My Brief Fling with Boeing

Back in the days when Boeing was everything to Seattle, before Microsoft or Amazon, I had a brief fling at a career at Big B. It was in 1962, the year of our World’s Fair that birthed our Space Needle as a curious object reflecting Seattle’s dominance in the aircraft industry. I was a foot-loose California kid of not quite 20, out for fun and adventure.

I ended up getting a job at Boeing after I left Orange County. I thought I’d head for Seattle to see the 1962 World’s Fair. I approached the city on the top deck of the Alaskan Way Viaduct (Hwy 99) and marvelled at the Smith Tower, then the tallest building on the West Coast — taller than anything in Los Angeles and San Francisco, even.

Boeing was hiring thousands of people to fill their burgeoning orders for their 707 passenger jet — almost yanking people off the street into Boeing’s own employment office on Second Avenue in downtown Seattle. They gave me a test that involved fairly simple math and some interpretation of blueprints. It was like a test in high school where I was a mediocre math student.

They graded my exam and told me that I was to be a mockup mechanic. I wasn’t sure what that was so I asked one of the job applicants who were sitting in the big room waiting to be called. He told me that it was the same job he had just landed at Big B. It involved reading blueprints and creating an exact copy of what it showed.

Next thing, my 19-year-old self is being introduced to a workbench at Boeing. There was a band saw, a drill press, a mix of hand tools, and a blueprint. The supervisor pointed out an older guy (“Bill”) working at a nearby bench, a chunky older fellow, who grunted a sour greeting and returned to his work. Then a forklift delivered a pallet piled high in chunks of aluminum. The supervisor said, there’s your tools and your blueprint, go to it.

A month went by and the pile of aluminum chunks dwindled down and another pallet next to it had a growing pile of chopped-up, ruined chunks of aluminum. I had yet to successfully create the object that the blueprint depicted. When I asked “Bill” questions he would grunt something and then turn back to his work, at which he seemed to be pretty good.

The supervisor dropped around, and I thought I would be fired on the spot. He looked at the pallet of ruined aluminum, patted me on the back, saying, “keep at it son. You’ll get the hang of it.” I had heard tales of how Boeing was so desperate to fill plane orders as well as some military aircraft that they were hiring almost anybody. I was one of those anybodies, it seemed.

After a few more weeks of destroying chunks of aluminum, I turned off my band saw and walked to the HR office and announced my resignation. I had fired myself. HR guy, who looked like he’d been sitting at that desk forever, was incredulous. Finally, he said, “well, son, I have to tell you that people who quit Boeing are never hired back.” I said, “that’s OK by me.”

Then I drove my rickety old 1949 Plymouth back to California, enrolled in Fullerton Junior College, and began learning how to be a journalist. My journalism career eventually brought me back to Seattle, working for The P-I and later for The Seattle Times.

We later moved to the Skagit Valley and bought a little farm about 30 miles outside of Mount Vernon on the North Cascades Highway. I completed my newspaper days as managing news editor of The Skagit Valley Herald.

My brush with Boeing brought to mind the lyrics of Roger Miller’s 1969 song, Boeing 707: “Boeing Boeing 707 going skywardly heavenly/Higher than bluebirds fly/ Why then oh why can’t I?”