Chapter Two

Watching the emerging cloth did not seem too exciting; but some of the stories the head mechanic, Charlie, told me were reasonably tawdry; and, if not true, were very exciting to a young lad of my tender age. However, in time to come I was to become accustomed to some chatter in his wild (?) exciting existence, which i found to be nothing more than an affectionate affair with John Barleycorn..I do believe some of his his tales belong in the library of Baron Munchhausen. But nevertheless I enjoyed them. He once told me about being in a house of ill repute and smoke was detected coming out of it somewhere and he had to race out of the premisses inhis underwear; and that some of the ladies he had known were gracious and even beautiful. All in all that he led an excitig life in adddition to taking care of the knitting machines.What I knew about him to be true was that he was a bachelor who hailed from upstate NewYork and he led a quiet life until the weekend when he blew all of his money on drink. He was quite a caroler of bawdy songs.
But beyond all of this excitement, he was still a great mechanic and proved to be a great friend.
One day, about a year after I started with the company, I was carrying some yarn to Charlie, Mr. Friedberg grabbed my arm, aand said, "Wait a minute, I want to tell you somthing."
He was always stopping me and saying "do this, or do that." I stopped, wondering what it would be this time.
"Look, you can work with Charlie on the msachines."
From then on I worked on the knitting macghine and was a knitter. Then began my days in earnest as a knitter, and I learned more and more each day about the skill.