TULSA TIME

When I worked at Rockwell there were a large number of people who had come from the Rockwell plant in Tulsa. The plant in Tulsa had downsized because of the lack of a contract and the company had a preferential hiring policy which enabled Tulsa employees to transfer to Columbus. Although they had obviously coveted the jobs in Columbus, I detected a great deal of resentment from many Tulsa transplants: it was the fact that they felt they "HAD" to be there but didn't want to be.

In my first department, my boss and his boss, both long-time "North American" employees, were from Ohio, but of the other seven management people in my department, three were from Tulsa, and three others from other aircraft manufacturers, and I, although being from Ohio, was the real "outsider", because I had no aircraft background. One supervisor, from North Carolina, who'd worked for a number of aircraft companies, said, "I'll take you under my wing." I knew I had to "get along" and "fit in", and I was grateful that I had him as an my tutor. Only later did I learn that he'd already been promised a promotion when he was hired and that he would become the Department Manager after a year. He later told me, "I was just grooming you; I knew I couldn't trust those yahoos from Tulsa and I needed loyal people." (He used the term "yahoos" a lot!)

The supervisors from Tulsa "stuck together"; they did not try to fit in; they had their own "enclave": apartments in the same complex; they ate lunch and socialized together; whereas my tutor bought a house close to where his boss lived. He laughed and told me, "Hell, yeah, I'm a brown-noser; I plan to stay around here!"

Their most obvious "non-joining" of the Tulsa supervisors was at Management Club meetings; they did not sit at the "Department table", but instead congregated with others from Tulsa who worked in other departments. There were people from Tulsa who'd been transferred to lateral, higher management positions, but there were none in the Nacelles; the only management people from Tulsa in the Nacelles were First-Line Supervisors, and interestingly, the Nacelles had the fewest number of people from Tulsa than the other sections and none of them were ever promoted. Looking back, I think it was because they saw their jobs as "temporary"; they were just waiting to get back "home".

It was just TOO easy to poke fun at the guys from Tulsa, and although I never SAID or DID anything, I was guilty, at least, of the sin of omission, as I "went along" with the jibes, and I never protested. Although we had to dress professionally, the three guys from Tulsa wore cowboy boots and large belt buckles. Although they wore the required dress shirts and ties, their slacks were "western-cut" to accommodate the cowboy boots; their very "western" looking suit jackets would be hung in the office. Whenever the guys from Tulsa would approach, others would sing snippets from an old country and western song which had a popular version in 1982 Tulsa Time. To this day, whenever I see a man with a big belt buckle, I think, "TULSA TIME".

They also had unusual pronunciations. The first time I heard one of them say "longeron", it came out something like this: "LON-GUH-RON" and when another said, "liaison", he pronounced it "LIE-UH-ZAHN". One day, in interacting with one of the guys from Tulsa, I pronounced longeron as it is in the dictionary, and the Tulsa-ite dared to correct me. I said, "Did you know that a great number of aircraft terms come from the French because of the Montgolfier brothers?" I turned and walked away. He followed me and asked, "What does that mean?" I answered, "It simply means that many aircraft terms come from the French because of the Montgolfier brothers."

He said, "I heard you the first time; I STILL don't know what you mean." Much to his chagrin, I repeated once more that many aircraft terms come from the French because of the Montgolfier brothers. He said, very angrily, "And I told you that I don't know what you mean." I said, "Look in a dictionary and you'll see that longeron comes from the French."

He never spoke to me again.