than this. The whole world is on fire and here we are parked in the shadow of this mausoleum drinkin’ the coldest beer on the planet. With Lesley Fucking Gore! No one else on the face of this earth is doing this! NO ONE!”
“I wonder what Lesley Gore is doin’ right this minute,” I mused. “I wonder what Al Kaline and Roger Smith and Sister Edward Irene are up to—right NOW! Right this very second. I feel sorry for their asses!” We laughed until our sides ached.
Nine fifty-four returned to the assembly line. Denny and I hustled back in to relieve our partners. In the nights to come we were never really able to recapture whatever it was that led to that precious double lunch we spent with Lesley Gore. After a while, we simply quit tryin’. Perhaps we were just crazy from the heat. It was known to happen. Whatever the cause, we always remembered the night we had you and you and the rest of the world thoroughly dicked for seventy-two minutes.
Bud had grown weary of the spot-welder's shuffle. In a way, he wasn't anything like the rest of us spark-eaters. He always had his nose buried in some college textbook. He had big plans that spread far beyond the walls of the GM Truck & Bus plant. Bud's master plan was to own and operate his own grocery store. He was only using GM as a temporary means to support his family and pay his tuition.
As the days neared for Bud's departure, I was struck with an immediate fear. What if they were to replace him with a woman? This was known to happen in cases where two guys were observed crunching their jobs together and outfoxing the braintrust who were responsible for splitting up the chores. It wasn't that a woman would be incapable of doing either of the two jobs. It was more that most any given woman would be hard-pressed to combine
both
of the jobs, especially when one of the jobs would require her to navigate a bulky spot-welder that spit fire like the bastard son of Mount Vesuvius. A man was needed. Either that or some steroid-gulpin’ she-goat from the women's Bulgarian gym team.
I pleaded with our foreman to send down a rugged sort. The last thing I needed was a wimp, regardless of sex. I was far too spoiled with the lazy benefits of doubling-up to return to the old nightly up and down, For sanity's sake, the gimmick had to keep rollin’.
The foreman brought down a new hire named Dale. As they came stridin’ down the aisle, I could tell that this guy was the answer to all my prayers. I was about to receive 225 pounds of solid, gullible rookie girth. I immediately took Dale under my wing. Within a week we were glidin’ through our paces. An hour on, an hour off. The gods had been smiling on me.
As for Dale, I had never run up against a more curious journey than the one that had brought him to the hub of Jungleland. He lived way the hell up in Twining, Michigan, a tiny farming village located 115 miles north of Flint. This meant he had to commute 230 miles per day, six days a week, to toil for General Motors. It seemed ridiculous. I didn't put on 230 miles to get to work over an entire summer.
I had only one question for Dale.
“WHY?”
“Well,” Dale said. “Do you have any idea how much a new John Deere with fully synchronized 24-speed PowerSync transmission and built in Hi-Lo will run you nowadays?”
“Um, a bundle?” I suggested.
“You ain't shittin’ it's a bundle. That's what brings me here.”
Dale went on to list all kinds of other mechanical nightmares needed to keep his farm updated. The price tags were astounding. It was all giving me a headache. At this rate, Dale was going to have to pull sixty years of moonlighting at the truck plant in order to pay off his fleet of farmyard bloodsuckers.
Dale also raised pigs. Now there was a combination you didn't run into every day—pig farmer/autoworker. He told me he had to get up at 6:30 in the morning to mess with his pigs. This allowed him about three hours of sleep per night. How in the hell did he
“I wonder what Lesley Gore is doin’ right this minute,” I mused. “I wonder what Al Kaline and Roger Smith and Sister Edward Irene are up to—right NOW! Right this very second. I feel sorry for their asses!” We laughed until our sides ached.
Nine fifty-four returned to the assembly line. Denny and I hustled back in to relieve our partners. In the nights to come we were never really able to recapture whatever it was that led to that precious double lunch we spent with Lesley Gore. After a while, we simply quit tryin’. Perhaps we were just crazy from the heat. It was known to happen. Whatever the cause, we always remembered the night we had you and you and the rest of the world thoroughly dicked for seventy-two minutes.
Bud had grown weary of the spot-welder's shuffle. In a way, he wasn't anything like the rest of us spark-eaters. He always had his nose buried in some college textbook. He had big plans that spread far beyond the walls of the GM Truck & Bus plant. Bud's master plan was to own and operate his own grocery store. He was only using GM as a temporary means to support his family and pay his tuition.
As the days neared for Bud's departure, I was struck with an immediate fear. What if they were to replace him with a woman? This was known to happen in cases where two guys were observed crunching their jobs together and outfoxing the braintrust who were responsible for splitting up the chores. It wasn't that a woman would be incapable of doing either of the two jobs. It was more that most any given woman would be hard-pressed to combine
both
of the jobs, especially when one of the jobs would require her to navigate a bulky spot-welder that spit fire like the bastard son of Mount Vesuvius. A man was needed. Either that or some steroid-gulpin’ she-goat from the women's Bulgarian gym team.
I pleaded with our foreman to send down a rugged sort. The last thing I needed was a wimp, regardless of sex. I was far too spoiled with the lazy benefits of doubling-up to return to the old nightly up and down, For sanity's sake, the gimmick had to keep rollin’.
The foreman brought down a new hire named Dale. As they came stridin’ down the aisle, I could tell that this guy was the answer to all my prayers. I was about to receive 225 pounds of solid, gullible rookie girth. I immediately took Dale under my wing. Within a week we were glidin’ through our paces. An hour on, an hour off. The gods had been smiling on me.
As for Dale, I had never run up against a more curious journey than the one that had brought him to the hub of Jungleland. He lived way the hell up in Twining, Michigan, a tiny farming village located 115 miles north of Flint. This meant he had to commute 230 miles per day, six days a week, to toil for General Motors. It seemed ridiculous. I didn't put on 230 miles to get to work over an entire summer.
I had only one question for Dale.
“WHY?”
“Well,” Dale said. “Do you have any idea how much a new John Deere with fully synchronized 24-speed PowerSync transmission and built in Hi-Lo will run you nowadays?”
“Um, a bundle?” I suggested.
“You ain't shittin’ it's a bundle. That's what brings me here.”
Dale went on to list all kinds of other mechanical nightmares needed to keep his farm updated. The price tags were astounding. It was all giving me a headache. At this rate, Dale was going to have to pull sixty years of moonlighting at the truck plant in order to pay off his fleet of farmyard bloodsuckers.
Dale also raised pigs. Now there was a combination you didn't run into every day—pig farmer/autoworker. He told me he had to get up at 6:30 in the morning to mess with his pigs. This allowed him about three hours of sleep per night. How in the hell did he
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