Brandywine Products

It was 50 years ago this summer that I had my first job working as a machinist helper at Brandywine Products.

Dad worked as a machinist at the Philadelphia Navy Yard during World War II. After the war he got a job at Walsh Machine Corp which was a small family owned machine shop located on Brandywine Street in the Tioga neighborhood of North Philadelphia near his family's house and grocery store. A few years later the family sold off the store and the house and moved to the Germantown section of the city where my father met my mother. They lived a block from each other. They ended up raising a family on the block between his family's home and her family's home.

As a small child I remember Dad taking me down to his work place down in Tioga. I can visualize the building and the sign outside that said Walsh Machine Corp. The neighborhood was getting bad and they were expanding the business. They needed more space and several years later they moved the company out of the city to North Wales which was about 45 minutes from our house. They also changed the name of the company to Brandywine Products. Dad commuted every day back and forth to the new plant. He also worked a lot of overtime.

He had become a salaried management employee and plant manager. He was very valuable to the Walsh family and the brothers always tried to take care of him. It was a family business. They had a picnic party every year out on the farm of one of the owners and then later and another employee out in the country. We always looked forward to that day in the country on an actual farm. It might have been a gentleman's farm but we loved it. Actually as I recall one of Mom's cousins had a real working farm about an hour outside the city and once a year we would go there for an afternoon dinner and a day on a real farm.

The company took care of Dad and because of all the time he spent at work John Walsh arranged for Dad to have a monthly night out at a restaurant on the company. Most of the time he and Mom would go out for a nice dinner at a fancy restaurant but two or three times a year they would take the whole family out for dinner at some place nice on the company's bill. It was always very nice and we learned how to behave in a fancy restaurant. Mom said they always got compliments from restaurant staff and other diners on the large family having dinner together. I fondly remember those restaurants. We would also go out to restaurants together when we were vacationing in the Poconos or down the Shore.

I started working at Brandywine Products in 1968 during the summer between my junior and senior years of high school when Dad got me a job there. I spent that summer cleaning up hot chips from around the machines and also did some product inspection work. I previously wrote about that first job experience here. We were still living in Germantown at the time and I would walk down to Wayne Junction every day and take the train up to the North Wales station then walk down the street to Brandywine Products. Sometimes I would catch a ride home with Dad but he often stayed late. I wore a uniform of sorts with green work pants and green shirt which would often get very dirty. I was a real workingman commuting on the train and everyone knew it. I spent most of my work money on records and rock shows.

We moved to Harleysville PA in November 1968. I continued to work on Saturdays at BP. I also got a car to get myself to work and also to drive down to Philly regularly. After I graduated from high school I thought I would work somewhere else and got a job in Lansdale at the Atlas Asbestos Co. for a couple of weeks and then went back to Brandywine where I continued working until I left for the Navy. After high school I became a lathe operator and later a Machinist's Mate in the Navy.

One of the nice things about working there was seeing my Dad everyday and experiencing a whole different side of him. He was really popular with all the guys that worked for him and he was a good boss. It was also interesting to see and hear him in the locker room. I had never heard him tell any off color jokes before. I was glad to have spent that time with him at work especially knowing now that I had so little time left with him.

So Dad worked at Brandywine Products up until the day he died in July 1970. The last time I saw him when I was home on leave after boot camp a few months before his aneurysm rupture.