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Stepping through the door of Hamilton Radiator Service is like stepping back in time.
Not far back, just to 1968, when Phil Boso went to work for Bill Hamilton at 90 cents an hour, fixing radiators and pumping gas. He would never have guessed that except for one single day, he would spend the rest of his working life at Hamilton Radiator.
It's easy to imagine the funny, fast-talking Phil as a kid fresh out of East Liverpool High School, 18 years old, working his first job while expecting to be drafted and sent to Vietnam, and soon to be married to his high school sweetheart, Darla Dingey.
Taped to the wall are faded pictures of Phil with Bill Hamilton and other employees standing by gas pumps, evidence it was also a gas station then. Phil has the same build, same eager look, except the hair is gray now and he has a never-ending reel of stories to tell.
I went to Hamilton's because the radiator on our 1948 Farmall C tractor had a leak. It had been leaking for years, but I got along by adding a gallon of water every time I ran it, putting in antifreeze only when I put it up for the winter. One winter I forgot and Ron Miller had to take the engine apart to put in new freeze plugs.
I called Ron for advice. Showing more confidence in me than I had in myself, he said I should be able to get it off the tractor, which I did, and take it for repair. But, where?
Hamilton's in the East End was the only place that came to mind. Based on what I could see of the shop from the street, though, I wasn't sure it was still in business or still fixing radiators.
I found a number, called and a man answered. He said, "Bring it in. If it isn't bigger than me, I can fix it." I thought that was a joke, but later understood it was Dennis Martin's humorous way of saying they don't work on the huge copper and brass radiators still found in some heavy equipment.
Walking in the front door with my fragile little tractor radiator in one hand, I saw no diagnostic computers, no cash registers, no rows of blister-pack parts on the front of a counter. There wasn't even a counter. There was Dennis Martin, the man who had answered my call, eating his lunch at a beat-up 1950s Formica-top kitchen table.
On the far right was a tank at what I supposed was the radiator work station. Attached on a stand, a blowtorch burned like an eternal flame. To the left, a stand-up desk and an open doorway, through which I could see the car repair shop, lift racks, and a floor whose thick black patina testified to a century of spilled oil.
I set my radiator against the inside front wall. Dennis said they would get to it.
Three days later I met Phil Boso when I came in to pick up my repaired radiator. (I say "RAY-dee-a-tor," they say "RAD-e-a-tor.")
It took very little prompting to get the story of Phil's life and the shop, including a peek at a forgotten place where motorcyclists once played: in a large shop in the back, Phil said, Bill Hamilton once indulged an indoor motorcycle race track; hard to imagine in that dark open space, but "Hamilton Raceway," sure enough, was painted in white on a black ceiling girder.
"Bill Hamilton," Phil said, "was the original Hot Car Man and the original Muffler King. Back then we'd do 10 radiators a day."
How many now? "Four or five a month," Dennis estimated.
"Nobody knows how to do this anymore," Phil said. "Today radiators are aluminum and plastic. You can't fix them. You throw them away."
Phil's shop does car repair, mainly coolant systems, brakes and front ends: struts, ball joints and such, and now and again fixes old copper radiators, so long as they are not bigger than Dennis. Phil flushes and preps 'em. Dennis solders the leaks.
Dennis Martin has worked at Hamilton's for 40 years. Three extra chairs are ranged around the table where he sits to greet customers and answer the phone. The chairs are for old friends who invariably drop by to pass the time.
Phil pointed out that three of the table legs are held on by rusty bolts in holes drilled through the Formica top. He said Indian Joe, a big man, broke them when he picked up the table and pinned a little guy called Pint against the wall with it. Not much of a story, but it explains the bolts.
The Vietnam War was heating up when Phil graduated in 1968. Some he knew in school died there. His brother came back with Agent Orange syndrome.
"I was 1-A," Phil said. "I figured I'd have to go and I was ready. I went to a recruiter and tried to sign up for the Air Force. I thought I'd have less chance of coming back in a body bag." The recruiter couldn't guarantee that enlisting would keep him out of Vietnam, so he went home and thought about it. The first draft lottery in 1969 assigned young men a call-up number by birth dates randomly drawn. "My number was so high I never had to go," Phil said.
The only time he worked elsewhere came when he heard that Ohio Brass over in Newell was hiring and paying two dollars. Ohio Brass was a ceramics plant, making big electrical insulators for transmission lines. When he reported for night shift in the sliphouse, a supervisor forgot to tell him to pay attention to a screen; it plugged up and he spent the night squeegeeing a vast amount of clay slip off the floor. The supervisor bawled him out, a boss cussed him out, and he went to the radiator shop and said, "Mr. Hamilton, can I have my job back?"
Bill Hamilton took Phil under his wing, eventually offering to set him up in the shop, though he had no money or collateral. "I ran it for a year and then bought it in '75 on land contract." In different ways local people helped keep Phil afloat, people like Sanford, Merle, Bernie and Bob Midler, four brothers who owned A&M Auto Parts. "They really helped me a lot. They gave me credit."
The Bosos have three sons and four granddaughters. Two married sons reside locally; the other is a bachelor and math professor in Wisconsin. Phil and Darla have been married 54 years.
Phil Boso spent his working life at Hamilton Radiator and now spends his working retirement there. "I want to quit and I can't," he said. "What would I do?"
There is a postscript: I successfully re-installed the radiator and it worked perfectly until I accidently poked a hole while replacing the cowling. When I got done being mad at myself, I returned to Hamilton's. Phil and Dennis saw me walking back in with the radiator, and were greatly relieved when I explained was my fault, not theirs. Two days later it was fixed at no charge. "We guarantee our work for 30 days no matter what," Phil said. I re-installed the radiator, filled it with antifreeze, ran the tractor and put it up in the barn for the winter.
A happy ending.