Stone South Wind - XII
A Journey to the Beginning
11
White Coral Bells
Upon a slender stalk
Lilies of the valley deck my garden walk
Oh, don't you wish,
That you might hear them ring?
That will happen only when
The fairies sing.
_
Traditional American Song – East Coast
Song, oh, song – why do you run through my head? But I know the answer – and she is married, and she hums it constantly. I once asked her what the words were, and the next day she handed me a little songbook with little words – but did not tell me the name of the song. It was not difficult to figure out if one knew how many syllables it had. SYLlable. sylLABles, syllyBLES.
Having only been at Winchester Repeating Arms for a few weeks, but I knew that something was wrong with the drying process - among many other things that Olin had problems with. That is the point where the powder is wet with moisture and needs to dry in a hot oven. The way things were done is piling up the powder in a heap – and the powder dried very slowly. Then I got an idea while humming MaryLou's favorite tune – the problem was that the gunpowder was piled in heaps.
But remember, I was called a physicist – so proof was to be required. Thus began the hunting around for a light microscope – more powerful than the ones one used in high school, though the principal was the same. The lady chemist – called Mary Lou – made up slides, to a diagram, and sent them over to the physics lab. We had just gotten the powerful microscopes ready, and since 1 did not need a tome – we could slide them under the microscope instantly.
Dividing the slides by time – was that the grains of powder did not dry evenly, but instead, a few areas dried instantly, and then grew outwards from there. I also found some high resistant thermometers – which were similar to, but much hotter than, the kinds that one uses in one's kitchen. Again we found that the heat radiated outwards from a few points, and because the grains were piled up like a pyramid, one had to let it dry until all of the gunpowder was dry. Unfortunately, that meant that the outer grains were too dry, and had to be discarded.
It was at that point that we set machinery in motion – and made up a series of trays to hold the gunpowder in a fine film. We also made the trays rather loose, rather than the normal way of having the wheels tightly locked into the tray. It was only a simulation, but we could make more when necessary.
Today's time I was called into the head of Winchester Repeating Arms gunpowder division, and I looked at him. He was the 1st man that I saw who was chubby, all the rest of us had had a great depression to thin our bodies down. But not him. He was much shorter than I was and had an accident that came from the deep South. I also noticed that he was at least the 3rd generation, probably more. He probably had gone the job from his father – good work if you can get it.
The course that I had to listen: “It has come to my attention that you have thrown together a series of trays and testing them on gunpowder drying systems.” Did not speak, I just nodded.
“Do not you know that every time the upper management comes in, and asks me what I need, I tell them that I need more drying equipment, for the powder ? And you come along, in only a month's time, and prove me wrong – with slides and thermometers. They have little handwriting on the corners which states that it is not the drying equipment - it is the way the grains are heated. And then there is a slide showing a drawing, that it says will fix the problem.”
“Seems to be working.”
“I do not care if it works, what I care about is that I know what I am talking about. In this little slideshow says: I do not know what I am talking about. That means that the slideshow has to disappear. Though I will have engineering do their version.”
“But their version will be wrong because they will want to have the wheels tight rather than loose.” That had been said in the slide.
“That is my concern, you just do experiments – not testing.” I tried a few more times to explain that the looseness was essential – because a few of the grains would gum up the gears, but I got nowhere. And he shipped me out, with a note to engineering to make their version of what I had done.
And it did not work. So, the director copied off a letter saying that the new drying process did not work – and asked for more drying machines instead.
One day at the cafeteria, a large white room with only a few dishes that anyone could handle was sitting alone and dejected – when what to my wondering eyes did appear but Mary Lou. My thoughts about her in ways that were not appropriate.
But then she said down across the ivory table in a plastic stool and announced herself by clearing her throat. “I helped your tray project along, and there will be some small changes. But do not tell anyone.” Before I could answer, she trooped away as if she had been announcing that the weather was cloudy.
Spiraling into that instant, as if a matter of happenstance, he realized just how - even beautiful was not enough to describe the word - but he and she were not they, each married to, for at least pledged to, another - for a moment in time decreed by grace - and mounted by the state that they lived in; in happenstance, perhaps some other juncture would be different in time and place and rupture, as if the onamonapoetic would join in different combinations with different results. As if the sound reached for a different plane entirely, truth be told.
Then a week later, the director was moved to a new position – while the pay was the same, he had no people underneath them to order around. The new director was his cousin but had been warned that the small army of the past was going to stay in the past. There would be carriers, and artillery pieces, and tanks, and machine guns, rifles, and other weapons which did not have a word, yet – and all of them would need gunpowder. Soб he would have to place in all of the improvements that his physicists came up with, immediately - if not sooner.
My simulation of trays was put into place, and new ones were installed which were like mine - rather than the engineers' 1st attempt. They had learned, as well, to take directions from the physicists. Not the engineers.
It did not help me in money: stayed an assistant physicist for the duration of the war. But when if I said, “My latest proposal needed to be a certain way,” – it was. So, I had power, but not the pay to compensate.