Keeping the apprentice on his mettle
President Malcolm Cruise was not always in journalism. He began at Conachers and, as he recalls here, he can claim to know the world of the organ from the inside
I WANT a Scrimshaw's pie," said Arnold Swallow. Arnold was second man in Peter Conacher's metal pipe shop. The date was July, 1952 and I was 16. It was all very bewildering. All I wanted to be was a pipe voicer. But there was no vacancy there. It was a pipe maker or nothing.
And now this. What did I know about pork pies? Of course, I was prepared, as should all new apprentices in those days, to be sent for "t' glass 'ammer" or asked to fetch "a round tooit". But pork pies...no. "You'll 'ave to 'old yer case straight up," said Arnold, "when yer get t'pie." Another mystery. Anyway, off I went at lunch time down Springwood Street and into town, swinging my little case as I walked.
A cheese sandwich for Brian Hirst, the pipe shop foreman, a packet of fags for Ted Gilhouley on the Middle Floor, two ounces of Legation Navy Cut for George Farrar, the head voicer and a Scrimshaw's pork pie for Arnold.
Of course, I wasn't to know, in my youthful innocence, that Scrimshaw would actually pour hot gravy into the pie just before he gave it to me. So I put it gently into my case, along with the other purchases and set out up High Street and back to the Springwood factory. Arnold was obviously looking forward to his pie - and he waited with baited breath while I unhooked the catches on my case. "Did you keep it upright?" he asked, anticipation writ large on his face. I didn't know what he was on about.
I opened the case...and the ghastly mess inside created instant dismay. The pie had disintegrated; its contents had amalgamated with the cheese sandwich, the packet of Players and the Legation Navy Cut. "Yer daft little bugger,'' said Arnold. I learned a lot that day! Incidents and laughs came thick and fast in the metal shop. Swiftly gone were my preconceived notions that since pipe organs generally went into churches the people who built them would be pious individuals.
I was, as are all apprentices, the butt of many jokes. I boiled the bottom out of the tea kettle and Brian had to solder in a new one. I was summoned to the boiler room one summer's day...I was the only person in the building small enough to get inside after it had been drained, to clean it out. "And if I get any lip," said machine room man (and boilerman extraordinary) Billy Earnshaw, "I'll fill it up wi' you inside." Billy took to me and did his best to teach me everything he knew about colourful language. Scruffy to the last and with overalls that must have come out of the Ark, Billy was a real character and took a rise out of everyone - from the managing director down.
My diminutive size (at that time!) also put me in demand for other tight spots. Like cleaning the solder burrs off mitred joints INSIDE metal windtrunking.
And there was similar work to be done inside the bottom notes of a huge scaled Pedal Open Diapason which we made for Mount Pottinger Presbyterian Church in Belfast.
Much swearing and sweating went into the rolling of the zinc for these pipes, since our biggest rolling machine - a hand-operated affair - was supposed to be big enough only for up to a nine inch scale. And this Open Diapason was a monster - about 13 inches at CCC.
Anyway we did it, with help from other departments - but they still pushed me in to clean up inside the pipes! Washing off new pipes was my job, as well as making miles of conveyance trunking for front pipes.
We had a nine-foot long wooden bath at bench height. It was filled with hot water and soap and then Joe Bloggs got to work with a variety of bottle brushes to wash every pipe of all new ranks.
One day, I pushed the brush a bit too hard on the languid of a sizeable Rohrflute pipe. And, horror of horrors, it bent. I daren't tell anyone. So in time, the rank was stacked in the special barrow used to crane new pipes up to the top floor where the Voicing Shop was situated. And sure enough, a few days later long- running rivalry between pipemakers and voicers reared its head when George Farrar bounced into the Metal Shop holding the damaged pipe.
"What are you lot playing at," he said triumphantly? T' languid o' this pipe's bent. I suppose Mr Nobody 'as buggered it up." I kept quiet but listened with embarrassment to the metal staff's acute observations on the character of Mr Farrar. The pipe, of course, was repaired in minutes.
Today's Health and Safety Executive would go raving mad at some of the practices of those days. Billy Earnshaw used to operate the crane. There was no safety gate on the top floor and he used to lean out over the edge holding on to the rope which controlled the lifting motor. (Someone, in years before, I believe, had fallen out of there and was killed).
The British Rail Commer Cob and trailer used to come and leave a container so that a new organ could be loaded in, then a day or two later the tractor section would return and take the container off to the goods yard. Billy, who knew everybody, had a rough but good natured rapport with the BR men. I watched in some wonder as the driver of the cob reversed his articulated trailer up the yard. The trailer hit the wall with a smack and a scrape. Billy leaned out.
"Yer ter near!" he shouted with a wit that only a West Riding man could muster, and then burst into uncontrollable mirth. Amid it all organs were built or rebuilt. The best materials were used, the craftsmanship was of the highest order. Conacher organs were built to last - and they have.
But it wasn't all funny. I went in and asked for a rise when my wage was £6.10s a week. The then MD came back to me a few minutes later and said: "Will half a crown be all right?" So I became a journalist.