The Skinny Apprentice

Between the schoolboy days and those of an engineering officer in the Merchant Marine there was a period to be consumed as an apprentice to the Fitting and Turning trade. Swanson Engineering was the only heavy engineering workshop in New Plymouth, so it was to this establishment that I went to show off my school-acquired talents.“Will the potential employer whom I meet perceive that he is in the company of a rocket scientist?”

The owner and interviewer of Swanson Engineering was Mr. B Titter and it was after meeting this man that a trade was offered if I was able to get a pass in my School Certificate. I did, and my days in the Fitting, Turning and Machining duly began with a lad of thin appearance and in oversized boots walking through the doors on a Monday to report for work.

Many years later, I was to work for a man whose maxim when it came to employing apprentices was,“If the lad is good at mathematics and spelling, he is no bloody use to me.”This man should have interviewed me in my skinny past.

I was soon to discover that the words“bugger” and“bloody” as used around the family home would not cut the mustard in a workshop environment. Those words that only a few weeks ago were very servable describing words, were superseded with much bigger“expletives deletives” and were used with far greater passion. Dinner table material they were not; nor could they be used within earshot of your parents. I did discover that some of those describing workshop words would induce Dad to take aim at your backside with his boot. I was getting ready to open the front door of the house one time after using the“F” word in the kitchen. What I did not realize was that, Dad had followed me up the hall and used his boot to assist me through a door that was still closed.“Thanks Dad.”

The jump from schoolboy to apprentice was rather large. Some made the transition more easily than others and as luck would have it my transition proved to be at the harder end of the scale. All the first year apprentices discovered shortly after starting that Mr. B Titter was a man to be feared by one and all. The“Screaming Skull” was his behind the back nickname. When you were face to face with the boss, the more formal greetings of, Sir or Mr. Titter where the norm. Some used scuttling silence as a form of acknowledgment.“Did you see the way that so and so slipped under that piece of plate steel when Mr. Titter arrived?”“I’m no doctor, but I think he needs an infusion of backbone.” Thankfully, scuttling was not a method that I choose to use when in the company of the“Skull”. There were very few men or boys who could withstand the arm waving and swearing of this short, thickset maniac. When he came into the top of the worksh