Accuride was on strike before and when I first started working there. Part of the reason the company hired a security guard company was because of the strike and some of the difficulties with the strikers and those who began to cross the picket line. By the time I began work there, the numbers of strikers had been seriously reduced. Most of those who had worked in the manufacturing area with the drawer sliders and the chemicals appeared to be Hispanic. The office workers and management personnel were white. I tried to remain neutral, but I was saddened that the workers lost.
One afternoon, the floor manager was at the gate. Another man was on the other side of the gate. They appeared to be glaring at one another intensely. I asked if I should open the gate, but the manager said no. I realized that the man on the other side of the fence was the head of the union. Another afternoon, I found nails on the entrance driveway, the kind that were in thick cardboard squares so that the nails stuck up and more easily could have punctured tires. I picked them all up one by one, probably as many as a dozen and more.
I got Darryl a job for the security guard company for a time, but it seems that the wife of the owner of the company took a disliking to him. Soon enough, he quit. I followed the Lakers once again, and though they made it to the finals against the Knicks yet again, they lost. Slowly, the weeks passed and my reporting time for OTS loomed.
My friend Dennis Madura and I had been looking to buy new cars. My '66 Mustang was now several years older and causing maintenance issues now and then. Because I knew I had been accepted at OTS, I figured I would drive there so that I would have a car while there. I did not believe the Mustang would stand that distant a drive. Grandpa Sanchez had given each of us two kids a second mortgage that got paid off early for $400. Dennis and I were looking to buy the new 1973 Chevy Camaro. Unfortunately, the GM plant building them was on strike. Each week we waited to hear that the strike had ended and Camaros would begin rolling off the assembly line in the Mid West.
About the time that the strike at Accuride was broken and the disappointed workers returned to the manufacturing floor, the GM strike was nearly at an end and '73 Camaros began to trickle into GM dealerships. We intended to buy ours at Cormier Chevrolet off of the San Diego Freeway. Finally, just a few weeks before I was going to depart for OTS, enough Camaros arrived at Cormier so we could buy one. The maroon one I chose was $4000 without air conditioning. I used $400 as a down payment. I then sold my Mustang for $750. Not long after, I was driving along Ocean Blvd. in Long Beach and I saw my old car parked on the street, never dreaming that as the years passed an early Mustang would be worth far, far more than I sold mine for.
The Camaro was my first new car. The Mustang was used when I bought it for $1950. The Rambler had been my mom's car that I inherited when she bought a new 1969 Ford Galaxie. I drove that Camaro everywhere in the years ahead as the photos below attest:
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