When I started off, I was working in a shed behind my house. All I had was a drill, an electric drill. That was the only machine I had.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
As an engineer, I tended to maintain my own equipment along with developing the processes for it.
I'm a machine man, and I head a machine.
I started out printing silk screen t-shirts. I sold ink pens. I worked construction. I worked at a gas station. I pumped gas. I was a mechanic for a little bit. I went into sewers, down into sewer lines. I had a lot of somewhat unpleasant gigs for a time there.
My mother had bought a sewing machine for me. When I went away to college, she gave me a sewing machine, a typewriter and a suitcase, and my mother made $17 a week working as a maid 12 hours a day, and she did that for me.
When I was young I had an apprenticeship as an engineer.
I've been an engineer, barman, skip lorry driver, coalman, boat window manufacturer, contract grass cutter and builder.
As a little boy, my first job was delivering newspapers, and then I had a variety of different jobs. I worked in a butcher shop. I worked in a supermarket. I worked in construction. I dug ditches on the Long Island Expressway in 1954, 1955, 1956.
I had to jump on the tractor and do my chores. I would have just killed to be in town, to be able to Rollerblade hand-in-hand with somebody I had a crush on. I just wanted to get off the farm, to find my outlet.
I have always hated machinery, and the only machine I ever understood was a wheelbarrow, and that but imperfectly.
My cooking is very simple, so I don't really use machines at all. A knife, cutting board, frying pan and strainer are my essentials.