburgh. He arranged to rent out his shop to a young man from Monaca, and the next Monday morning he caught an early train to Pittsburgh where he went to work in a barber shop in one of the large downtown hotels. By Wednesday he decided he'd had enough of that, and he turned in his resignation, effective immediately. Later, telling about it to family and friends, he said, "There are just too many people up there, and I don't know even one of them."

Later that same year Roy and Tina's second child was born, a girl whom they named Christine Lee. By then Roy had hired on at the B&W tube mill in Beaver Falls, where he worked almost continuously until he retired in 1975. In the early years he had a variety of jobs at the mill, including a stint as a conductor on the company's switcher locomotive. The switcher would run to the railroad siding just outside the fence, pick up cars of inbound materials as well as empties, run them back into the mill yard and spot them at assigned places all through the plant for loading or unloading. They also picked up loaded cars on the grounds, made them up into trains and pulled them out to the siding, to be picked up by the railroad. Among other duties, it was the conductor's job to ensure that the tracks were kept clear for safe passage of the locomotive.



One day Roy noticed a semi-trailer rig backed up to one of the buildings with the cab extended across one of the tracks. A truck driver making a delivery had been careless in parking the vehicle. Roy went into the building, hunted up the driver, and asked him to move his truck so it would be clear of the railroad track. A while later Roy saw that the truck was still in the same place, so again he hunted up the driver. This time the man said, "Oh yeah. Sorry, but I got tied up in here." Roy shook his head, then turned away saying, "That's OK, the train will be coming along in a few minutes, anyhow. We'll just take off what doesn't clear. When the locomotive did head down that track, the offending truck was nowhere to be seen.

In late November of 1950 the Beaver Valley area was hit by the heaviest snowfall in its recorded history up to that time, and probably since. Thanksgiving Day started out very warm. The temperature reached 70 degrees by early afternoon, then quickly started to drop. Soon it began raining. By 5:00 p.m. the rain had turned to snow, and by 9:00 p.m. it was coming down hard. The snow and wind continued through the night and all day Friday, gradually bringing nearly everything to a complete standstill. When the snow finally stopped early Saturday morning about 26 inches of the white stuff had been deposited.

Roy was scheduled to work the second shift (3:00 to 11:00) that Friday. As a member of the Combustion Department he knew the cold weather would make their work critical. His car was snowed in at the curb in front of his house on 4th Avenue, New Brighton. It was still snowing hard and the roads were treacherous. Yet, despite those conditions and the distance involved, he felt he needed to do his level best to get to work. The buses had stopped running, but a few cars were still moving on the main roads very slowly. So Roy bundled up and hiked out to 3rd Avenue in hopes of hitchhiking his way to the tube mill at the far end of Beaver Falls, about four or five miles away.

Eventually a car came along and, without stopping, the driver slowed down enough that Roy could run over, open the door and jump in. The man asked where he was going and when Roy answered the-man said, "You're in luck, because I'm heading that way, too."

They slowly made their way up to 5th Avenue and crossed the bridge into Beaver Falls without much trouble. The hill on Seventh Avenue was a real challenge though, and there were times Roy thought they wouldn't make it to the top. But they did. As they continued along Roy asked the driver how far he was going. The man said he was a salesman, and lived near Youngstown, Ohio. Roy asked, "You don't plan to go all the way to Youngstown in this snow, do you?" "Well, that's my plan. What route do you think would be safest today?'

Roy did his best to convince the man to give up the idea of driving so far under those conditions. "We just passed the Brodhead Hotel back there at Twelfth Street. I suggest that after you drop me off you head back there and get a room to stay in until this snow is over and the roads are plowed." The man shrugged his shoulders and hunched even further over the steering wheel, determined to keep going.

The climb up College Hill was even worse than Seventh Avenue, and again they barely made it. By the time they reached the top, the man had grown quiet, and as they continued through the driving snow, his shoulders seemed to sag. As they approached the mill gate, he turned to Roy and asked, "Where do you want me to drop you off? I think I will check out the Brodhead."

Roy was a heavy smoker much of his life. He had begun with cigarettes as a teenager, and by age 25 he was smoking two-to-three packs a day. He continued at that rate for another 20 years, but by his early 50's he knew very well that cigarettes were doing him no good.

He was at work in the Combustion Department office one day, about 1965, sitting at a desk and smoking a cigarette. A phone rang across the room, and as he got up to answer it his head began to spin, He thought to himself, "I bet that's from smoking. I'm going to quit, now," and he snuffed out his cigarette while speaking on the phone. Later that same shift he had a similar episode, but this when he got up from his chair he felt a pain in his chest. He wondered if he had smoked another cigarette. Reaching to the ashtray nearby he felt through the accumulation, of butts. Sure enough, one was still warm and it was his brand. He told himself, "That does it; I'm swearing off these things." Reaching into his shirt pocket he pulled out the opened pack he kept there and said to one of his co-workers. "Here, you can have these things. I'm not going to have anything to do with them any more."

And he never smoked again.

Roy spent the biggest part of his working career as a fuel technician in the Combustion Department at the Babcock & Wilcox Co. (B&W) steel plant in Beaver Falls. In addition to monitoring and regulating the flow of fuel to various furnaces throughout the plant, his department was responsible for cleaning and maintaining the burners and the furnaces. A major task the entire crew dreaded was the relining of the largest furnaces. It was dirty, heavy and difficult work and it took a lot of skill and knowledge. Fortunately, it didn't need to be done very often.

By the early 1970s the company was experiencing difficult economic conditions, and had begun cutting back their work force. Older employees retired at a rapid rate, and not many replacements were hired. About that time Roy's department manager realized that one of the large furnaces would soon need relining, and he suggested to his management that the upcoming summer shutdown period would be the best time to schedule the job. But it would be time-consuming and would take a major unit out of production for several weeks, and so the decision was made to wait another year. By the next summer the department manager had retired, and Roy and one other man were the only one's with previous experience in relining that furnace. Again management decided to pass up the job, despite urgings from the Combustion Department manager.

About mid-February 1975, the new department manager announced to his crew that the relining of the big furnace could not be put off any longer. It would have to be done during the coming summer shutdown. By then the other experienced man had retired, and Roy was the only one left who had done that job before. Realizing this and dreading the work and the heavy responsibility that went with it, Roy weighed his options.

Several days later, he approached his manager. "You say you're planning to reline that furnace this summer." "That's right." "Well, I'll be 65 on the 11th of July, and I've been looking forward to retiring then. But I don't want to have any part in doing that relining job with a crew that's never done it before. Now I've got my 13 weeks' sabbatical coming, and I haven't taken any vacation yet. So, I'm going to put in for early retirement effective the end of May. And the way I figure it, next Friday will be my last day. I hate to run out on you like that, but you people had your chances before and you didn't take them, so I can't feel too sorry."