Rivethead (15 page)
I could never figure out why I showed up for these briefings. There were never any ashtrays, no one smoked. There was never any beer or liquor, no one drank. I couldn't chime in on their heated discussions about El Salvador, I didn't even know where the damn place was. Everyone seemed to know everything about something and nothing about anything. Polyester rebels with fine homes and pretty wives and economical Japanese cars parked in the drive. I imagined their idea of revolution might be to refrain from mowing their lawns on consecutive Saturdays or cranking their goddamn Fleetwood Mac albums so loud that the mailman would frown.
Michael Moore would frequently approach me after these meetings, asking whether I would be interested in writing features for his paper. I would remind him that I knew very little about the struggles of mankind and all the other atrocities that seemed to rankle these people so. Never mind that shit, he'd tell me.
One night we were standing on the porch watching the others drive off. With El Salvador packed neatly away on the shelf, they needed nothin’ but prompt shuteye. “You work in the shop,” Moore mentioned. “Why not write about that kind of experience?”
“Write about working in the factory? Who'd wanna know anything about
that
kind of shit? Besides, half the time GM keeps my ass out on the street. Where's the appeal in that?”
“You'd be surprised,” Moore said.
A few weeks after our little discussion, I received a phone call from General Motors. It was time to rejoin the ranks of the employed. I was told to once again report to the Personnel office. I stood around with the other recalls awaiting placement. I assumed that I would be briskly escorted back to the Jungle. The thought didn't discomfort me. It would be nice to see the old gang again. Perhaps I could even land one of my old jobs.
After an hour or so, a big black guy in snazzy threads came into the room and pointed his finger at me and a couple of the other recalls. He looked like a post-forty version of Muhammad Ali. He told us to follow. I had never seen this man before. Obviously, this didn't bode well. An unfamiliar face would likely assure an unfamiliar place. As fucked-up and filthy as Cab Shop was, I still considered it my home.
We were not heading for the Cab Shop. I began feeling nervous and betrayed. We walked on and on, finally coming to an abrupt halt downstairs on the Rivet Line. I had heard various condemnations of this area—hard work, hard bosses, hard hours. You could only get lucky just so often. My luck was up.
The Ali clone had us huddle together. He introduced himself as Henry Jackson. I didn't care for the way he was smiling at us. Whenever a member of supervision slapped you with that kind of grin, it was like an unspoken broadcast that you were about to be dealt a shitload of misery and flung on the rack.
Henry Jackson spoke. “You men are now property of the Rivet Line. You will find that like any other department the Rivet Line has its share of good jobs and difficult jobs. I will confess, mostly the latter.” He paused as if waiting for a chuckle that never came. “If there is only one thing that I want to stress to you men today, it is this. Follow me, please.”
At this point, Jackson walked over to one of the dangling rivet guns. He stooped over and picked up a nearby board. He stuck the board in between the pinch space of the rivet gun and squeezed the trigger. The board immediately crumbled to the floor, splintered in half.
“Men, that could have just as easily been your finger,” Henry Jackson stated. “Never, but never, for any reason put your hand anywhere near this section of the rivet gun.”
Having demonstrated the danger that lurked within the jaws of the rivet gun, Jackson announced that he would now show us to our supervisor. I looked over at the guys I was with. We all seemed to be thinking the same thing: thank God, I thought
this
prick was gonna be our boss! Jackson introduced us to some horn-rimmed fella who had ASS SUCKER stamped all over his giant forehead. He was probably one of those textbook Einsteins from the General Motors Institute who'd never spent one lousy hour workin’ the line and couldn't tell a callus from a collarbone. It didn't seem fair to have to take orders from someone who'd never gotten dirty or put a screw in its required locale. These guys were often marked for torment and mutiny.
Our foreman began dispersing us onto open jobs within the department. The Rivet Line was the starting point for all that went on during the three-day snake trail needed to assemble a truck. The complete birth procedure began right here. It started with a couple of long black rails. As the rails were hoisted onto crawling pedestals, the workers began riveting them together and affixing them with various attachments. There weren't any screws or bolts to be been. Just rivets. Thousands upon thousands of dull gray rivets. They resembled mushrooms.
Stanley, our foreman, stuck me on a job right near the beginning of the process. He introduced me to the guy who would be breaking me in. The lucky bastard was going back to his old job on sanitation. This realization caused the guy to start whoopin’ and hollerin’ and jumpin’ around like a man who'd just wriggled out of a noose. I took this as a bad omen. I waited as the ex-riveter finished his celebration dance.
Exhausted, he shook my hand. “I'm gonna give it to you straight,” he said. “This job fucking sucks. There's no sense in lyin’ to you. Until you get it down, your hands will ache, your feet will throb and your back will feel like it's been steamrolled. If you're not jerkin’ the rivet gun around, you'll be wrestlin’ to get the next frame into position. On top of that, you have to build up your own stock and there's plenty of it.”
“Are there any advantages to working down here?” I asked pitifully.
The guy scratched at his beard. “Well, the exit to the time clocks and the parking lot is just down those stairs. Come lunchtime or quittin’ time, you can usually get a good jump on the rest of the pack.”
That was it? A head start to the parking lot? A shot at bein’ the first guy in line at the beer and wine store? Shit, maybe I should've gone to college or attended Bartender's School.
For the next couple hours I stood back and studied the routine. You were given three days to learn your assignment. I didn't plan on jumpin’ in until absolutely necessary. I looked around at those who would soon be my neighbors. I'd seen happier faces on burn victims.
When our first break arrived, I snuck across the train cove and sped up the stairwell to the Cab Shop. I was in desperate search of Lydia, my previous supervisor. I was hoping she might be able to pull some strings and get me the hell off the Rivet Line. I was a Jungle boy. Rivets and rails weren't in my blood. I needed a transfusion of screws, sparks and sheet metal.
I caught up with Lydia as she was heading down to the supervisor's cafeteria. She stopped and smiled brightly. Damn, she was pretty.
“Ben, it's great to see you back to work,” she said. She looked down at my belly and giggled. “It looks like the layoff didn't hurt your appetite any!”
“I'm pretty good with the beer,” I replied.
“So, where are you workin’ now? Are you still upstairs?”
“Unfortunately, no. They stuck my ass down on the Rivet Line. That's what brings me to you. Is there any possible way you can twist things around and get me back up to Cab Shop? I'll take any job you have open.”
Lydia thought for a moment. “The person you would really have to talk to is Art.” Art was our old General Foreman. “We've got a couple of openings, but you would have to go through him.”
“Do me a favor, Lydia. The next time you see Art, tell him I have to speak to him. Remind him of what a great worker I've been. I hate to ask you to lie, but I don't think I can hack it on the Rivet Line.”
“I'll pass it along, Ben. Hopefully, something can be worked out.”
I hustled back down the stairwell and, once again, cut across on one of the boxcars. Taking a shortcut through the trains was strictly forbidden by management. It was a definite safety hazard, one that everybody ignored. If you happened to be caught cutting through the train, there would be a firm lecture and a reprimand waiting on the other side.
This part about having trains moseyin’ in and out only twenty yards away from my new job struck me as odd. It was just an example of how large the Rivet Line area really was. One gigantic, barn-like cavern where the trains pulled up, unloaded and departed again. It was all somehow spooky. Trains belonged in train yards. Trains belonged on hillsides. Trains belonged on bridges. Above all, trains belonged outdoors. It made me nervous to be in the same room with a train.
The whistle blew and the Rivet Line began to crawl. I took a seat up on the workbench and watched the guy I was replacing tackle his duties. He'd grab one end of a long rail and, with the help of the worker up the line from him, flip it over on its back. CLAAAANNNNNNGGGG! He then raced back to the bench and grabbed a four-wheel-drive spring casting and a muffler hanger. He would rivet the pieces onto the rail. With that completed, he'd jostle the rail back into an upright position and grab a cross member off the overhanging feeder line that curled above the bench. Reaching up with his spare arm, he'd grab a different rivet gun while fidgeting to get the cross member firmly planted so that it aligned with the proper set of holes. He then inserted the rivets and began squashing the cross member into place. Just watching this guy go at it made my head hurt.
“How about takin’ a stab at it?” the guy asked me after a while. “You're not gonna get the feel of the job sittin’ up there on the bench.”
I politely declined. I didn't want to learn any portion of this monster maze before it was absolutely necessary. Once the bossman thought you had a reasonable grasp of the setup, he was likely to step in and turn you loose on your own. I needed to keep delaying in order to give Art some time to reel me back up to Cab Shop.
“Well, you've got three days,” the guy replied. “After that, this baby's all yours.”
I puttered around the rest of the day tryin’ my best to look like I was in deep rumination regarding the task at hand. It wasn't until the middle of the next day that I was able to track down Art. When I caught him, I practically started yanking off his shirt sleeve. Lydia had already informed him of my urgent appeal. I asked Art what he could do.
He exhaled slowly. “It's simply not that easy,” he began. “Once you've been assigned to an area it's damn near impossible to get you transferred out. Especially when that area is the Rivet Line. Not many people want to work down there so they tend to clutch on to their workers. However, I'll see what I can do about working out a trade. They won't surrender one of their bodies without a replacement in return.”
Trade? Surrender? Bodies? This was beginning to stink like some insuperable hostage shakedown. Trade positions? In that case, my trade value had to be nil. Who in their right mind would be willing to swap places with a doomed goomer from the Rivet Line? It would be like having a guy in the drunk tank asking to switch spots with a loser on death row.
By the start of my third day on the Rivet Line, it was evident that a trade was not in the offing. Art started payin’ me all this lip service about “someday in the future” and “guttin’ it out” when all he was really sayin’ was “you silly asshole, I could search from now until retirement and never run across a dupe so ignorant that he'd trade spots with you.”
I gave up hope and surrendered to my new placement. I was to be a riveter. It was now my sworn duty to learn my job as quickly and professionally as possible. I only had one day left to perfect what they referred to as “the pinup job.” If I couldn't answer the bell after the allotted three-day break-in period, GM had every right to usher me down that nearby stairwell, past the time clocks, out the exit and point me in the general direction of nowhere. Nowhere seemed fine in a way, but it was highly doubtful that nowhere paid $12.82 an hour and fixed your rotten teeth for free.
M
OST CALAMITIES IN LIFE EVENTUALLY FADE AWAY AND LEAVE
you scratchin’ your skull as to why you allowed yourself to get so tensed in the first place. My Rivet Line anxiety was one such calamity. I soon conquered the toilsome pinup job and burrowed myself a pliable little rut. Along with the assistance of the day shift operator, I squawked and raised enough hell about the stock-building portion of the job to have it taken away and assigned elsewhere. This allowed me a little free time in between jobs—just enough to surface for air and give a quick wink to the madness.
There were several differences between my station on the Rivet Line and my old home in the Cab Shop. Most notable was the fact that I was now ball-and-chained to a job that kept me forever in motion. That merciless minute hand relented somewhat due to the fact that there just wasn't as much time to stand around clock-gazin’. Oftentimes I would get so scoped-in on my duties, so chiseled to the waltz of the rails, that I wouldn't even notice it was break time until I saw the rest of the crew peelin’ off their gloves. I'd lock into the mission and stow my mind away so as not to have it interfere with the absurdity of the regimen. Entire shifts would sail by during which I hardly developed a tangible current of thought. The last thing I wanted to do was lacerate my brain with the nude truth lurking behind this mulish treadmill. A whore was always better off if he or she avoided the ugly gaze of the trick.
There were other differences. As opposed to Cab Shop, the Rivet Line was a place of relative solitude. Conversation was rare and assembly line hijinks were extinct. This met with my favor since most of the guys surrounding me were seasoned rednecks. They wore the telltale garb: bib overalls, flannel shirts, hunting caps and jackets displaying the logo of our local union. They carried lunch buckets with their precious Chiquita banana stickers plastered all over ‘em. The banana stickers were a dead giveaway. The true redneck treated these decals as if they were Congressional Medals of Honor. If one were to begin peeling off, the owner would scramble about looking for some industrial adhesive to secure the sticker back into place. I hadn't the slightest clue as to what those banana stickers represented. Perfect attendance? Intelligence quotient? Animals slaughtered? They were like the helmets of college football players adorned with team decals awarded for outstanding plays. It seemed silly and useless, but I wasn't gonna chuckle. I was fond of the notion that my teeth stay rooted to my gums.