Rivethead - Ben Hamper [32]
While Robert was from Alabama, our stories were much the same. His forefathers, like mine, had drifted into this moron dragnet lookin’ for steady work and a pocketful of beer change.
And like my father and me, Robert liked to drink. Once he'd had a few, he'd start in with hilarious stories of his childhood in the backwoods. He talked about the perverse sexual practices of his cousins and their clumsy endeavors with farm critters, the white trash hookers who'd lay it all out on a haymow while charging the bystanders a buck a pop to watch it go down. It was all very funny and that prick minute hand would buzz by in circles.
We'd often end up discussing our fates as proud American truck builders. We both shared the contention that neither one of us should've ever been forced to attend even one miserable day's worth of formal education. What good was schooling to someone who was just gonna turn screws and shoot sparks the rest of his life? Robert suggested that this time could have been better spent gettin’ high and chasin’ females. I would heartily agree, insisting that anything—masturbating, bowling, fishing, blowing up banks—would've been better than the crap all those nuns had crammed down my throat.
If Robert tended to be a pissed-off sulk at times, he had every right to be. He'd been divorced a couple of times and the Friend of the Court was slicin’ him to pieces. They took the child support right out of his check and, on Thursday nights, while everybody would be gettin’ all giddy over the big numbers starin’ back at them from their pay stubs, Robert would be slouched over his workbench tryin’ his damndest to formulate a budget from the remains of his week's earnings.
It was a shame that guys like Robert had to drag their asses through the Jungle nine hours a night, inhaling fire and growing deaf from the din, only to wind up taking home a paycheck that was more in line with what your average zithead from Taco Bell was making. But, like so many shoprats, Robert had mortgaged his soul to the bitch goddesses of whiskey and women, and he paid for it every Thursday night.
Robert introduced me to an old guy known only as Louie who worked at the end of our line in the repair station. Louie had a great little racket goin’ for himself. He peddled half pints of Canadian Club and Black Velvet up and down the line in the Cab Shop area. He charged three bucks a bottle, almost double the store rate, but who was gonna argue. The booze was in the door, you didn't have to wait for it, and Louie delivered right to your bench.
When ordering from Louie, all one had to do was slip the word down the line through a network of fellow workers. You passed on your selection and detailed your location by using the numbers stenciled onto the big iron pillar nearest your job. It was like conjuring up a genie. You'd lay out your money on top of your bench and Louie would come stragglin’ down the aisle just like Mr. Green Jeans with the booze stashed somewhere in his floppy coveralls. What a wonderful little microcosm of American capitalism Louie had goin’ for himself. Just goes to show that there's an endless array of clever ventures one can concoct to assure that one's grandkids are able to afford the sissy college of their choice. All by ourselves, Robert and I probably paid off a couple semesters.
Shoprat alcohol consumption was always a hot debate with those who just didn't understand the way things worked inside a General Motors plant. While not everyone boozed on a daily basis, alcohol was a central part of many of our lives. It was a crutch not unlike the twenty cups of coffee millions of other Americans depend on to whisk them through their workday. We drank our fair share of coffee, but the factory environment seemed to lend itself toward something that was a great deal more potent and rejuvenating.
I frequently found myself defending this custom with nonfactory acquaintances.