Always the one guy that lucked out, sticks with the same job since high school and learns everything there is to know about it and makes 6 figures a year, but for most people especially today that is not the case.

Metalworking, just when you think you've got the game figured, some SOB changes the rules.  It's never the same, it's an education that goes as long as you work in it.  Wish I knew where those six figures were, I might have tried for it.  Best year I ever had, I barely broke 40K and that was just the one year.  That was also many many hours of overtime.  And yes, I agree, it was a different and probably far better era than now.  Most places that still manufacture in this area want at least a journeyman's card and from one of the technical colleges, Milwaukee Area Technical College being the preferred one.  Two years in a glorified vocational school trumps thirty years of experience.  Hmm. Could be why we were always able to grin after the process engineer left after he'd timed a job to determine what we got paid for each piece, what he learned in a book isn't going to equal what even ten years of experience on the machine gave us.  Of course, we never told him the "secrets" that all of us knew.
Doric.

The "I" in Doric is Silent.