Rivethead - Ben Hamper [55]
Actually, it only lasted until the next set of rails arrived. The roar of the crowd was quickly replaced by the roar of the machines. Jim McKay scurried back into my wealthy imagination. Roger Smith was nowhere to be seen. The cheering faded away and, with it, a few more minutes off the clock. That, in itself, was victory enough.
After nearly a year on the Rivet Line, a period of almost total isolation, I finally met someone who was neither a redneck, a pervert, an ass-sucker or a religious fanatic. His name was David Steel and he worked the gas tank bracket job across the line and three jobs down. Little did I know then how closely entwined our destinies would become within the digestive tract of our General Motors tenure.
It started with a feature article I had written for the Flint Voice. I was especially excited about this piece because it was the first thing I'd written to be displayed on the Voice cover. Usually I got buried toward the back in between some dyke manifesto and an ad for a new health food eatery.
The article was entitled “Rock is Dead,” a personal tirade I had written condemning the state of the airwaves over at the local FM radio crotch-rock mothership. I was still resisting my editor's constant plea to write something regarding my brain-dead enshrinement as a shoprat. The entire concept made me yawn. I stuck to rambling on about obscure rock music.
I decided to use my cover story as a means of introducing myself to David Steel. One night during a breakdown on the line, I hopped over the track and handed Dave a copy of the Voice to examine. He glanced at the headline and seemed enthused by the topic. The line began to roll again and I hopped back over the track to return to my pinup duties.
Though we had never spoken, Steel had always intrigued me. Like myself, he was a total loner. He kept to himself and shuffled back and forth every night with this glum-lookin’ scowl. What impressed me most about him was that, for reasons unknown, he appeared to be the personal whipping boy of Henry Jackson, the supervisional brute of the entire Frame Line. Jackson was forever storming down the line and jumping into his shit about something I could never quite overhear. Steel just ignored him. Occasionally, he'd flip Jackson the bird and all hell would break loose. I figured any enemy of Henry Jackson should be a friend of mine.
At the end of the shift that night, Dave motioned to me as we fled for the time clocks. He said he agreed with my assessment on the horrible condition of modern radio, comparing it to the monotonous humdrum of the assembly line. Then, he paused.
“Do you like to drink?” he asked.
“More than most,” I said.
“Perhaps we should go get drunk.”
“That seems like a sensible idea.”
In the weeks and months to come, Dave and I formed our own two-man clique. It was strange how many things we had in common. We both had experienced bumpy childhoods. We both had been drughead outcasts in high school. We both had gotten married far too young. We both held a serious contempt for the majority of the human race. We hated our jobs and our bosses and our union reps. We hated Miss America and sunlight and Christmas. We were discontented and bored.
Like me, Dave came from a fertile background of shoprats. His grandfolks and parents had been lifers at GM. We joked about this constantly—how factory servitude was something so predestined within our genes that we had probably