Rivethead (34 page)

We arrived there in the afternoon. The schedule called for me to do a live television interview at 6:30 the next morning. Dave and I both agreed that I'd never be able to function at that early hour. He suggested that we stay up all night and indulge in a nocturnal bar crawl of Chicago nightlife. Finally, someone who spoke sense.

We hit several blues joints and got back to our hotel around 3:00. Only a few more hours to go. I kept drinkin’ and tossin’ down the occasional Xanax. Dave was as drunk as I'd ever seen him. He insisted on ordering a pizza. When it finally arrived, he took about three bites out of it before hurling it, along with an empty fifth of rum, over the balcony and into the hotel swimming pool eight floors below. “Swish!” Dave yelled.

“Cool it, Laimbeer. Our mission still lies ahead of us.”

“Gimme a bourbon,” Dave snarled.

We sat around drinkin’ Jim Beam and water. Dave kept playin’ with the TV set until he ran across a channel that was showing
Lost in Space.
It was the episode where Dr. Smith found a machine which allowed him to pump out these armies of cyborgs which looked exactly like him. Old Zach was havin’ a great time. Alas, Dr. Zachary Smith's plans fell through. The end of the show found him squattin’ on this Styrofoam boulder weeping: “All I wanted to do was rule the universe.” Dave and I cracked up. Dr. Smith should have been the Chairman of General Motors.

Around 5:00, Dave started primpin’ for the TV show. He showered and shaved and began styling his sacred pompadour. It was hilarious. He had a hair blower contraption the size of a bazooka.

“Hey, I was under the impression they wanted me on the show.” I laughed.

“They may need a stand-in seein’ as how you're drunk and doped silly.”

“They'd never buy it. You look more like George Hamilton than a shoprat.”

Dave shook his head. “At least brush your teeth and comb your hair.”

By the time we arrived at the television station, I was pretty wasted. The door guard looked at me and refused to let us in. I stepped aside and let Dave do the explaining. Finally, a sweet-lookin’ gal appeared and ushered us upstairs to the set. Apparently, she hadn't seen the cover of
Mother Jones
yet. She kept complimenting Dave on his writing flair. I injected that not only was Dave a decent writer, he had hair stiff enough to dent beer kegs. Dave flipped me the bird and the two of them walked on ahead of me.

Remarkably, the show turned out fine. I didn't slur too badly or toss in any four-letter words. I remember the stage guys were laughing so hard that their cameras were shakin’. They were especially fond of my wrought-up tangent about going bowling with Roger Smith. As the segment ended, I stood up and almost fell straight on my face. The host gave me a big handshake and invited me to come back on the show whenever I came to Chicago.

My nerves were growing steadily worse. The Rivet Line, once my fortress and private lair, was now nothing more than a huge galleryful of paranoia and mayhem. All I did was stare at the clock, a suicidal gesture in itself. I threw away my notebook. There was no inspiration, there was nothing.

As if things weren't bad enough, they announced that the first group of transfer signees would be heading off for Pontiac within a month. Tony and Dave's names were on the list. I had drawn a temporary bye. Tony was elated. Dave was his usual uncertain self.

Meanwhile, in the wake of my
Mother Jones
piece, the phone began to ring again. A producer for
The Today Show
called expressing an interest in doing a feature on the Rivethead. This was getting downright silly. I had a notion to tell him the Rivethead was closed down for repairs. I was still a bit put off from my experience with the
60 Minutes
disaster. However, this guy seemed much more friendly. I agreed to the segment and we set up plans for the following week.

The crew from NBC spent four days following me around. Besides myself, they spent time interviewing my grandfather, my daughter, Mike Moore, my grandmother and assorted friends. They wanted something from the shopera so we got the band together and they filmed us ripping through a particularly hot version of “Rat Like Me.” Dave's pompadour looked like a large exotic bird.

The producer mentioned that he wanted to take the cameras inside the shop to film me on the Rivet Line. Sheesh, what a comedian. I explained to him that I was hardly GM's favorite son and that getting clearance to film inside the factory would be about as likely as receiving permission to film the Pope taking a crap. The producer remained unfazed. He represented America's top-rated morning show. Confidently, he drove straight down to GM headquarters in Detroit for the go-ahead.

The next day he phoned me. “Jesus, you were right on that call,” he reported. “The best that I could do was to get permission to film you in the parking lot.”

“I warned you.” I chuckled. “GM believes a creative mind is a flawed mind.”

The producer continued. “All I know is that everything was proceeding fine up until the point when I mentioned your name. From then on, I might as well have been talking to a cement wall.”

We arranged to do the shoot in the parking lot. I told the producer to have his film crew ready and waiting at 9:24, our lunchtime. I showed them exactly where they should set up—surrounding the back of Al's pickup camper. I told several of my linemates to show up. At first break Al and I went out and bought three cases of beer. We threw them on ice so they would be nice and chilly for the filming.

Once again, I was bewildered by GM's sense of logic. All NBC wanted to do was get some uneventful footage of the Rivethead and his cronies going about their jobs. A tidy, innocuous venture into the workaday world of an American assembly line. How harmless. How natural. NBC was gonna parade us before the nation so why not have it situated in a locale where GM could monitor the content? We would certainly project a proud image. With Sanders and Henry Jackson hunchin’ over us, outstanding behavior would be guaranteed. It was foolish.

GM probably wound up wondering the same thing. For instead of harmless footage of men going about their workday routines, they were to be eventually treated to the cringin’ eyesore of twenty or so shifty rivetlings pile-drivin’ cans of Budweiser like parched boat people. I had a hunch that this vision would cause some squirmin’ down in Detroit. Tough shit.

The producer had one final idea for the segment. The next evening he wanted me to assemble some of my closet Rivet Line chums and bring them over to Mark's Lounge. He wanted to do a bit on the post-shift conviviality of factory folk. He added that NBC would be pickin up the tab for all the drinks. For his sake, I hoped he wasn't operating on a thin budget.

The next day I was shaving while listening to the noon news on television. The same old shit came rolling forth about deficits and plane crashes and world turmoil. The anchorman then proceeded into the local news. What came next very nearly caused me to cut my lip off. I ran into the living room unable to believe what I was hearing.

“THE SAVAGE ATTACK ON THE TWO WAITRESSES HAPPENED EARLY THIS MORNING AT AN ESTABLISHMENT IN FLINT CALLED MARK'S LOUNGE. THE WOMEN WERE ALONE IN THE BAR WHEN AN UNKNOWN ASSAILANT AMBUSHED THEM, STABBING EACH REPEATEDLY. THE VICTIMS ARE LISTED IN CRITICAL CONDITION AND THE POLICE HAVE NO MOTIVE FOR THE ATTACK AT THIS TIME.”

I sat there in shock as the television showed the two barmaids being hustled by stretcher into an ambulance. There was much blood. I turned off the set. Who could commit such an act, I sat there wondering. The barmaids of Mark's were our Sisters of Mercy, our faithful nannies. They were on
our
side. The animal who pulled this crap had to be an outsider.

I called the producer. “Forget about the segment at Mark's tonight. Some asshole went through there this morning and sliced up a couple barmaids.”

“Christ, that's awful,” he responded. “Are they gonna live?”

“It's too early to say. It just went down a few hours ago.”

“Shit, I'm sorry, Ben. We'll try to film the segment next month when we come back to town with Betty Rollin. Let me know how this thing turns out in the meantime.”

“I'll do that,” I replied, still in a daze.

The unspeakable turned out to be true. A worker from our very own plant had committed the attack. Apparently, the guy was doped out of his tree and just went berserk. Not only did he carve up two of our fair maidens, he also busted into a local pharmacy that very same night and stole an extensive amount of drugs. A couple of days later, two kids playin’ in the woods behind the nearby UAW softball complex found his body next to a stream, ODed and blue as a jar of Vicks. Lying next to him was a pillowcase full of pills and streaked with blood.

Bad vuggum had its hooks in me also. Another panic attack struck as I was entering the shop one afternoon. I immediately spun around and got hold of Dr. Kilaru. He put me off work for a few weeks and prescribed another drug called Tofranil, an antidepressant. I took the drug for a few days before tossing ‘em down the toilet. The damn shit made my heart beat like a jackhammer.

Dr. Kilaru was becoming more and more insistent that I enroll as an outpatient at the mental health center. I steadfastly refused. He kept at it, mentioning how I could assist myself in recovery through daily regimens of personal therapy, group interaction, seminars, medication, physical therapy and field trips. This meant mixing it up with human beings. That was asking a lot.

The field trip idea especially bothered me. I could just envision myself staring out the back of some old red school bus, crowbarred elbow-to-elbow with a slobberin’ gang of manics, loons and schizoids. I could see the smug faces of my high school peers as they drove to their useless jobs, see them bursting into hysterics as I gazed back at them through the morning drizzle and bus fumes. “Hey! It's Benny Hamper! The boy we voted most likely to suffocate on his own vomit. Wave at the poor bastard!” Oh, that I could exchange this strange malady for something more simple—like the heartbreak of psoriasis or venereal warts.

Things weren't going a whole lot smoother for my editor, Mike Moore. After only three issues at the helm, he was fired from his job at
Mother Jones.
The publisher listed several reasons for the sudden axe, the most grievious being Moore's refusal to run an article critical of the Sandinista regime in Nicaragua. The publisher also accused Moore of never being around the office or, for that matter, the state of California. Mike was rather adept at concocting any excuse to fly back to Flint. But doing battle with that procession of poseurs, who could blame him?

With Moore's firing came my conclusion as a columnist for
Mother Jones.
I would miss the extra income but, otherwise, it was fine with me. I was practically bein’ driven out of my skull by the magazine's crew of fact checkers and researchers. These morons would call me over and over asking the most goddamn inane questions. For instance, one morning they rolled me outta bed to ask me if I could give them the phone number of at least one other co-worker who could positively verify the fact that the North Unit parking lot was
indeed
called “the North Unit parking lot.”

Moore called me to talk about his dismissal. He told me the publisher was upset with his insistence on letting me have my own column. He also added that the publisher thought my last column—a comical overview of the repulsive
Faces of Death
documentary trilogy—was the most tasteless and offensive piece of bathroom humor he'd ever read.

“Since when does tastelessness preclude good writing?” I grumbled. “I thought that was one of the better things I'd written.”

“I thought it was a hoot,” Mike added.

“Shit, I swear they oughta change the name of that rag to
Mother Teresa.
I say screw ‘em. You'd have more creative freedom writin’ for Tass.”

“Maybe so,” Moore replied, “but it was still a job.”

A few days later, I received a letter from the managing editor of
Mother Jones.
In it, he stated how much the magazine would enjoy having me stay on as a columnist. He mentioned that he hoped Mike's firing wouldn't have a bearing on my future contributions to the magazine. He even went on to state that bringing me aboard was one of the best moves Mike had made during his brief tenure as editor. Say what?

The bullshit quota was smellin’ darn nasty. Somehow I was bein’ wedged in between these two corners and it made me feel uneasy. Not knowing who to believe, nor really caring, I opted to stay out of the matter. I was in it for kicks. This shell game hardly qualified as such. I knew where my allegiance was and it didn't lie within the lap of anybody's
Mother.

I took the Rivethead over to the
Detroit Free Press
where my chronicles of factory life became an instant hit. Detroit couldn't resist a smartass. I wrote for their Sunday magazine and was allowed all the freedom, space and time I needed. Kathy Warbelow, my editor, was always there to coax and coddle me. Even at this late date, I still needed reassurances that the writing was okay. More importantly, I needed to know I was okay. The Rivethead may have been a slicker, but the guy inside was quivering badly.

My notoriety was anything but a source of pride and pleasure back on the front lines. Sanders and Jackson, the Oreo brain police, were beginning to hawk my every move. Sanders was especially eager to burn my ass. He'd been steamed at me ever since he'd been forced to become my mailman. This humorous development began to occur after my appearance on
The Today Show
and the cover of
Mother Jones.
People started writing to me and, not knowing my home address, some of them simply mailed their letters to: The Rivethead, Suburban/Blazer Line, GM Truck & Bus, Flint, MI. I was stunned that the front office people didn't just incinerate these letters. Instead, they sent ‘em down to Sanders for delivery. Christ, you could have fried bacon on his scalp.

Attention such as this convinced Sanders that I had some kind of evil stranglehold over the minds of my linemates. Anytime anything went wrong, he converged on me as if I was somehow orchestrating a mutiny with just a nod of my head. I could only wish that it were true.