The recent closing of the Electrolux Co. in St. Cloud was as sad as the closure of Fingerhut and the Sartell paper mill after an explosion there killed a worker and doomed the mill.
Those three companies employed so many people from the greater St. Cloud area and beyond who earned good wages to support themselves and their families. Growing up in south St. Cloud, I knew so many neighbors who worked at those places.
Electrolux was 73 years old.
I’m happy those good people who worked there – more than 700 of them – are receiving free retraining, if they choose, to help them find other kinds of work.
As I read the news of the final day of Electrolux, a flood of good memories surfaced. In my young and heedless heyday, that factory was known as Franklin Manufacturing. When I was fresh out of high school, 1966, Franklin’s was my first “real” job after summers and winters of mowing and shoveling to earn sporadic spending money.
When I landed that job, its starting wage was – if I recall correctly – $2.40 an hour, thanks to the powers of unionization. Sounds like chickenfeed now, but that would be the equivalent of $20 or $25 an hour nowadays. And back then, the going wage for unskilled jobs was something like 85 cents an hour.
$2.40! I thought I’d died and gone to heaven, my pockets always rustling, jangling, with bills and coins, plenty of money to buy books, record albums from Musicland, a wonderful stereo from the Singer Co. To this day, when I hear songs from Simon and Garfunkel’s “Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme” album and Dylan’s “Blonde on Blonde” album, I often think of the Franklin days because I bought those albums that summer. Friends and I would sit for hours listening to them on my brand-new super-dooper stereo, drinking canned Cold Spring beer I’d snitch from dad’s stash.
At Franklin, I worked 12-hour shifts. My job was to work with another employee to insulate freezer interior liner boxes with strips of yellow insulation we’d attach around the top with masking tape. The boxes looked like thin metal caskets. Then the boxes would move on down the line, to other workers at the “Foamer,” where each box would be placed inside a larger freezer box and foamy liquid insulation would be pumped in the space between the two boxes.
It was monotonous work, long hours on hot afternoons and muggy nights, but we employees managed to make it almost fun – gabbing about our lives; our ambitions, hopes and dreams; playing practical jokes and spewing wisecracks as we did a kind of ritualized “dance” around that liner box, taping, taping, taping. I vividly remember Don, a coworker, who was so grateful for his job because it covered his house payment, two car payments and his family’s living expenses. All of that on $2-something an hour. Many people are not so fortunate these days, having to work two and even three jobs.
To this day, when I eat ham-and-mayonnaise sandwiches I think of Franklin because that is what I brought from home for lunch just about every day.
I also flash back when I smell spray paint from aerosol cans because that is how Franklin smelled – from the spray-painting of the appliances. Back then, all of the fridges/freezers were still the good old standard white, but a new line of colors had just been introduced – Harvest Gold and Avocado Green. Wow! Colorful freezers! What will they think of next? For years, I’d see those colored freezers/ fridges in people’s garages – dented, faded, rusting at the edges but still working, usually holding caches of party beer. At the sight of those old relics, I’d flash back to the good ol’ Franklin days, when life was so brimming with excitement and promise.
Ah, youth! Ah, the carefree days! Long gone, but the memories glow like embers.
Let me lift my glass to the laid-off Electrolux workers. May you all find good, new, well-paying jobs and lead healthy, happy lives.
