Tim Hinkle was an outstanding student at Northampton High School. In this column, he chronicles the journey of his father, Mr. George Hinkle, from family farm to the Universal Atlas Cement Company, an odyssey of hard work and dedication.

Tim Hinkle writes:

Until the Atlas Cement Company, just east of Northampton, closed in 1982, we could hear men being paged over its public address system when we were out on our lawn or had the windows open on a cool spring or fall day. (We live near Northampton High School.)

My father, George Hinkle, worked at the Atlas, much of the time as a vacation swing man, from 1962 until the plant closed 20 years later. My uncle, Francis, also worked at the Atlas and would go on to finish his cement mill career at the Keystone, in Bath. My brother, Matthew, worked at the Atlas, for a couple of summers while he went to school, and our friendshoft (second cousin) and neighbor, Alfred Silfies, worked there as well.

“Neighbor” can be a relative term. I grew up on a small family farm in Rockville, near Route 946, between Danielsville and Klecknersville, 10 or 11 miles from Northampton High School and Universal Atlas Plant No. 4. The farm was our grandparents’, and we lived with them - my parents, my brother and sister, me and my great-grandmother. It was a small two-bedroom house with running water but no inside bathroom or central heat. Alfred and his family lived about halfway to Danielsville from our house.

The farm covered about 40 acres, with several small fields in and around Rockville and in Moore Township. We raised pigs, chickens and a few steers. We always had a couple of cows - for the milk - as well.

We grew wheat, oats, corn and alfalfa for hay. Some of the crops we sold for cash, but a good part of them were for use in feeding our livestock.

We sold milk to the Lehigh Valley Cooperative Farmers Association, of which my grandfather was a member, and eggs to the Lehigh Valley Egg Producers Co-operative Association.

There was a large garden and a truck patch, where we raised pretty much all of our own vegetables, for fresh and for canning, including potatoes.

We took some of our own wheat to the Mauser Mill in Treichlers every year, to be ground into flour. Every winter we butchered a steer and several pigs. We smoked our own hams and sausage as well. Those were the days when Pennsylvania Dutch homemakers often looked down their noses at “can opener cooks” who had to buy their food in stores.

Even though the farm made us pretty much food self-sufficient, it couldn’t generate enough cash to pay for a tractor, a car, clothing and other needs that every family has (things like putting central heat and a bathroom into the house). So, my mother, Lorraine, worked part time most of her life at the DeeVille Blouse Factory that inhabited the old trolley barn in Danielsville for many years. And my father worked full time at three jobs over his career.

George got a job with the Lehigh & New England Railroad after his service in World War II, working on the line gang. After the railroad went out of business in 1961 - and for some periods when he was laid off from the Atlas in the early years of his job there - my father worked for a local house builder who also helped dig graves at local cemeteries. Winter or summer, rain or shine, he helped to square up graves and laid bricks to line the holes (before concrete vaults were common).

Even though George was hired full time at the Atlas in 1962, there were periods during the early years when he would be laid off for months at a time - most often in the winter. The shame of this timing was that most farm work had to be done in the summer. So, on many days he would come home after a day or midnight work shift at the Atlas to turn right around and get on the tractor to plow, harrow, plant or cut the crop in a field.

As most everyone knows, being able to take small amounts of cement for your own use was one of the perks of working at a cement mill. My father used his available supply to shore up building or shed foundations on the farm, to put in some concrete walks and to make a stand for our Christmas tree. It was simple, inexpensive and effective. He took a five-gallon bucket and filled it with concrete while making a cylindrical opening in the top center that was deep and wide enough to hold the base of a six-foot fir tree (with a few wood shims to center and stabilize it).

We never had a tilting or falling tree problem again, but it took two of us kids to move the bucket from the shed to the house every year. It weighed more than any tree we ever put into it.

When he was laid off, George received unemployment compensation (partial payments when he was able to work for the builder). And we got government surplus food, which I thought was wonderful. The butter (one-pound blocks) and cheese (five-pound blocks) that came in those bi-weekly distributions helped to keep people working who grew the food, gave work to those who used the raw products to make finished goods and tasted great. It was certainly a help for our tight budgets. Remember that there were six of us until 1972, when my grandfather died (his mother and wife had died by the early 1960s).

My grandfather was a farmer, and nothing else, for most of his life. In fact, he never worked for pay after Social Security began in 1935 (having worked in a couple of slate quarries in the Danielsville and Slatedale areas before that). As a result, he was one of those individuals - there may be no more left - who received Social Security benefits at age 65 based on his daughter’s (my mother’s) work record.

George was always conscientious about his work at the Atlas. I can remember having an assignment in junior high school to write a description of my father’s job for guidance class (which we had one day a week for at least one year). Like most kids, I wasn’t very interested in what my parents did at work. But I can remember to this day - more than 50 years later - the detail and the pride with which my father described the cement-making process: clinker, gypsum, limestone; and cement is the product. Concrete is what you get when you add water and aggregate to the cement.

And George was proud to work at the Atlas. There was a family picnic one year (probably 1966 or 1967), after there had been 1,000 days without a lost-time accident. The company put up a concrete pillar out at the plant entrance off Route 329 in recognition of the achievement.

My father enjoyed taking us into parts of the plant on a tour during the picnic. And he introduced us to the plant manager and some of his co-workers. I brought my girlfriend along, whom I married 43 years ago. Susan guessed how many jellybeans were in a large jar, which led to our winning a Polaroid Swinger camera, a real treat.

I rode the bus to school every day, beginning with the Danielsville school for first grade. After Lehigh Township Elementary School opened in Cherryville in 1956, I took the bus there and then to the junior and senior highs in Northampton until June of 1966, when I graduated.

Late every fall, snow fences went up in the farm fields on both sides of the roads between Rockville, Danielsville and Cherryville. But, invariably, there would be enough snow in one or more winter storms most every year to close school for one or a few days at a time. There was a storm like that in 1962 or 1963, and we were glad for a couple of days off.

My father, as I’ve said, was grateful for his job at the Atlas. And, except for back surgery and a heart attack, I don’t think he missed a shift during his 20-year career there.

Early on the morning after the snowstorm started that year, being scheduled to work afternoon shift that day, George bundled up. He wore an extra shirt and overalls over his work pants. He put on his boots and heavy coat and tied his lunch pail over his shoulder with bailer twine. And he set off to walk to his afternoon shift in the falling snow, on the impassable 10 miles of roads between our farm and the plant. That’s how much a job at the Atlas meant to him and to our family.

Because of road conditions, my mother wasn’t able to drive to Northampton to bring my father home for a few days. He filled in for men who didn’t make it for their shifts over those days. The Atlas brought in food for him and the others who were trapped at the mill - usually from Miller’s Diner in town.

I wouldn’t object to hearing the PA system from the Atlas again, when we’re out on our lawn or have the windows open on nice spring or fall days. The building projects in which its products were employed are legend; they helped make the 20th century into the American century. But just as important, the Atlas’ four plants provided food, shelter and economic security to generations of hard-working families over the 87 years of its operation. And it made all the difference to my parents and their three children as we grew up in Rockville.

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We thank Susan and Tim Hinkle for graciously sharing their extensive family history research with our loyal readers. The series has presented a vivid and interesting look at our past.

In two weeks, we will be learning about the history of Northampton’s public water system.