Interviewer: Victoria Phaneuf

Affiliation: University of Arizona

I had spoken to Robert Lynn, Jr. on the phone and we set up a time to meet. His machine shop is tucked in next to part of Flechas' shipyard, behind a large overgrown fence. I arrived and parked next to one of the doors. The shop is in a large metal building and surrounded by overgrown vegetation and some small piles of scrap metal. Inside the shop there are a number of very large machines and piles and piles of metal – some rusty, some new, some that looked like they had been (or were) tools and others that looked like scraps or pieces of metal to be used for something. We introduced ourselves and Mr. Lynn explained that he was still cleaning up from the hurricane, the shop wasn't usually in such bad condition but he had to pull apart all the machines, clean them and put them back together, and he was still going through everything else to see what was worth saving. He found a folding chair for me and he sat on a roll of wire near one of the doors where we could have a couple of fans pointed in our direction. Once I explained the project he was very open to talking with me, much more interested than I had suspected from our first conversation. He was wearing a set of blue coveralls and a hat with sneakers – one shoelace untied. He's a tall man with graying hair and glasses. He's 72 years old.