Rivethead - Ben Hamper [27]
After that night, I never saw Roy again. Personnel sent up a young Puerto Rican guy to help me do the Right Guard commercial and the two of us put in our ninety days without much of a squawk.
The money was right, even if we weren't.
4
DURING THE SUMMER AND FALL OF 1977, THE TRUCK PLANT was hummin’ six days a week, nine hours per shift. All of this overtime added up to one gorgeous stream of income. There was the time-and-a-half money. There was the second-shift premium bonus and there were frequent cost-of-living adjustments. It seemed like every time I turned around, the paymaster was stuffin’ another wad of currency into my waistband.
Any dumb hireling was bound to adopt a sweet craving for this kind of repetitive generosity. I was certainly no exception. I had been poor all my life, then suddenly I couldn't turn my head without bumping into another financial windfall. I'd get up in the afternoon, start rummaging through my drawer for a fresh set of skivvies, and there would be a couple of $100 bills I'd forgotten about. Howdy, Mr. Franklin. By chance, you haven't seen a pair of sweat socks in there minus a hole in the toe?
These were truly prosperous times at our plant and they were enriching us all. Roger Smith was browsing for yachts, my General Foreman was looking at property in the Upper Peninsula, several of my linemates were seen swapping Kessler's for Crown Royal, and I was devoting a miniature fortune to punk records, girlfriends and bar tabs.
It seemed no matter how many we pushed out the door, we just couldn't assemble those fad-happy recreational vehicles fast enough to suit a slobberin’ public who'd gone cold turkey throughout the recession of the embargo years. Here they came: pent-up, petrol-guzzlin’ Americans with their waverin’ hard-ons barging through showrooms on lurkin’ prowl for a chrome-laden beastie to bulldoze down the boulevard. Suburbans and Blazers, the elixir of the hog masses.
We built and we built. Demand was so high that the Corporation would have surely had us working on Sundays if our local union agreement hadn't prohibited it. Besides, six days was plenty. A seven-day workweek would have guaranteed a work force that was subhuman at best—a slaughterhut full of foul-smellin’ mutants who couldn't tell dusk from dawn nor harmony from homicide.
It was during this boom period that I attended my first of the annual “State of the Factory” addresses. The presentation was to keep us informed on just where our plant stood in relation to efficiency, quality rating, cost procedure, worker attendance and overall sales. We were also to be apprised on the condition of our dreaded dogfight with the Japanese and, our main source of competition, the bullies at Ford with their sleek fleets of pickups and sub-snuff Ford Broncos.
We were herded next door to this mammoth hangar called the Research Building. I have no idea what kind of research went on there, but it's a fair bet that the place was at least a partial foil for all the legions of smock-clad highbrows who weaved around the assembly line each evening trying their damndest to look brilliant and concerned about who knows what. I stuck by Bob-A-Lou, who was an old pro at these corporate hoedowns. He told me to settle in for an hour's worth of propaganda, cheerleading and high-tech gibberish that would gladly float right over my head. We made a quick beeline for the free doughnuts and Pepsi. Whatever was on the agenda, it sure beat working.
“There's the Plant Manager now,” Bob-A-Lou mumbled through his forth or fifth jelly doughnut. He was pointing toward the stage which, by this time, was completely overrun with about two dozen clones in drab neckties.
“Which one is the chief?” I asked Bob-A-Lou, hopelessly confused.
“The John Wayne look-alike,” he said.
“Oh, yeah.” I laughed. “All that's missin’ is the pistol and spurs.”
“I can positively assure you of one thing,” Bob-A-Lou said while assaulting a new doughnut. “Sometime