Rivethead (32 page)

Tardy as always, Moore came screechin’ up in his faithful Honda. Uh-oh. Rare was the time you gazed upon a Japanese import in this sprawling car kennel. When you did, they were usually very easy to identify—busted-off antennas, boot heel indentations on the quarter panel, key scrapes along the paintjob, broken mirrors, broken windows. Freedom of choice in one's particular mode of transportation ended rather abruptly at the entrance gate to most GM assembly plants. There were plenty of flag-totin’ vandals still takin’ night classes at the John Wayne Institute for Insecure Bigots.

“Couldn't you have borrowed your girlfriend's car?” I asked Mike as he hopped into my Camaro.

“She drives a Toyota,” he replied. Sheesh.

“How about a cold quart of beer?”

“You know I can't possibly down that much beer. Hey, you sure my car's safe out here?”

“Does your insurance cover mindless vandalism and freak disasters?”

“I guess.”

“Then she's as safe as a cock in a jock,” I lied. “Have a drink, you'll loosen up.”

“I told you, I can't drink that much beer.”

“Looks like you've given me no choice.” I uncapped the other quart and began poundin’.

I went inside the plant first and told Mike to follow behind me a minute later. We met down at the time clocks. He seemed momentarily mesmerized. “Man, I wish I had a time card to punch in one of these.”

“Well, you can't use mine. That would stop my pay. Try using your Visa card. You never know, it might wipe out your balance.”

When we made it up to my job, Mike took a seat on a crateful of spring castings. I flipped over my garbage can and sat down next to him. My editor couldn't stop smiling. He looked up and down the line as if this was some kind of breathtaking moment in history. Perhaps it was.

“This is where you
write?
” Moore asked. “What about all this noise?”

“You don't even notice it after a while. It's like real discordant elevator Muzak.”

I introduced my editor to several of the regulars. Paul seized the opportunity and began showing Mike photographs of his prized motorcycles. Hell, the way Mike was grinnin’, you would have thought he was gazin’ at nude snapshots of Ginger and Mary Ann.

My editor wanted to meet the steering gear man. I had to break the news to him gently. “He's not available, Mike. He checked himself into a detox ward last week.”

His next request was to catch a glimpse of Howie Makem. I explained that Howie had no set schedule. “Howie makes up his own hours. Besides, he rarely patrols this beat anymore since Herman beaned him on the head with an empty pint of McMasters.”

Mike Moore's final request was to hit a few rivets. I tried to talk him out of the idea, but he was practically foamin’ at the mouth. “Shit,” I moaned. “If Henry Jackson were to come stridin’ through here, my ass would be crammed through a keyhole.”

My editor began to beg. “C'mon, just a few. Please…PLEASE!”

I showed Mike how to grasp the gun and navigate the tip to the target. I warned him not to pull the trigger until everything was aligned. He was really smiling now. I lit a cigarette and stepped back. Moore positioned the gun squarely atop the target and drove home a perfect rivet. The guys applauded and he hit a few more. Hell, he looked like a natural.

“Thanks,” he said.

Anytime.

Things began moving quickly. Craziness pervaded. Not only did I have this sudden invitation from my editor to take the Rivethead to a national forum, but I was being tapped on the shoulder by other unlikely sources. A man from
Penthouse
magazine kept calling wanting me to write “an autoworker's view of sex on an assembly line.” I told him that such an article would have to be pure fabrication. He said that would be fine, that I could use a pseudonym if I preferred. I had to decline. It was absurd: “Mel brandished his walloper as Kate's ample melons glistened in the piss-colored haze. He mounted her as the rats looked on, sweltering loins pulsing in the…”

A woman from the
Detroit Free Press
called. She was aware of the demise of the
Voice
and wanted to know if I'd be interested in ladling out my factory grunt for their Sunday magazine. I told her about my upcoming move to
Mother Jones.
She then asked if she could run a variety of my old
Michigan Voice
pieces and reprint any further
Mother Jones
articles. I inquired about payment for such and the numbers she responded with seemed remarkably generous. Be my guest, I told her. Welcome to the Rivethead's sensational bar tab rummage sale.

Soon after, another woman phoned. It was the lady I'd talked to a few months earlier from
Esquire
magazine. She was calling to inform me that I had been selected to appear in
Esquire's
1986 Register, “a compendium of the nation's brightest young minds and high achievers under age forty.” She offered her congratulations and said that a photographer would be arriving in Flint within the next few weeks to get some pictures. Either I was improving or it was a sluggish year for phenoms.

I called Dave Steel. “Prepare yourself,” I cautioned. “The Rivethead has just been selected as one of this country's brightest young minds by
Esquire
magazine. I think it only fair to warn you that this bizarre turn of events conclusively indicates that the ruination of Western Civilization is now in full swing.”

“I would have to agree,” Dave replied. “The moral fiber of this land is in deep jeopardy.”

Things on the Rivet Line were also runnin’ wacky. In the span of ten days, two workers had been bitten badly by their rivet guns. One guy lost his ring finger and the other one had broken all the bones in his right hand. Neither worker was ever to return.

As for the guy who smashed his hand, the aftermath was both sad and ridiculous. Within ten minutes of the mishap, Henry Jackson was over at the scene of the accident rantin’ his fat ass off to all within ear shot about how he was gonna put this individual on notice for “careless workmanship in the job place.” Even those of us who were used to Jackson's ill nature were dumbfounded. Here a man had just been permanently maimed and Henry's only concern was to see that the guy would be promptly penalized. There were some things you saw and heard inside a factory that made you bristle. There were some things you saw and heard inside a factory that made you want to throttle a prick by his neck until your wrists snapped.

Crazy, crazy, crazy. There was the night I was up in Cab Shop visiting Bob-A-Lou. We were just shootin’ the shit when a fight broke out down the line. Like everyone else, we dropped what we were doing and headed for the action. It ended as we got there. The two combatants were already bein’ separated. That's when we noticed the blood. It was streaming out of the one guy's neck like he'd opened a faucet. He'd been slashed badly and the fella who'd sliced him stood there, bug-eyed and sweatin’, breathin’ very hard with the blade danglin’ at his side: mad at the world, mad at the machines, mad at the walls, mad in the head. He looked around at us, then went bolting away through the snaking lines of the Trim Shop area. As long as I live, I'll never forget the vision of him sprinting in the distance like a panicked gazelle, insane and desperate, disappearing like a phantom into the industrial underbrush.

Bob-A-Lou told me later that the two of them were back to work, side by side, gettin’ along just fine. The victim had gotten his neck stitched up and the other guy had received two weeks off plus probation. It seemed more than odd. Was there any other workplace in the world where you could have a go at killing someone and be back at your job within fourteen days as if you had simply made a minor error in judgment? I doubted it. Imagine if this scenario had taken place at IBM or Sears. The cops would have been everywhere, the TV stations would have descended and the knife wielder would've been lookin’ at a minimum of five to ten in the state pokey for attempted murder. But this was GM. The Sign of Excellence. Quality, Commitment and Cutlery. Boys will be boys.

Just as discouraging as smashed bones and slit throats was the sudden decision by management to remove Gino from his supervisor's role on the Rivet Line. It made no sense whatsoever. No other foreman in the entire corporate dog pen could possess Gino's knack for overseeing the daily traumas on the Rivet Line. The sacred Quality meter bore this out. For all of the horseplay and hijinks that went along with the area, the Rivet Line always remained near the top of the Quality ratings. Why would they want to tamper with a working marriage?

The explanation we were given was that Gino had become “too close to his work force.” GM often employs this screwy logic whenever a supervisor and his crew develop a bond that won't allow for proper amounts of hostility and mistrust. They're quick to fill you up with all their newfangled bluster about “team concept” and “consensus decision making” while, at the same time, they insist on elevating the most inept suck-butts they can dredge up to ensure that everything proceeds at a level of useless antagonism.

The Rivet Line was far from perfect. We all had our share of shortcuts and bits of petty disobedience. Gino was aware of it all and drew us a bottom line. Build good trucks. Hit good rivets. Cover your damn job and we'll cover each other's backs. Just give me a good job. If you hang, you'll hang yourself. The way it should be. We were gonna miss old Gino.

Enter the new boss, a self-proclaimed “troubleshooter.” He had been enlisted to groom the Rivet Line into a more docile outpost. As he told Schobel and me on his first night on the job: “I float from plant to plant. Whenever GM has a specific problem spot, they call me in to clean up.”

With a tight grip on the whip, the new bossman started riding the crew. No music. No Rivet Hockey. No horseplay. No drinking. No card playing. No working up the line. No leaving the department. No doubling-up. No this, no that. No questions asked.

No way. After three nights of this imported bullyism, the boys had had their fill. Frames began sliding down the line minus parts. Rivets became cross-eyed. Guns mysteriously broke down. The repairmen began shipping the majority of the defects, unable to keep up with the repair load.

Sabotage was rather drastic; however it was an effective way of getting the point across. We simply had no other recourse. Sometimes these power-gods had to be reminded that it was we, the workers, who kept the place runnin’. If you started reamin’ your men at every turn, sooner or later it was all gonna come back to you. There would be a bigger honcho than you, with a larnyx twice as loud, just waiting to chew your ass to ribbons as the forty greasy serfs you thought you had conquered would be lined up for last call with grins on their kissers and shrugs on their shoulders.

This new guy was nobody's dummy. He could see it all slippin’ away, his goon tactics workin’ against him. He pulled us all aside and suggested that we return to our old methods. The guy was no troubleshooter. He was a scared little lapdog whose hand had been called. Very quickly, the big boys moved him out to try his hired-gun charade in some other corner of the works.We had won this particular go-round, but we all knew the big boys would be returning to the drawing board.

Our next supervisor was selected from our very midst, a popular ploy. GM would promote a boot-licker whose allegiance could be twisted by power and money, clear his rap sheet and send him back to his home base as a kind of in-house spy. The rationale was that this creepin’ Judas would have an inside track on all the systems and schemes of his former linemates.

The scab they promoted was a veteran co-worker of ours named Calvin Moza. Within hours of his appointment, Moza had put Schobel and me on notice for doubling-up, Doug and Terry on notice for kickin’ rivets and three other workers on notice for bench banging. (The banging of the benches was a ritual performed right before break or the end of the shift, a tribal celebration that had gone on for years.) These were all “violations” that Calvin Moza had indulged in just the previous week. But, now, he was one of
them.
There was nothin’ worse than a fuckin’ sellout.

When Moza nailed Eddie for bangin’ on his bench, it was too much to take. I motioned for Moza to come over to my job. I took out my hammer, smiled, and proceeded to go apeshit on my bench top.

“You're on notice again, Hamper,” Moza shouted above the clamor.

“Fuck you! YOU'RE THE ONE ON NOTICE!”

Almost instantly, the sounds of hammers, drifts, chains and pipes came crashing down in gorgeous unison. Moza braced himself against my bench, his head whipping back and forth. You could pretty much tell what he was thinking. How can I put forty workers on notice at once? To do so would require more paperwork than any one man could peddle. We banged on and on. Finally, Moza fled for the sanctuary of his little glass office.

It was only the beginning. For the next eight days, we made Calvin Moza's short-lived career switch sheer hell. Every time he'd walk the aisle, someone would pepper his steps with raining rivets. He couldn't make a move without the hammers banging and loud chants of “suckass” and “brown snout” ringin’ in his ears. Calvin Moza got everything he deserved. There simply was no room for pity when dealing with a hypocrite who was about as pure as freshly driven snot.

When they led him away on the final day, he looked like he'd aged a decade. They buried his sorry ass in some remote corner of the South Unit. Once again we had turned back the Big Boys’ attempt to saddle us with an intimidator. All it took was a unified effort and a healthy dose of anarchy. Together we stand, divided we might as well transfer to the Fender Line.

We didn't have nearly the success with the next guy they threw at us. His name was Sanders—a diehard prick, a full-fledged sadist, a corporate pit bull. We gave it our all, but this brickhead took it in stride and spit it back out. I had the distinct suspicion that we were locking horns with something that didn't even qualify as human.

In the weeks to come, we fired everything we had at Sanders. We ran bad shit. We heckled him unmercifully. We stole the hubcaps off his car. We put everything from Alpo to acid in his sandwiches. We banged on our benches until our arms and ears throbbed.