Take It from Dad

by George Griswold Livermore

I had every possible kind of trouble with the factory: a strike that tied us up flat for eight weeks in the middle of the summer, to a fire in the storehouse that destroyed five thousand cases of shoes and every blamed time I was in the midst of a mess, old Josiah Lane would blow in, and blow up. It seemed like the old cuss was always hovering around like a buzzard over a herd of sick cattle, and when he lighted on me I felt as though he went away with chunks of my hide in his skinny fingers.

I was the worst shoemaker in the world, couldn't handle help, was a rotten financial man, had no head for details, and was so poor a buyer, it was a wonder some of the leather companies didn't run me for governor. As for production, he could make more shoes with a kit of cobbler's tools, than I could turn out with the help of the S. M. Co.

That old bird used to sit in the office chewing fine cut, and drawling out sarcastic remarks, until I could have knocked him cold; but even then I realized that a man who made shoes from pegs to welts, knew something, and I needed all the knowledge I could get.

After every bawling out, old Josiah used to creak to his feet, remarking, "I'll give ye another trial though I'm foolish to do it," while I stood by trembling with rage, wishing I wasn't married so I could bust his ugly old head open with a die.

Gosh! I used to get mad for the things that happened weren't my fault. First, I thought how foolish I'd been to leave my soft job at Clough & Spinney's, then, I began to get mad at the factory, myself, and all the daily troubles that were forever piling in on me, and I determined I'd lick that job if it killed me.

I gave more time to listening to old Josiah at my periodical dressing downs, and less time to hating him, and I lived in that old ark of a factory, until I knew every nail in every beam in its dirty ceiling, and could run any machine in it in the dark.

Along in the late fall, the monthly balance sheets began to look less like the treasury statements of the Dominican Republic, but they weren't so promising that there was any danger of J. P. Morgan coming to me for advice on how to make money, and on the 15th of December I wrote out my resignation, and handed it to old Josiah. The old man never even read it. Just tore it up, threw it under the desk, and sat chewing his fine cut, until I thought I'd jump out the window if he didn't say something.

"Want to git through do ye?" he drawled at last.

"I don't want to, I am," I snapped back.