I had no idea what he was talking about. “Right.”
He led me over to the machine next to it. “What you see coming out here are round drive gears that are pressed into the output shaft of the transmission. The long one is the driven gear that’s inserted at a right angle to mesh with the drive gear.”
I looked at him and wondered: Chinese? Swahili?
We went to the next machine. “Here they’re making drive gears that press onto the front wheel hub. The driven gear is fixed to the brake backing plate to measure the drive gear. See?”
I nodded.
He walked me over to another machine. “This machine replaces worn gears. The transmission gearing has been standard for a long time. The advantage of the front wheel systems is that axle ratios can be changed, or multiple-ratio rear axles can be used without affecting the speedometer accuracy. See?”
Swahili, I decided. “Of course.”
“Now I’ll show you your department.”
He took me over to the short order department, where I was to take charge. The machines I had been introduced to were mammoth and were built to turn out huge orders for automobile manufacturers, a half a million gears or more at a time. The short order department consisted of three much smaller machines.
Otto Karp explained, “If someone orders five or ten gears, we can’t afford to start up the big machines for that small an order. But these machines here are equipped to turn out as few as one or two gears. When a short order comes in, you will handle it and it can be filled right away.”
“How do I do that?”
“First, you will be handed a purchase order. The order can be for anywhere from one to a dozen drive or driven gears. Next, you give the order to the machinist. When the gears are ready, you’ll take them to the annealing department, where they’ll be hardened. Your next stop is inspection and finally the wrapping department.”
It sounded simple enough.
I learned that my predecessor had given the men who worked in the short order department no more than six orders a day. The rest he held back, and the men sat around half the day, doing nothing. I thought it was a waste. Within a month, I had increased the output by fifty percent. At Christmastime, I got my reward. Otto Karp handed me a check for fourteen dollars and said, “Here. You deserve it. You have a dollar raise.”
Otto was traveling on the road and Natalie was working six days a week at a dress shop. Richard was going to school. My days at Stewart Warner, working in the drab surroundings of the factory, surrounded by surrealistic machinery, had become mind-numbing. My evenings were just as bad. I rode the El downtown to the Loop, walked into the hotel where I was working, and spent the next few hours receiving and returning overcoats. My life had become an ugly gray rut again and there was no way out.
Riding home on the El late one night, coming from work, an ad in The Chicago Tribune caught my eye:
Paul Ash Is Sponsoring an Amateur Contest
Start your career in show business
Paul Ash, a nationally known band leader, was appearing at the Chicago Theatre. The ad was catnip to me. I had no idea what the amateur contest was about, but I knew I wanted to be in it.
On Saturday, before I went to work at the drugstore, I stopped at the Chicago Theatre and asked to see Paul Ash. His manager came out of an office. “What can I do for you?”
“I’d like to enter the amateur contest,” I said.
He consulted a paper. “We don’t have an announcer yet. Can you handle that?”
“Oh. Yes, sir.”
“Good. What’s your name?”
What was my name? Schechtel was not a show business name. People were always misspelling it and mispronouncing it. I needed a name they would remember. The possibilities raced through my mind. Gable, Cooper, Grant, Stewart, Powell . . .
The man was staring at me. “Don’t you know your name?”
“Of course I do,” I said quickly. “It’s Sidney Sh— Sheldon. Sidney Sheldon.”