Rivethead - Ben Hamper [39]
There wasn't any mystery as to why everyone called him Same-O. No matter what was said to my old friend, whether it be a simple hello or a request for the correct time, he invariably replied “same old thing.” I'd finish up welding down a wheel well and turn around to find him leanin’ on his broom behind my workbench. His face looked like leather. Before I'd be able to speak, he'd smile at me and mutter “same old thing.” I might comment on the heat or the Detroit Tigers or ask him if he had another Viceroy. No matter. “Same old thing,” he'd offer. I could already make out the script on his gravestone. There would be no mention of birth or death or surname. Only: SAME OLD THING. Same-O had it sussed. I often believe he was the only genius I ever encountered at GM Truck & Bus.
Lightnin’ and Same-O. They were our role models. Survivors, lackeys, barons. Real victors. They had trampled the Jungle into mulch. It was all Dale and I really hoped for. To develop a niche, flip down the blinders, and pulverize our job assignments into a meaningless ghost walk through the necessary quarter century and change. No surprises. No speed bumps. No tampering with the existing terms. Obscurity and triumph.
It didn't happen. It turned out that we were just a couple of wistful lunks. From our blurry vision inside the foxhole, we couldn't catch a glimpse of all the shit that was piling up on the corporate horizon. The market downturns, the consumer swoons, the untimely return of another recession. We were as naive as they came. With only two years’ seniority, we hung to this belief that we were glued to our placements for eternity—or thirty years, whichever came first. We wanted to hold on together like some shrewd tag team spiraling through the useless decades. Like Lightnin’ and Same-O and our very own granddaddies.
It didn't happen. Somebody forgot to buy their gleamin’ Suburban. Someone else left their marvelous Blazer to rot away on the showroom floor. The overtime evaporated. The rumors began to fly. The ranks began to thin. What had happened to all those desperate people in New England? Had they finally seen a Suburban? Was that all they wanted…a look-see?
Oh, that crazy auto industry. Here today, Twining tomorrow. Hi there, bye now! They handed over my spot-welder to a guy who held higher rank. Dale was gone before I was. They ushered him out on a Thursday night after drumming on the side of his cardboard crypt. I told Dale we would meet up again. I was a very good liar.
It's been over nine years since we danced with a spot-welder or cursed at a clamp. And, right now, we're neither young nor old. Just another couple of middle-aged shoprats, ex or otherwise, clawin’ for coins.
Right now it's a very chilly afternoon in November. It's almost 4:30 P.M.—the old start time. I'm pecking away on a typewriter inside a pool shed that's been hastily converted into a writer's retreat. I keep fiddlin’ with this jerkoff space heater that's very near death. I have no idea what Dale is up to. Boots full of pigshit, he's probably messin’ with a deadline of his own.
5
1979 WASN'T THE BEST OF YEARS FOR FLINT. MY BELEAGUERED hometown was like some banged-up middleweight resting its rump on the ropes, covering up its soft belly, hoping only to last out the round. The big paydays, the cool precision, the bully mystique—all of it was being soundly trounced.
Prosperity was no longer the same happy tune. Nineteen eighty was more like a funeral dirge. The nation's highest unemployment rate affixed itself to the home turf and relative newcomers like myself and half of the crew up in Cab Shop became instant driftwood. The rookies of ‘77, those fair-haired recruits