On Being 96

The other day I took a look in the mirror and I found myself looking back at a 96-year-old-guy and noticing that he could use a shave. I started looking at different things about him -- how his mustache is trimmed and how he's always looking askance at what is going on around him.


The thoughts were coming rapidly into my mind-- one question tumbling right after the other. I decided to look at what I found.
I guess you don'''t feel any special way about being 96 except you know when you were born. You wonder what you've accomplished that will live after you to your credit .

Now I am beginning to wonder what the future holds and what the future really is and what my perspectives should be if this happens or that happens.

I keep telling myself in a couple ofyears I'll be able to tell people what the first 100 years are like andI decided to stop thinking after that. I decided to leave it for another day. Upon reflection,I thought, let things happen as they will.

Around 1946 I left the knitting industry. I went into the field of selling. At that time I was living on Empire Boulevard in Brooklyn. I was selling household cleaning products.Pine oil insecticide, polish, soap, etc. I sold this to homes and businesses. That''s the hard part of it. Sometimes it was easier to sell to businesses. There are more products to sell to businesses. I was able to sell these products to almost any kind of business. I entered the field and found that there were certain areas of thefield that were more productive than others. For awhile I only sold insecticides to restaurants by the gallon.

Other businesses fell intol ine as the productss variesd. Productss changesas the linesvaried. I osld metal polish toguys whoi owned buildings. I couldn't sell them insecticide because they had exterminators.

More About Knitting

Here is more information about the knitting mill.

The ability to produce perfect cloth depends on your abiliuty to be adept. Maybe more than one cone is running out at the same time and you have to replace all of the empties. You work the new cones into the machine by hand and then turn on the motor to continue knkitting the cloth

Entering the Knitting Industry

Having had no experience before, these are the few things I learned. There were different kinds of knitting machines. Brinton, Scafford & Holt, Jacquard, Dubied, Eppler Necktie Machine.

When I went into a knitting mill for the first time, I was struck by the whirring and clicking of machines and was momentarily terrified. I soon got over that. After awhile the noise became second nature to me as I went about my daily tasks.



Each day, my daily work was to operate the machines and keep checking them constantly for breaks in the material and making sure I was turning out perfect cloth.

In most modern plants, the cloth was rolled up as it came out of the machines. After enough had been made I would cut off the material and the next roll would be started. This was to be continued throughout the day.



As one spool ran out, it had to be replaced by a fresh one.

The roll was a cone of thread weighing approximately three to four pounds.