"People here want to be known for something."

When I was growing up, part of the geography lesson was learning what industry a city or state was known for. Rhode Island had jewelry. Hartford, insurance. Pittsburgh was famous for making steel, Detroit for cars. Winston-Salem made cigarettes, Tampa rolled cigars. Kansas gave us wheat, Florida grew oranges.

Worcester, Massachusetts, didn't have any one thing it was known for, but manufacturing was big. And a lot of the manufacturing done in Worcester was industrial, often producing components for other heavy-duty industries.

Wyman-Gordon produced forgings that went into aircraft engines. Norton made abrasives. My father worked at Thompson Wire, which made fine wires. He started out working in the mill, became a foreman, and was then promoted to sales. He mostly sold to companies in the Midwest, and I remember that one of his customers was Delco Spark Plugs of Flint, Michigan, the birthplace of GM.

I never knew what town was known for making firetrucks. But if you lived in Nesquehoning, Pennsylvania, for the past 75 years or so, you would have said Nesquehoning. That is you would have said Nesquehoning up until April, when KME is shutting down, putting 400 folks out of work.

“Nesquehoning and KME were kind of like one and one with each other,” said Trey Koerbler, 37, who lived a few blocks from the factory, rode on the KME trucks as a volunteer firefighter and used to work at the plant, just as his uncle and grandfather once did.

“It’s a pride thing,” he said. (Source: Washington Post)

I know, I know, time and the economy march on. Companies go out of business, entire industries get disrupted and pull a disappearing act. New jobs replace the old, and that will be true for the 400 newly unemployed firetruck makers of Nesquehoning, Pennsylvania.

If you're going to be unemployed, this is a good time for it. The economy is hopping, and there are a lot of jobs out there. Okay, they may not be what you want to do. They may not be located where you want to live. And they may not pay quite you were making as an industrial worker. But still...

...something harder to measure was being lost.

That something was built by Sonny Kovatch, who came back from the Pacific and began improving on his father's garage. Over time, he grew it into a manufacturing firm that became one of the largest firetruck companies in he country. Atlanta, Boston, Philadelphia, LA, New York. They all bought KME trucks. And KME, as the lead company in town, supported the community in ways large and small that an outsider would never do. 

Anyway, that "something harder to measure" started to be lost a few years back, when KME - a home grown, local outfit - was bought by out of towners - a PE firm - which started doing what PE firms do best. None of which does much good for the folks who were working at a place before PE stuck their mitts in.

The inevitable happened, and KME is closing its doors.

Life will go on - even though Nesquehoning, Pennsylvania, will grow poorer and drearier and less sure of itself. 

“People here want to be known for something,” said Jesse Walck, business manager for the local school district. “And now what will that be? Nothing.”

People everywhere want to be known for something. People want to have pride in place. 

Worcester has lost a lot of those manufacturing firms that were there when I was growing up, like Thompson Wire, which is long gone. Other companies have been streamlined and employ a lot fewer folks (Wyman Gordon, Norton) than they did in the heyday of Worcester as a manufauring center. But Worcester is still known for "stuff". All those colleges. Biotech. Insurance. Robert Goddard, whose genius kicked off the space age. The smiley face. The valentine. Denis Leary. 

Nesquehoning, Pennsylvania, never had as much going for it as the Heart of the Commonwealth does. And now they won't have the firetrucks. 

Another Rust Belt loss story.

Sad.