Detritus

We had no idea, Tommy and I, of what lie in store for us on that late September afternoon in 1974. His old man, John 'Big John' MacAllister, owned a demolition and salvage company. He was hired to come in and clean out old factories, etc. Remove whatever could be sold, then raze the building. If it was a big site, it might take anywhere from a few weeks to a month or more to strip and haul away the scrap. As curious boys will be, we loved to snoop around on the job sites whenever our Mom's would let us. And this time began like any other adventure Tommy and I went on together. I recovered one page of a follow-up report in which I gave an account of what transpired that fateful day. The rest was unfortunately destroyed in a fire at the records repository.

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REPORT No. F-001  Sec. I-505  Subject: MacAllister, Tomas J.

RECORDED: 12 Nov 1981

ORM: 005513738441

RECORDER: N. Josephson

WITNESS: REDACTED


Page 3

N.J.- "When did you first learn about this place?"

Me  - "I believe it was on the ninth of September. One of us would often have dinner at the other's house. And it was common for Tommy's Dad to talk to us about the jobs he was working on. He knew we were into that stuff."

N.J.- "Okay. Was there anything unusual that you remember Mr. MacAllister mentioning about this particular place?"

Me  - "Not really. Other than him saying that there was a growing push in communities to begin getting rid of the detritus from the the old days."

N.J.- "As to old days, he was referring to..."

Me  - "He was talking about leftover, derelict, abandoned factories and industrial sites from the 20's, 30's and so on. Many had been razed by the time we were old enough to snoop around, but some still stood long after they were needed."

N.J.- "I see. Um, tell me where this place was located?"

Me  - "Sikorsky and 19th Ave., just past Butler Rd."

N.J.- "Okay. Down by...Richardson's Packing Plant. Over on Sioux-Ain."

Me  - "Uh, two streets over from there. You drove past the old Union Pacific roundhouse and it was the last place on Sikorsky...it was a dead end street."

N.J.- "So you two...you and Tommy MacAllister went down to the site and looked around."

Me  - "That's right. We rode our bikes out there, it was only a couple miles and the weather was nice and mildly warm. It was one of those picture perfect Autumn days."

N.J.- "Tell me, what kind of place was it? What was the name?"

Me  - "It had been a vast machinery plant that went under in the Great Depression. The name was Rudolph Machine and Tool. I believe it was an immigrant that founded the place. Anyway, it was just this huge, sprawling complex of buildings, machines, locomotives..."

N.J.- "Did you say locomotives?

Me  - "Yes I did. Rudolph did a lot of work on trains, derrick cranes, etc. So I guess they built engines, powertrains, you name it."

N.J.- "How did you two gain access into the plant?"

Me  - "Oh that was easy. Although the main doors were still padlocked, many of the auxiliary doors were long since busted off their hinges."

N.J.- "I see. Um...so what happened?"

Me  - "We snooped around the main machine shop for awhile, when Tommy asked me if I'd ever been over to the far end of the property before. See, Tom had been out there with his old man several times, and we'd visited once or twice together. But those times had been relatively short for one reason or another. That day we had the entire afternoon to ourselves."

N.J.- "And you agreed to follow his lead?"

Me  - "Sure. Me and Tommy were like brothers. We did everything together."

N.J.- "But you stated already that you had reservations at one point. Why is that?"

Me  - "Well, it's hard to explain. I...I guess it was a sixth sense if you will. A small feeling in your gut that something was wrong. But I ignored it; chalked it up to the usual butterflies kids have when they go exploring in places they shouldn't be."

N.J.- "So then what happened?"

Me  - "I asked him where did he mean. And he told me the 'cloverleaf' and the lagoon. As soon as he said that, goosebumps covered both my arms, even though the temperature was in the 70s that day."

Me  - "I said OK, and off we went. It was a huge place, like 3000 acres or better. And see, back then, once Sikorsky (Ave.) ended, there was no more roads or access into that place. Rudolph was built against a massive piece of native wilderness. So once you were at the end of the property, you were a long way from other folks...and from help."

Me  - "We pedaled out to the cloverleaf, which was this huge track diamond that the railroad used to switch cars and engines as needed. See, Rudolph leased the back end of his property to Union Pacific, and because he worked on so many of UP's engines, they built another building out back, which became the de facto engine house here in West Allis for UP."

N.J.- "And you mentioned a lagoon."

Me  - "That's right. All the runoff from the paint shops, the machine shops, etc, were collected in drains and routed out to a series of holding ponds by means of underground canals. It had been fenced off once, but huge sections were missing when we were out there."

N.J.- "And it was out there, in that engine house, that you found the device."

Me  - "Sort of. I was sitting in an locomotive, pretending I was an engineer, driving my train and blowing the whistle, when Tommy called to me. He had found something cool and he wanted me to check it out."

Me  - "Sitting in a corner on a concrete base, was a massive, black machine, rectangular in shape. 'What is it?' he asked me. 'No idea, Tommy.' There was an inset panel at about four feet off the ground, and it was filled with a triple row of gauges, switches and lights."

N.J.- "Were the gauges labeled?"

Me  - "Oh yeah. Oil Pressure. Supercharger Intake Temp. Turbine-1 RPM. Things like that. And each had a corresponding idiot light and toggle switch. It was some kind of dynamometer. The problem wasn't with that. It was the machine in the adjoining break room."

Me  - "There was a stainless steel box with nine stainless steel cylinders fanned around it. The embossed label read, "Reddy-Dealer: Mfg. By Fairchilde Corp." It was an automatic soda jerk machine from the 40s. There was even a small mesh screen on the box where the device would say such phrases as "Thank You", May I Help You?", "Careful: Liquid Is Hot" and "Please Enter Your Selection." Apparently there was a miniature device like a player piano would have...or a music box. It was a metal drum with little metal pegs that were played as it revolved inside. When you "spoke" a command into it, you had to press a corresponding button at the same time."

N.J.- "Marvel of engineering."

Me  - "Oh yes.