Asbestos Plant/Dehon Farm

My next job was also interesting but short lived. It was also about ten miles away but in the other direction. It was at the Keasby and Madison asbestos plant in Ambler. I was put to work in the paper mill making asbetos paper to be used in the manufacture of stoves, refrigerators, etc. My job was to roll the paper into huge rolls and then to cut and roll it into various sizes and weights of smaller rolls. The machinery for doing this was modern and efficient and I liked the job.
The manufacture of the paper was interesting although I had nothing to do with that. The dry asbestos was made elsewhere and came in in bags. It was then thrown into a large vat by hand where it was thoroughly mixed with water and wood pulp by a large mechanical blender and pumped into another vat at the end of a line of dryer drums. The asbestos was transferred to the dryer drums by a large pulley wheel that slowly revolved in the asbestos mixture. It was then scraped off that pulley wheel as a very wet sheet onto the first of the hot dryer drums. It then wound over and under these drums, about a dozen of them, until it was dry and came to me, where I helped to roll, cut and weigh it for sale.
It was a union shop and I had signed up to join the union when after about two weeks, the union called a strike and we were all out of work. This was just after the first of the year 1946, and I did not wait for the strike to be settled but started looking for another job at once.
A few days later, I answered a want ad in the Norristown newspaper for a dairy farmer in Plymouth Township. In this way, I met Bornot Dehon and I took the job that lasted for the next forty-three years.