MCAAP's staff lives with the plant's condition, much as it lives with the nature of the work itself. Melinda Cook is 25, and she has worked at the plant for three years. Her mother, both sets of grandparents, her great-grandparents, and even a parent of one of those great-grandparents -- have all worked at MCAAP. She's fifth generation at the plant. "I try not to think about the fact that we make bombs. I don't really love the work, but I love the people out here," says Cook.
Ron Dugger, 59, has been working at the plant for 18 years. "Do I think about the bombs? I really don't. You concentrate on your area of the production line. You do the best at your job. When I see what's happening in Afghanistan on TV, I think, My Lord, I helped make that. It's kind of a mixed feeling. But I feel like we do make an important contribution. We furnish our military with what they need to fight."
Dugger, a supervisor, is leading a group refurbishing 2.75-inch rockets with fresh fuses. The last step of the process is to put each rocket into a cardboard shipping tube, slide a top on the tube, and tape the top in place. Oddly, a machine is used for that final step, to wrap the tape around the tube, sealing on the top. The young man operating that machine is careful to fold the end of the tape back on itself, leaving a little shirttail. "We put the tail on so they can peel the tape off easily," he says.
It's the kind of touch that reveals much about the attitude of MCAAP's bomb makers: They're not thinking about whom George Bush or Donald Rumsfeld is going to aim those 2.75-inch rockets at; they're thinking about men and women just like themselves whose very lives might depend on getting the rockets out of their tubes in one hell of a hurry.
Charles Fishman (cnfish@mindspring.com), a Fast Company senior editor, wrote most recently about five former employees of Enron (May 2002).
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