Rivet Line
by
Michael Moore


FOREWORD

by Michael Moore

MY RELATIONSHIP WITH BEN HAMPER HAS RESULTED IN MY BEing fired from my
job, sued for libel, losing a potential friendship with my hero Bruce
Springsteen, and now forced into
writing this damn foreword so I can keep my favorite ball cap. Which is
actually Hamper's favorite ball cap, but now that half the world has
seen it on my head in Roger & Me, and, possession being so many tenths
of the law, we decided to
settle this with my keeping the hat if I wrote this foreword. Let me
back up for a second...

I first heard of Ben Hamper shortly after John Lennon was murdered. A
columnist in the Flint Journal, the daily rag in our hometown of Flint,
Michigan, wrote that the country was actually better off with Lennon
dead, considering all of the rebellion he caused. If it wasn't for
Lennon and the Beatles, she exhorted, our generation would have turned
out more respectable people who held such jobs as engineers or lawyers.
So this guy named Hamper sent a letter to the Flint Journal saying, "I
make my living turning bolts in the factory. Being a devoted Lennon fan,
I'm suddenly discouraged to realize that, had I avoided this scoundrel's
music, I could have been a real success in some lofty vocation."

I thought about trying to find this "Ben Hamper" to see if he would
like to write for my alternative biweekly newspaper, the Flint, Voice.
But that idea got shoved aside, and it was another six months before an
unsolicited record review from Ben arrived in the mail with a note
attached saying I could run this if I wanted to. This one-paragraph
review was so wonderfully sick that I immediately called him up to
discuss further writing assignments.

After a few more reviews for the Flint Voice, it was clear from his
writing that there was more inside him that needed to come out. I asked
him to consider writing a column about life in the shop--or any other
subject of his choosing. So in addition to reports from the General
Motors assembly line, he covered the loeal Elvis impersonators, faith
healers and greasy spoons. It was right about then I should have pulled
the reins in on this guy, but he was upsetting so many people, I just
couldn't stop him.

Then one week, Hamper wrote about a bar he frequented where there were
so many fistfights, he suggested a smart dentist should open an office
next door to the joint. "What the place lacked in ambience," he wrote,
"it made up for in ambulance." Well, the bar soon closed and the owner
sued me, claiming that Hamper's remarks had ruined his business.
Fortunately, the judge had been my Boy Scout advisor and firmly
believed, with God as his witness, that I could do no wrong, and
dismissed the suit.

Hamper's "Impressions of a Rivethead" column became the most widely read
page in the Flint Voice and, when the paper became the Michigan Voice,
his popularity soared. The Wall Street Journal ran a front page story on
him, Harper's magazine reprinted one of his pieces and some shoe company
wanted him to endorse their industrial boots (Ben knows boots).
Meanwhile, he would take off work in the middle of his night shift at
GM, come over to the Voice office, and try to get the staff to stop
working and join him in his various vices. I remember one particular
night watching him engage the staff in a game of lawn darts inside the
building, using a poster of GM chairman Roger Smith as the target. I
guess that was our version of the new journalism.

Finally, after nearly ten years of publishing the Voice, I

was asked by a liberal millionaire to move to San Francisco and become
the editor of Mother Jones magazine. The owner liked the "working class
reality" of the Michigan Voice and wanted to put some of that into
Mother Jones. It had once been the country's premier muckraking
magazine, but now it was a soft, touchy-feely periodical that had lost
over 80,000 subscribers. So, when I arrived in California on my mission
to save the magazine, one of the first writers I commissioned was Ben
Hamper. He wrote a hilarious piece I titled "I, Rivethead," and I made
it the cover story of my first issue. I then told him that he could
continue his "Rivethead" column in each issue of the magazine. I even
sent him on a promotional tour.

Well, never trust a millionaire when he tells you he wants that "working
class reality" in his magazine. As my third issue was being readied for
publication, the owner came into my office and, waving a copy of
Hamper's latest column, asked me if I really intended on printing this
smut. Yes, I said. Bye-bye, he replied. The next day I was in the
unemployment line.

I went back home to Flint, where Ben tried to cheer me up by letting me
watch his collection of Charles Manson interviews. On his shelf, I
spotted a ball cap that, I felt, summed up my life at that moment. On
the front of the cap was a giant lake trout with the words "I'm Out for
Trout." I asked Ben if I could borrow it and he said sure, but he wanted
it back soon.

The next day, Roger Smith announced he was laying off another 10,000
workers in Flint. Buoyed by this development, I decided to make a film
in which I would try to get Smith to come to Flint so he could see what
happens to the people he throws out on the street. During the first day
of shooting, I happened to wear Hamper's "Out for Trout" hat while on
camera. To maintain coinsistency in the filming during the following
days, I had to keep wearing that damned hat. That ball cap soon became
the symbol for the film, and Hamper was not to have it on his balding
head again.

As Roger & Me neared completion, I wanted to get permission from Bruce
Springsteen to use his song "My Hometown" in the movie. I went to New
York to meet with Springsteen's friend and biographer Dave Marsh to
solicit his help. Instead, Marsh took me to task for once running a
column by Hamper which poked fun at the Boss for being a

multimillionaire while singing songs about working in a factory.
Although I pleaded with Marsh that I despised everything that Hamper
ever stood for, he stated "You were irresponsible for running such a
thing. Ben Hamper is my ideological enemy." He showed me the door, thus
ending any chance of hanging with the guys at the Stone Pony. (Warner
Bros., the distributor of Roger & Me, and the largest media conglomerate
in the world but apparently no one's "ideological enemy"---later got
permission from Springsteen for the song.)

Through his appearance in Roger & Me, Ben became known throughout the
world as "that guy in the mental clinic playing basketball and singing
the Beach Boys song." More than one person, he tells me, has stopped him
on the street to comment on his pick and roll, his vocal range and the
"Hinckley-like glint in his eye." With one memorable movie part under
his belt, he still had not been widely recognized for the literary
talent he and the nuns always knew he had, so he holed up in his
backyard shed and began to write this book to set the record straight.

What has resulted on these pages, I believe, is a masterpiece of writing
which paints a darkly humorous account of working class life in America.
It establishes Ben as an important voice of the nineties, one which I'm
sure we will hear from again and again. At the very least, it should
confirm his place in publishing history as the first author to write a
major book while under medical supervision and the influence of eleven
different miracle drugs. (I can hear the Regis intro now: "Please
welcome author/outpatient... Ben Hamper!") And no matter what happens,
Hamper still holds the free-throw record both at the mental clinic and
at my house.

Of course, to read what he has to say on these pages, you may wonder who
the real crazy ones are. This insane system known as the assembly line
is designed to deny individuality and eliminate self-worth. Do you ever
wonder who built the car you drive? Do you think about the personal toll
it extracts from those individuals who spend the best years of their
lives in a hot, dirty, boring, dehumanizing factory? Out there in the
rust belt.., the heartbeat of America... well, they're paid so well, you
know, for their "unskilled" labor. Hell, they should feel lucky

they even have a job! In this book, Ben Hamper tells what a lucky guy
he is.

Ben and I both grew up in Flint, Michigan, the sons of factory workers.
We were never supposed to get out, and you were never supposed to hear
otr voices, it all comes down to a matter of class, of knowing our
place, and a place like Flint, Michigan, doesn't really exist in the
minds of the media or decision makers. Even the country's liberals are
at a loss when it comes to thinking about the Ben Hampers. They speak
often, as they should, of the ills of our society, but rarely do they
mention class, that growing distinction between rich and poor, between
those who sweat for their money and those who inherit it or legally
steal it. Do they ever give one iota of thought to what the person who
rivets their rocker panels is going through. Rocker panels, you say?
Huh? Exactly.

Ben and I were both determined when we left high school not to go on the
assembly line. So I started my own paper and Ben made up poems while
painting houses. Unfortunately, he decided one day that no one was going
to see any glimmer of creativity in him, so he gave up and went into the
shop. I too had similar feelings yet, after getting hired at Buick, I
just didn't have the guts to go through with it and called in sick my
first day of work. I never did walk through those gates. I am glad that
Ben and I finally ran into each other and, in our own ways, held on to
that belief that we were not invisible people with inaudible voices
simply because our fathers ate out of a lunch bucket and shopped at K
mart.

Both of us finally got our chance. But I still have the ball cap.

PROLOGUE.

DEAD ROCK STARS ARE SINGIN' FOR ME AND THE BOYS ON THE

Rivet Line tonight. Hendrix. Morrison. Zeppelin. The Dead Rock Star
catalogue churnin' outta Hogjaw's homemade boom box. There's Joplin and
Brian Jones and plenty of Lynyrd Skynyrd. Dead Rock Stars full of malice
and sweet confusion. Tonight and every night they bawl. The Dead Rock
Stars yowling at us as we kick out the quota.

We're all here. Department 07, Blazer/Suburban Line factory outpost
FF-15 stenciled in black spray paint on the big iron girder behind
Dougie's workbench. We're building expensive trucks for the General
Motors Corp. We've come back once again to tussle with our parts and to
hear the Dead Rock Stars harmonize above the industrial din.

The music of the Dead Rock Stars bursts from a ledge on Dougie's
workbench---our hideaway for Hoaw's stereo. Just before the start of
every shift, Dougie goes through the complicated ritual of threading the
cords and speaker wires from the stereo down a hollow leg in his
workbench and into the plug at the base of the water fountain behind his
job. The camouflage must be perfect. It is against company policy to use
a General

Motors electrical outlet as a source to summon up Dead Rock Stars. Only
battery-powered radios are allowed.

Originally HoKiaw complied with this rule. It wasn't easy. Due to the
enormous power demand of his radio creation, the Jaw was forced to lug a
car battery into work with him every shift. You would see him strainin'
his way through the parking lot every afternoon, a lunch bucket curled
under one arm and his trusty Delco Weatherbeater hoisted on top of his
other shoulder. Trailing behind him would be a couple of riveters with
their arms locked around the speaker boxes pallbearers bringin' around
the tombs of the Dead Rock Stars.

This went on for a month or so before the security guards decided to
halt the parade. Car batteries were declared illegal. Apparently the
guards had concluded that it was a mighty dangerous precedent to allow
workers to enter the plant premises with the batteries of their
automobiles stashed on their shoulders. After all, whose heads would be
in the vise if one of these sonic blasters pulled an overload up on the
assembly line and spewed a load of battery acid into the eyes and ears
of the screw brigade? Dead Rock Stars? Dead Shoprats? Not on my goddamn
beat.

As for the popularity of Dead Rock Stars on the Rivet Line, I've settled
upon this private theory. The music of the Dead Rock Stars is redundant
and completely predictable. We've heard their songs a million times
over. In this way, the music of the Dead Rock Stars infinitely mirrors
the drudgery of our assembly jobs. Since assembly labor is only a basic
extension of high school humdrum, it only stands to reason that the same
wearied hepsters who used to dodge economics class for a smoke in the
boys' room would later in life become fossilized to the hibernatin'
soundtracks of their own implacable youth. Let the eggheads in economics
have David Byrne and Laurie Anderson. The rivetheads be needin' their
"Purple Haze" and "Free Bird" just like tomorrow needs today.

It's mob rule, and the mob demands Dead Rock Stars in their choir loft.
Of course this arrangement provides for a fair amount of bitching from
linemates in our area who hold no sacred allegiance to the songs of the
rockin' deceased.

For example, there's Dick, the left-side rear spring man. He works
directly across from Dougie, travelin' a nightly path

that requires him to take the maximum dose of Dead Rock Star thud. It'.
nothing unusual to spot Dick takin' a deep drag from one of his
ever-present Winstons while gazin' head-on into the boom box with this
buggered glint in his eye and this twisted grimace on his face that
almost pleads aloud for some kind of transistor malfunction, tweeter
meltdown or any other variety of holy intervention.

Eddie and Jehan prefer rap music. On occasion, Jehan brings in his own
battery-powered blaster and engages in this furious battle-of-the-blare
with Hogjaw's almighty boom box. The Kings of Rap vs. The Dead Rock
Stars vs. The Steady Clang of Industry. It makes for quite the raucous
stew--sorta like pluggin' your head into the butt end of a Concorde
during acceleration mode.

Management's stance on all of this usually boils down to a simple matter
of see no evil, hear no evil. If the guy in the tie can't actually see
the visible evidence of how you're wastin' millions of corporate
dollars, he's most often inclined to let the music flow. It keeps him
off the hook. He doesn't have to play killjoy. He can dummy up and
pretend that all those guitar solos he hears screechin' through the
middle of the night are only happy by-products of a contented work
force. His boss will love him, his wife will love him, his men will like
him and the Company will somehow stagger on. Industry on the march.
Bravo!

But even in victory, there's often a price to pay. Let us not forget
that General Motors has already informed the work force that there won't
be any profit sharing to spread around this year. Too much waste. Too
many buyouts. Too few pennies. And I imagine those damn utility bills
are way out of sight too. "

Oh well, what can I say? I'm just sitting here waiting for the next
chassis to arrive. I'm tapping my toes to the beat of the Dead Rock
Stars. Ten feet to my right, I can hear the trickle of untold billions
being' sucked outta the corporate coffers through the base of the water
fountain behind Dougie's workbench.

I'm thinking that rock stars, even dead ones, don't come cheap.

1.

I WAS SEVEN YEARS OLD THE FIRST TIME I EVER SET FOOT inside an
automobile factory. The occasion was Family Night at the old Fisher Body
plant in Flint where my father worked the second shift.

General Motors provided this yearly intrusion as an opportunity for the
kin of the work force to funnel in and view their fathers, husbands,
uncles and granddads as they toiled away on the assembly line. If
nothing else, this annual peepshow lent a whole world of credence to our
father's daily grumble. The assembly line did indeed stink. The noise
was very close to intolerable. The heat was one complete bastard. Little
wonder the old man's socks always smelled like liverwurst bleached for a
week in the desert sun.

For my mother, it was at least one night out of the year when she could
verify the old man's whereabouts. One night a year when she could be
reasonably assured that my father wasn't lurchin' over a pool table at
the Patio Lounge or picklin' his gizzard at any one of a thousand beer
joints out of Dort Highway. My father loved his drink. He wasn't nearly
as fond of labor.

On this night, the old man was present. I remember my mother being
relieved. If he hadn't been there, it would have been difficult for her
to explain to my little brother and me why we had made this exhaustive
trek through Satan's playpen just to ogle a bunch of oily strangers and
their grinnin' lineage.

After a hundred wrong turns and dead ends, we found my old man down on
the trim line. His job was to install windshields using this goofy
apparatus with large suction cups that resembled an octopus being
crucified. A car would nuzzle up to the old man's work area and he would
be waiting for it, a cigarette dangling from his lip, his arms wrapped
around the windshield contraption as if it might suddenly rebel and bolt
off for the ocean. Car, windshield. Car, windshield. Car, windshield. No
wonder my father preferred playin' hopscotch with barmaids. This kind of
repetition didn't look like any fun at all.

And here, all of this time, I had assumed that Dad just built the
vehicles all by his lonesome. I always imagined that building adult cars
was identical to building cars in model kits. You were given a large box
with illustrated directions, a clutter of fenders, wheels and trunk
lids, and some hip-high vat of airplane glue. When one was finished, you
simply motioned to some boss-type in the aisle: "Hey, bring me another
kit and make it a goddamn Corvette this time!"

We stood there for forty minutes or so, a miniature lifetime, and the
pattern never changed. Car, windshield. Car, windshield. Drudgery piled
atop drudgery. Cigarette to cigarette. Decades rolling through the
rafters, bones turning to dust, stubborn clocks gagging down flesh,
another windshield, another cigarette, wars blinking on and off,
thunderstorms muttering the alphabet, crows on power lines asleep or
dead, that mechanical octopus squirming against nothing, nothing,
NOTHINGNESS. I wanted to shout at my father "Do something else!" Do
something else or come home with us or flee to the nearest watering
hole. DO SOMETHING ELSE! Car, windshield. Car, windshield. Christ, no.

Thank God that, even at age seven, I knew what I was going to be when I
grew up. There wouldn't be any

car/windshield cha-cha awaiting me. I was going to be an ambulance
driver, the most glamorous calling in the world. I would spend my days
zooming from one mangled calamity to the next. I would have full license
to poke my face into the great American bucket, seat bloodfest. The
metallic crunch, the spiderweb of cracked glass (no doubt installed by
my zombied father), the stupid eyeballs of the ripped and ravaged, the
blood and guts of the accordion carnage. Ah, yes. To engage the sweet
wail of the sirens. To scoop teeth from out of the dashboard. That would
be the life. Everything my mother insisted we avoid when we passed a
wreck. "Boys, don't look out the window," she would tremble. I always
looked. I had to look.

My mind was set. Someday I'd be an ambulance driver. I would eat at
McDonald's every night. I would buy a house right across the street from
Tiger Stadium. My old man was nuts. Car, windshield, car, windshield:
what kind of idiot occupation was that?

As far as I remember, we never returned for another Family Night. It was
just as well, for in all likelihood, we'd never have spotted my father.
He had this habitual lean for the nearest exit. As soon as my
grandmother lined him up for another job, he'd disappear into an eternal
crawl for the coldest mug of beer in town. He took turns being a car
salesman, a milkman, a construction worker, a railroad hand, a house
painter, a mechanic and a landscaper. Each time the suds would devour
his sense of duty, he'd get canned or simply quit, and back he'd come to
his lumpy retreat on the living room sofa. My grandmother would be less
than pleased.

Frequently mixed in with these dashed occupations were the inevitable
sojourns back to the assembly line. It was not the least bit uncommon
for a man to be fired at one factory on a Friday and be given the red
carpet treatment at another automotive facility across town on Monday.
If this is Tuesday, this must be Buick. If this is Thursday, how 'bout
AC Spark Plug. During the sixties there were ten or so factories in
Flint workin' three shifts per day and in this kind of boomtown climate
even the beggars could afford to be choosers.

here, Mr. Beerbreath. So glad to have you collapse on our doorstep."

I can't recall how many times my old man spun through the revolving
doors of General Motors. However, around the house, we could always
sense when Dad was cleaving through the factory rut. He would enter the
house with this bulldog grimace. He'd gobble his meal, arise, put on one
of his Arnie Palmer golf sweaters and whisk off for a troll through
publand. Often, he wouldn't return for days. Then, suddenly one morning,
there he'd be reekin' of Pabst and pepperoni, passed out in a fetal
position on the sofa, wearin' the same cool duds he left home in.

Not surprisingly, this led to a fair amount of friction between my
mother and father. I could hear them early in the morning, their
ferocious bitching driftin' through the heater vent up and into the
bedroom I shared with three of my brothers.

It didn't take a marriage counselor or referee to sift to the bottom of
these parental showdowns. Propped up in my bunk, I could easily discern
the irrationality of my old man's barbs and the meek desperation of my
mother's rebuttals. My father insisted that my mother was yanking the
family against him. "You're turnin' the whole bunch of them into goddamn
mama's boys!" the old man would rant. "Every one of them acts like I'm
some kind of villain."

Meanwhile, my mother would score with a hefty uppercut of fact. "Don't
blame me, Bernard. Maybe if you hung around the house more than two
nights a month the kids might get to know you." My old man abhorred the
truth. It was like some horrible, foreign diction that ripped at his
core. The car payment was truth. The telephone bill was truth. The six
sleeping children, plus the one sitting bolt upright in his bed, were
truth. Worst of all, the cars and windshield were truth.

Cars, windshields. Cars, fenders. Cars, whatever. The ongoing shuffle of
the shoprat. It wasn't as if this profession was a plague that appeared
out of nowhere to ensnare my old man. Quite the opposite was true. His
daddy was a shoprat. His daddy's daddy was a shoprat. Perhaps his
daddy's daddy's

daddy would have been a shoprat if only Hank Ford would have dreamed
this shit up a little sooner.

My old man's mother had been a shoprat. The same with Uncle Jack and
Uncle Gene and Uncle Clarence. Ditto dear old Aunt Laura. My mother's
dad had been a shoprat. (If you're wondering what happened to my
mother's mother and her sense of duty well, Christ, somebody had to stay
home and pack this clan a lunch.)

Right from the outset, when the call went out for shoprats, my ancestors
responded in almost Pavlovian compliance. The family tree practically
listed right over on its side with eager men and women grasping for that
great automotive dream.

My great-grandfather got the wheel rollin'. In 1910, he began his
twenty-year tenure-down on Industrial Avenue piecing together mobilized
buggies. This was a period right after the invention of the gas-powered
engine and long before the introduction of freeway sniping. My
great-grandfather would have hung in there longer, but he bumped heads
in the thirties with something called the Depression.

My grandfather hired on in 1930. He rode out the turbulence of the
Depression and worked as a skilled tradesman for thirty-two years at
Buick. He had no plans to retire, but the cancer took him down at age
fifty-two. He died one week to the day after he cashed his first pension
check.

My other grandfather hitched his way from Springfield, Illinois, to the
Vehicle City in 1925. He put in forty years, from Babe Ruth to the
Beatles, as an inspector at the Chevrolet Engine plant. He always
claimed that the only reason he retired was his disdain for the new
breed of autoworkers in the sixties. He referred to them as
"candy-asses." I assumed he was remarking about some inedible new brand
of chocolate bar.

During the war, my grandmother helped build machine guns at the AC Spark
Plug factory. She later switched over to working on aircraft out on Dort
Highway. To this day, my grandmother still helps me change the oil in my
Camaro.

My Aunt Laura and her husband Jack put in a combined sixty-five years at
the AC plant and the Buick Foundry. Uncle Jack was well known for his
lust for overtime, often volunteering to work double shifts and
sixteen-hour days. This may provide a valuable clue as to why they never
had any children.

For sheer longevity, my Uncle Clarence outdistanced everyone in the
family tree. From 1919 till 1964, an amazing span of forty-five years,
he answered the whistle over at the Buick Engine plant.

Forty-five years! That's longer than the life expectancy of over
two-thirds of the world's population. Forty-five years! Shit, just
imagine -from a cradle down in Dixie to his hunched over demise on the
potty E1vis Presley never even lived that long. Forty-five years! After
all of that, what do they give you for a retirement gift? A grandfather
clock? An iron lung? A bronzed calendar the size of a Yugo?

With a heritage like that you'd think my old man would have had enough
grit and grind floatin' through his gene pool to practically assure his
pod development as a full-bloomin' archetype of the species. A purebred
shoprat, begotten from sperms that jingle, jangle, jingle to the jungle
strains of Greaseball Mecca. The fair-haired boy in the rhinestone
coveralls. Spawn of labor. Self-winding fetus with the umbilical lasso
looped around the blue-collared neckbone of Mr. Goodwrench.

Apparently, the old man wasn't much for heritage. He tumbled out of the
family tree, urinated on it and never looked back. For him, General
Motors was nothing more than a recurring nuisance, an occasional pit
stop where he could tidy up his bankroll before troopin' out on another
aimless binge.

It was unfortunate that my father couldn't combine his love for beer and
his dependence on pocket money into one workable formula. After all, he
wasn't the only palooka in the family who tipped toward the tapper. The
majority of my ancestors were heavy drinkers. Excluding my grandmother,
all of them imbibed frequently as hard-laborin' shoprats are wont to do.

My mother's dad was especially skilled at juggling work and play. Monday
morning through Friday afternoon he was the consummate provider.
Straight home from work, dinner, the evening news and immediately into
bed at 7:00 P.M. He arose each weekday at 3:30 A.M., fixed himself some
black coffee, turned on the kitchen radio, smoked a handful of Lucky
Strikes and waited to leave for work at a quarter to five. This regimen
never varied one iota in the forty years he worked for GM.

Come the quittin' whistle on Friday afternoon, a colossal metamorphosis
took place. So long, shoprat. Hello, hooligan. As my mother tells it,
they never caught more than a staggerin' glimpse of my grandfather on
any given weekend. He occasionally dropped in for a quick supper
whereupon he would substitute the dinner hour for an excuse to denounce
my grandma's cooking, castigate the children and generously mutter
"goddamn it-alls" for the benefit of the rest of the defective tniverse.

My grandfather surely could be an ornery bastard, but it should be
thusly noted that he was always there to answer the bell. He had a wife
and three kids to house and feed. He turned the trick daily. He may have
had a passionate lust for booze, but it never interfered with his job at
General Motors. When he retired, he was a very wealthy man. Devotion,
responsability and duty to the Corporation. The bottle was never far
away, but it always rode shotgun.

Seeing as how my old man constructed this formula completely
ass-backwards, the entire burden of support fell solely into my mother's
lap. While the old man was off baby-sitting barstools, it was left up to
my mom to raise and provide for eight kids.

Throughout my youth, my mother worked two jobs a day. Nine to five, she
was a medical secretary at a doctor's office. She walked the two miles
to work each day because we were too broke to afford a car. By night,
she worked as a medical records transcriber, pounding the dictaphone
machine for Hurley Hospital in the tiny, makeshift office in the corner
of the living room.

It was unfortunate for my old man that my mother was such a strict and
loyal Catholic. Consequently, my mother wasn't allowed to practice the
pill and the baby faucet was allowed to leak on unabated. The final
tally showed five boys and three girls of which I was the eldest. Eight
was indeed enough. In fact, eight was plainly too goddamn many. Every
time the stork paid a visit, he left a new bundle of joy for my mother
and a fresh load in the chamber of the gun pointed at my old man's
skull.

It seemed with each new addition to our family, my father slid further
and further away from accountability. He liked children, he just didn't
have the space for a clan of his own. It was like the cars and the
windshield. The equation never

balanced out. The undertow of all this repetition was a riddle he could
never hope to untangle.

By the age of ten, I realized that my old man was not soon to be
confused with Ward Cleaver. I was hip to all his ploys and well aware of
his flair for bullshit. His boozin' never particularly bothered me. I
figured if my father wanted to go get plowed, it was his decision.

What bothered me was my old man's insistence on fabricating dreadful,
transparent lies. We both knew what he was up to so why not just 'fess
up and admit the obvious.

I surely would have respected him more if he'd only come up to me on
those occasions of rabid thirst and said "Look, son. I feel like some
kind of suffocatin' beast. The world is knockin' me around something
awful and it's only fuckin' proper that I find a bar at once. I want to
get smashed. I want to play footsies with the locals. I want to sing
like Dean Martin. I want to drink until they start clickin' the lights
off and on and then I wanna weave home and collapse into bed with the
weight of the world slidin' off the sheets. You may not understand any
of this now, but someday you'll have a world of your own to contend
with."

My friends were always amused with my old man's approach to the duties
of fatherhood. Most of their fathers were dedicated shoprats, shackled
to some factory titty like hornets to honey. Their fathers wouldn't miss
a day's work if their spinal cords were severed. Obedience to the
Corporation. An honest day's pay for an honest day's toil. Car, bumper.
Car, door latch. Car, dipstick.

For them, my father was the mold breaker the curious renegade who dared
to scrunch himself up in fetal bliss, smack dab in the middle of the
workday, snoozin' off the effects of another nocturnal creepy-crawl.

After school, we would tiptoe past him, snickering back and forth at the
behemoth in full slumber. You had to be very cautious. To awaken the old
man from his beer coma would earn you an immediate pass to have your
head dislodged. Sometimes, just for laughs, I'd get as close as I
possibly dared and jut my middle finger right in his face. The poor
bastard was like some dormant circus geek and he never even knew it. Of
course, my friends preferred to catch my old man in his

glorious prime. This usually occurred whenever I'd have a friend over
for the night. My old man would weave in while we were watchin' some
late-night horror flick and immediately take over the entertainment.
After a full night of drinkin', there was nothing' my old man enjoyed
more than a captive audience for his sloshed bar chatter. Even if he was
playin' to a crowd comprised of two sleep-starved ten-year-olds.

There were the stories about how he broke said pool stick over said
chiseler's head and how the babes he hung with had chests the size of
pony kegs ("They'd be through with you boys before you ever got it
unzipped," he'd chuckle) and how he knew Tiger great Denny McLain on a
first-name basis and how Denny better watch his shit cuz these mob
pricks were no one to try and slip a change-up by and how he was rapin'
the local bookies with his expertise at pickin' the over and under.

It went on and on. Typically, he would conclude these drunken seminars
with horrible denunciations of the black race. My old man was a master
of deflecting his own guilt onto anyone other than himself. The blacks
were his favorite dumping ground. He would blame them for everything.
He'd make all these demented assertions about how Hitler was stopped too
early because once he ditched all the Jews, he was gonna wipe out the
niggers. Fine fodder for festerin' ten-year-old minds. We preferred
hearin' about large breasts and the woes of Denny McLain.

Despite the racial garbage, my friends all agreed that my old man's beer
blather beat the shit out of listenin' to their fathers whine about what
was on television and how the lawn needed trimmin'. Their fathers were
as robotic in their home life as they were about their factory jobs. It
was as if the shop had hollowed them out and replaced their intestines
with circuit breakers. Car, tailpipe. Food, pork chop. Car, brake pad.
Rent, Friday. Car, hubcap. Life, toothpaste.

Mike Gellately's father was a good example. Almost every evening after
dinner I headed over to Mike's house. He would greet me at the side door
and we'd trail through the kitchen on our way up to his bedroom.

Without fail, Mr. Gellately would be propped at the kitchen table--a
six-pack of Blue Ribbon at his right elbow, an overloaded ashtray at his
left. He would be staring straight

ahead at the kitchen sink and his faithful radio would be stationed in
front of him, forever tuned in to the Detroit Tigers or Red Wings. Sip,
puff, belch. Occasionally, he would startle the homestead my muttering a
random "shit" or "fuck." That would be the extent of his nightly
vocabulary.

Neither Mike nor I understood the first thing about our fathers. They
were like the living dead. Their patterns differed Mike's old man held a
job most of the time, my old man was on some kind of less-paying
treadmill--but their ruts were terribly predictable. We grew to hate our
fathers.

By the time I approached teenhood, I no longer wanted to be an ambulance
driver. I didn't know what the hell I wanted to be. Mike always
suggested that we become disc jockeys. I never argued. A disc jockey
would certainly lead a glamorous life. Anything had to be better than
the cadaver shuffle the factories were peddlin' our fathers.

Even the neighborhood we lived in was a by-product of General Motors.
During the boom years of the twenties, houses had to be constructed in
order to keep up with the influx of factory workers arriving from the
South to find jobs. General Motors built their own little suburb on the
north side of Flint. In keeping with their repetitive nature, all the
houses were duplicates.

Our neighborhood was strictly blue-collar and predominantly Catholic.
The men lumbered back and forth to the factories while their wives
raised large families, packed lunch buckets and marched the kids off to
the nuns.

My family was no exception. From the very beginning, I was raised a good
Catholic boy. Catholic church, Catholic school, Catholic home, Catholic
drone. I was baptized, confirmed, anointed and tattooed with ashes all
in the hope that one day I might have a spot reserved for me on that
glorious flotilla up to the heavens.

No matter how tight the budget was at home, my mother always managed to
scrape up the necessary funds to provide for our Catholic education. It
was never intended that I grow up to be anything other than a good
Catholic man--a steady churchgoer with a steady factory income, a
station wagon parked under the elms and a wife with an automatic door on
her womb.

St. Luke's Elementary provided a very capable boot camp environment for
those who would later deposit themselves in the rigid bustle of factory
life. The education-through intimidation technique favored there was not
unlike the jarhead gang mentality of the General Motors floorlords. Our
fathers' overseers were brutes with clipboards, sideburns and tangled
rhetoric. Our overseers, the sisters of St. Luke's, were brutes with
clipboards, sideburns and tangled rosaries.

A pattern was developing. During the seventh and eighth grades at St.
Luke's, the nuns divided the students into groups according to
intelligence and behavior. There were three groups: the obedient
eggheads, the bland robots of mediocrity and, my group, the who-gives a
shit hey have you heard them ew-Creamalbumy
etyupmydaddy'sastinkin'shoprat-too clan.

Being a proud underachiever of the latter grouping, I was relieved of
much of the pressure to succeed in life and was left with my drowsy
peers to clog up the classroom while we awaited our almost certain fate
as future factory nimwits. Not much was expected of us and we went out
of our way to ensure that was how it would remain. Consequently, the
nuns cut us a great deal of slack figuring that for every Einstein and
Aristotle flipped out of the cookie cutter there had to be a couple
mental dwarves available to assemble a life's procession of Buicks and
Impalas for those on the road to high places.

Of course this method of reasoning didn't exactly jibe with our parents'
outlook on destiny. At report card time, our folks would raise all kinds
of hell while cringing over our grades. I suppose it only makes sense
that every morn and pop wants more for their tuition dollar than a
series of lazy failures guaranteed to pave the lane right into the turd
dump of the assembly line. You could achieve that predestination at any
public school and save the family till a lootful.

My folks were no exception. My mother would gaze at my report card and
the color would leave her face. It was like a slap to the head .... a
horrible betrayal on my part considering the long hours of work she had
put in to assure her son a fine Catholic education.

"An E in Math, a D in History and Science, a D- IN RELIGION?" my mother
would howl. "How could any child

who attends mass SIX days a week possibly do so poorly in Religion?"

I would make a pathetic attempt to switch to the highlights. "Look,
Morn, I did raise my Self-Conduct mark from a D to a C-. And I did
receive passing grades in Music and Gym."

"Music and Gym? MUSIC AND GYM! Just what is that supposed to tell me?
That you have a secure future singing the national anthem at basketball
games? Just wait until your father takes a look at this mess."

I could wait. If there was one thing I detested, it was my old man
preachin' to me about my shortcomings as a model Catholic youth. It was
such a bad joke. What the hell qualified him to criticize anything I
did? I felt that he should reserve his critiques for matters that more
closely coincided with his niche in life. Education? Shit. He should
have stuck to advising me on the proper methods of wife cheating and
check forging and navigating a car with triple vision. And what about
the studied art of smoking an entire Winston without ever removing it
from your mouth or the precious knack of impersonating a morgue stiff
for forty-eight consecutive hours on the living room sofa. This was the
kind of heavy data no nun could ever pass along.

I was my father's seed. Technically, I guess that was reason enough for
him to meddle with my grade situation.

"You think you're hot shit, don't you, son?" my father would begin. I
would shrug nervously. "You think you've got a pretty soft thing going
for yourself. Am I right?" I would shake my head slowly.

"Well, the way I see it, you ain't nothin' but a bad actor. You may be
snowin' your mother, but I can smell your game a mile away. You wanna
play wiseass with me and I'll knock you down a few pegs. Anytime you
feel like you can take the old man, I'll be right here. Anytime you
wanna wear the pants in the family, you just let me know. I'll be more
than willing to put my foot right up your ass. Understand, son?"

"Yes," I would mumble enraged and full of regrets. If only I were eight
inches taller and had a reckless set of balls. I could envision myself
springing from the interrogation seat and sucker punching my old man
right in the chops. "Here, sweet father of mine, take this busted lip as
a loving token of my esteemed

adulation and let this punch to the rib cage serve as a loving reminder
that your eldest son worships the ground you piss on."

But back to reality or, at least, my father's version of such. "Now,
son, you must realize that your mother and I have worked very hard to
see that you receive some proper schooling. All this report card tells
me is that you don't give a good goddamn one way or the other. You keep
this shit up and you'll be just like half the other morons in this city
who end up spinnin' their wheels and suckin' some heavy ass down at
Chevrolet or over at Buick. You can clown it up now, but you'll be
laughin' out of the other side of your mouth once the blisters appear
and some bastard starts leanin' over your shoulder with another bumper
to fasten down."

I heard this speech often during my formative years. I came to refer to
it as my old man's "State of the Hometown" address. Do as I say, not as
I did, kid. My friends received similar pronouncements from their
fathers. The factories weren't looking for a few good men. They were
dragging the lagoon for optionless bumpkins with brats to feed and
livers to bathe. An educated man might hang on for a while, but was apt
to flee at any given whistle. That wasn't any good for corporate
continuity. GM wanted the salt of the earth, dung-heavers, flunkies and
leeches men who would grunt the day away void of self betterment,
numbed-out cyborgs willing to swap cerebellum loaf for patio furniture,
a second jalopy and a tragic carpet ride deboarding curbside in front of
some pseudo-Tudor dollhouse on the outskirts of town.

Which is to say that being a factory worker in Flint, Michigan, wasn't
something purposely passed on from generation to generation. To grow up
believing that you were brought into this world to follow in your
daddy's footsteps, just another chip-off-the-old-shoprat, was to engage
in the lowest possible form of negativism. Working the line for GM was
something fathers did so that their offspring wouldn't have to.

In the case of my ancestry, we had been blessed with this ongoing cycle
of martyrs. Men who toiled tirelessly in an effort to provide their sons
and daughters with a better way of living. Unfortunately, at the same
time, our family was also cursed by a steady flow of uninspired
descendants who scoffed at alternative

opportunity and merely hung around waitin' for the baton to be passed
from crab claw to puppy paw.

By deftly flunking my way through St. Luke's Junior High, I was already
exhibiting symptoms of one who was pointing squarely to the loading dock
of the nearest General Motors outpost. Even my father was accurate with
his diagnosis. Another Hamper banging at the gate of idiot industry with
a ten-foot scowl and a forehead fresh for stampin'. I could practically
hear my great-grandfather yelpin' from his crypt: "Not another one! Hey,
don't any of you pricks wanna become lawyers or somethin'? Huh? HUH?"
Silent decades drifted by choking on indecision. "Well, piss on ya, I'm
going back to sleep. Car, windshield. Car, fuel pump. Car, ignition
switch. Car, zzzzzz..."

2.

FLINT, MICHIGAN. THE VEHICLE CITY. GREASEBALL MECCA.

The birthplace of thud-rockers Grand Funk Railroad, game show geek Bob
Eubanks and a hobby shop called General Motors. A town where every
infant twirls a set of channel locks in place of a rattle. A town whose
collective bowling average is four times higher than the IQ of its
inhabitants. A town that genuflects in front of used-car lots and
scratches its butt with the jagged peaks of the automotive sales chart.
A town where having a car up on blocks anywhere on your property bestows
upon you a privileged sense of royalty. Beer Belly Valhalla. Cog Butcher
of the world. Gravy on your french fries.

Flint, Michigan. Detroit as seen backwards through a telescope. The
callus on the palm of the state shaped like a welder's mitt. A town
where 66.5 percent of the working citizenship are in some way, shape or
form linked to the shit-encrusted underbelly of a French buggy racer
named Chevrolet and a floppy-eared Scotchman named Buick. A town where
23.5 percent of the population pimp everything from Elvis on velvet to
horse tranquilizers to Halo Burgers to NRA bumper stickers. A town where
the remaining 10 percent sit

back and watch it all go by sellin' their blood, rollin' convenience
stores, puffin' no-brand cigarettes while cursin' their

wives and kids and neighbors and the flies sneakin' through the

screens and the piss-warm quarts of Red White & Blue and the

Skylark parked out back with the busted tranny. "Just like half the
other morons..." my old man had

warned. He was certainly more wise than most of my friends'

fathers. They questioned nothing. They accepted their birth rights and
strode sheep-like into the vast head-fuck of the

factories. My old man was at least honest with himself. He

realized a ball vise when he saw one. It didn't matter that he

was a five-star drunk with the cumulative ambition of an

eggplant. The old man held on to a chunk of his soul, concealing

it from the fangs of lamebrain labor, accomplishing a small

piece of everything while doing absolutely nothing. In Flint,

Michigan, that was an achievement in itself.

		My old man was determined to make sure that I, Bernard

Egan Hamper III, his pipsqueak namesake, the eldest of his

five sons, wouldn't follow the feed line into General Motors.

When I was at St. Luke's, he tore at my ass relentlessly. When

it came time for high school, he often threatened to ship me off

to a military academy. My morn furiously opposed this solution.

Her suggestion was that I enter the seminary. Fortunately,

both of these horrid plots were laid to ruin due to lack of

funds.

		I entered St. Michael's High School with a more determined outlook on
things. I was pretty sure that I didn't want

any part of General Motors and I didn't profess any great yearning to
become a world-class drunkard. Beyond that, I

knew very little. Mike and I still clung loosely to our private

visions of becoming hotshot radio personalities. We had an

ever-escalating fondness for the female breast and in order to

collect heavily on the mammo-meter we had to achieve some

kind of cool notoriety. We figured just about any radio hack

worth his beans was bound to be holdin' fort with big-busted

Donovan mamas and bra-free Beatle booty.

	Spurred on by parental badgering and fueled with the

heady octane of boobs galore, I pulled off an amazing stunt my

freshman year at St. Mike's. I wound up making the honor roll!

Apparently, my leftover cronies from St. Luke's found this

development hard to grasp, for on the list saluting the honor students
that hung on the bulletin board in the school lobby someone had scrawled
the words "How?" and "Why?" next to my name. I didn't have a ready
answer. What could I say? "I owe it all to the persistence of my drunken
pa and a hormonal yen for watermelon teats?"

Before my sophomore year, they closed down St. Michael's. Shit, I
thought, right when i was gatherin' a groove. The diocese decided that
the small parish high schools were a thing of the past. In other words,
resorting to the norms of Catholicism, they had fond a more lucrative
method of bleeding coin out of the flock.

Ground was broken on the northern border of Flint and construction began
on this enormous structure that would consolidate all of the area's
Catholic high schools. Say good night to St. Mike, St. Matt, St. Agnes,
St. John, St. Mary and to those southside swine, Holy Redeemer. What was
wrong with them Redeemers, anyway? Couldn't they find a saint to lift a
name from? Seem' as how they. annually mopped ass on the football field,
possibly St. Joseph of Namath would have been appropriate.

The braintrust at the diocese ran into the same predicament when they
settled on the name for the new high school we were all about to attend.
They called it Luke Powers High. Hmmm, Luke Powers. I must have skipped
right past that guy during Bible Study. Surely, there had to be more
saints out there without earthly monuments celebrating their good deeds.
Luke Powers? It sounded like a cowpoke from an old episode of The Big
Valley or the name of some pockmarked pump jockey down at the corner
Sunoco.

During the tenth grade of Powers, I was able to bluff my way onto the
honor roll once more. It wasn't so much attributable to any sense of
goal-setting on my part, I just had nothing else to do but hit the books
as I baby-sat my younger brothers and sisters night in and night out. My
mother was now working the second shift at McLaren Hospital. My father
was quickly becoming an endangered species at home. That left me in
charge of six kids to cook for, delegate chores for, clean crappy
diapers for, officiate rumbles for and to safely stow in

bed and bunk. When all grew peaceful, I would flip open the books.

Powers was significantly different from the small parish schools I had
attended at St. Luke's and St. Mike's. My classmates weren't
middle-class kids. These were not the sons and daughters of the assembly
line. Most of the new blood at Powers hailed from wealthy families. Some
of them weren't even Catholic. Their parents just deposited them here as
a means of avoiding the turbulence of schoolin' down with white trash
and blackies and hoodlums and druggies and things that go bump near the
water fountain. None of them possessed any shoprat heritage nor were any
likely to spend a lifetime affixing trunk lids to the ass ends of
Buicks.

Things were definitely on the upswing my sophomore year at Powers. My
honor roll status delighted my mother and seemed to soothe my father's
doubts regarding my factory-bent tendencies. I was even beginning to
think I might defy my shoprat heritage after all. I became interested in
poetry and spent long hours up in my bedroom concocting silly little
love poems that combined all the worst elements of Rod McKuen and my
hippie mentor, Richard Brautigan. I actually penned my own large
collection of poems called "Intestines of a Balloon." Ouch.

I did discover that the poetry, as awkward and schmaltzy as it was, drew
great favor from the girls of my sophomore class. Suddenly I was no
longer just another wiseacre with a pesky libido and murky future. My
lovelorn poetics won them over. I grabbed an honorable mention for one
of my poems in a contest that ran in the Detroit News. Presto, I was
like some hippie-dippie Alan Alda twangin' heartstrings in the sap-happy
Love Generation. Someone to be trusted. An alternative to the
sex-starved jockos and wily potheads and the piranha greasers in their
clunky Dingo boots. Everyone had an angle and since I didn't have any
money or any terrific athletic prowess and I didn't dance very well, I
relied on the muse of the poet to garner whatever female appreciation I
could drum up.

We had an English teacher named Miss Kane who took a particular shine to
my budding enshrinement as the poet laureate of Powers High. She often
mimeographed my poems and passed them around her Creative Writing class.
She'd read

some of my poems in front of the class and the girls all smiled
brightly in my direction. I smiled back, thankful for their innocence
and terrible judgment of talent. Meanwhile, the guys all slouched down
in their desks, half pissed that they hadn't stumbled onto such an
ingenious scam.

By my junior year in high school, strange new vices had risen from out
of the murk to pull me under. I exchanged my textbooks for Mothers of
Invention albums. I grew my hair down to my ass and attended classes on
an infrequent basis. I exchanged my loner personage to join up with a
small band of brooding hooligans. I spent most of my time swallowing or
inhaling every type of illegal substance they would pass me. Needless to
say, my two-year run on the honor roll dissolved in one glorious heap of
incompletes and lazy failures.

i was feeling more and more pressure trying to hold the family together
while my mother worked. The occasional run ins with my old man were
tense. He'd rip into my ass about the length of my hair, my hoodlum
pals, my grades, my wardrobe, anything he could find. I would stand
there in silent rage. All I could really dwell on was kicking his
drunken ass. My fists would ball up and then recoil.

In the end, I was just too chickenshit to try the old man. I turned to
the bonds I had made with my new friends. We ate acid at every
opportunity. I sat in the back of the classroom throughout my junior
year stoned to the gills on orange barrel mescaline or windowpane acid.
Sometimes I laughed so hard at the proceedings taking place around me
that the teacher would ask me if I had a problem. Outside of the fact
that I hardly knew my name and everything around me had this incredible
purple glow, there was no problem at all. Acid replaced lots of things.
Most importantly, it took down reality.

By the time my senior year rolled around, things were beginning to get
jumbled. My father had mysteriously slid away one autumn night and the
only information any of us had was that he was shacking up with some bar
floozie somewhere in southern Florida. He'd taken off without so much as
an adios or a fresh change of skivvies. This desertion again thrust me
into the role of surrogate dad while my mother toiled long hours on the
hospital night shift.

My devotion to school matters became a complete joke. I

rarely attended class, preferring to hang out at a friend's dreary
apartment with a bunch of fellow lunks who were most certainly headed
for jail, the morgue or General Motors. Our scholastic majors ranged
from chemical abuse to hashish peddling. My long-standing reign as love
poem ambassador dissolved into a mire of radical blatherings. Quaaludes
became the new curse on campus and I gobbled my fair share, often
falling asleep in various stairwells and auditorium catwalks.

Having arrived this far on the academic route, it was time for all
students to start funneling a vision career-wise. They had guidance
counselors who summoned you into their offices attempting to find what
kind of mold fit you best. Doctor? Attorney? Accountant? Shoprat? No,
no, no they never mentioned shoprat. Nor did they mention serial killer,
pimp, poet, ambulance driver or disc jockey.

I went to the guidance counselor's office and stared at the floor. He
rummaged through a thick file cabinet bursting with worthless, lunatic
occupational data while I sat there and daydreamed about Darlene
Ranzik's breasts. The lime green halter was the best. You got a good
sideview of the complete works. They were as round as cantaloupes and
easily twice the size. Some lucky fucker was gonna tie his nuts around a
wedding band and be nursin' on those miracles for the rest of his life.
It wouldn't be me. I didn't have a game plan in order.

The guidance counselor pulled file after file. Time dragged on and on
and I sensed that he was growing increasingly edgy with my indifference
to latching on to a viable vocational goal. I felt sorta sorry for him.
There just wasn't anything in there for me. This seemed to upset him far
more than it did me.

I began writing love poems again. For the first time, I had a specific
reason why. Her name was Joanie, a hippie maiden with beautiful red
hair. We had attended Catholic school together ever since St. Luke's
though we had never really spoken. We were attracted to each other, but
shy. The arrival of drugs seemed to knock that barrier down. Before
long, we were inseparable skipping classes, making love in my station
wagon, dropping LSD at football games, trompin' off to every rotten rock
'n' roll concert within the Saginaw valley.

I enjoyed spending time at Joanie's house. It was like a replica of what
I wished mine could be. Her father was a

wonderful man--always fair, always friendly, always available. Not an
easy trick considering Joanie's folks had eleven kids. You would think
her father would be the ragin' alcoholic nomad. Not so. They all got
along just fine and it seemed I would concoct any excuse just to visit
there.

By the middle of my senior year things at home were at least beginning
to settle into a tolerable routine. With the old man gone there were no
more early morning tantrums. No more stolen paperboy loot. No more idiot
IOU's wadded up in sock drawers where our allowance money used to hide.
No more intimidation and lies and confusion and guilt and surrenders to
snockered lunacy. Joanie would come by and together we would cook dinner
for the troop. We'd play with my brothers and sisters and once they were
put in bed, we'd lie down and make love in the middle of the living room
floor. It all seemed to be healing over. Even my stinkin' love poems
were improving vastly.

Nothing lasts forever. One Friday night in March, while we were all
huddled around wrestling and watching The Brady Bunch, my old man
reappeared. He had been AWOL for a total of six months. And, as always,
he acted like he had merely stepped out to buy a loaf of bread or get a
haircut. He was wearing this ugly Hawaiian shirt and reeked of alcohol.
"Hi, son," he said. I didn't respond. Within ten minutes, he was snorin'
like a bulldozer on the sofa.

The old man was back and as full of shit as ever. The flooze down in
Florida had tired of his mooching and sent him packing northward.
Everything returned to its horrible norm. What little faith I had in
anything soon evaporated. I retreated deep into my own little universe
of chemicals and inhalants. The higher I got, the less it hurt. This
arrangement didn't preclude me from making a major ass out of myself on
a regular basis.

There was the time I flipped out in Journalism class. My job was to
provide headlines for all the articles that went into the school
newspaper. My fellow classmates started clamoring around me for witty
scrawls to peg above their precious columns. I was totally gone. I
politely told everyone to fuck off and ran outside to my car. I started
it up, drove ten feet and hopped back out. It felt as though I was
driving on the rims. I circled the car several times, kicking each tire.
They appeared

just fine. I got back in the car and goosed it. Unfortunately, during
my little stoned escapade to check the tires out, I hadn't noticed that
the entire Powers High marching band had paraded out to the parking lot.
Some kid with a tuba went rollin' across my hood. The band instructor
started screaming. I sped away shivering badly and breathin' funny.

Then there was the time I got caught rolling a mammoth joint on a desk
in the school library. Miss Kane, the same teacher who thought so highly
of my weepy poems, marched me right to the principal's office. The
evidence was presented, a small confab was held and I was immediately
expelled. My mother came up to the school to plead for my reinstatement.
The principal refused. It killed me to see my mother reduced to begging.
I got the principal off to the side and started talking deal. I told him
if he would allow me back in school, I would become his own private
narc. The idea caught his fancy. Of course what he didn't know was that
I was lyin' through my teeth. We shook hands and I was reinstated. As
the months went by, i became a very unpopular guy with the principal.
Each time he shook me down for information, I turned dumber than a tree
stump. He'd been scammed. I rolled my joints in the john from then on.

By graduation time, my old man had once again taken flight to Florida to
shack up with who-knows-who. Good riddance, the family concurred. My
mother finally had had her fill of the bastard and started divorce
proceedings. It was only after the old man had left that my mother
discovered she was going to be giving birth to the eighth addition to
our clan. A child that my father would never return to see.

There must have been something in the frosty Michigan air that winter
that fueled the reproduction cycle. The Catholic as-rabbit theory was
suddenly twirling amuck. Joanie called me over to her place one evening
to inform me that she too was bloomin' with child. Joanie's due date was
only a couple of weeks from my mother's.

Since Joanie already had accumulated enough credits to graduate, the
school let her have her diploma early. She was just beginning to show
and there was no way in hell they were gonna allow her to waltz the
hallways in her preggy state. The nuns would have spewed pea soup and
banged to their knees.

Joanie stayed home while I finished up my senior year. One day I was
summoned to the counselor's office. Terrific, I thought, maybe the guy
had found a job for me in that fat file cabinet of his. With a baby due,
I had a feeling I might need one.

This was not the case. The counselor instructed me to have a seat and as
I sat down I could gather that the news was not good. He told me that he
had been poring over my transcript and found that I was several credits
short of the required number necessary to graduate. All those days
skipping class and chucking textbooks had finally caught up to me. The
counselor said he would have to see what would need to be done and talk
it over with the principal. He said he would let me know in a couple of
days.

The counselor never did call me back to his office..All I can assume is
that when my name was mentioned, the principal must have told him to rig
the paperwork so everything fell into place. He had seen enough of my
act. There was no way he was going to flunk me and have me back for
another fun-filled year. Here's your fuckin' diploma, get scarce and may
the Lord be with you always!

After graduation, I hurriedly planned for the unknown. First up came
marriage. Since we'd both been reared as God fearin' Catholics, the
inevitable solution to this teen pregnancy mishap was immediate
matrimony. Abortion and adoption were sordid eight-letter words that
existed only in made-for-TV movies starring Kay Lenz or Susan Dey. We
tied the knot at Sacred Heart Church. My best man was some guy we found
cleanin' the pews.

My uncle got me a job painting apartments for a large rental complex.
After our marriage, Joanie and I moved into one of the apartments. In
August, Joanie had our child, a beautiful little girl with bright red
hair we named Sonya. We were poor but happy in our sudden little
universe. Back at home, my brother Bob filled my role as teen nanny. Bob
was much stronger than I. It worked well.

I enjoyed painting apartments. There were no human beings to contend
with and everyone at the complex just left me alone. The closest thing I
had to a boss was this senile old man who was the maintenance manager.
Once upon a time, he

had been a big-league attorney for Ford Motors. Then he had a nervous
breakdown and began plowing the bottle. His son-in law owned the company
and the old man and I were just another pair of his uninspired lackeys.

After months of practice, I got a routine down to where I could blaze my
way through a unit in the morning, be finished by lunch and spend the
rest of the afternoon reading paperbacks and listening to the oldies
station on my latex-splattered transistor radio. I could have easily
painted two units per day but, with the way these pricks were payin' me,
I felt it only justified to give them the lowest accountable output for
their lousy three bucks an hour. Besides, where several of the other
maintenance workers were receiving their apartments rent free, I was
being charged the full shot just like any other tenant. What it boiled
down to was that I would have to turn over half of my earnings right
back to the company just to keep a roof over my family's head. They
weren't gettin' anything extra out of me.

I met another guy who worked at the apartments who was in the identical
situation I was. His name was Glen and he was also newly married with a
new baby and was living it dime-to dime like Joanie and I were. They
lived in the apartment building next to ours and we all became
accomplished at dodging the rut of constant poverty.

Glen and I received our paychecks on Mondays and we'd skim seven or
eight bucks off the top of our measly pay and buy a week's worth of this
piss-water beer called Columbia. The local grocer sold this crap for a
dollar a six-pack, a real bargain for fun-starved minimum wagers like
Glen and myself. Almost every night we held court at Glen and Barb's,
swigging down this awful-tastin' beer while Barb cued up scratchy Abba
singles and wonderful Lou Christie albums salvaged from the junk bins of
the nearby Goodwill. We laughed and danced and got very intoxicated.

After the wives dropped off, Glen and I stayed up late talking. He was
hell-bent on landing a job at General Motors and stressed all the
benefits of working for the hometown team. I sucked on my lousy Columbia
and shook my head.

"Have you ever noticed the looks on the faces of those

bastards when they get home from work?" I asked Glen. "Fuck the money,
I don't need that monster gaze."

"Well, what the hell are you gonna do when you grow up?" Glen laughed.

"I don't know," I said. And I truly didn't.

'nd you ride me for wantin' to get into the shop! Shit, you need another
beer."

It was out of our hands anyway. There was a recession going on and the
gates to Greaseball Mecca were temporarily padlocked. Job seekers were
forced to follow the detour signs to McDonald's or Arby's or Maplebrook
Village Apartments, at least until the Arabs let go of our balls and the
market began to chug again.

I, for one, could wait.

3.

MY MARRIAGE TO JOANIE WAS QUICKLY BEGINNING TO CRUMBLE,

Between my nightly beer-bombing over at Glen's and our continual
teetering on the brink of poverty, my young bride was getting fed up to
her eyebrows with life in the comatose lane. We were just two confused
kids playing house, flailing at each other with every blunt collision
that sudden adulthood generated. High school sweethearts can make for
strange bed partners once the reality of the rent and the groceries and
the car payments descend on the dollhouse.

As my father-in-law saw it, there was only one antidote to our marital
woes: finding me gainful employment. He kept suggesting that I pursue a
career at General Motors. We happened to live right in the shadows of
the Chevrolet Manufacturing plant, the Chevy Engine plant and the
enormous GM Truck & Bus facility. How convenient, he often pointed out.
I paid my father-in-law nothing but lip service. I told him the shops
weren't hiring. I insisted that there were other things on some
invisible horizon awaiting my induction. I spouted and sputtered brave
ignorant lies about how a young man should pause and blossom into clever
vocations that would surely lie in wait once the haze receded and the
clear adult mind began to function.

I was full of shit. I would say anything to turn the subject around from
the inevitable. The inevitable being this: I knew in the tenth grade
that I would be a shoprat. It was more an understanding of certain
truisms found in my hometown than any form of game plan I might have
been hatching. In Flint, Michigan, you either balled up your fists and
got career motivated the moment the piano quit bangin' the commencement
theme or, more likely, you'd still be left leanin' when the ancestors
arrived to pass along your birthright. Here, kid, fetch.

There were times I was actually drawn to the shops. Occasionally, I
would get drunk and park next to one of the factories just in time to
watch the fools pile out at quitting time. I hated the looks on their
faces. Miserable cretins, one and all. I would sit there with a can of
beer in my lap and try to focus on one alternative career goal. There
weren't any. All I ever came back to was the inevitable admission that I
didn't really want to do anything. And around these parts, in the fat
choke hold of Papa GM, that was just chickenshit slang for asking "What
time does the line start up on Monday?"

I quit my job at the apartment complex. I decided to go into freelance
painting, a job where I could at least name my own hours. After eight or
nine months of near starvation, I ditched this stupid stratagem. I was
no hustler. I needed someone to tell me what to do. Meanwhile, the
recession dragged on.

I caught on with a guy who ran a janitorial service. We worked at night
cleaning up business colleges, drugstores and attorneys' offices. I
wiped down toilets for the minimum wage. The boss was always hollering
at me for missing some wayward pee stain or leaving streaks on some
lonesome stretch of linoleum. No wonder I soon gave up this promising
career and took to sitting around the apartment drinking beer, playing
with my daughter and waiting for my wife to come home from work at her
father's bridal store.

The marriage had all but disintegrated by then. Joanie worked and I
drank. We rarely even spoke to each other. There wasn't anything to say.
She was the breadwinner and I was the

louse. The parallel between my behavior and my old man's was something
that didn't escape me. Just the thought of it made me want to drive our
dilapidated Mustang head-center into the nearest bridge abutment.

Joanie finally kicked me out of our marriage and took custody of our
daughter. My life was so screwed-up by then that the idea of working for
GM not only lost its repugnance, it took on the frantic allure of a rope
tossed to a quicksand victim. I not only surrendered to the inevitable,
I began begging for it. General Motors was the only possible panacea to
the erosion of my marriage and my own personal bout with suicidal mind
fatigue.

It was birthright time, goddamnit. Though the recession was still
hovering over the city, I didn't let it detour me. I began getting up at
5:00 A.M. and hustling over to the factories. Right on the entrance gate
to the personnel office was a sign that read NO APPLICATIONS. Undaunted,
I would stride forward. Don't play games with me, GM. My name is Hamper.
Surely you remember that loyal, long-suffering clan. Just show me to my
setup and everything will be fine.

The personnel people didn't see it that way. They asked if I had noticed
the sign. I said I had. Then they asked if I could read. I said yes.
Then they asked me to vacate the plant grounds immediately. It wasn't
the type of red carpet treatment I felt entitled to, being the son-of a
son of a son of-a shoprat. So much for ancestral privilege.

My father-in-law started passing me these tips on what office to go to
and whose name to mention. He must have been gettin' some bogus info
because every time I followed his instructions I received nothing more
than blank bewilderment.

i was also following up tips from an old German lady I had done some
painting for. She had worked for GM for thirty-some years. She claimed
to know everybody. In the end, her information was no better than my
father-in-law's. I struck out repeatedly, becoming more embarrassed with
every desperate rejection.

The so-called tips dried up. It was just as well. I was beginning to
feel ridiculous haunting personnel offices on every goofball's whim. It
had gotten to the point that when the white-collars saw me grabbing the
door handle to the Personnel office, they would all line up abreast and
start shakin' their

heads emphatically as if they had infective lice digging at their
scalps. No applications. Zero. Void. Confute, rebut, deny.

Months went by. Joanie and I separated. I moved into my mother's
basement where I slept all day and caroused all night on the biweekly
unemployment funds I had earned after my stint as the inept janitor. I
still clung to the belief that the marriage could be salvaged if I could
only hitch up with the screw train and bring home some of that sweet GM
loot. Screw my old man and his forewarnings. Screw the nuns and their
lesson plans. Screw the guidance counselor's bulging file cabinet. Screw
the ambulance drivers and disc jockeys and midnight janitors. Screw me
and screw you. I wanted to be a shoprat, true and blue.

The recession of the mid-seventies began to lift. Car sales were
beginning to rise. Truck sales were booming. Relatives were once again
able to start funneling those sacred applications out the door to their
street-walkin' kin. My good friend Denny got one off a cousin. My buddy
Mike picked one up from his father. Half of the idiots I hung out with
in high school were layin' claim to General Motors work applications. I
was glad for them. Still, I wondered when, if ever, my precious
birthright would be forked my way.

Finally, my father-in-law came through. Some distant aunt on my wife's
side of the family worked as a nurse in the Truck Plant hospital. I was
sent over to her house to fetch the elusive ap. There it was on the
dining room table, the paperwork drivel at the end of the rainbow. I
jotted all the shit down, fibbing on the section that asked had I ever
taken drugs, handed it back to Aunt Nurse and skipped out the door like
a man who had just wormed his neck from the noose. Maybe there would be
another noose with my name on it on the other side of this application,
but I didn't care at all. Suddenly, the sky was full of dollar bills and
pay stubs the size of blimps.

Denny got called in for his physical. Paydirt! GM only scheduled you for
a physical when they intended to put you right to work. He called me up
and we talked about the rapture of capitalism the bankrolls, the new
cars, the best booze, the choicest drugs, new stereos and new digs. This
was in April, two months after his application had been filed. Figuring
that

two months was the standard waiting period, I assumed that I would be
getting my phone call any day.

Nope. While Denny was already completing his ninety days service in the
Truck Plant (the minimum amount of service required to secure your job
at GM), I was still sweating it out in my mom's basement, jumping every
time the phone rang. What the hell was it that was making them stall?

Just to make sure that my application hadn't been incinerated or used
for butt-wad, I called the Personnel office every Monday morning. The
voice on the other end always put me on hold for a lengthy period and
then returned to tell me that my application was still treading ink in
their paper lagoon. I hadn't even worked a day yet for General Motors
and already I didn't trust these shills.

I wasn't home the day they finally did call. It was a Saturday afternoon
and I was planted on a barstool up at Jack Gilbert's Wayside Inn. I
didn't expect to get called in on a weekend, so I left the house with no
instructions to where anyone could reach me. My little brother, a real
wiseacre, told them that I could be reached at any number of North Flint
area bars. I'm sure this tickled them pink.

Fortunately, I had given GM my in-laws' number as a backup and my
sister-in-law came racing into the Wayside where I was in the process of
getting shit-faced with her boyfriend Rick.

"Ben. BEN! GM just called you! They want you to come to work."

"Shit," I hollered, "it's about time those bastards rang me. On a
weekend, no less. That gives me and the old Ricker here time to do some
much-deserved celebrating. Did they mention what time they need me on
Monday?"

"No, no, no! They want you to work TODAY! They said to be there at four
and to wear some work boots if possible."

"TODAY? Saturday? It is Saturday, isn't it? Four o'clock? WORK BOOTS?"

"Four o'clock," my sister-in-law repeated. "Work boots if possible.

This was some heavy shit. To be called in during the middle of the
weekend smelled like an emergency. GM was now in the midst of one of
their all-time boom-boom quota years, so

I supposed reinforcements were needed on Saturdays, Sundays, Salad days
any time was the right time. This also marked the first time I ever
remembered being asked out on a Saturday night by a corporation.

"I better move out," I told Rick. "Mustn't keep Papa Jimmy waitin'."

"Wear something sexy, ratboy," Rick laughed. 'and don't forget to
write."

I hustled home. I didn't have any work boots, so I just threw on a pair
of old Converse hightops along with a T-shirt and a pair of filthy
jeans. My head was reciting all the advice my distant aunt had filled me
with: Keep youR guard out for troublemakers. Don't be coerced into
drinking. Be on time. Do everything you're told, try to do extra, don't
engage in horseplay, address your supervisor as "sir." Check, check,
check.

Before we were to begin working, the group I was hiring in with was
instructed to meet for a physical examination in the plant hospital. We
were a sluggish-looking crew. There were about twenty of us all
together--each person chain smoking and staring at the floor, waiting in
silence to be pronounced fit for active drudgery. We resembled some
awkward casting call for the next Maynard G. Krebs. I had a strong hunch
that there wasn't a marketable skill among us.

A doctor came out and directed us into a single-file line. The urine
test was up first. We were each handed a small vial and told to line up
for the restroom.

The guy standing in front of me kept looking over his shoulder at me.
When it was his turn to enter the can, he spun around and asked if it
would be all right if I donated a little of my urine for his vial. He
seemed to be very stressed. This was long before drug testing was ever
common in the workplace. I wondered what the big deal was.

"I just can't get it to flow right now," the guy claimed. Apparently,
the fear was that the Company might look down upon any prospective serf
who was incapable of bringing forth the pee when it mattered most. No
piss, no job, ingrate!

I didn't care much for the idea of passing around my piss with a total
stranger. It didn't seem like a solid career move. Besides, for all
either of us knew, I might be holding on to a bad batch. I had a long,
painful bout with hepatitis when I was

twelve. My formative years were spent wolfing down a wide variety of
menacing chemicals. I drank like a sieve. I had an ulcer that ate at me
like a cordless drill. Hell, who'd wanna take a crapshoot on the chance
that any of that might come floating to the surface of their corporate
dossier?

Evidently, this guy. He returned from the John and, true to his work,
the vial he held before me was completely empty. "C'mon," he said. "Just
a squirt. I'll pay you for it."

Christ, that did it. "Gimme the thing," I groaned. It probably wasn't
the most noble act of giving one had ever made on behalf of a needy
Union brother but, somehow, it sure seemed like it at the time. We were
almost through with our urine samples when a member of our group, a late
arrival, walked into the hospital and began to speak with our overseer.
I sensed that the guy was in deep shit. He kept apologizing over and
over--something to do with getting messed up in traffic and being
detained. Judging by his performance, I doubted he was lying.

It didn't matter. The man with the clipboard wasn't buying a single
word. He stood there shaking his head from one side to the other--just
another weasel in a short-sleeve shirt, deputized to protect the status
quo. He did his job well.

"You were told to be prompt," he spouted. "There can be NO EXCEPTIONS."

The realization that he'd blown his big audition seemed to overwhelm the
late guy. He looked down at the floor, his voice started breaking and,
right there in front of everyone, he began to cry. It all came spillin'
out--what was he gonna tell his family and who would understand? For the
sons and daughters of the assembly line, 1977 wasn't the best of years
to go fumblin' the family baton.

We stood there clutching our little vials of piss as they escorted him
out. We had been on time. We were going to build trucks for the GM Truck
& Bus Division. The man with the bow tie and clipboard had written down
all our names. Our friend had been ten minutes late. He had already
proven himself undeserving of a hitch on the screw train. There could be
no exceptions.

Ten years later, I found myself still thinking about the late guy. On
those terribly humid shifts when the parts just weren't

going together right and the clock was taking two steps back for every
step forward, exhausted and desperate, I'd see him over by the pool
table in the bar across the street. He'd have a cold beer in his hand
and a grin a mile wide. I would imagine myself walking up to him with my
safety glasses, my locker key and my plastic identification badge held
out in my hand. "Here, it's all yours, buddy," I'd say. "I need a cold
one."

Immediately, the jukebox would stop playing. Everyone in the bar would
turn toward me and begin to laugh. The late guy would slip his arm
around the waitress and they both would shake their heads. "You were
told to be prompt," he would say. "There can be no exceptions."

I was assigned to the Cab Shop, an area more commonly known to its
inhabitants as the Jungle. Lifers had told me that on a scale from one
to ten--with one representing midtown Pompeii and ten being then GM
Chairman Roger Smith's summer home--the Jungle rates about a minus six.

It wasn't difficult to see how they had come up with the name for the
place. Ropes, wires and assorted black rubber cables drooped down and
entangled everything. Sparks shot out in all directions--bouncing in the
aisles, flying into the rafters and even ricocheting off the natives'
heads. The noise level was deafening. It was like some hideous
unrelenting tape loop of trains having sex. I realized instantly that,
as far as new homes go, the Jungle left a lot to be desired. Me Tarzan,
you screwed.

I had been forewarned. As our group was being dispatched at various drop
points throughout the factory, the guy walking beside me mumbled about
our likely destination. "Cab Shop," the prophet said. "We're headed for
Cab Shop." Perplexed, I wondered if this meant we would be building
taxis.

The group trudged on, leaving a few workers in each new area. We stopped
by the Trim Line. The Axle Line. The Frame Line. The Tire Line. The
Receding Hairline. When we arrived at the Motor Line, my friend with the
bashful bladder hopped off. "Thanks," he told me. It was kind of
strange. All we had in common was a small, useless vial of urine. "Have
a nice career," I offered.

Soon, all but two rookies had been planted--the prophet

and me. We took a dark elevator upstairs and, when the gate opened, the
prophet let out a groan. "Goddamn, I knew it! The bastard's lettin' us
off in Cab Shop." I had to agree with the prophet. Our overseer did seem
like a bastard. Just the way he had gleefully shot down that late guy
made me hate his guts. Not only was he a bastard, he made for one lousy
Johnny Appleseed. We stood at the foot of the Jungle. We were doomed.
There could be no exceptions.

"Here you are, boys--the Cab Department," our overseer spoke. "In this
area you are advised to wear clothing made from a nonflammable fabric.
Also, you will need to purchase a pair of steel-toned work boots,
available at fair cost in the shoe store next to the workers'
cafeteria." He grinned. "Good luck, boys," he said and walked away.

A pudgy, slick-dressed black guy directed us down the line toward our
job setups. This was Brown, our foreman. As we tagged along behind him,
the workers paused to give us the razz. We were fresh blood, ignorant
meat. "Turn around before it's too late," someone shouted. "Hey, Brown,
let 'em hang tailgates," another chimed in. Hang tailgates? Christ, that
sounded like a ball-buster.

Our foreman stopped next to a big red-haired guy and a man in a filthy
welder's cap. He pointed at me and informed me that I would be replacing
the guy in the welder's cap. The guy seemed elated. "It's about goddamn
time you got me outta here." The guy in the welder's cap looked at me
and smiled. He had very few teeth. "My name's Gary and this is Bud," he
said, pointing to the big redhead. "You'll love it here, just love it."
Both of them laughed.

It turned out that my fellow rookie, the prophet, would be working
directly across from me. His name was Roy and he'd come to Flint from
Oklahoma to live with his brother and find work in the factory. It
seemed like an awfully long haul just to wind up in this dreaded Jungle.
Anyway, I felt glad for his presence. Having a greenie like myself
across the line could only help during this assimilation process.

For the entire shift, I was asked to do nothing but stand back and
examine how Gary performed his job. I was told that I would have three
days to learn the job and then it would be all mine. Always the
pessimist, I asked Gary what happened if

after three days were up I still didn't have a handle on the job. "Then
they give you the Van Slyke shuffle." He chuckled. Van Slyke was the
street the factory was located on.

"I'll have it down in a day." I told Gary. "I've seen enough of the
street."

Gary and Bud worked their jobs together. They combined them so that one
of them was working while the other guy sat out and read the paper or
did a crossword. I figured the job couldn't be too difficult if one of
them had the time to complete both jobs while the other guy lagged
around doin' nothin'.

This form of combo workmanship was termed "doubling up," a time-honored
tradition throughout the shop that helped alleviate much of the boredom.
Bud assured me that once I got my job down at a steady pace, he would
teach me his job and we could survive much easier with a double-up
arrangement. I nodded hesitantly, wanting only to conquer one detail at
a time.

At the end of my first shift, I walked out of the lot with Roy. His
martyr's grumble about being' stashed in the Cab Shop had quickly
vanished.

"Fuckin' A, Ben, do you realize we just grossed about $100 for standin'
around doin' absolutely nothin'?"

"A $100 gross?" I repeated.

"Sure, this is Saturday. Saturday means time and a half. You can also
include our night shift premium. A hundred dollar gross for watchin' a
bunch of dipshits tinkerin' around!"

"Yeah, but don't forget starting next week you and I will be the
dipshits."

"Hell, those jobs they gave us are pussy detail. Once we get settled in,
we'll be sittin' on our asses half the time while bringin' home three or
four bills a week. It's a highway robbery. I'm gonna go get drunk. Care
to join me?"

"I'll pass this time," I told Roy. "See you Monday."

Our jobs were identical--to install splash shields, pencil rods and
assorted screws with a noisy air gun in the rear ends of Chevy Blazers
and Suburbans. To accomplish this, we worked on a portion of the line
where the cabs rose up on an elevated track. Once the cabs were about
five feet off the ground, Roy and I ducked inside the rear wheel wells
and busted ass. Standing across from each other in those cramped wheel
wells always reminded me of the two neighbors in the Right Guard

commercial who met every morning in their communal medicine cabinet.
"Hi, guy! Care for a scoop of sealer on that pencil rod?"

Within a shift and a half, I had already conquered my new job. The
foreman turned Gary loose and I was on my own. After I fastened down my
required parts with my air gun, Bud jumped into the wheel well with his
bulky spot-welder and zapped the truck bed and wheel well together.
Sparks flew out in these crazy curvatures and danced to dust. Tiny
clicking explosions dash-dotted the atmosphere like some jumpy Morse
code. It was sorta like Nam without the Motown soundtracks and mosquito
netting.

Bud introduced me to some of the nearby natives. There was Dan-O, the
resident prankster, who mig-welded the truck beddings. He constantly
chewed cigars while keeping up a running racial tease with the black guy
who worked next to Bud and me.

- Another was a guy they all called Bob-A-Lou. He had this gleaming crew
cut and a belly that hung down halfway to his knees. Bob-A-Lou worked
down the line a bit and it was fairly obvious that whatever he did
involved some heavy-duty welding. His T-shirt was dotted with a few
thousand burn holes and his forearms were a road map of tiny pink scabs.
Bob-A-Lou had a voice like Andy Devine and it was funny to hear him
gripe about something. The guy never cursed. "By golly, men, it's a
steamer in here today. I wish these goldarn fans would kick out a little
more air." I liked Bob-A-Lou right off.

Then there was Robert, the black guy who worked next to Bud and me. He
was the sullen type and I had a hunch he didn't warm up to rookies
quickly. I shook his hand and he muttered something to me. "Okay," I
said. Turning away, I asked Bud what the hell Robert had said. "He told
you to make sure you keep the fuck out of his area. He doesn't like
getting pushed into the hole." The hole? Bud explained the hole was a
term used to describe falling behind. I waved at Robert. Hard work, hold
the hole.

By the end of my first week on the job, Bud was already pestering me to
double-up jobs with him. I was uneasy about the offer. Doubling-up with
Bud meant that I would have to learn how to navigate his fire-breathing
spot-welder. I had my

reservations about coming within ten feet of that flaming albatross.
Besides, I was quite content with my jerky little air gun. The screws
and the J-clips shot right in and all you had to do was stand there and
hoist the thing like some bad-ass cop pointin' his piece.

Another consideration was that I was a new hire. I worried about the
foreman's reaction to seeing me sitting on my ass half of the day. They
liked to refer to this place as Generous Motors, but I had my doubts
whether this pet phrase extended itself to greenhorns like myself who
lacked the necessary seniority to operate their own scams.

"You're worried about Broum?" Bud whined. "Fuck Brown. He don't give a
shit what goes on around here as long as the quota's met and the general
foreman isn't gnawin' his nuts."

And I suppose it was true. One night Brown was hanging around the back
of our workbench, scrunched up on a palletful of #202 screws. I was
convinced he was here to eyeball me for possible infractions against the
rule manual. I moved swiftly from job to job all the while attempting to
affix this professional square-jawed look to my face. After about
fifteen minutes of this nervous setup, I whispered to Bud asking what
Brown was up to.

"By the looks of it, he's giving me the once-over," I told Bud.

"Is that what you think? Listen, you've got that silly-assed job
whipped. Brown doesn't even know you exist."

"Then WHAT THE HELL IS HE DOING BACK THERE?" I demanded.

"He's drinking beer," Bud said.

"DRINKING BEER? Brown? Our foreman? Where'd he get it?"

"I brought him in a six of Miller's at lunchtime. It's hidden in an
empty J-clip box under our bench."

I looked over at Brown. He had a big dumb smile on his face. Every
thirty seconds or so, he'd pivot his head around toward the aisle and
then dive-bomb out of view behind our workbench. It was hot in the Cab
Shop and I couldn't help but envy his access to a cold beer.

"And I bet there's a payoff for you, right?" I asked Bud.

"Now you're catching on. See, I have information that the

Suburban tailgate buildup job will be open in a week or so. I asked
Brown about it and he told me he'd seen what he could do when the time
comes. I figure some cold beer here and there might help give me a leg
up when the job comes open. Brown's a fuckin' alkie."

"In other words, you're greasin' the foreman's liver."

"Something like that." Bud grinned.

Here I had been told to be on my most saintly behavior. What a lousy
joke. My very own supervisor was suckin' down the brew three nights a
week twelve feet behind my back. Once he'd finish, Brown untangled
himself from his makeshift hooch cellar, punctuated the occasion with a
large belch, gave Bud a nod and walked on down the line to check up on
the rest of the department.

It was apparent, in the wake of my own supervisor's misconduct, that
Bud's double-up urgings couldn't be as jeopardizing to my career as I
had originally believed. If the foreman could squat around chuggin'
beers during line time, most everything else would have to be tolerated.
I already had enough on Brown to assure his silence.

"About time we started combining these pussy jobs," I told Bud.

"Now you're comin' around." Bud gleamed.

He showed me how to operate his spot-welder. It wasn't an easy task.
First you had to yank the machine down a large pulley and position the
two tips of the welder in between the truck bed and the wheel well. Once
you had it situated, you dragged it over to the right corner of the
wheel well and began firing the trigger. Every inch or two you smacked
out a weld--ideally, twenty-four welds per truck. All the while, sparks
would be sprayin' all over the place. When a job was completed, you
jerked the spot-welder free, stood back and let it bounce back up the
pulley.

I gave it a try. I tugged. I groped. I strained in anger. I couldn't get
the damn thing to budge more than a half inch every cycle. I ended up
putting about fifty-five welds in the wheel well. Someone out there was
gonna have a right rear wheel well toasted to the crisp. The sparks were
gobbling me. They came pouring down on my head, sizzling what was left
of my sparse crop of hair. Finally, I had dragged the welder down

so far out of the normal path that I was halfway into Robert's area. He
stood there waiting to weld on his splash shield. He didn't look pleased
at all. Just before I was convinced he was gonna jab me with the red tip
of his mig-welder, Bud bailed me out.

"Relax," he said. "You're trying to outmuscle the thing. The welder will
do all the work if you just hold it lightly and go for the ride. The
more you fight the damn thing, the more grief it's gonna give you."

It took some doing, but within two or three days I was an accomplished
spot-welder. I found out how to tilt the machine so that the sparks flew
out sideways and not straight down on my head. There was something very
hale and manly about husking that mean hunk of hell once you got the
hang of it. It gave me a sense of complete reign--King Rat, Ball-Buster
Goliath, the hysteric bombardier makin' flame-broiled waffle mince out
of the rib cage of BAD TRUCK POWER. This crunchin' dinosaur was my
bitch. A flame-snortin', black goose Magnum. In comparison, my air gun
was strictly Hasbro. A snifflin' little insect flittin' around the
buttocks of the bull.

Bud had certainly been right. Doubling-up jobs, whenever and wherever
possible, made the utmost sense. This arrangement totally destroyed the
monotony of waiting for that next cab to arrive. When it was my turn to
handle the two jobs, I'd be so busy with my work that I wouldn't have
time to agonize over the crawl of the clock. I patterned myself a brisk
routine and the minute hand whirled by.

When it was Bud's turn at the grind, I would hop the line and read
paperbacks next to Roy at the workers' picnic bench. It was like being
paid to attend the library. Roy was extremely jealous of my sweet setup.
He was locked into the old up and down and the clock was already beatin'
him senseless. He nagged and nagged at Dan-O, his neighbor, to work out
a similar setup. Dan-O always turned him down. He was too busy
concocting practical jokes to mess with a new routine.

The more shortcuts I learned, the more Bud and I would lengthen our
tours of duty. We went from doubling-up for an hour at a time to two
hours. The longer the layover between times up at work, the more time we
had to sprawl out and investigate methods of passing time. I read two
newspapers, a

magazine and a good chunk of novel every evening. Bud spent most of his
time off horsing around with Dan-O or doing homework for college classes
he was taking during the day.

At times, I got bored and restless sittin' on my ass in the middle of
the Jungle. With my job securely covered, I occasionally set out
wandering throughout the factory. I was completely overwhelmed by the
size of the plant. It was the largest truck-producing facility in the
entire world. I could only compare it to some huge, metallic ant farm,
doomed and domed over, a clamorous burg with a tall tin roof.

I walked for miles down the various aisleways and corridors with no idea
of where I was headed or where I might end up. One night I might end up
in the Tire Bay watchin' the beer bellies wobble as they hustled tire
after tire off the conveyor line. The men down there were in constant
motion. They looked very depressed. I could recall that look from the
visit to my own father's job. Car, windshield. Truck, radial. Repetition
as strangulation. Shit, how'd I get so lucky?

The next night I might end up on the Final Line checkin' out the
finished product as they raced the engines and spanked life into those
gleaming, overpriced Suburban and Blazer newborns. Way the hell down at
the end of the Final Line you could see the sun setting. I would follow
the rays and dip outside the door of this giant womb to lean against the
wall and smoke cigarettes. No one knew who I was. I didn't know them
either. That was part of the beauty. There were so many of us shoprats
that we were all just part of some faceless herd. I could have been an
inspector or a rookie or a guard or Roger Smith Jr. No one gave a shit.

As a summer progressed and the weeks slid slowly by, my pal Roy was
beginning to unravel in a real rush. His enthusiasm about all the money
we were makin' had dissipated and he was having major difficulty coping
with the drudgery of factory labor. Unable to arrange a double-up system
with Dan-o, he wallowed in the slow-motion injustice of the time clock.
His job, like mine, wasn't difficult, it was just plain monotonous. We
hadn't even put in our ninety days yet (the minimum amount of service
required for a worker to apply for sick leave) and Roy was already fast
on the track to wiggin' out.

We had been able to conquer the other annoyances. We

adjusted to the heat and grew accustomed to the noise. After a while,
we even got used to the claustrophobia of the wheel wells. The idea that
we were being paid handsome wages to mimic a bunch of overachieving
simians suited us just dandy. We had no lofty career goals. In America,
or at least in Flint, as long as the numbers on your pay stub justified
your daily bread, there was nothing more to accomplish.

The one thing that was impossible to escape was the monotony of our new
jobs. Every minute, every hour, every truck and every movement was a
plodding replica of the one that had gone before. The monotony gnawed
away at Roy. His behavior began to verge on the desperate. The only way
he saw to deal with the monotony was to numb himself to it. When the
lunch horn sounded, we'd race out to his pickup and Roy would pull these
enormous joints from the glove box. "Take one," he'd offer. Pot made me
nervous so I would stick to the beer from his well-stocked cooler or
slug a little of the whiskey that was always on hand.

The numbing process seemed to demand more every night. We'd go out to
the truck and Roy would burn two joints at a time. He'd snort coke
whenever he could find it. "I don't know if I'm gonna make my ninety
days," he'd tell me. It was all part of Roy's master plan. Once he
reached his ninety days' seniority, he would round up a reliable quack,
feign some mystery injury (spinal aggravations were the most popular
malady) and, with all the paperwork, semiretire to an orbit of singles
bars, dope dens and sick pay benefits. The old invisible Ozzie Nelson
work ethic festering deep into the wounded psyches of the young.

But Roy never did make his ninety days. To those who were on hand during
his last days of service, it came as no real surprise. We all realized
that Roy was cracking up.

There was the classic evening Roy took a hit of some powerful acid and
ended up barfin' his guts out all over the floor next to his job. Tune
in, turn on and build trucks. At first, I thought Roy was actually gonna
make it. There was much merriment radiating from his side of the wheel
well. Everything was a hoot or a holler. It was a shame it couldn't
last.

I returned from one of my aimless jaunts around the

factory and Bud pulled me aside. "What the fuck is wrong with Roy?" he
asked.

"Why, is there a problem?"

"Well, for one thing, he's speakin' total gibberish. His face looks like
a ghost and he's sweatin' like a butcher. I swear the dumbshit's on some
crazy drug trip."

I jumped into the next wheel well and looked over at Roy. The merriment
was certainly gone. He looked horrible. The goblins of psychedelic had
parked their paranoia machine smack dab in the center of Roy's cranium.

For the next hour, I tried mightily to keep him together. I told him if
he could just make it to the lunch horn, we'd get him out of here and
settle everything with Brown. We'd concoct some story about how Roy got
terribly ill and had to be raced home to bed.

We both tried our damndest ... Roy forging on while I counted down the
minutes. It was all in vain. Just five minutes to go before the hour,
Roy let loose. The puke shot everywhere. Dan-O bravely stepped in to
handle Roy's job as he went tearing off for the exit. Jesus, did it
reek.

Brown came down to check on the commotion. I told him that Roy had been
sick right from the beginning of the shift but, not wanting to abandon
his post, tried desperately to make it to the lunch break.

"That's what I call dedication," Brown declared.

At that, I could have puked myself. "I'll say," I said.

A few nights later came the infamous incident involving the sacrificial
rodent. Roy had managed to capture this tiny mouse that had been
sneaking around one of the stock bins. He fashioned an elaborate
cardboard house for the creature and set it on his workbench. He fed the
mouse. He gave it water. He built windows in the house so his pet could
watch him doin' his job. Any worker who passed through the area was
given a personal introduction to the mouse. For all the world, it seemed
like a glorious love affair.

I never figured out whether it was due to the dope or the drudgery or
some unseen domestic quarrel, but things sure switched around in a hurry
after the lunch break. Roy would rush through each job, run back to his
workbench, and start screaming at the mouse through the tiny cardboard
windows.

When asked what the problem was, Roy insisted that the mouse was
mocking the way he performed the job. He ranted and raved. He stomped
and cursed. He put his arms around the mouse condo and shook it
violently.

Finally it was over. Before any of us could react or shout him down, Roy
grabbed the mouse by the tail and stalked up the welder's platform. He
took a brazing torch, gassed up a long, blue flame and, right there in
the middle of Jungleland, incinerated his little buddy at arm's length.
Then he went right back to work as if nothing had happened.

Then, the day before he quit, Roy approached me with a box-cutter knife
sticking out of his glove and requested that I give him a slice across
the back of the hand. He felt sure this ploy would land him a few days
off.

Since slicing Roy didn't seem like a solid career move, I refused. Roy
went down the line to the other workers where he received a couple
charitable offers to cut his throat, but no dice on the hand. He wound
up sulking back to his job.

After a half dozen attempts on his own, Roy finally got himself a gash.
He waited until the blood had a chance to spread out a bit and then went
dashing off to see the boss. The damage was minimal. A hunk of gauze, an
elastic bandage and a slow, defeated shuffle back to the wheel wells.

After that night, I never saw Roy again. Personnel sent up a young
Puerto Rican guy to help me do the Right Guard commercial and the two of
us put in our ninety days without much of a squawk.

The money was right, even if we weren't.

4.

DURING THE SUMMER AND FALL OF 1977, THE TRUCK PLANT

was hummin' six days a week, nine hours per shift. All of this overtime
added up to one gorgeous stream of income. There was the time-and-a-half
money. There was the second shift premium bonus and there were frequent
cost-of-living adjustments. It seemed like every time I turned around,
the paymaster was stuffin' another wad of currency into my waistband.

Any dumb hireling was bound to adopt a sweet craving for this kind of
repetitive generosity. I was certainly no exception. I had been poor all
my life, then suddenly I couldn't turn my head without bumping into
another financial windfall. I'd get up in the afternoon, start rummaging
through my drawer for a fresh set of skivvies, and there would be a
couple of $100 bills I'd forgotten about. Howdy, Mr. Franklin. By
chance, you haven't seen a pair of sweat socks in there minus a hole in
the toe?

These were truly prosperous times at our plant and they were enriching
us all. Roger Smith was browsing for yachts, my General Foreman was
looking at property in the Upper ooo4400o

Peninsula, several of my linemates were seen swapping Kessler's for
Crown Royal, and I was devoting a miniature fortune to punk records,
girlfriends and bar tabs.

It seemed no matter how many we pushed out the door, we just couldn't
assemble those fad-happy recreational vehicles fast enough to suit a
slobberin' public who'd gone cold turkey throughout the recession of the
embargo years. Here they came: pent-up, petrol-guzzlin' Americans with
their waverin' hard-ons barging through showrooms on lurkin' prowl for a
chrome-laden beastie to bulldoze down the boulevard. Subur bans and
Blazers, the elixir of the hog masses.

We built and we built. Demand was so high that the Corporation would
have surely had us working on Sundays if our local union agreement
hadn't prohibited it. Besides, six days was plenty. A seven-day workweek
would have guaranteed a work force that was subhuman at best a
slaughterhut full of foul-smellin' mutants who couldn't tell dusk from
dawn nor harmony from homicide.

it was during this boom period that I attended my first of the annual
"State of the Factory" addresses. The presentation was to keep us
informed on just where our plant stood in relation to efficiency,
quality rating, cost procedure, worker attendance and overall sales. We
were also to be apprised on the condition of our dreaded dogfight with
the Japanese and, our main source of competition, the bullies at Ford
with their sleek fleets of pickups and sub-snuff Ford Broncos.

We were herded next door to this mammoth hangar called the Research
Building. I have no idea what kind of research went on there, but it's a
fair bet that the place was at least a partial foil for all the legions
of smock-clad highbrows who weaved around the assembly line each evening
trying their damndest to look brilliant and concerned about who knows
what. I stuck by Bob-A-Lou, who was an old pro at these corporate
hoedowns. He told me to settle in for an hour's worth of propaganda,
cheerleading and high-tech gibberish that would gladly float right over
my head. We made a quick beeline for the free doughnuts and Pepsi.
Whatever was on the agenda, it sure beat working.

"There's the Plant Manager now," Bob-A-Lou mumbled through his forth or
fifth jelly doughnut. He was pointing

toward the stage which, by this time, was completely overrun with about
two dozen clones in drab neckties.

"Which one is the chief?" I asked Bob-A-Lou, hopelessly confused.

"The John Wayne look-alike," he said.

"Oh, yeah." I laughed. 'All that's missin' is the pistol and spurs."

"I can positively assure you of one thing," Bob-A-Lou said while
assaulting a new doughnut. "Sometime during his spiel, he's gonna tell
us that he will be regularly touring the plant, pausing to listen to any
of our gripes or suggestions. He will pledge to be visible and
accessible. Just remember I told you

SO."

"Bullshit, I presume."

"You better know it. In all my years here, I've yet to see his face in
the factory. He's probably afraid that he'll scuff one of his cuff links
or something."

The pep rally began. The Plant Manager started by back patting everybody
in the galaxy. Up with us, down with them! He introduced a steady parade
of weasels who dutifully took their bows. The Plant Manager was a very
happy man. Outside the back of the building, I could envision a Brinks
truck carting away his company bonus. We received jelly doughnuts and
warm pop. Up with us, down with them!

He started talking about the enormous popularity of our best-seller, the
Chevy Suburban. "We can't even meet the demand for this product," he
bellowed. "Do you realize that there are people in New England who have
never even SEEN a Suburban!" I took a gulp of Pepsi and wondered to
myself. Is there no limit to the human suffering some people must
endure?

The Plant Manager's
Knute-Rockne-reborn-as-poorboy's-Leo-Buscaglia-on-the-threshold-of-industrial-Guyana
rah-rah speech continued for another half hour or so. As Bob-ALou had
predicted, the boss started playin' footsie with the workers: "I plan to
make every effort to visit with as many of you as I can. Your input is
invaluable to the future of our operations. It is essential that each
and every one of us join together in unifying our..."

"Shut the fuck up," a guy behind me groaned.

The Plant Manager introduced the man in charge of over seeing worker
attendance. In contrast, he didn't seem happy at all. The attendance man
unveiled a large chart illustrating the trends in absenteeism. With a
long pointer, he traced the roller coaster tendencies of the unexcused
absence. He pointed to Monday, which slung low to the bottom of the
chart. Monday was an unpopular day attendance-wise. He moved the pointer
over to Tuesday and Wednesday which showed a significant gain in
attendance. The chart peaked way up high on Thursday. Thursday was pay
night. Everybody showed up on Thursday.

"Then we arrive at Friday," the attendance man announced. A guilty wave
of laughter spread through the workers. None of the bossmen appeared at
all amused. Friday was an unspoken Sabbath for many of the workers.
Paychecks in their pockets, the leash was temporarily loosened. To get a
jump on the weekend was often a temptation too difficult to resist. The
Corporation saw it quite differently.

The attendance man took his pointer, which was resting triumphantly on
the snow-capped peak of Thursday evening, and, following the graph,
plunged the pointer straight down through Friday, a motion that
resembled falling off a cliff. Again, there was much snickering.

"Unfortunately, this is not a subject that lends itself to any amount of
humor," the attendance man bristled. 'Absenteeism is the single largest
factor in poor quality. No replacement, no utility worker can perform
your job as well as you. Each time you take an unexcused absence, you
damage the company along with the security of your own job!" With that
said, he packed up his graphs and charts and stalked off stage to make
way for the techno-cretins. The veins in his neck were visible all the
way back to the doughnut table.

Hardly anyone tuned in for the technical presentation. It was one long
lullaby of foreign terminology, slides, numerology and assorted
high-tech masturbation. Why would any of us give a shit about the
specifics of the great master plan? We knew what holes our screws went
in. That was truth enough. Point us toward our air guns and welder and
drill presses and save all the particulars for the antheads in the
smocks and bifocals.

"Be sure to help yourselves to the doughnuts and soft drinks on your way
out," the Plant Manager shouted as the pow-wow broke up. It was time to
pour ourselves back into the

mold and attend to our well-paying jobs. Up with us, down

with them.

I met all kinds of bizarre individuals during my first year

at GM Truck & Bus, characters who would prove to be constants throughout
my factory tenure. Dementia and derangement were rampant traits. Most of
these guys were not unlike myself--urped forth from the birthrights of
their kin, drowsy with destiny, uninspired, keen for drink, unamused
with the arms race or God or the Middle East, underpaid and overpaid,
desperate, goofy, bored and trapped. It was the rare one who would come
out and fib in the middle of a card game about how he didn't really
belong here. We belonged. There were really no other options--just
tricky lies and self-soothing bullshit about "how my real talent lies in
carpentry" or "within five years I'm opening a bait shop in Tawas." We
weren't going anywhere. That pay stub was like a concrete pair of
loafers. Sit down, shut up and ante.

Our linemate Dan-O was an irreplaceable native up in our

neck of the Jungle. He was the master of diversions. His relentless
pranks kept us entertained and loose. More importantly, he had a
terrific knack for keepin' our minds off that wretched clock.

Each night Dan-O would have a new trick. I recall the time

he took a long cardboard tube used to hold brazing rods, painted it all
psychedelic, and passed it off to the unsuspecting as a porno
kaleidoscope. He told all the guys that if they held it directly into
the overhead lights and looked through the hole, they would get a
gorgeous glimpse of Hustler's Miss August. There was never any shortage
of volunteers.

There was never any Miss August either. The victim grabbed the peep
tube, tilted it straight up to the lights, only to get doused with a
generous flow of water right in the eyeball. Dan-O also made sure to
line the peephole with black paint. Not only did the victim wind up
drenched, he'd also slink away sportin' a shiner the size of a tennis
ball.

Another Dan-O favorite was his "crucified wallet" trick.

He would nail down an old wallet into the woodblock floor in the
aisleway, flip the wallet closed to conceal the nail, and insert the
torn corner off a $20 bill. Invariably, some guy would

stroll by and notice the apparent gold mine. As we pretended to look
the other way, the victim casually glanced around and, feeling
unnoticed, swooped down for the wallet only to wind up tumbling on his
face or developing an instant hernia. The Jungle would explode in
laughter as the victim retreated sheepishly.

The most entertaining of Dan-O's pranks, from a spectator's view, was
the "charging tarantula" trap. Dan-O would take fishing line, attach it
to a very realistic-looking rubber tarantula, and rig the fish line so
that at the flick of his wrist the tarantula would come scampering out
from beneath a stock crate near the aisleway. For bait, Dan-O would
crumple up a dollar bill and place it in the aisle. The innocent
pedestrian would come along, start to reach for the dollar, and... SHIT
GOD ALMIGHTY... the bug-eyed terror you would see in the faces of these
victims was enough to send you howling to your knees. After the victim
had fled, Dan-O would leisurely reset the trap and we'd await the next
pigeon. Man, the time just flew.

The absolute craziest co-worker I met during my first year was my relief
man, Jack. He was a doper, the pied piper of dumbdom, always banged to
the gills on some queer mix of speed, mescaline, hash or cocaine. As my
relief man, his duties were to come around twice per night and spell me
for my break period. I would often hang around as Jack ran through my
job. Though there was something plainly dangerous about him, it could
never be denied that Jack was always a great source for laughter. His
rantings were legend.

Jack also presented me with one of my first confrontations with an
enigma that had been bothering me since I had hired in. He was so
resolute in his hatred toward General Motors that it completely baffled
me as to why he hung around. He had this persecution complex that ate at
him like a bellyful of red ants. I didn't really understand it. I was
still relatively raw, but I assumed a deal was a deal. GM paid us a tidy
income and we did the shitwork. No one was holding a gun to anyone's
head. I didn't harbor any hatred toward GM. My war was with that
suffocating minute hand. With Jack, General Motors was the taproot for
all that was miserable and repellent in his life. To

hear him tell it, GM was out to bury him. He was obsessed with
vengeance and anarchy.

For instance, one night Jack arrived to send me on break. Before doing
so, he raced around the corner to buy a pack of smokes. A moment later,
he reappeared screechin' his lungs out. Apparently, the cigarette
machine had eaten his money. An unfortunate break? Not the way Jack saw
it. This was just another GM conspiracy designed to crank up the
animosity level. The war was on. Jack reached into my workbench and
grabbed my sledgehammer. I had a very uneasy feeling about the look on
his face.

Moments after Jack charged off with my sledgehammer, I heard the sound
of glass being shattered. The pounding continued. He was obviously
destroying the vending machine. GM had absolutely nothing to do with
these machines. They were serviced by private vendors. Still, Jack
bashed away at the machine as if he were poundin' the very last breath
out of Roger Smith himself.

Finally, Jack returned. He had about two dozen packs of cigarettes
bunched to his chest. Blood trickled from his forearms. His smile was
one demented line stretching from ear to ear. The war had been won. From
that day on, Jack always referred to my sledgehammer as the Better
Business Bureau. He was convinced that he had delivered a furious blow
against the infernal GM empire. All he really did was deprive the
department of access to cigarettes for the next several months.

Whenever I asked Jack why he just didn't quit and move on to something
that was less aggravating, he would jump all over me. "Goddamnit, that's
precisely what they're banking on. That I'll weaken and bow to their
endless tyranny. NO WAY! They'll have to drag me out of here."

Besides the crazies, there was also the occasional violent type. We had
one guy up in the Jungle, a black dude named Franklin, who kept our
department on constant edge. He was forever picking fights with
co-workers. It wasn't any kind of racial thing, Franklin had it in for
everyone. When something set him off, he just went to whalin' on people.

One night, he got Henry, our Quality man. Henry had refused to give
Franklin an extra pair of work gloves. Franklin became enraged. Later in
the shift, he snuck up on Henry and

smashed him over the head with a door latch. Henry received a dozen
stitches in the back of his skull and Franklin got thirty days on the
street.

Franklin worked as a utility man, floating daily from job to job
depending on where he was needed. At the beginning of every shift you
could hear him throwin' his customary shitfit about what job the foreman
had assigned him to cover. It didn't matter what type of job it was,
easy or difficult. He'd scream and holler and demand to see his union
rep.

i felt a certain amount of pity for our boss. No matter how he tried to
soothe the situation, it only made it worse. For example, I firmly
believe that if our foreman were to have come up to Franklin one sunny
afternoon and told him his only duty for the shift would be to fornicate
with Miss America on some sandy beach with a dozen bottles of chilled
Dom Perignon at hand, he would have thrown himself into a blind rage and
accused the boss of denying him the right to sweat it out all night on
the door hang job.

Franklin didn't pull any of his crap with the veterans or guys who
outbulked him. He preyed mainly on the timid, the brittle and the
rookies. The rookies were at a severe disadvantage. Without having
served the first ninety days of their probation period, there was no way
they could risk swinging at anybody. To do so would mean instant
termination. GM didn't have time to sort out who was to blame in these
skirmishes. You could get sucker-punched while saying a rosary and still
receive the same punishment as your attacker. It was professional
suicide for any rookie to fight back. Franklin exploited this situation
and made a career out of intimidating rookies.

Besides his violent streak, there was something else about Franklin that
had me very intrigued. He was forever writing stuff down on little
notepads, scraps of cardboard, napkins

anything he could find. Several co-workers I talked to joked that he was
probably just scrawling down ransom notes or bomb threats. One thing was
for certain. Franklin wouldn't allow a soul to see what he was writing.
If you came anywhere near him while he was jotting, he'd quickly cram
the paper away.

My curiosity was getting the best of me. Jerome Franklin. Bully.
Terrorist. Cutthroat. Man of letters? I had to find out

what was behind his mysterious sideline. One evening, while Franklin
was covering Roy's old job across the line from me, I went over to the
picnic bench and began thumbing through the sports section. In between
jobs, Franklin was furiously hammering out something on a piece of paper
towel. I decided to make my move.

"Shit, Franks, you rewritin' the Bible over here?" "Just some bullshit
to pass the time," he muttered. "Mind if I took a look?" A big pause. A
brutal pause. A pause with a vanity plate that read v EAT ME. Finally,
Franklin gave me a nervous grin. "Go ahead," he said. "But I don't want
one word of this shit being' spread through the department or it's your
ass."

I laid out the paper towel on the picnic bench. The printing

was barely legible. Grease spots and sealer smudges covered the page. I
began reading and was quickly amazed. Franklin was writing poetry of all
things. The poetry was not only a surprise, the damn shit was red-hot.
He had some great lines in there, plenty of imagery and anger and this
passionate raw beauty that welded together in a furious glide. The guy
wasn't writing as much as he was attacking the beast. The poetry leapt
at your spine and shook you down.

"Jesus, Franks, this stuff really kicks ass."

Franklin shrugged and dumped another load of pencil rods

into his bin. He said nothing. He was obviously uncomfortable about
being exposed as someone who could actually accomplish something more
than pounding skulls and bustin' out teeth.

I read on. Who'd have ever believe it? The resident high

priest of mayhem was a poet of enormous talent. No whiny art-fag lip
service here. No candy-ass dime-a-rhyme. Franklin got in and got out. No
excess baggage, no gristle. It was all red meat and arteries burstin'
wide open and gray matter boiling in flame. He had the goods, the bads
and plenty of the uglies. I put down the paper towel and was about to
say something. Franklin cut me off.

"Not a word. Let's just fuckin' drop it."

In the nights to come I hounded Franklin to let me check

out his writings, but he always blew me off. I knew better than to press
the matter too far and run the risk of having my face flattened, so I
just gave up. It was sad that he couldn't funnel

his hostility into something more worthwhile than brawling with
co-workers and behaving like the campus bully.

Franklin never did change his stance. Within a couple of months, GM had
him by the balls. His constant fighting combined with his atrocious
attendance record had finally dug him a hole so deep that even the union
couldn't bail him out. He was fired and they had to bring up three
guards to haul him away.

There's probably no tellin' what he's whalin' on today, nine years
removed from the Jungle. Apartment walls. Cell bars. The skulls of the
bewildered. Possibly, there's a typewriter mixed in there somewhere. I
hope so. I would hate to think that all of that rattlesnake scrawl died
along with the job. What a waste.

After a few weeks I managed to develop a good rapport with another black
dude, Robert, the mig-welder who worked right down from me. Having been
sequestered in Catholic schools my entire youth and adolescence, I
didn't have much of an opportunity to meet many black folk until I hired
on with GM. You just didn't find too many bro's hangin' around the
communion rail hummin' verses of "Holy, Holy, Holy" while awaiting their
tongue's worth of Mr. Christ. Just your basic bunch of white hypocrites
sheenin' their souls for another week's worth of fetch and wretch.

While Robert was from Alabama, our stories were much the same. His
forefathers, like mine, had drifted into this moron dragnet lookin' for
steady work and a pocketful of beer change.

And like my father and me, Robert liked to drink. Once he'd had a few,
he'd start in with hilarious stories of his childhood in the backwoods.
He talked about the perverse sexual practices of his cousins and their
clumsy endeavors with farm critters, the white trash hookers who'd lay
it all out on a haymow while charging the bystanders a buck a pop to
watch it go down. It was all very funny and that prick minute hand would
buzz by in circles.

We'd often end up discussing our fates as proud American truck builders.
We both shared the contention that neither one of us should're ever been
forced to attend even one miserable day's worth of formal education.
What good was schooling to someone who was just gonna turn screws and
shoot sparks the

rest of his life? Robert suggested that this time could have been
better spent gettin' high and chasin' females. I would heartily agree,
insisting that anything-, masturbating, bowling, fishing, blowing up
bank--would've been better than the crap all those nuns had crammed down
my throat.

If Robert tended to be a pissed-off sulk at times, he had every right to
be. He'd been divorced a couple of times and the Friend of the Court was
slicin' him to pieces. They took the child support right out of his
check and, on Thursday nights, while everybody would be gettin' all
giddy over the big numbers starin' back at them from their pay stubs,
Robert would be slouched over his workbench tryin' his damndest to
formulate a budget from the remains of his week's earnings.

It was a shame that guys like Robert had to drag their asses through the
Jungle nine hours a night, inhaling fire and growing deaf from the din,
only to wind up taking home a paycheck that was more in line with what
your average zithead from Taco Bell was making. But, like so many
shoprats, Robert had mortgaged his soul to the bitch goddesses of
whiskey and women, and he paid for it every Thursday night.

Robert introduced me to an old guy known only as Louie who worked at the
end of our line in the repair station. Louie had a great little racket
goin' for himself. He peddled half pints of Canadian Club and Black
Velvet up and down the line in the Cab Shop area. He charged three bucks
a bottle, almost double the store rate, but who was gonna argue. The
booze was in the door, you didn't have to wait for it, and Louie
delivered right to your bech.

When ordering from Louie, all one had to do was slip the word down the
line through a network of fellow workers. You passed on your selection
and detailed your location by using the numbers stenciled onto the big
iron pillar nearest your job. It was like conjuring up a ;euie. You'd
lay out your money on top of your bench and Louie would come stragglin'
down the aisle just like Mr. Green Jeans with the booze stashed
somewhere in his floppy coveralls. What a wonderful little microcosm of
American capitalism Louie had goin' for himself. Just goes to show that
there's an endless array of clever ventures one can concoct to assure
that one's grandkids are able to afford the

sissy college of their choice. All by ourselves, Robert and I probably
paid off a couple semesters..

Shoprat alcohol consumption was always a hot debate with those who just
didn't understand the way things worked inside a General Motors plant.
While not everyone boozed on a daily basis, alcohol was a central part
of many of our lives It was a crutch not unlike the twenty cups of
coffee millions of other Americans depend on to whisk them through their
workday. We drank our fair share of coffee, but the factory environment
seemed to lend itself toward something that was a great deal more potent
and rejuvenating.

I frequently found myself defending this custom with nonfactory
acquaintances. They conveniently put the blame for everything square in
the laps of those who drank on the job: "NO WONDER the Japanese are
moppin' up the market floor with your asses! NO WONDER my new vehicle
farts like a moose full of chickpeas! NO WONDER the rear end of my Chevy
Suburban rattles like a Hari Krishna in a cement mixer! NO WONDER they
want to phase out all you juicers and replace you with robotics!"

The criticisms came from all sources--friends, neighbors, retirees,
relatives, the local media. It was a popular bandwagon full of
self-righteous dickheads and know-nothings. The yappin' hypocrisy that
never ceased to amuse: "IT'S THOSE OVERPAID, SPINELESS FACTORY HACKS AND
THEIR DEMONIC CRAVING FOR FIREWATER! THEY REPRESENT TOTAL HUMILIATION TO
THE GREAT AMERICAN WORK ETHIC! THOSE INGRATES CAN'T BE SATISFIED WITH
THEIR GARGANTUAN PAYCHECKS OR THE FACT THAT THEY POSSESS MORE MEDICAL
COVERAGE THEN EVEL KNIEVEL COULD PISS AWAY IN A MILLION UNSUCCESSFUL BUS
HURDLES! TO TOP IT Off THEY'RE ALL CODDLED AND PROTECTED BY A UNION THAT
WOULD PROBABLY EMBRACE RICHARD SPECK AS JUST A MISUNDERSTOOD DRIFTER
WITH A HARMLESS YEN FOR VODKA AND ROPE TRICKS!"

Oftentimes, the Flint Journal, the unofficial GM gazette, would devote
large portions of their editorial page to the miserable whines of these
blowhards. "I worked in the plant for

thirty-six years and never once needed to rely on alcohol..." "I think
that it is an outrage that my neighbor, a GM employee, spends half of
his shift sitting in a bar..." "The autoworker of today is weak and
corrupt and..." Blah, blab, blab.

It's one thing to be harangued by those who have gone before the
forebears, the sit-down strikers, the providers of the torch, my very
own grandfather but to be put through the verbal shredder by townsfolk
who've never even seen the innards of an auto factory, well, that was a
different matter. Their pious deductions always made me squirm.

The total farce of it all is that given our jobs, these same

moany denizens would be lined up right next to us at the barstools and
beer coolers if they could somehow weasel in the gate. They'd lose that
sacred work ethic baloney and clasp on to Louie's coveralls faster than
you can say "the mercury reads 118 in the Paint Department tonight."
Keep in mind, the grass is always greener on the other side until it's
your turn to jump the fence and chop the shit down.

There is simply no need for apologies. Hell, when you get

right down to it, General Motors management doesn't even pay much heed
to the drinking habits of its own work force. They realize it would be a
massive and futile effort on their part to attempt to stymie a
widespread tradition. And moreover, they really don't give a good
goddamn who's tippin' and who isn't just as long as the parts keep
flowing by in their assigned locations. Start sending down inferior
product and then drinking would become an issue.

Drinking right on the line wasn't something everyone

cared for. But plenty did, and the most popular time to go snagging for
gusto was the lunch break. As soon as that lunch horn blew, half of the
plant put it in gear, sprinting out the door in packs of three or four,
each pointed squarely for one of those chilly coolers up at one of the
nearby beer emporiums. Talk about havoc. It was like some nightly cross
between the start of the Indy 500 and chute-surfin' out of the fuselage
of a burning jet. Engines racing. Tires squealing. Pedestrians
somersaulting over car hoods.

I half expected one night to find Marlon Perkins propped

in a jeep near the gate narrating this frantic migration: "Notice,

friends, the fleet mobility of our subjects. The wide eyes and gaping
mouths are timeless clues that another pilgrimage to the watering hole
is well under way."

A half hour is all most workers had. Make no mistake, this small
opportunity to bust open the monotony of shop grind helped many guys
avoid cracking up, cracking skulls, missing work or mutating into
supervisional bullies. A jumbo of beer certainly wasn't gonna save
anyone's life, but the odds were it would certainly enhance it. John
DeLorean himself proved that factory critters can't triumph above the
ordinary on black coffee and Twinkles alone. Hell no. On a clear day you
can see General Motors and, if you squint a little harder, you can also
see a frosty quart of Budweiser just as plain as the cocaine attach case
at the end of the motel bed.

It was during these early years that my old friend Denny and I spent our
lunch breaks together. With a double-up arrangement not much different
from mine, Denny was able to tag along as we indulged in every shoprat's
dream scare: the Double Lunch. With our jobs securely covered by
coworkers, we could slide out and overlap the two lunch periods
designated for the two separate truck lines. Instead of a half hour for
lunch, we now had a sprawling hour and twelve minutes to get lost. It
was wonderful what you could avoid accomplishing with that extra
forty-two minutes off.

One particular double lunch from that period has always stood out. The
plant was really roasting that night with the kind of corraled heat that
often rendered the overhead fans useless and forced a horde of
dehydrated reeking shoprats to line up at the drinking fountain and gulp
down salt tablets.

On that night, Denny came to my job with an invitation to slug down a
few at lunch. Though nothing in the world sounded better than cold beer,
I knew we would have to be careful. The beer was always a godsend goin'
down, but you had to watch out for the fatigue factor it brought on when
the heat was high. If you overdid it you ran the risk of drowsing out
during the second half of the shift. By night's end you'd be totally
gassed and ornery enough to punch out your own grandmother.

But the offer was just too appealing. "I like beer," I said. "Beer
tastes good."

At the convenience store we stood in line behind three attractive young
ladies. They were purchasing diet pop and

wine coolers. I remember thinking that they must be part of some very
special breed, a sorority of angels who simply forbade themselves to
perspire. They giggled and fussed with their perfect hair all the while
glaring at us with their terrible animal eyes.

We smiled back at them. It was all so hopeless. We

couldn't help our appearance. We didn't normally smell this way. It was
the $12.82 an hour and the benefits package and the opportunity to swill
a cold one in between breaks in the madness that doomed us to trudge
into convenience stores lookin' like Spare patties in wet suits. Our
grandfathers had taken this route. Our fathers were right behind them.
Now it was our turn to be thirsty, rank and every bit as unlucky.

We took our quarts of Mickey's Malt Liquor and headed for

the back of the employees' lot. It was always wise to park in a section
far far removed from the roving eye of the surveillance cameras.
Otherwise, the guards might scope you down as you tipped that cold
chalice to your lips and decide to wheel out and give you some shit.
This rarely happened, but it was a nuisance all the same. There would be
ID requests. There would be boring lectures. Sometimes there might even
be a slow shuffle down to the Labor Relations office.

Denny and I drank, mostly in silence, while a Lesley Gore

Greatest Hits tape poured out of the dash of my Camaro. We were
beginning to feel human, the beer workin' its magic, the edge
dissolving, the shoprat's humble version of the multiple martini lunch.
We sat there staring off into the smokestacks with the weight of the
world gradually sliding through the floorboard. The guards and the
bossmen were absolute madmen. How could anything that felt so good be a
punishable offense? Our screws were all in place. Our welds were shining
brightly. It was all working out. What could be the problem?

We both loved Lesley Gore and, on this most humid of

nights, Lessley was really lettin' us have it: "California Nights," "I
Don't Wanna Be a Loser," "That's the Way Boys Are" her complete arsenal.
We slurped faster and faster on our malt liquor jumbos. At that precise
moment, there was very little doubt that we had everyone in the galaxy
squarely beaten.

We were on a roll. We raced back to the convenience store,

this time purchasing two forty-ouncers of Mickey's Malt. We

hit on the beer and sang along with Lesley and laughed at our great
fortune. We looked like trash, we smelled like death, we had no idea who
was winning the wars or the rat race or the relentless struggle to get
on top. It was all so very meaningless. Someone would be declared the
victor and the rest of the world would roll over and begin to plot
tomorrow's lousy comeback.

"I've gotta admit," Denny laughed, "it doesn't get much better 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 A1 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?"

"Urn, 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 do it? Why
in the hell did he do it? I asked Dale

why he didn't just give up the farm and pig biz, move downstate, and
carve out a sweet living as just another rat in the pack. Flint wasn't
Oz, but it had to pull rank over a town called Twining.

"Move... HERE?" he groaned. "Move to Flint?"

"Why not," I answered. "Lots of bars, plenty of women,

cable TV, a semipro hockey team, large shopping malls, superb Coney
Islands, movie theaters, record stores...um, did I mention lots of
bars?"

Dale was more interested in fishing holes and deer trails.

He also chided me about the murder rate and whether people

had to lock their doors at night.

"Now that's hittin' below the belt, Dale."

"I'll stick to Twining," he said.

Despite our different lifestyles, Dale and I clicked well together. He
was much more experimental than Bud had been. Dale shared the same
commitment I had to tryin' anything that would budge that minute hand in
our favor. We quickly scrapped the hour on, hour off arrangement and
went straight for the summit of the double-up system -a half day on, a
half day off. This meant you could actually spend as little as four or
five hours in the plant, get paid for the full time, and escape out of
the chaos by sunset. What a setup.

This is how it worked: Dale and I would both report to

work before the 4:30 horn. We'd spend a half hour preparing all the
stock we would need for the evening. At 5:00, I would take over the two
jobs while Dale went to sleep in a makeshift cardboard bed behind our
bench. Having been up since sunrise, Dale was a very eager candidate for
some shuteye. He'd stuff some plugs into his ears, crawl into his bed,
and often be sound asleep before I had even finished my first truck.

I'd work the jobs from 5:00 until 9:24, the official Suburban/

Blazer Line lunch period. When the line stopped, I'd give Dale's
cardboard coffin a good kick and rouse him from his sweaty dreams of
compression ratios and pork products. It was time for the handoff. I
would give my ID badge to Dale so that he could punch me out at quitting
time. This was the riskiest part of the operation. If a supervisor or
security guard managed to spot a worker punchin' out two badges, his ass
was dead. Next to stealing and sabotage, this act was the most

severe crime you could pull. Immediate dismissal was the result. I had
seen it happen to a couple of careless workers and they were promptly
put to the curb. No, this was not a solid career move; however, it had
to be done to assure that the early escapee would get paid a full
shift's worth.

As risky as it was, you really had to be a complete idiot to get caught
ringin' out two badges. All it took was common sense to do the job
proper. The first rule was that yol never used the same time clock for
both badges. Since there were a dozen time clocks to choose from this
wasn't difficult. You moved up to the first time clock, took a look
around, always making sure you punched out your partner's badge first.
This done, you quickly stashed his badge down the front of your pants.
Then you moved on to another clock and punched yourself out. This way
even if a guard caught you ringin' out a second badge, at least that
badge would be your own. If questioned as to why you were seen punching
out twice, you became very upset, insisting that the first clock had
malfunctioned, a frequent aggravation. If the guard persisted and asked
to see what you slid down your pants, you really became livid, accusing
him of a shameless come-on. Then, you hauled ass.

I have some wonderful memories of sittin' on a barstool on a Friday
night at the Limberlost Bar in Houghton Lake, Michigan 130 miles north
of the truck plant--nursin' on my tbird beer while lookin' up between
the antlers at the clock as it turned over to 2:00 A.m. At that precise
moment 130 miles to the south Dale would slide my General Motors ID
badge through one of the twelve time clocks.

Perfecting this kind of immaculate trickery called for complete
reliability in one's partner. You had to be sure that the quality of the
jobs remained faultless. You had to make extra certain to avoid any type
of injury. You had to refrain from all drinking. With your partner not
around to intervene, you couldn't risk having to piss out a load of
beer.

Over the weeks and months to come, Dale and I accelerated our routine.
We got the operation down so well that we could actually do both jobs
and still have time to stand around. Unfortunately, this didn't escape
the eye of our General Foreman, who was already having a difficult time
swallowing our

system. Doubling-up was one thing. But to double-up while working and
still have time to browse the paper or kibitz with fellow linemates just
didn't wash. We were being watched. We knew it and we should have slowed
it down to make it appear more difficult than it really was. But we
didn't. We'd simply become too damn cocky.

Not surprisingly, Dale and I arrived at our jobs one afternoon to find a
swarm of bossmen grouped around our bench. There was our supervisor, the
General Foreman, the Repair Foreman and a couple other big players
milling about. They had a large box of some kind of stock piece I didn't
recognize. They also had a strange, tiny air gun that they were passin'
around.

The picture was dreadfully clear. The bastards were adding work to our
jobs. The Repair Foreman grabbed the tiny air gun and a piece of the
foreign stock and bent way beneath the belly of the truck cab.
Zzzzzzz-zing! He reached for another. Zzzzzzz-zing! Then another. Then
another. Then one more. With every squeal of that runt gun, i felt a bit
more nauseous.

Dale and I slouched down at the picnic table. Bob-ALou came to express
his condolences. "They've been over there for a half hour fiddling with
those new parts," he said. "Tough luck, guys."

"What are those goddamn things, anyway?" I groaned.

Robert shrugged. "Hey, you had to see it comin'. They've been hawkin'
you like naked pussy for the past month."

Dale finally spoke up. "Screw 'em. We'll get around it somehow. We'll
just have to crank it up a gear."

The bossmen motioned for Dale and me to come over. They explained how it
would be. We would read the schedule taped to the front of each cab and
this would inform us as to whether a certain truck called for
air-conditioning clamps. There would be no set pattern that we could
rely on. Sometimes the clamps would be required on three consecutive
trucks. Other times they might fall on every fourth truck. This kind of
suspense was just what the bossmen were hoping would break up our
system.

Attaching the air-conditioning clamps was a pain in the ass. It wasn't a
strenuous chore, it was more of an exasperation. You couldn't see the
holes you were supposed to be

screwing into. You had to feel around and, once you found them, you had
to balance the air gun perfectly still so that the screw and clamp
didn't vibrate off the miniature tip of the gun. If you missed your
mark, everything would fly apart and you would be forced to start all
over.

After a couple of days of this new arrangement, I was ready to
surrender. Just when I thought I'd drilled in all five clamps securely,
one of them would go clanking off and land on the ramp track. I'd start
cussin' my brains out and stompin' around like a madman.

Thankfully, Dale was there to calm me down. Mechanical plights and
misbehaving gizmos were hobbies for him. He began teaching me a new
stance that would give me much better accuracy with the air gun. I
practiced and practiced. Dale wouldn't allow me to give up, assuring me
that we'd be right back in business within a week.

And that unconcerned, soothsayin' pig farmer was right. Through
determination, perspiration, acceleration and pure spite, we swallowed
up the air-conditioning clamps into our routine and were back
doubling-up within a week. We made for a helluva team. The neurotic,
scare-happy city kid and the bullheaded, work-junkie farm boy.

Our return to glory didn't escape the notice of our supervisors. They'd
pause while passing our jobs and ogle us a while. They had been so
convinced that the additional work would halt our schemin' ways. They'd
called our bluff and been beaten.

As exasperated as they probably felt, they knew there was nothing they
could really do to stop us. We showed up for work each and every day. We
ran nothing but 100 percent defect-free quality. We kept our workplace
spotless, provided you overlooked Dale's ugly slick of chewing tobacco
juice. GM was very big on bottom lines and the bottom line as it
pertained to Dale and me was that we were exemplary shoprats.

The months sailed by. The bossmen left us to our own devices. The
opportunity to cleave through the monotony of assembly line labor by
combining our two jobs was something neither Dale nor I ever took for
granted. We were dumbshit lucky and we knew it. If the Plant Manager
himself had shown up with a contract binding the two of us to stick to
our Jungle ruts for the duration of our thirty years, we'd probably have

scrawled our names, dates of birth and Social Security numbers on it in
warm blood.

With two years down and twenty-eight to go, Dale and I were more than
satisfied with our lot in the corporate web. We reasoned that we would
grow old together on our job combo. We envisioned ourselves becoming
potbellied old farts, docile and harmless, staying our course toward
that gold watch and wonderful pension plan. Proud old bucks stompin' on
Father Time Clock.

We wanted nothing more than to follow in the footsteps of Cab Shop
legends like Lightnin' and Same-O. Here were two old-timers who'd been
around so long that they probably could remember when there was no GM
Truck & Bus plant on Van Slyke Road Lonly an Indian settlement or a
trading post. When a worker had reached this amount of seniority, not
much was expected of him performance-wise. They just shued through the
motions and GM stuck a paycheck in their pocket every Thursday night.

Lightnin' was a real study. No one had the faintest clue as to what his
job assignment might be. The popular theory was that it had something to
do with the men's room located in the stairwell leading up to the Cab
Shop. That was the only place you ever caught a glimpse of Lightnin'.
He'd be leanin' up against a wall near the last urinal, sound asleep on
his feet.

It didn't make any sense. There were a million hideaways a man could
find to lie down and take a snooze-the cushion room, the tool crib, the
locker room, the cafeterias, the picnic tables, the stock pallets, the
back seat of a defective Blazer. Why Lightnin' chose to sleep leanin'
against the men's room wall remained one of the great mysteries of Cab
Shop. He wasn't an old queer or anything like that. Hell, he wasn't even
conscious.

Bob-A-Lou was the resident speculator when it came to the topic of
Lightnin'. It was his theory that Lightnin' was a custodian assigned to
clean this specific men's room way back when. Bob-A-Lou believed that
through the ugly crawl of years, Lightnin' had slowly dissolved all
memory of his actual calling, perhaps his entire identity. However, he
never forgot for a moment his assigned battle station. Bob-A-Lou
theorized that Lightnin' was like one of those confused old Japanese

soldiers you occasionally heard about still holed-up on the Kiribati
Islands thinkin' the war was still wagin'.

Who really knew? When the horn blew to begin each shift, Lightnin' took
up his silent vigil as the fossilized overseer of the LL-16 stairwell
men's room. When it got crowded in there on break, you sometimes had to
give old Lightnin' a little nudge in order to find some elbow room at
the pisser. It was neither funny nor sad. It. was something that went on
and on and, after a while, he was another piece of the milieu.

Then there was my old pal Same-O. What a character. Same-O was a living
landmark up in the Cab Shop area. He was very old and very tired. I
could never understand why he stayed on at the plant. Surely, he had
more than enough time in to retire. He was like so many of the old guys
lurchin' around the aisleways, givin' an occasional swipe of the broom
to some ancient pile of dust, molded to the scenery like trolls to the
shadows. It was as if they had nowhere else to go.

There wasn't any mystery as to why everyone called him Same-O. No matter
what was said to my old friend, whether it be a simple hello or a
request for the correct time, he invariably replied "same old thing."
I'd finish up welding down a wheel well and turn around to find him
leanin' on his broom behind my workbench. His face looked like leather.
Before I'd be able to speak, he'd smile at me and mutter "same old
thing." I might comment on the heat or the Detroit Tigers or ask him if
he had another Viceroy. No matter. "Same old thing," he'd offer. I could
already make out the script on his gravestone. There

would be no mention of birth or death or surname. Only: SAME

OLD THING. Same-O had it sussed. I often believe he was the only

genius I ever encountered at GM Truck & Bus.

Lightnin' and Same-O. They were our role models. Survivors, lackeys,
barons. Real victors. They had trampled the Jungle into mulch. It was
all Dale and I really hoped fo: To develop a niche, flip down the
blinders, and pulverize our job assignments into a meaningless ghost
walk through the necessary quarter century and change. No surprises. No
speed bumps. No tampering with the existing terms. Obscurity and
triumph.

It didn't happen. It turned out that we were just a couple

of wistful lunks. From our blurry vision inside the foxhole, we

couldn't catch a glimpse of all the shit that was piling up on the
corporate horizon. The market downturns, the consumer swoons, the
untimely return of another recession. We were as naive as they came.
With only two years' seniority, we hung to this belief that we were
glued to our placements for eternity or thirty years, whichever came
first. We wanted to hold on together like some shrewd tag team spiraling
through the useless decades. Like Lightnin' and Same-O and our very own
granddaddies.

It didn't happen. Somebody forgot to buy their gleamin' Suburban.
Someone else left their marvelous Blazer to rot away on the showroom
floor. The overtime evaporated. The rumors began to fly. The ranks began
to thin. What had happened to all those desperate people in New England?
Had they finally seen a Suburban? Was that all they wanted.., a
look-see?

Oh, that crazy auto industry. Here today, Twining tomorrow. Hi there,
bye now! They handed over my spot-welder to a guy who held higher rank.
Dale was gone before I was. They ushered him out on a Thursday night
after drumming on the side of his cardboard crypt. I told Dale we would
meet up again. I was a very good liar.

It's been over nine years since we danced with a spot welder or cursed
at a clamp. And, right now, we're neither young nor old. Just another
couple of middle-aged shoprats, ex or otherwise, clawin' for coins.

Right now it's a very chilly afternoon in November. It's almost 4:30
P.M.--the old start time. I'm pecking away on a typewriter inside a pool
shed that's been hastily converted into a writer's retreat. I keep
fiddlin' with this jerkoff space heater that's very near death. I have
no idea what Dale is up to. Boots full of pigshit, he's probably messin'
with a deadline of his own.

5.

1979 WASN'T THE BEST OF YEARS FOR FLINT. MY BELEAGUERED

hometown was like some banged-up middleweight resting its rump on the
ropes, covering up its soft belly, hoping only to last out the round.
The big paydays, the cool precision, the bully mystique all of it was
being soundly trounced.

Prosperity was no longer the same happy tune. Nineteen eighty was more
like a funeral dirge. The nation's highest unemployment rate affixed
itself to the home turf and relative newcomers like myself and half of
the crew up in Cab Shop became instant driftwood. The rookies of '77,
those fair-haired recruits of the last real boom era, suddenly looked
like a mighty confused bunch spilling out of the doors of the local
Michigan Employment Security Commission office. For once Papa GM started
to wheeze, every little sib was bound to catch that bug.

However, being laid off from General Motors wasn't the worst thing a
shoprat could run up against. On the plus side, you obviously weren't
required to work. That in itself was a remarkable new pleasure. No
longer did you have to bend or lift or stoop or strain or pick at the
burn scabs on your skull.

No more clipboard kaisers playin' rent-a-God. No more smoke and soot
and fumes and sonic puree. No more minute hands circling like vultures
over dead prey. No more propaganda and cafeteria poison and post-shift
demolition derbies.

As for the downside, you no longer had real job security. That was not
good. No longer could you just nuzzle up to your birthright. No more
hefty wages for idiot labor. No more... urn.., let me think a minute.
There must have been something else. Hmmmm. Oh yeah, no more stupid shit
to commit to memory just in case some curious publishing firm decided to
risk handing you a book contract. I guess that about covers it.

So, as you can see, being laid off wasn't such a terrible dilemma. The
good far outweighed the bad. There was no reason to get.., hey... HOLD
IT! Jesus, where's my brain? I totally blanked on the biggest, baddest,
meanest minus of 'em all: THE UNEMPLOYMENT LINE! Just the sound of that
phrase makes me wanna fling lunch.

A little history of my life's main phobia is in order here. I'm prone to
being the nervous sort when required to stand in line. For me, the
ultimate tension in life is to be stuck in a supermarket jampile waiting
to buy my goods while surrounded by throngs of housewives sifting
through the Midnight Star for grainy pics of Tom Selleck's buttocks.
Help!

Many is the time I felt I was going to go stark raving shit-brained
wacko. I wince at this vision of a twitching lunatic someday
pole-vaulting the counter, smashing through the storefront glass, and
streaking off into the horizon with a horde of suburbanite ghouls
nipping at his Air Hampers with ferocious demands to "HAVE A NICE DAY!"
Make it stop! No more dimwit skull sessions about Sparky Anderson and
the weather. No more lilting mutilations of Jim Croce's "Time in a
Bottle." No more insanity, grief, terror, disgrace and coward's luck.

I've heard that in some states the unemployed simply receive their
checks via the mail. Not so in Michigan. Never mind all the time and
money they could save with this solution. Never mind all the mayhem and
chaos they could prevent with just a stamp and an envelope. Nope, that
would make too much sense. It would also deprive them of their sick
fascination of seeing you shake, quake and quiver as they dragged their
dead asses around in circles.

Realizing this, my old advice to all you panicky types out there is to
do EVERYTHING within your power to hang on to your job. Heap your
employer with phony plaudits, offer to babysit his kids, gulp
amphetamines and perform the work load of ten mules. If you have to, get
down and smooch his dusty wingtips anew with sheen. In your spare time
go to church, pray to Allah, pray to Buddha, plead with Zeus, beg of
Jab, implore the graces of whatever deity landed the '69 Mets a pennant
to keep your nervous butt in the fold and out of places like the
Michigan Employment Security Commission (MESC) logjam of human languish.
No, this is not the spot to be if you get clammy in a crowd.

First off, the MESC has no windows. Once you pop through the doors, it's
like entering a holding tank for sodden stmo wrestlers. You're required
to check in at the front desk where a little old lady will put a red
check next to your appointment time and ask you if you have any
paperwork to turn in. Always, absolutely always, answer no or you will
be detained for a period long enough to qualify for having your face
reprinted on the side of a milk carton. Paperwork makes these people
freeze on contact. If you have paperwork to hand in, wait until you've
got your check passed on to you and then broach the subject as if it
were some dumb, accidental oversight. Don't worry if they get upset.
These tyrants were born pissed off.

After your card has been checked at the front desk, you will be
instructed to fall in line. Being a shoprat, the most popular of jobless
hacks, I always had my choice of lines 6 through 12. Without fail I
always managed to select the wrong one. My method of choosing a line
hardly bordered on the scientific. I would simply gve a deep glance into
the eyes of the assorted claims people and somehow try to determine
which one felt like drivin' herd. Sometimes I'd try the stiff old man.
Sometimes the pretty young woman. Sometimes the evil lady who looked
like Agnes Moorehead ripped from the grave. The strategy, if one could
call it that, never worked. I always ended up in a linoleum tar pit.

A friend of mine always insisted that the MESC had made a widespread
effort to stock its ranks full of people with fetishes for dominance. He
may have been right. So many of their employees seemed to delight in
having you grovel, squirm and plead total ignorance to their cascade of
bureaucratic

muddle. They acted as if you had laid yourself off, that you had no
intention of ever lifting another finger, that you were in a frantic
rush to get back poolside to your bevy of naked stewardesses, that you
hated this country and wanted to use their money to buy explosives to
lob at the governoffs motorcade.

Wading through their standard, hypnotic probes, I was always tempted to
liven things up:

MESC: "Have you received any income during the past two weeks?"

Answer: "Yes, I was paid $10,000 to carry out a hit on a United States
senator."

MESC: 're you receiving any other benefits from any other state?"

Answer: "Yes, 1 am currently on a retainer fee from the State of
Maryland as a procurer of young male prostitutes."

MESC: "Have you been able and available for work the past two weeks?"

Answer: "No, I've been too busy selling PCP to third graders up at the
corner arcade."

Occasionally, you'd see people get really irked over a development with
their claim. On one memorable visit I recall the desk people dropping
this big, ugly bombshell stating that due to some new hitch in the law,
the extended benefits program was being cut and that many of these
jobless folks had run the old money meter dry. Believe me, this message
was not received with much jubilation, as proven by one enraged castoff
who being of sound strength, if not entirely sound mind--saw fit to
retreat to the MESC Personnel parking lot and play Zorro on the office
workers' radials with his switchblade. He was eventually captured and
thrown in jail where I guess he pretty much accomplished his objective
the State was still gonna be footin' his meal ticket.

Above all, the thing you wanted to avoid when visiting the unemployment
office was to be detained in the section of seats over by the side wall.
This is where they would send you if you developed a complication with
your claim, if you needed to file for a new claim, if you acted
unappreciative or if you had gone to the bathroom in your pants. If you
were instructed to have a seat in this dreadful limbo it was advisable
that you have your mail delivery halted and prepare to wait, wait, wait.
I was

very fortunate, having been able to avoid this section. What they did
with these people was not apparent. Sporadically, some figurehead would
poke his head out from beyond the partition and summon one of the
waiting multitudes to follow him.

Never, but never, did I ever witness people reappear once they'd been
ushered into the back chambers of the MESC. At first I thought these
folks were merely ducking out a side exit, but casual research into this
possibility showed me that THERE WAS NO SIDE EXIT.

I assumed that this was how it must end. A silent trudge down a narrow
hall, led by a cranky claims executioner with cold eyes and blue lips.
Finally having your benefits exhausted, you were a total nonentity. No
one missed you. No one could see you. You disappeared from the
unemployment statistics. You no longer existed.

A miniature Auschwitz had been assembled far behind the clicking of the
cashier's keys, far removed from the lazy shuffle of the fresh
claimant's feet, off in back where you now only waited for the pellets
to drop and the air to get red.

Oh, I guess it could have been worse. You could have been burned to
death in a Pinto. You could have been snagged in a plane prop. You could
have been fatally trampled at a Paul Anka concert. You could have had to
go out and find a job.

That was the funny part. A job? Most of us already had jobs. We worked
for the goddamn General Motors Corporation. We were shoprats stuck in a
holding pattern. This was all temporary, a ituke of the trade. Soon
enough those showrooms would start bustling. Phones would begin to ring
and we'd all straggle back to our callings. It was just one of the
quirky fates that went along with being just another cog in such a
mammoth flywheel.

With this understood, it was such a joke when the folks over at the MESC
announced that you were now expected to make the rounds looking for an
alternative occupation. Instead of just pickin' up your biweekly check,
the claims people insisted that you must take along four sets of job
applications to be filled out and returned upon your next visit. It was
ignorant, but you had to play along in order to keep receiving your
money.

This new requirement was a real grin. For instance, on the day before I
was to go pick up my check at the MESC, I would reach for the yellow
pages and randomly select some of the

most bizarre places of business I could find. On a given week I may
have "applied" for work at a taxidermy shop, a porno theater, a
limousine service and a funeral home. They had a spot on the job form
where you were required to write in the name of the individual you had
spoken with. I'd call up the business and ask whoever answered the
owner's name. I'd jot it down and hang up. The form also had a line
asking "Outcome of Job Interview." I put down phrases like "enormously
unqualified," "lacking suificient training" and "a stalemate of mutual
disgust." - I assume the MESC never followed up on any of it. It was
just another way for them to make you feel pressured. They had to know
that any shoprat with half a brain wasn't likely to sacrifice his hefty
unemployment benefits by accepting a job flippin' burgers or scrubbin'
toilets. We may have been crazy, but we weren't fuckin' dumb.

It was fairly ridiculous how much money we were being awarded for not
going to work. Unemployment paid you $377 biweekly. Add to this the $80
a week courtesy of the GM-UAW Supplemental Unemployment Benefits and you
were takin' in a comfortable $268 a week, hardly anyone's definition of
chump change when measured against the fact that you weren't required to
do anything but survive the snail plod over at the MESC every other
week.

It didn't end there. This being the tail end of the Jimmy Carter era, we
were presented another bonus. It seemed Jim had a powerful soft spot in
his lust-leechin' heart for unemployed factory goomers. Before he was
booted out of office, he shoved through some bill called the Trade
Readjustment Act (TRA) and, yipes, it was feedtime all over again for
the old hip pocket.

TRA was designed to provide financial assistance for autoworkers whose
plants were closed due to the influx of foreign competition. I gladly
took their money, though the pretense seemed rather misguided. I still
maintain that blaming it all on the Japanese was a rather cowardly way
of admitting 'w, shit, who was the asshole in charge of mass producing
RHINOS when the public can only afford GERBILS."

I remember the day I received my lump-sum TRA payment. I had never seen
such mirth and hysteria inside the GM-UAW Benefits office. Men were
actually smiling and talking to one another. They would go sprinting out
the door plantin' high fives

and wavin' their odd-colored checks above their heads. It was all so
contrary to the usual dull isolation of the cattle clog.

When it was my turn, I stepped forward and presented my card. The claims
lady handed me a receipt and directed me to the cashier's desk. The
cashier handed me my SUB pay and then began typing up my TRA check.
Judging from the reaction of my fellow workers, I was soon to be a very
exuberant heir. Who'd have guessed that gettin' canned from your job
could be such a bull market? Who cared? Praise the Lord and pass the
allocation.

I waited until I got back to my Camaro to look over my TRA check. The
greed factor was already consuming me. I felt like a kid on Christmas
morning. I held my breath as I glanced over to the amount line. My eyes
immediately popped out. Flashing back at me was a check in Bernard
Hamper's name for TWENTY-SEVEN HUNDRED AND 00 DOLLARS. Jesus, was I ever
glad I had voted for Mr. Carter.

I sped home to the house I shared with my brother Bob. I proudly
unveiled my TRA check. Bob looked at it and shook his head. "Generous
Motors strikes again." He chuckled. "What are you gonna do with all that
money? Or need I ask."

'Ask not! As your eldest, brother, it is my considered opinion that we
call up the crew and convene the next several evenings in one
overindulgent cesspool of liquor, drugs and rock 'n' roll trash. It's
the very least we can do to show appreciation to that peanut-shuckin'
commander in chief and the fierce Japanese who, in emergency tandem, saw
fit to impregnate my coffer twenty-sevenfold."

What other route was there for a young, unemployed party buffoon who
didn't give a rip about his bank balance but to squander such a silly
gift of generosity on crud that would help dissolve his nightly ennui?
It was like free money. Like hittin' up the Lotto. When all was burned
and buried, I had managed to hold back just enough to pay off the loan
on my car.

The most silly irony in being laid off during this period was that I was
now actually making more money by not going to work. When you sat down
and averaged in the TRA windfall, I was coming out about twenty bucks
per week to the better. It really dampened your enthusiasm for any rapid
return to the

ranks of the employed. Hell, being rehired would effectively mean
taking a cut in pay.

During my layoff I paid a visit to my aunt's house for her annual family
reunion cookout. My grandfather was there, holding court, drinkin' beer
with my uncles, and discussing the world at large. I attempted to stay
on the fringe, fully aware that my grandfather was bound to switch the
subject over to General Motors once he spotted me. He had put in so many
years at GM that, though he'd been retired for more than a decade, the
shop remained his favorite oratorical topic. He could talk factory until
your ears turned blue. I anticipated these conversations with a most
definite lack of zeal.

My grandfather saw me and approached. "Y'know, I've been readin' in the
newspaper about all of that TRA money you guys are receivin'." Uh-oh,
prepare to enter the time tunnel.

"Pretty good money for not havin' to work at all."

"You won't hear me complaining," I replied.

"I should say not. Christ, you boys today are gettin' a free ride. In my
early years at GM, you were left high and dry when they pulled a
cutback. There wasn't no unemployment check or SUB pay and there sure as
hell wasn't any of this TRA junk. You scraped up work anywhere you could
tendin' bar, moppin' floors, sellin' apples. You didn't have no
pamperin' union wipin' your ass at every turn. Shit, no. Back then a
foreman could run you right out the door for no reason at all. The next
day his brother-in-law would be doin' your job."

My grandfather went on and on. I couldn't help but get a little
pissed-off. He took it too far, making it sound like I should feel a
terrible guilt over all the benefits I was getting. Christ, I couldn't
help it if I was born too late to scrounge and suffer. What the hell was
I supposed to do? Refuse unemployment insurance? Turn down pay hikes?
Demand the removal of my fan? Insist that GM stop paying me such bloated
wages and return me to the damn stone age?

It was an uncomfortable stalemate. Two generations of shoprats who
simply couldn't relate to each other's era. Indeed, I owed a tremendous
debt to my grandfathers and uncles and to all those who bravely took
part in the historic sitdown strikes of 1937. They were truly working
class heroes who bettered the path for all factory men and women to
come. But,

hold on, we worked damn hard also. We sweated and humped and hammered
it out just as they had. What did they want from us? Our left nuts?

Things had improved immensely due to the efforts of our forefathers. We
would always remain grateful to them. However, some things never did
change. The factory was still a shithole, comparisons be damned. One
large shithole and you'd better believe that that unbearable clock on
the wall never moved one iota faster for us than it did them.

GM phoned me. It was bound to happen sooner or later. The big callback.
Actually, the timing couldn't have been better. Since I had been laid
off nearly nine months, my benefits were in danger of skidding to a
halt. I only had two more visits to the MESC before my last extension
was exhausted. After that, who knew? My rsum was sorta blank.

I was instructed to rendezvous back up to my old department in Cab Shop.
This suited me fine. I hated surprises. As I arrived upstairs, it was as
if a day had never passed. The old gang was sitting around--Bob-A-Lou,
Robert, Dan-O, Tim, Bigfoot, Ronny, Larry, Armando, Ty, Jimmy. Of
course, there was Same-O leanin' on his broom. The only one missing was
Dale. He had opted to quit GM and stay up in Twining with his pigs and
combines.

We had a new foreman, rather, foreperson. A beautiful young black woman
named Lydia. She asked that we all group around the picnic table. I
wedged in next to Ronny. Lydia paused and looked down at her clipboard.
Damn, she was pretty.

Lydia began. "Most of you workers are familiar with the Cab Shop. This
will make the start-up procedure much easier. I will now read a list of
what jobs are still open. If I mention a job you are interested in,
please raise your hand."

She began reading off the job descriptions. Looking across the line, I
could see that my old job was already filled. Some older guy was busy
fillin' up the screw bins and stackin' the pencil rods and clamps. I
wanted to kill the bastard. Didn't he realize he was trespassing?

I wasn't even listening to Lydia's job auction when I suddenly felt
someone jerk my arm into the air. It was Ronny.

"We'll take 'em," he yelled.

"We'll take WHAT?" I demanded.

"The Suburban and Blazer tailgate buildup jobs."

"Oh."

Ronny already knew both of the buildup jobs. Hell, he knew practically
every job in the entire Jungle. Ronny also knew me well enough to know
that I'd work my ass off in order to set up a scheme. He knew that if
the two of us worked the tailgates as a partnership, we could fancy out
a little system that would allow us plenty of free time. I thanked Ronny
for volunteering me. It wasn't the marvelous setup I'd had with Dale,
but it was probably the next best thing in the department. Had he not
grabbed my arm, I might've wound up boltin' down cargo beds or fittin'
doors.

We attacked our new jobs. The hitch was to bust ass and built up the
tailgates faster than they were pulling them off the end of our feeder
line. We each drilled our separate tailgates, leaned them aside, and
once we had enough built, it was time to converge and arrange the
tailgates on the conveyor line. When the bottom layer was finished, we
began double-stacking. When all was completed, the conveyor line was
this trudging, two-tiered mountain of gleaming silver slowly creeping
toward the buttocks of the nation's finest-built recreational vehicles.

Being twenty-four jobs ahead of the line amounted roughly to forty-five
minutes of free time. Not bad, not bad at all. It wasn't nearly enough
time to reach last call up at Houghton Lake or hibernate in a cardboard
tomb, but it was time enough to play some three-handed euchre with Gary,
the door-build guy, or, more frequently, to go wandering down to the
cafeteria with Ronny on one of his massive feeding frenzies.

The GM Truck & Bus cafeteria Dachau for the average stomach lining, a
linoleum nightmare, Guyana soup kitchen for the famished and foolhardy.
The place always looked yellow to me as if the air itself had contracted
hepatitis. The inedibles were provided by an outside catering service
who when asked the proverbial probe "How do you handle a hungry man?"
must have replied "Botulism, just say ahhh." The astonishing part of it
all was that so many workers partook in this bow-wow chow on a daily
basis. I guess that's what happens when you're subject to a monopoly.
There was nowhere else to eat. Your only alternatives were a few vending
machines stocked with

tantalizing entrees like canned chili, vinegar-flavored potato chips,
pork rinds and stale Zagnut bars. Fasting was both a popular and
intelligent option.

On one side of the cafeteria they served what they called "Full Course
Meals." For about five bucks you would receive a slim gray slab of
cow-thing, a side of artificial tater goop, a washed-out rainbow of
veggies, a rectangle of lime Jell-o and a carton of warm milk.

The other side of the cafeteria featured "The Grill." This is where
Ronny always did his serious chowin'. He had a soft spot in his hardened
arteries for their cheeseburger deluxe with extra bacon. Watching Ronny
consume two or three of his favorite monster burgers was both hilarious
and hideous. All you could hear was this incredible suction noise
punctuated by various slurps and burps. He wasn't eatin' the damn
cheeseburgers as much as he seemed to be having oral sex with them.

I often had to warn Ronny to slow down. "Watch it, Jethro. You're gonna
gnaw off a fingertip if you're not careful."

"Grrrrabll-aggaga-mooshrrrr," Ronny would respond, his mustache gloomed
with mayo, his eyes glaring back at me like some fevered boar. What
could be said. A boy and his burger. It was as inherently American as
Washington crossing the Delaware or Billy Carter pissing on an airport
runway.

THE SHOP FOOD MATCH GAME

Hey, just for kicks. Here's the directions: simply match the food
listings in the numbered column with the corresponding taste sensations
in the lettered column. No fair approaching a shoprat for assistance.
Scoring: 9 or 10 correct--ready to dine on the set of a snuff movie. 7
or 8 correct--consider moving to the Republic of Mylanta. 5 or 6
correct--too wimpy to have a beer gut. Less than 5--pray that you never
become blue-collar.

1. Mashed Potatoes

2. Beans & Franks

3. Reuben Sandwich

4. Chicken Soup

5. Tater Tots

6. Turkey

7. Coney Dogs

8. Patty Melt

9. Cole Slaw

10. Salisbury Steak

A. Construction Paper

B. Alan "Trammel's Sweat Socks Immediately After a Doubleheader C.
Sunoco High Octane 260 D. Airplane Glue

E. Embalming Fluid F. Sam Kinison's Shower Mat G. Squirrel Death H.
Golfball Skins

I. Collie Dung

J. Grated Crickets

ANSWERS: 1-D, 2-C, 3-B, 4-E, 5-H, 6-E 7-G, 8-A, 9-J, 10-I

Bob-A-Lou developed a total, heart-stompin' crush on one of the cashiers
down in the cafeteria. She was this sassy, glam-babe blonde whose sole
mission on earth seemed to be nothing more than providing herself as
groin-swell for the hungry droves who wove through the slop lines. She'd
lean there on her cashier's stool with her cleavage tumblin' out of her
shrunken smock, her legs all stacked up for maximum eyeballin', a Doral
forever dangling from the corner of her mouth. It was all just a game of
show & tell.

Not for Bob-A-Lou. He was in love with the cashier queen. It all
amounted to one terrible mismatch--the brutal cock teaser and the
hopeless romantic. Bob-A-.Lou had never even had a girlfriend before. He
was thirty-one years old and still lived with his mother. He was a
complete innocent with a heart as big as a house. It all spelled
trouble.

For the next couple months, Bob-A-Lou asked the cashier out repeatedly
only to be given some lame excuse. Bob-ALou remained undeterred. Sooner
or later, his cashier q.een would agree to a date. I couldn't bring
myself to tell Bob-A-Lou he was in for a terrible letdown. What I wanted
to do was approach the cashier and ask her why she just didn't tell
Bob-A-Lou she was engaged or something. C'mon, mercy kill the poor
bastard. Let him down, bitch. Let him down before he proceeds with the
wedding invitations.

The inevitable finally took place. One Monday afternoon after Ronny and
I had filled up our conveyor line, I went over to chat with Bob-A-Lou at
his welder's job. He just sorta nodded at me and flipped down his
welder's visor. After he'd

shot his welds, he took off his visor and sat down next to me.

He was completely silent. Something had to be wrong. "Everything all
right?" I asked.

"You know Karen, the gal I'm always talkin' to down in the cafeteria?"

"Sure, the pretty one," I replied. "Something wrong with her?"

Bob-A-Lou shook his head. "No, she's feeling fine. In fact, she's
feeling so fine that she was able to go bowling last Saturday night out
at North Lanes after she told me she'd be out of town over the weekend
for her aunt's funeral."

Bob-A-Lou went on to relate this long story about how he and his cousin
had decided to go bowl a few frames the previous Saturday evening. While
heading up to buy another Pepsi, pure Bob-A-Lou, he was shocked to spot
the cashier queen a few lanes over smoochin' and gropin' all over this
Surfer Joe look-alike. She even waved at Bob-A-Lou. His heart had been
ripped apart ever since.

Then Bob-A-Lou paused. I was sure I could see it building up in his
face. A cuss word! It was as if after years and years of polite
constipation he was gonna finally let it loose. A limo length volley of
vulgarity along the lines of "goddamn whore face shitball!" or "useless
lyin' skag bait cunt." He was way

overdue. There would be no better occasion. Let it rip! "The dumb
trollop," Bob-A-Lou hissed. Huh?

I stood there wanting to say it for him: BITCH! I wanted to say a lot of
things. I wanted to tell him that there was much more to getting
yourself laid than being an honest Joe. That crap rarely counted for
anything when it came pork time. I wanted to tell him abott all the bar
scum right across the street who were having their peckers nibbled
nightly and that the only jump they had on him was that they were
complete selfish assholes who didn't give a shit about anything other
than biceps and booze and tattoos and emptyin' their testes into the
first shallow flooze who stumbled into their double vision.

There was hope, I wanted to tell him. There was always hope, but he was
just gonna have to quit actin' like such a swell fuckin' pilgrim. He
needed to ditch the crew cut. Act like a jerk. Develop a substance abuse
problem. The girlies would come fallin' out of the trees.

Cynical or not, it was true. The shoprats I knew who did the most
business with the ladies were utter cretins. Drunks, druggies, bullies
and ten-time losers. Bob-A-Lou had more class than any roomful of them
put together. But class rarely won the ass. The majority of these women
wanted reclamation projects. Lost souls that they could clamp on to like
precious martyrs. A guy void of defects mustered no challenge. Send in
the cruds.

After the debacle with the cashier queen, Bob-ALou vowed to take his
pursuit overseas. I thought he was shittin' me. He wasn't. He developed
this hot pen pal relationship with some woman over in the Philippines.
He flew over to marry her over our Christmas break. When he returned, he
proudly displayed his wedding band to the entire Jungle. I felt happy
for Bob-A-Lou. He was his old self again. Maybe now he could move out of
his mother's house.

Meanwhile, my own personal marriage to the General Motors Corporation
wasn't faring as well. Just like some wishywashy broad who couldn't make
up her mind, I was about to be sent packing on another indefinite
layoff. Hello Reaganomics, goodbye occupation.

It was rather upsetting. Not so much the layoff part I'd danced that
dance and found it very compatible with my underachiever lifestyle. What
rankled me about being laid off again was the knowledge that another
pussy job was about to go slidin' through my fingers. My gravy setup
with Ronny would be irretrievable just like my original scam with Dale
had been. There was no way of knowing where I might end up and what kind
of horrid rat maze would await me once everything settled back into
place and the consumers started gettin' horny again.

During my second extended layoff, I spent most of my time drinking. My
usual hangout was the Rusty Nail mal arge, dimly lit tavern nestled
downtown among the vacant storefronts, and plywood palaces that
effectively defined the flagging overall condition of Flint in general,
and GM in particular. My brother's girlfriend, Jackie, managed the bar
and we had full run of the place.

Looking back, I think the Rusty Nail days were some of the best times of
my life. I was surrounded by my best friends, most of them shoprats in
limbo. I was once again getting paid to do absolutely nothing. I felt
detached and secure in this

cocoon of nightly buffoonery. There was no reason to feel guilty. I had
a job, they just didn't need me at the moment. I'd be back whenever the
signal was given. Until then, I had found a handy place of refuge,
possibly the last little fortress I'd ever be able to reside in before
such puerile forays would be branded as stupefied adolescence or
repeating the path of my father.

Jackie allowed me to take over complete control of the Rusty Nail
jukebox. A well-stocked jukebox was essential to the atmosphere of any
decent bar. I ditched all the top-forty flotsam and hackneyed standards.
I loaded up on spazz-out masterpieces by the likes of Arthur Conley, the
Troggs, the Mutants, Aretha, Black Flag and the Bobby Fuller Four. For
us, the marvelous segue from Dino, Desi & Billy's "I'm a Fool" plowin'
headlong into the spite and rancor of the Sex Pistols' "Holidays in the
Sun" was beer-drenched ecstasy. Even the geezers and bag ladies got up
and pranced.

It didn't take long before the twerps at the local college leeched on to
our Shindig Mecca. The local art fag community soon followed. The bar
was quickly overrun with the kind of clientele we most wanted to avoid.
Before long, the Rusty Nail was doomed. Jackie started booking these
prissy New Wave bands to come in and play almost nightly. God, it was
putrid. These cheezy bastards wore these skinny little ties and spewed
out lousy cover versions of the hitmakers of the day. It was more than
we could bear. The place was now nothing more than a preppie playpen for
the terminally dull.

We surrendered and moved our nightly reveling back to the house I shared
with Bob. We danced, we drank, we threw up, we threw down, we broke up
every piece of furniture and basically behaved like a bunch of raving
lunatics. Women would drop by and scoot right back out the door. We
didn't care. All of us were too loaded to get it up anyway. The Flint
police got in the habit of dropping by. Occasionally, they'd take a few
of us with them. Eery cent we had went toward alcohol, cocaine and new
records.

Drinking all night was fine, but I needed something to fill up the
afternoons. That was one of the problems with unemployment. So often it
wove itself into unenjoyment, sentencing you to a vague sprawl where the
days all lumped together in one faceless herd. Working was almost
preferable. Almost.

It was truly difficult to understand. I had hired in during

such a boom era that the overtime alone would have provided enough
income to survive on. Yet here I was four short years later assembling
nothing but a crop of serious sloth and one mighty pickled liver. I
guess it was that old inverse spiral motion where I had peaked in my
rookie season and was now hurtling through the galaxy toward that warm
plate of mystery stew on some lonesome mission room floor. At times I
felt like standing out front of GM Headquarters and hollerin' through a
bullhorn: 'ttention! Enough with the fickle bullshit! Are we gonna build
trucks or keep playin' hide-the-birthright? Hello! HELLO!"

Layin' back is a fine reward when you're employed. However, layin' back
tends to wear thin when it itself becomes your job. Gettin' loaded,
readin' magazines, staring at the television becomes a rut rather than
any form of relaxation. It's like a kid nearing the end of summer. He
might really hate school, but he begins to get awful antsy after three
months of tossin' a ball back and forth and ridin' his bicycle halfway
to hell and back. When every day is Saturday, Saturday is suddenly no
big deal.

In an effort to find something to do while waiting out GM's

dawdling, I decided to take up my old writing hobby. Each afternoon I'd
plunk myself down in front of my mom's old Underwood typewriter and
stare out the kitchen window ready to hatch some enormous tome that
never came calling. I pecked away at everything from love poems to hate
mail to haikus about spring. It all reeked and I knew it, but I banged
away for lack of anything else to do.

This went on for a while until I stumbled onto an under

ground newspaper floating around town called the Flint Voice. I used to
pick up a copy now and then up at the local liquor store. It was obvious
that this rag was just some hippie relic patched together by a bunch of
moaners desperately tryin' to reinvent the sixties. They took themselves
way too serious and none of them had any real flair for knockin' out the
printed word.

"In Times Such as These, We Need a Voice," their cover

motto hurrumphed. This statement wasn't totally unfounded. Flint was
falling apart at the seams economically, politically, racially. The
major's office was a bunch of liars and cheats, the city's prosecuting
attorney was up on charges of embezzlement

Tand the police force were in the midst of their thunderous
off-Broadway production of Danny Get Your Gun. In the late seventies and
early eighties more people per capita were killed by police officers in
Flint than in any other city in the country. Twenty-five percent of all
gun-related deaths were done by cops. The boys were shootin' from the
hip, askin' questions later and your odds were lookin' especially lousy
if you happened to be sportin' an Afro. In times such as these we not
only needed a "Voice," we could have used a few thousand bulletproof
vests.

The Flint Voice was the brainchild and squawkin' brat of a long-haired
live wire named Michael Moore. I was familiar with the guy. So was
anyone in Flint who had one eye half open. Moore was constantly hurling
himself into the midst of some trenchant uproar. You would see him on
television, hear him raisin' hell on the radio, read about him causin' a
ruckus down at a meeting of the City Council.

The underground paper biz was not the easiest boat to float, especially
when half the town looked upon you as nothing more than a communist
blowhard. In order to get his paper off the ground, Moor went delving
for funds. Rather than appealing to the listless townsfolk, he attempted
a crazier stunt. He latched on to an international recording artist and
persuaded him to headline a steady stream of Flint Voice benefit
concerts.

The recording star was the late Harry Chapin whose string of hits
included "Taxi" and "Cat's in the Cradle." Moore managed to weasel
himself backstage at the Chapin concert in nearby Lansing. After the
show was over, Moore went to Chapin's dressing room and knocked on the
door. No response. Moore kept a knockin'. Finally, a security guard
began hauling Moore away. The resulting fracas caused Chapin to open the
door to check things out. That's when Michael Moore put his silver
tongue into gear. Intrigued by his notions, Chapin invited the
persistent hippie into his dressing room.

Moore must have delivered some kind of impassioned oracle for, soon
enough, Chapin became a regular fixture around Flint. He performed no
less than eleven benefit concerts for the Flint Voice. The total take
from these concerts was in the half-million-dollar range. Moore took the
money and bought a big old house in the neighboring comm-unity of
Burton. He bought a typesetting computer, layout equipment, telephones,

copy machines. He hired ad men, secretaries and found himself a
printer. Michael Moore and Flint Voice were on their way.

Meanwhile, it was Harry at the auditorium. Harry at the luncheon club.
Harry at the union hall. Harry in your living room. Harry runnin'
upstairs to use your can. Everyone was wild about Harry and so on and so
forth. Chapin's appearances never failed to turn out the natives. He
adopted Flint as his second home. If there was ever such a thing as a
godsend, the Flint Voice had Harry Chapin as the living definition.

Anyways, one afternoon after the game shows had faded and the beer was
kickin' in nicely, I decided to write up a record review and send it off
to the Voice. They had a music section in the paper that was as bland
and retro as a faded Nehru. I typed up a review of an album by a band
called Shoes and tossed it in the mail.

A couple days later, Moore called me and asked if I would come out to
the Voice to meet with him. Apparently, he had enjoyed the record
review. Either that or he just wanted to know whether my basement would
be available over the weekend to host one of Harry's gigs. No matter,
just the prospect of gettin' off my sofa for a few hours, for any damn
reason, had me feelin' mighty chipper. It was July 15, 1981.

The next afternoon I drained a couple beers and headed off for the Flint
Voice office. I kept thinking maybe I was on to something. Something
that might provide a buffer against the increasing humdrum of
unemployment. Something that might distract me from the terrible lagoons
in Richard Dawson's eyes. Something. Any damn thing.

I was about two miles away from the Flint Voice when the guy on the
radio let it fly: "Popular musician and songwriter Harry Chapin was
killed today when his small car collided with..." I pulled into the
first convenience store I saw, bought a twelve-pack, and drove back
home.

Eventually, I had my meeting with Michael Moore. We hit it off well. He
was in no way the jaded hippie leftover I had come to envision. Moore
shared my twisted sense of humor and, underneath his cocky veneer, he
was just as mixed-up and insecure as I was. The only major difference
between us was that he was loaded with drive, where i was just prone to
being'

loaded. Moore put me on the staff as a music critic. It was the

only thing i knew much about besides shoprats.

Without the generous benefit, money raised by Harry Chapin, the Flint
Voice soon began tilting toward debt. It was a strange period. Moore
would insist that the Voice staff have a meeting once a month. Rarely
would much be accomplished. Moore would stand up in the middle of
someone's living room, plead for financing schemes, outline a new
subscription drive and collapse on the couch while everyone turned their
attention to their bawlin' infants or some pukish-lookin' asparagus dip
one of the veggies was passin' around.

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 lancl 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 All . 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 All 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 misers
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 being ' 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. Trails 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 River 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.

6.

MOST 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 River 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 River 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 oft',
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.

The only guy I ever spoke with was my line neighbor, Hank. He was an old
coot whose voice sounded like gravel being churned against broken glass.
He smoked two packs of Chesterfields each shift. It made me
uncomfortable to hear him speak. Everything was punctuated with a hack
or coughin' spasm or a lung cookie flung toward the aisle. He'd
apologize and light up another.

Hank was a strange one. He kept vacillating between two very dissimilar
personalities. One week he'd be the perverted old man. He'd start
pesterin' me about the size of my girlfriend's breasts, croakin' on and
on about the young female anatomy, droolin' about his own niece,
mesmerized in his lecher's roll call of "sweetmeat" and "baby cakes." If
Hank would have left it at that, he'd have hardly qualified as being'
remotely oddball. Tits and tight cheeks and the relentless pursuit of
such were perennial assembly line themes.

What separated Hank was that the very next week he'd transform into
this Bible-clutchin' Jesus comrade. He'd spend all of his idle time
extolling the virtues of celibacy and the cleansed soul. He'd approach
my work area and ask me in that horrible rasp of his whether I "knew
Christ." I would reply that Christ and I had been cellmates together for
several years in Catholic school systems. This seemed to please Hank. He
would look around at our co-workers and tell me that the entire bunch of
them were headed to hell. On the other hand, I was to be spared. I
feigned delight as Hank returned to his bench for another Chesterfield.

Working beside a full-blown schizoid seemed preferable to jawin' it over
with the rednecks. At least Hank wasn't given to the curious worship of
banana slickers. I figured Hank's biweekly shue between perversity and
righteousness was just his wacky formula for covering both sides of the
tracks. For all I knew, he may have had a crawlspace lined with
"sweetmeat" and a shrine to Jesus in his living room. It hardly
mattered. I liked Hank, but I will admit that the day they transferred
him back to his old booth-cleaner's job I was just as elated about the
switch as he was.

After about four months down on the Rivet Line, I had truly perfected
the menal and physical strain of the pinup job. The blisters of the hand
and the mind had hardened over, leaving me the absolute master of the
puppet show. I developed shortcuts at every turn. I became so proficient
at twirlin' my rivet gun to and fro that the damn thing felt as
comfortable as a third arm. I mashed my duties into pitiful redundancy.

The truth was loose: I was the son of a son of a bitch, an ancestral
prodigy born to clobber my way through loathsome dungheaps of idiot
labor. My genes were cocked and loaded. I was a meteor, a gunslinger, a
switchblade boonerarg hurled from the pecker driblets of my forefathers'
untainted jalopy seed. I was A1 Kaline peggin' home a beebee from the
right field corner. I was Picasso applyin' the final masterstroke to his
frenzied Guernica. I was Wilson Pickett stompin' up the stairway of the
Midnight Hour. I was one blazin' tomahawk of m-iggin' eel shot. Graceful
and indomitable. Methodical and brain-dead. The quintessential shoprat.
The Rivethead.

However, my ascension into this new sense of dominance

didn't rid me of the age-old plight that came to haunt every screw
jockey: what the fuck do you do to kill the clock? There were ways of
handling nimwit supervisors and banana sticker rednecks and lopsided
rails. But the clock was a whole different mammal altogether. It sucked
on you as you awaited the next job. It ridiculed you each time you'd
take a peek. The more irritated you became, the slower it moved. The
slower it moved, the more you thought. Thinking was a very slow death at
times.

Desperation led me to all the usual dreary tactics used to fight back
the clock. Boring excursions like racing to the water fountain and back,
chain-smoking, feeding Chee-tos to mice, skeet shooting Milk Duds with
rubber bands, punting washers into the rafters high above the train
depot, spitting contests. Any method was viable just as long as it was
able to evaporate one more stubborn minute.

I did have one favorite method of beatin' the clock. What i would do was
to pretend my job was an Olympic event. I would become both television
narrator and participant. It would go something like this:

"We've come to the end of another long day for the American squad. So
far, the Japanese have totally dominated each event, sweeping the gold
and silver in every category. Any final hopes the Americans might have
of winning a gold medal rest solely on the shoulders of Ben Hamper, an
assembler out of the GM Truck & Bus facility in Flint, Michigan.

"Hamper will be competing in the Freestyle Rivet Squash. Though he's
considered a long shot at best, you will see in this recent interview
that Hamper believes he's capable of pulling off the upset.

"Ben, the word around camp is that you lack experience. Sources point to
the fact that you've only been riveting a short while. How do you
respond to this line of criticism?"

"[Bleep] 'em! Maybe I don't know apples from oranges, but I can assure
you I know my way around a rivet gun. You can toss that inexperience tag
right in the crapper."

"In light of their domination in these games, would it be fair to assume
that you harbor a personal vendetta against the Japanese contingent?"

"Strictly pride, Mr. McKay. I represent the United States of America. I
stand for all that is sacred among Americans: The

automobile. Hot dogs. Baseball. Disneyland. Trash bag murders. As for
the Japanese, I own their butts. I'm Nagasaki and Godzilla and the Enola
Gay all wrapped into one powder keg. I'm gonna send them all back to
fritterin' with transistor radios and toaster ovens."

At this point in my fantasy, I would stalk around my job psyching
myself. I'd begin flexing my arms and jogging in place. I'd hiss and
growl. I'd slowly pull on my gloves while staring down my imaginary foe.
The crowd would be in absolute pandemonium-. Yankee Doodle banshees
sensing the kill. I would return to the narration:

"The time Hamper will have to beat is 24.46 seconds, the

new world's record set only moments ago by Koy Dung of Japan. Hamper
certainly appears undaunted. He's even taking time out to taunt his
Japanese rival. It remains to be seen whether this confident young
riveter from Michigan can back up such cocky behavior.

"The American signals that he is ready. We now await the

whistle. It sounds and Hamper is off. Immediately, he's got the rail
flipped and is attaching the muffler hangers. He grabs for his rivet gun
and... OH MY... would you take a look at this! All we can see is one
frantic blur. Hamper swings in the second rivet gun and begins his
attack on the final leg. He twists he pivots, he unleashes the gun. This
very well might be... YES... YES! 22.19 seconds! Hamper has done it! A
new world's record. AMERICA WINS THE GOLD! AMERICA WINS THE GOLD!

"Total bedlam has broken loose. Throngs of Americans

have broken through the barriers and are now lifting Hamper high upon
their shoulders. We can see an exuberant Roger Smith, the Chairman of
General Motors, attempting to squeeze his way through the mass of
celebrants. Smith has now reached the gold medalist and is extending his
hand. This had to be a very special moment for Hamper. In a span of mere
seconds, he has sprung from absolute obscurity to a position of
corporate eminence. Roger Smith is now embracing Hamper. What an
emotional moment! Smith is openly weeping as the jubilant riveter pats
him on the head. This outpouring of mirth shall last forever in the
annals of Olympic glory."

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 entvined our destinies would become
within the diges tive 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 both lain in our mother's wombs practicing assembly
maneuvers. ("Bernard, I can feel the baby kicking. No, wait he's
RIVETING!") We referred to ourselves as thoroughbreds.

It did come as a surprise when Dave told me he had gone to college. He
had spent five years at Michigan State majoring in telecommunications.
This didn't jibe at all with the usual route of a GM thoroughbred. Dave
explained that he was just biding time, takin' a few years off to fool
around before scrounging back home for that old familiar birthright.

"I always knew I'd end up here," Dave confessed. "I wanted to be a
nobody."

"Well, you sure chose the right place." I laughed. "Exactly," Dave
continued. "I figure if you have to work° you may as well do something
so lame and uneventful that you're not even required to think. I hate
this job, but I hate it less than anything that would require daily
human contact."

And herein lay my real attraction to David Steel. I had finally met
someone who was ultimately more cynical and sulky

than I was. This was not an easy order. There seemed to be no end to
Dave's miserable yen for pessimism and self-pity. He was the total
opposite of my old friend Bob-A-Lou. For instance, if you were to ask
Bob whether a glass of water on the counter was half full or half empty,
he would most certainly reply with the former. If you were to pose the
same question to Dave, he'd probably reply "bone dry and covered with
leeches."

Dave became my vicarious martyr. His rampant gloom and constant
self-abasement made me feel comparatively blessed. Anytime I needed a
quick fix of cheer, all I had to do was hook up with Dave for a while.
It was like being cellmates on death row with Woody Allen.

We spent our lunch breaks together out in Dave's old Vega. We'd share a
little whiskey, peering straight ahead at the barbed wire and the
moonlight and the gulls pecking away on discarded chicken bones. I
remember one night something occurred to me that I'd always been curious
about. It was time to approach Dave for an answer.

"What is it with you and Henry Jackson? Why is he always reamin' your
ass?"

Dave took a slug off the bottle. "That fuckin' gorilla hates me."

"What'd you do? Spill tranny fluid all over one of his Ital,:an suits?"

"Worse than that. I was born."

"Knowing Henry, I suppose that would be grounds enough." "I used to work
for him when I hired in. From day one, we've been at ito He hates me
because he realizes I'm far more

intelligent than him. But, then again, so is a lug wrench." "He reminds
me of Muhammad All."

Dave shook his head. "You're way off. Henry Jackson- is the Idi Amin of
the Western Hemisphere. God, I hate that

prick. He's always whinin' that I have an attitude problem." "Dave
Steel... an attitude problem?" I laughed.

"Hey, fuck you. My supposed attitude problem could be quickly remedied
if only a stock crate fell over and flattened his fat ass. That would
improve my attitude immensely."

We got in a few more weeks before the layoffs came calling again. Having
spent a year on the pinup job, I was never so grateful to be handed
another pink slip. My team spirit was lacking. I needed a seat on the
clrb to shove the stuffing back

under my scalp. Dave was even more elated than I was. He was like some
kind of foamin' mongrel strangling to get off the leash.

However, a curious thing happened on our path to the curb. On the last
night before we were to be released, Henry Jackson came stridin' through
our department and pulled Dave aside. Dave was told that he wouldn't be
a part of the layoff. Instead, Henry Jackson had personally arranged it
so that Dave would be shipped over to the Pickup Line to work. What made
this especially cruel was the fact that there were several workers who
didn't want to be laid off. Family men who could have used the monetary
security of a firm forty-hour workweek. Henry Jackson wasn't interested
in such sensible arrangements. He was too entangled in his personal
vendettas.

Dave was seething. He wanted out the door with the rest of us. It wasn't
to be. David had an attitude problem. It seemed odd that GM would want
someone like that to remain behind and tend to business. Then again, Idi
Amin was never really known for his rational logic.

On my way out, I stopped to wish Dave the best. He was hardly in a
talkative mood. I told him that someday we would both laugh at this ill
turn. It seemed strange that I was trying to soothe the rage of a man
who was doomed to keep his job while all around me there were scores of
dejected workers shuffling for the exit bemoaning the loss of theirs.

There was so much that I just didn't understand. Less each day, in fact.

Meanwhile, I was becoming somewhat of a favorite read in the pages of
the Flint Voice. I was being prodded on by my editor who saw me as some
kind of Chuckie Kuralt from Septicland. He was obviously using me as a
loony wedge to pry between all the weighty prattle regarding police
atrocities, chemical dump sites, women's rights and the ongoing
conflicts in Central America and the Middle East. I knew nothing of this
shit. That suited Mike Moore just fine. He even temporarily stopped
pestering me about writing shoprat chronicles. I was grateful.

As the official Voice buffoon, I was enlisted to cover a series of
oddball events. I wrote about gettin' drunk and bounced from an Osmond
Family concert. I was assigned to

undergo the head-whackin' miracle cure at an Ernest Angley revival
hoedown. I did an interview with Buddy Holly, who, -- curiously enough,
had been dead for over twenty fuckin' years. I wrote about having
intercourse with a woman who damn near dejeweled me after lathering
through an Elvis impersonator show. In short, serious goddamn journalism
that the nuns had never taught me.

Then came the "Toughman Contest" assignment. Nothing on the face of this
planet could have been more representative of the Flint Experience than
this human cockfight. An old fashioned, city-sanctioned bloodletting.
Total lunkhead theater. (For the unfamiliar, a "Toughman Contest" is an
event where people pay money to watch any asshole off the street try to
pulverize any other asshole off the street in hopes of winning a
thousand-dollar grand prize.) Several states had outlawed these contests
for their sheer primitivism. But this was Michigan. Better yet, this was
Flint. Let the pummeling begin.

I remember insisting that I not have to attend this carnage by myself. I
surely wasn't going to invite my girlfriend along and no one else I knew
was this hard up for kicks. My companions for this ugly venture turned
out to be Molly, the world's most sorely underpaid office manager, and
Mike Moore, her camera-totin' boss.

We took our seats just as two heavyweights entered the ring. The fighter
in the blue corner was introduced as "representing GM Truck & Bus." I
immediately stood and applauded. Opposing my gallant union brother was a
two legged mobile home with a Pancho Villa mustache who appeared ready
to gnaw through the breastplate of the next thing that moved. The odds
looked bad for the good guys.

The bell sounded and the two hulks came out charging. It didn't take
long to realize that defense was a worthless priority to these toughmen.
They attacked in a continual forward lurch, arms flailing like crazed
pistons, legs spread wide and wobbly, their careless chins poking
straight ahead like heat-seeking greeting cards. It was total global
warfare with nothing held in reserve. A kamikaze rage that had about as
much to do with the true art of pugilism as slam-dancing had with
classical ballet.

By the third and final round, neither of the boys had much left. Both
fighters looked as if they were sleepwalkin' back to

the boneyard. Bloodied and swollen, they staggered to and fro in each
other's arms, occasionally separating to launch one last feeble attempt
at a haymaker. At the same time, the crowd was screeching for a kill.
"Hit him with your purse, you pussy!" shouted one fine American down
below us. Nothing short of decapitation was gonna soothe the bloodlust
of these patriots.

I remember glancing over at Molly. She had her hands over her eyes. I
turned my attention to the crowd and looked at them dispassionately.
They roared like hyenas in a feeding frenzy, insatiable in their need
for pain and turmoil. Malt liquor eye sockets bulging behind shrunken
leisure suits. A night on the town for the dead and dying.

Flint, glorious Flint. I think I understood their grief and what it was
that attracted them so to this ridiculous mayhem. They certainly weren't
here as spectators of sport, for this "Toughman Contest" could hardly
qualify as anything more than organized barbarism. I believed they were
all here to commit some kind of weird personal exorcism. The toughmen
were just convenient foils for the true meat-grinders of the world: the
landlords, the foremen, the cops, the judges, the nagging spouse, the
fools in charge. Violence as one glorious teething ring for the benumbed
and trampled masses.

Flint, with all of its automotive start-ups and shutdowns. All the
uncertainty and paranoia and idle tension. It wasn't so strange. It was
a real wonder we weren't all being fitted for loincloths and nose bones.
Where have you gone Joe DiMaggio, our lonely ratpack wants to KICK YOUR
SAGGIN', COFFEE BREWIN' ASS!

We sat through several more bouts. I began to warm to the commotion and
repeated calls for blood. Mike rejoined us. For the past hour he had
been snapping photos at ringside. "It smells like piss and vomit down
there," he offered. Molly put her hands back over her eyes.

Curiously, my editor thought that it would be a great idea if I
accompanied him back down and interviewed some of the crowd near the
action. Naturally, I refused.

"Ben, a good reporter sticks his nose right into the story." "In piss
and vomit?" I moaned.

"Just come down and talk to some of these people," he pleaded. '
journalist has to move around."

"Listen. I'm not a journalist, I'm not a reporter I'M A SHOPRAT! Just
like 90 percent of these losers. When will you get this through your
head?"

The answer, of course, was never. Moore continued to spur me on toward
the next deadline. He began to swap and sell my pieces to other
underground rags. I knew nothing of this network of left-leanin'
publications other than the fact that they paid rather poorly if at all.
Moore assured me that this was fine. The important thing was that I was
gaining recognition. I assured him that beer money was a higher
priority.

Not everyone was taking a shine to my writing hobby. I became aware of
this one morning as I scanned through the Flint Journal. Under a
headline that read "Fluent Settlement Sought" was the announcement that
the Flint Voice, Michael Moore and Ben Hamper were being sued for libel
in Genesee Circuit Court by an establishment called the Good Times
Lounge.

The article I had written regarding the Good Times Lounge was almost a
year old. In it, I had noted that the Good Times Lounge was without a
doubt the rowdiest launch pad in town. A real thug palace full of biker
scum and dopeheads and heavy metal retards who, for the sheer heck of
it, would pounce on the clientele and proceed to change a chump's face
from gorgeous to goulash "What this place lacks in ambience it makes up
in ambulance," I observed at the time. For such findings, I was being
shook down for ten thousand dollars. Ditto Michael Moore and the Voice.

On the day of our hearing, I waited for Moore in the court lobby.
Fifteen minutes late, he came bustlin' through the big glass doors
wearin' these horribly faded jeans and a worn-out flannel shirt that
appeared to have been heisted from the bedroom clutter of Eb, the kindly
farmhand on Green Acres. So much for dazzling the court with dapper
threads.

I shook my head and groaned. "Who's the judge in this case, Junior
Samples?"

"Oh, sorry, I couldn't find anything clean," Moore understated.

The courtroom seemed to be a busy place this day. A parade of legal dogs
flowed back and forth through the hallway as we sat waiting and
wondering when it would be our turn to fidget before the robe. Moore
seemed to enjoy the atmosphere,

engaging in small talk with a few of the assembled litigants. I
slouched next to him fumbling for cigarettes, a complete basket case. I
yearned to be back on the old pinup job, engulfed up to my elbows in
muffler hangers and rivets and total nothingness. There were never any
surprises awaiting the pinup man.

At last, our lawyer motioned us into the courtroom. It seemed as though
we were sitting in pews. No one smiled. I could smell foul lies and old
tears. The court typist stared blankly ahead as if she had just been
sentenced to hang for omitting a comma.

The judge weaved his way through the hopelessly legal introduction to
the case. When he finished, our lawyer stood and prepared to begin his
opening remarks. All at once, the judge stopped himmleaning back with a
huge grin, fixing his eyes directly on Moore and me.

Holy shit, I shuddered. He's laughing at us! We're guilty as sin. We
reek of guilt and ooze with fault. Oh, sweet Jesus, I'll probably wind
up in a cell with some droolin' psychopath who ain't had any rump since
LBJ croaked. This couldn't be happening. The court typist looked up at
us with dead floating porpoise eyes. She'd probably been a fuckin' nun!
I felt like swan-divin' right out the third-story window. Whatever
happened to justice for all?

The judge finally spoke: "Gentlemen, I feel it is only fair to both
parties that I disqualify myself from this case immediately." Huh? The
judge went on to explain that he'd once rented office space from my
editor's grandfather, that he was good friends with my editor's parents,
that his wife had served on some stupid committee with my editor, and
that he had once purchased ad space for his reelection in the Flint
Voice. Why couldn't this guy just have kept his yap shut? Here we had a
judge in our hip pocket and he was bailin' out on us. Forget the damn
photo album, let's gavel this libel bullshit right out through the metal
detectors. The bottom line was that we were INNOCENT MEN. Who cared
about these untidy incidentals? Just because so-and-so knows so-and-so
doesn't mean the Good Times Lounge was suddenly the Vatican.

Urrrgh. The case was rescheduled for the next month, supposedly with a
judge who hadn't been Mike Moore's Cub Scout leader, poker buddy or gay
lover.

While awaiting the next hearing, we were pleasantly shocked

to learn that the Good Times Lounge had suddenly dropped the whole
lawsuit. Apparently, the owner had shut the place down and moved away to
Alaska. It seemed like a terrific relocation to me. This whole business
of attorneys and plaintiffs and motions was making me one goddamn
nervous wreck.

My editor realized this and, with it, an opening. He asked if I would
meet him at his office. I drove out and he put it to me: "instead of
dealin' with all of this other nonsense, how about writing a factory
column each issue?"

I didn't hesitate. "Sounds like a solid career move," I agreed.

I was eventually reeled back into the GM nest. However, this time, a big
curveball was awaiting me. I was told to report for duty at 6:00 A.M.
the following morning. Something had to be terribly wrong. Six A.M. was
the start-up time for the first shift. First shift was always reserved
for the old-timers guys who enjoyed wakin' with the roosters and rollin'
into the plant with industrial-sized buckets of convenience store coffee
splashin' all over their floorboards.

Considering my comparatively low seniority, how did I figure in with
this pack? I was a relative youngster. I didn't have fake choppers or
war tattoos or Benny Goodman on eight-track. I hated fuckin' coffee. I
hated birds tweetin' and alarm clocks and disc jockeys reciting the wind
chill factor. There was just no figurin' General Motors. When it came
time to make a move, I think they just threw darts at a board or yanked
on straws.

To compound my misery, I was told to report to the Axle Line. The Axle
Line was only a short distance from the Rivet Line; however it may as
well have been a thousand miles away. The Axle Line area was eerie. The
lighting was a very dingy yellow. The workers looked like ghouls dippin'
between fog banks. Just as disturbing was the awkward silence. Instead
of the normal bashing and crashing, all you could hear was this annoying
clicking sound like a far-off game of marbles.

My new foreman, a Mr. Hurley, scribbled down my name and number. He told
me to follow him to my new placement.

"Have you ever operated a hoist before, Hamper?" he asked. "No, sir," I
answered. "My specialty is riveting." "Sorry, no rivets down here, pal."

I followed the boss as we weaved our way through countless piles of
axles. Each one appeared to be a different shape or design. They lay
there atop each other like missiles ready for launch.

"Hamper, this is Mark Garrison," Hurley said. "You will be replacing
Mark on the rear axle hoist job."

This Garrison fella was bustin' it so hard that he didn't have time to
turn around for any formal greetings. He flung his right hand over his
shoulder and I gave it a slap. It was only forty-five minutes into the
shift and the poor bastard's shirt was already soaked through.

Hurley left us alone. In order to talk with Garrison, I had to race back
and forth while he dragged his hoist around searching for the next axle
that coincided with his schedule sheet. Once located, he hoisted the
axle into the air and hustled back to the outstretched arms of the axle
carrier. With one mighty heave, he slid the axle into place.
Immediately, he pivoted and glanced at his schedule. It was time to fly
off in the direction of another brand of axle. I could only shake my
head. This job made thumping rivets look like a day at the Playboy
Mansion.

First break arrived and I accompanied Garrison down to the cafeteria. I
had many questions I wanted to ask foremost, what were a couple of young
guys like us doing on the first shift? Garrison explained that the plant
was bringing back several rehires to plug up some of the shit jobs that
the old-timers wanted no part of. "They figure that a worker fresh off
the streets is basically optionless," Mark relayed. "He has to take
whatever's thrown his way."

"Come on." I laughed. "There has to be plenty of family men on second
shift willing to take these jobs over. They'd take

anything to get off nights. I believe we're gettin' shafted." "It
wouldn't be the first time," Garrison replied.

The rest of the week unwound as one unholy nightmare. Try as I might, I
just couldn't get the hang of the rear axle hoist job. I continually
misread my schedule. I ran several wrong pieces. I dropped axles on the
floor. I busted the hoist cable. I got shit so out of sequence that they
had to shut down the entire line to straighten things out.

Something was missing. I couldn't put my finger on it, but

I knew it revolved around the unloading of the axle onto the carrier
arms. I asked Garrison to handle the job while I stood back in the aisle
and observed. From this vantage point, the problem was apparent. It had
nothing to do with brawn or style or technique. I WAS TOO FUCKING SHORT
FOR THIS JOB! Where Garrison was long and lanky and could get
eyeball-to-eyeball with the insertion process of the carrier arms, I was
dwarfin' in at five feet six and a half and constantly depending on
blind chance when sliding in the axle.

I approached the boss to tell him of my discovery. He was gabbin' to
someone on the phone, so I slouched at the picnic bench and lit up a
smoke. I felt better than I had in days. Wrong man, wrong job. It was
that simple.

Hurley slammed down the phone and ran toward me. "Hamper, that was the
General Foreman on the line. According to him, you've run three wrong
axles in the past hour. God damnit, I'm writin' your ass up NOW!"

Now I was hot. "I don't give a shit how many times you try to write me
up. The whole problem is that I am too fucking short to see what the
hell I'm doin' on that job. How can I hit the carrier arms when I can't
even SEE the bastards?"

"Don't try to peddle me that line of bullshit. I've had short people run
that job before."

This was getting us nowhere. A different mode of attack was necessary. I
had another trump card that I'd been saving and it was time to use it.
"I want my committee man down here--NOW!" Hurley raced back to the phone
and called down to the union office. He really was convinced that he had
me. He didn't know shit.

The committee man arrived. We conferred while Hurley glared at us and
stewed at his desk. The issue we were talking over had nothing to do
with my height or lack thereof. I was informing my committee man about
the propaganda Hurley had been passing me about my request to be
transferred onto the night shift. According to Hurley, a transfer was
impossible due to my low seniority. In truth, he was lyin' out his ass
just so that he could cover an unwanted job.

My committee man motioned for Hurley to join us. Oh, this was gonna be
sweet. "Is it true that you have told this

because he lacked the proper amount of seniority to do so?"

Hurley was caught totally off guard. He was expecting an argument
dealing with the height issue. He swallowed and attempted to smile.
"Urn, I suppose I did. The bottom line is that I have jobs down here
that need to be filled."

"I'll give you the bottom line," my committee man growled.

"There are a hundred workers with more seniority than Mr. Hamper who are
struggling to be transferred onto the day shift. He has no business down
here other than the fact that you have purposely deceived him into
believing that he has no other recourse. I am prepared to write up a
grievance on behalf of Mr. Hamper regarding this matter."

"Let him slide," I said. 'All I want is to get the hell outta

here."

"He's free to go at the end of today's shift," Hurley replied. Then he
glared at me. "However, until then, he better not even think about
walkin' out on me."

It was funny. I hadn't even entertained the thought of sneakin' out
early until Hurley had brought it up. As soon as first break arrived, I
grabbed my coat and hit the door. I went back home and hit the bed just
about the time most sane people were fallin' out of theirs.

The next day I headed into the plant and wandered over to

the Rivet Line. I had decided to see if there were any openings
available on the night shift for a short, homesick ex-riveter. Through
phone conversations I'd had with David Steel, I'd learned that Gino
Donlan was now the supervisor in charge of the Rivet Line. Dave and I
had both worked briefly under Gino the last time around and found him to
be extremely fair and honest with his workers.

I waited for Gino in his office. He seemed surprised to see

me hangin' around. "Steel told me that you were workin' the

day shift back on the Axle Line."

'Ancient history," I replied. "Listen, Gino, you wouldn't happen to have
any open jobs available by chance?"

're you shittin' me? I've got a whole list of 'em. In fact,

your old pinup job is open. I can't find anyone who wants to

cover that bitch."

"You have now," I smiled.

Gino laughed and extended his hand. "Welcome aboard, my dear friend."

Gino Donlan probably thought I was completely mad. Perhaps I was. All I
knew was that there was something about those rivets that had gotten
into my blood. I loved the way they looked jammed into those old rusty
bins. I loved the way they felt rollin' around my palm like dice. I
loved to see their little round heads squashed beneath the incredible
force of the rivet guns. I loved everything about those gray metal
mushrooms. I was quite possibly a very sick man.

Things once again returned to a tolerable norm. Once again, I employed
my pitiful collection of fantasies to help move the minute hand forward.
I also began to take notes, scrawling down some of the more peculiar
aspects of assembly life on napkins, stock tags, envelopes, anything I
could find. Wen I returned home after the shift, I would try to decipher
the resultant mess and work them into pieces for my new Flint Voice
column "Revenge of the Rivethead."

Dave Steel was once again across the line from me, this time down to my
left on the rail-pull job. We fell back into our old routine of gripin'
and groanin' about every vestige of assembly labor. It really amounted
to nothing more than moany protectionism. We belonged here, we knew it.
We just couldn't confide that deep inside we were comfortable within the
dim sighted womb of a voyage so dull. We would sit in Dave's car at
break and curse the entire maze, all the while conveniently dodging the
fact that we were humble mercenaries like all the rest.

We also had difficulty conceiving the fact that we still had almost
twenty-five years to go before we qualified for full retirement. It made
us uncomfortable watching all those drowsy lookin' goats roamin' around
the plant thirstin' for that thirty year mark. They looked hopelessly
drained. Beer-bellied and gored-out, driftin' along like yesterday's
news, floatin' along to the finish line where so many would inevitably
check out of the shop and croak. It happened too frequently. Some
old-timer would retire on a Tuesday clutching his gold watch and, two
weeks from the day, you'd hear about how he keeled over in a radish
patch before he could cash his first pension check just like it was part
of the national agreement.

There were other things that gnawed at us. For instance, I remember one
night they stuck this old woman down on the Rivet Line. It was
ridiculous, just another example of GM's total aimless approach in
evaluating the capabilities and limitations of a given worker. The Rivet
Line was simply no place for such an old gal. The guns were heavy and
very temperamental. The sensible thing to do would have been to place
the old woman up in Trim or the Final Line.

On her second day down on the chain-hitch job, the old woman walloped
her head on a rivet gun, knocking herself senseless and straight to the
floor. She lay there sprawled beneath the crawl of the carriages like a
rag doll. Immediately, one of the guys ran over and pushed the stop
button and shut down the line.

Uh-oh. The red alert. If for whatever reason you wanted to mobilize a
frantic bunch of white-collar power thugs in the direction of your area,
nothing worked as well as pushing that sacred stop button. They'd come
swoopin' outta the rafters like hawks on a bunny. Within thirty seconds,
every tie within a 300-yard radius was on the scenc clemanding answers,
squawkin' into walkie-talkies, huffin' and puffin' like the universe had
flipped over on their windpipes.

What a pathetic display of compassion this turned out to be. While this
little old woman lay crumpled beneath the crawling frame carriers, all
these nervous pricks wanted to know was WHO IN THE HELL TURNED THIS LINE
OFF! The General Foreman, a real Nazi who we called Penguin, reached up
and pulled out the stop button. The line jerked back into motion.

"Goddamnit," I yelled. "What about the old lady?" "Don't worry," some
bosshead offered, "we'll pull her out of there. Everybody else just get
back to work and KEEP THIS LINE RUNNING!"

Meanwhile, the old woman was coming to. With the assistance of a couple
supervisors, they got her up on her feet and sat her down at her bench.
She began to cryEpartly terrorized, partly humiliated. Jesus Christ,
this was probably somebody's grandmother. It was awful. I thought about
my own grandmother slumped on that oily woodblock floor. I thought

about all the banners and coffee cups urging SAFETY FIRST and similar
lies.

More than anything, I thought of how much I hated some of these
dispassionate bastards in the white shirts. Here an old woman had come
dangerously close to being' crushed and all they cared about was their
precious production quota. I could see Henry Jackson huddling on the
fringe jackin' and jivin' like it was all a joke. I wondered what
approach he might have taken had it been his own grandmother konked
silly and heaped on the Rivet Line floor.

It was all so typical of General Motors. Their priorities were often
scary. It was perfectly fine for a foreman to stop the line and chew on
your ass about some minor detail, but it was practically an act of
treason for a worker to stop the line in order to extricate an
unconscious old lady out of harm's way. Safety and Production sometimes
the two just didn't mesh.

It was around this time that we began hearing a strange new entry into
the GM vocabulary. The word was "Quality." The term itself was like some
new intoxicating utterance that General Motors had pried outta the ass
end of a golden goose. Quality, quality, quality. Suddenly, you couldn't
raise your head without having your lobes pummeled with slogans and
exhortations hailing this new buzzword. Up until this time, the maxim
had always been Quantity. Quantity and Quota. Herd them trucks out the
door. Quick, quick... QUICKER!

Evidently, GM was finally sniffin' the wind. Americans didn't give a
shit about how fast and how many units you could zoom out the back door.
They just wanted a vehicle that didn't begin to disintegrate the moment
it rolled off the showroom floor. If they couldn't find something that
held together here, there was always the option of purchasing one of
those generic lookin' imports that got about 500 miles per gallon and
stuck together as firm as Stonehenge.

Quality represented buyers. Buyers meant sales. Sales meant fat tummies
and a fat solid bonus. Quality would loosen those bony fingers off the
purse strings. Quality could change the tune and serenade a buyer out of
a buck. For living proof, all one had to do was glimpse over at Lee
Iacocca, the born again pom-pom boy of Quality High who was currently
splattering himself all over medialand with galvanic jabber along the
lines

of 'WE BUILD THEM RIGHT OR WE ALL EAT DOGFOOD!" We gotcha, Lee. Quality
was the answer to the illin'.

The GM Truck & Bus plant began fiddling with various Quality-minded
plots as a means to enthuse the work force. These concepts ranged from
the "Build It Like You Owned It" guilt trip to the voodoo scare tactics
of "Here Come the Japs to Foreclose Your Mortgage" to the gimmicky
"Reward the Good Rodent With a Key Chain" theory. Some of these game
plans were so utterly farcical, one would have been tempted to guffaw if
it weren't for the fact that it was your brain that these follies were
being' foisted upon.

Case in point: the management at the Truck Plant decided what the
Quality concept really needed was a mascot. Conceived in a moment of
sheer visionary enlightenment, the plan was to dress up the mascot as a
large cat. Fittingly, this rat-in-cat's clothing was to be called
Quality Cat. Somewhere along the line, an even more brilliant mind
upstairs decided that Quality Cat was sort of a dull title. Therefore, a
contest was organized in an attempt to give the Quality Cat a more vital
name.

Hundreds of crafty welders, screw jockeys and assorted shoprats
immediately began clunking their heads in an effort to christen the
hallowed cat. Management announced that they would reward the most
creative of these entries with a week's use of a company truck. Hot
damn! The eventual winner of the contest was a worker who stumbled upon
the inspired moniker Howie Makem. Sadly, my intriguing entry, Wanda
Kwit, finished way the hell down the list somewhere right between
Roger's Pussy and Tuna Meowt.

Howie Makem was to become the messianic embodiment of the Company's new
Quality drive. A livin', breathin' propaganda vessel assigned to spur on
the troops. Go ahead and laugh, I know I did. Just for a moment, imagine
the probing skull session that took place in some high-level think tank
the day Howie was first brought to mention.

"You know, slogans on coffee cups just ain't gettin' it, Bill."

"You're absolutely right, Ted. We need something more dynamic. More
upbeat."

"Hey, why don't we give the men their own kitty cat!"

"Kitty cat? Hmmm, I like it! A large kitty cat! Ted, you're a genius!"

Howie Makem stood five feet nine. He had light brown fur, long synthetic
whiskers and a head the size of a Datsun. He wore a long red cape
emblazoned with the letter Q for Quality. A very magical cat, Howie
walked everywhere on his hind paws. Cruelly, Howie was not entrusted
with a dick.

Howie would make the rounds poking his floppy whiskers in and out of
each department. A "Howie sighting" was always cause for great fanfare.
The workers would scream and holler and jump up and down on their
workbenches whenever Howie drifted by. Howie Makem may have begun as
just another Company ploy to prod the tired legions, but most of us ran
with the joke and soon Howie evolved into a crazy phenomenon.

Of course, this isn't to say that everyone was in Howie's corner.
Opinions varied. For instance, Dave Steel hated Howie's guts. He
insisted that having a giant cat parade around the factory espousing
General Motors dogma insulted his intelligence and demeaned him
personally on an adult level. I remember we constantly argued about
Howie's existence. One night Dave had really had it with Howie

"Christ, what's next?" Dave groaned. "They'll probably bring in Fred
Rogers to pass out balloons and lollipops."

"Chill out." I laughed. "You're always taking shit way too seriously.
Sure, having a giant cat rooting us on is totally ludicrous. But you
have to admit the concept is at least humorous in a pathetic kind of
way."

Dave bristled. "I don't find anything the least bit humorous about
having some suck-ass in a cat's costume roamin' through my place of
work. What they are tellin' us is that we are so retarded growth-wise
that all we can relate to are characters along the lines of Saturday
morning cartoon figures. Bring out Bozo! Hail Huckleberry Hound!"

- "Who would you prefer? Einstein and Thomas Edison? Face it, Howie fits
the surroundings."

"Fuck Howie. Fuck Einstein and Edison. What do I need this mascot
bullshit for? Do they really think I'll perform a better job with a huge
cat lurchin' over me? If they really want to charge up all these
boneheads, why not bring in some Playboy Bunnies? I'm thirty years old,
not thirteen."

"There's only one drawback to your suggestion," I replied. "How long do
you think it'd take before some drunked-up

redneck mauled one of the Bunnies to shreds?"

"Oh, probably fifteen seconds, tops."

"See what I mean? Dave, it's time for you to get on the winning side.
Like it or not, Howie's our man."

"Not this guy's. My fondest wish is that Howie gets his tail snagged in
the chain gear and is mercilessly ground into Kibbles & Bits."

On the other hand, my editor at the Voice loved hearing about Howie
Makem. I can't remember anything that made him laugh harder. He'd double
over and clutch his stomach, tears running down his cheeks. Plainly,
this was the most hysterical gag Moore had ever heard of. The best part
about it was that I didn't have to make up a single word. Everything
that I told him regarding Howie was pure fact. I remember the first time
I told Mike about Howie.

"You mean to tell me," Moore sputtered between assorted snorts and
cackles, "that GM has a guy who walks around the factory.., dressed up
like a... GIANT CAT! This is their idea

of enticing Quality out of their work force?"

"Correct," I replied straight-faced.

"Oh my God, oh shit," Moore squealed. "You know what this means, don't
you?"

"The end of Western Civilization as we know it? A communist overthrow?"

"No, no, no. You have to get an interview with Howie Makem for the
paper. The Rivethead meets the Quality Cat! Oh Jesus, oh shit..."

"Not a fuckin' chance," I howled. "I'll write you a biography of Howie,
I'll put together a Howie Makem diary, I'll interview workers on their
feelings about Howie, but I absolutely refuse to talk with that.., that
cat-thing. Not now, not ever. Jesus, who knows what lurks inside that
giant furry head?"

Moore kept pestering me to do the interview with Howie Makem. I held
firm. The answer was and always would be a definite NO. Just watching
Howie trudge by my job waving his big brown paw in my direction was
freaky enough. Having to sit down and ask questions of the bastard would
ave sent me right over the wall. Still, Moore never gave up hope. He

pleaded with me every time I went out to the Voice for passages from
Howie. It became a very large nuisance.

Alas, the matter was resolved in a strange way. Tragedy had apparently
struck. Weeks and then months went by without a single Howie sighting.
Everyone at work was puzzled. Had Howie been promoted to the front
office? Had Howie transferred onto the day shift? Had Howie been
kidnapped by Japanese invaders? Worse yet, had Howie Makem, the official
ambassador of GM's new Quality push, been unceremoniously LAID OFF? Had
it been in the U.S. News & World Report?

	The working class the world over is in shock today as it was

	announced that the General Motors Corporation's beloved Quality

	cat, Mr. Howard Makem, was officially laid off from his job at the

	GM Truck & Bus facility in Flint, Michigan. A grieving UAW

	spokesman told reporters: 'The auto industry has lost a dear comrade

	and a special brother who provided a keen light in an era of

	darkness." GM Chairman Roger Smith refused comment outside

	of the admission that he 'felt like a lousy hangman." Mr. Makem

	is reported to be in seclusion at his home outside the small village

	of Lapeer where a night-long vigil is being held by throngs of

	admirers and somber linemates.

I remember the day I had to break the news to Mike that Howie Makem had
apparently vanished. Christ, it was as if his little brother had
disappeared.

"Howie's GONE?" Mike hollered. "Have you asked around? He must be
somewhere."

"I don't know where he went," I answered. 'All I know is that he's been
missing for weeks. The flag outside the plant hasn't been at half mast
or anything, so I assume he's still alive."

"You wouldn't be snowin' me about this whole disappearance, would you? I
know how loath you are about givin' me a Howie Makem interview. Let's be
honest, Ben." "I can't believe we're having this whole conversation.
Howie Makem is missing. I don't know why and I don't know where. Above
all, I don't even fuckin' care! If he ever shows up again, I promise to
get you an interview. Are you happy?" My editor leaned back in his
chair. "Exceedingly so." He beamed.

It was back to the drawing board for the brainy sorts at

GM Truck & Bus. In light of Howie Makem's disappearance, another
inventive Quality concept was needed. They introduced to us the official
General Motors "Quality Drinking Glass."

One evening, the supervisors began approaching each of their workers
with a little mid-job pep talk. The gist was that if the Quality level
reached such and such a figure, we would all receive a lovely drinking
glass memento that we could proudly take home to show our kin and prop
beside our bowling trophies and eighth-grade diplomas. The glass even
provided a wrenching of the heartstrings, for emblazoned on the side was
the profile of none other than Howie Makem himself, rest his
controversial soul.

Christ, I got all choked up and thought I was gonna bawl. With renewed
determination, I began knocking the piss right out of each and every
rivet that dared rear its shiny little scalp in my direction. Go, team,
go! Forget your house payment. Forget your child support. Forget that
trip to Cedar Point. Damn it, do it for Howie!

Sure enough, the boys and I hit our goal. One night after lunch break,
Gino came luggin' a case of Quality Drinking Glasses down the line.

"Thanks for the good job, Ben." Gino smiled. "Here's your cup."

At the same time, one of the utility guys was walking right behind Gino
asking each worker whether he'd like to sell his Quality Glass for a
buck. He mumbled something about wanting to start a collection. I was
shocked. I told the guy to get his rotten currency outta my face. No one
could have my Howie Makem drinking glass. The gall of some bastards...

I figure that the whole investment in these glasses probably ran GM
maybe $35. But, of course, it was the thought that mattered most. After
all, when someone works hard all day in a smoky chamber full of sludge,
noise, armpits, beer breath, cigar butts, psychos, manic depressives,
grease pits, banana stickers, venom and gigantic stalking kitty cats,
why not give the guy his own glass.

You can bet your ass he'll soon be needin' a drink.

7.

ANOTHER LAYOFF SWALLOWED ME UP THIS TIME, THE GRAND

pappy of 'em all. I was out of work for nearly a year, far too long a
span when you stopped to consider Reagan was now in power. Ron wasn't
nearly as charitable as our old pal Jimmy Carter. He had his own designs
on what he wanted to do with the budget and they surely didn't include
funneling any of it into the frayed pocket lining of Joe Lunch pail. No
more safety nets for the urchins of fickle industry.

On the verge of poverty, Dave Steel and I were really beginning to sweat
it. We began calling up co-workers who were still clinging to their jobs
in the plant. We started hittin' them up for every two-bit rumor they
could hustle down. Bob-A-Lou informed me that there was some heavy
chatter making the rounds regarding a new product being introduced at
our plant. No one was sure what this mystery vehicle would be, but the
grapevine was practically smoldering. Dave was receiving the same
scuttlebutt from his sources.

We'd both been ,fortunate up until then. Each time we'd been shelved, GM
reeled us back in just before our benefits were set to dissolve, so our
layoffs seemed more like paid vacations. But this was before
Reaganomics, before the merry-go-round rusted to a standstill. We
weren't carefree spuds anymore. We were thirty fuckin' something and we
had budgets that had entwined themselves around those hefty
blue-checkered pay stubs.

-- All we could do was wait. Wait, wait, wait and pray that the
simmering rumors were true. Once again, Richard Dawson's eyes began
boring tiny little holes in my skull. I'd jump into my Camaro and drive
around aimlessly. It wasn't fair. Eleven months of lame luck for a five
foot six and a half meat loaf with red eyes and a soul in need of one
colossal enema. Seventh Heaven closed for rePairs, please proceed to
7-Eleven for as much overpriced beer as you can lug to your car and
drive seven miles outta town, plow 'em all down and vomit out the T-top
as the crows all scream your name. I was experiencing shoprat
withdrawal. From thoroughbred to sawhorse. I became the third-base coach
for my brother's Little League baseball team. I volunteered to take
retards to the zoo. I conned my way into my own radio show on the city's
Public Broadcasting station, playing Black Flag and Annette Funicello
records for a small cult of adolescent skinheads.

And then...finally...it was HIM! The date: July 26,

1983. The time: 10:00 A.M. EST. The place: General Motors Executive
Headquarters, Top Dog Suite, Detroit, Michigan.

In one fluid motion, GM Chairman Roger Smith reared

back in his leather chair, cocked his arm high above his head, and
hurled the half-eaten remainder of a lemon-filled jelly doughnut out his
fourteenth-story window.

A decision had been reached. A nervous smile .crept through

and replaced the morning-long grimace. Roger Smith - Chairman of the
Bored, honcho of a thousand wretched levers--tapped the intercom button
for his secretary.

"Miss Henderson, it is time to place the call."

"Oh, Mr. Smith, surely you don't mean "

"Precisely, Miss Henderson. Tell him this time we mean it.

Tell him to show up promptly and leave his blasphemous notepads behind.
Tell him damn the torpedos and damn the Toyotas and damn Iacocca if he
gets in our way. Tell him... goddamnit...just tell him we NEED him!"

RINNNNNNNG! RINNNNNNNNG!

...he loves me not. He loves me, he loves me not. He loves me... well,
hell yes that squat little gerbil loves me. After all, who else would he
rumble outta bed between dreary daymares of life and death and Eve Plumb
in turquoise hotpants if not I, the Rivethead, thoroughbred of all
thoroughbreds,

the quickest triggerman this side of the River Rouge. "Hello."

"Mr. Hamper?" It was that same sultry monotone. I got goosebumps the
size of hubcaps.

"Yes?" I responded breathlessly.

"You are to report back to work at the GM Truck & Bus

plant tomorrow morning at 6:00 A.M. for rehiring." "I love you."
CLICK!!!!

Apparently my callback to GM was necessitated when the Corporation
landed this enormous contract with Uncle Sam to build a shitload of army
trucks. This was the mystery product that Bob-A-Lou and the others had
been hinting about. Besides Smith, I now had another man to thank for
this swell turn of fate--Caspar (The Friendly) Weinberger. It was this
man's dogged lust for a few billion dollars worth of military vehicles
that reopened the doors and pumped new life into my sagging shoprat
career.

Hey, whatever turned them on. I was just glad to be back. Army trucks?
Count me in. Tanks, bazookas, napalm? Hell, it was their hobby shop. I
was in no position to argue. Conscientious objection might be a noble
path come draft day, but with my meal ticket hangin' in the balance, I
was quick to respond "Hell yes, I will go!" Ronnie needed a new fleet of
death wagons. It sucked, but so did starving.

As per my instructions, I rendezvoused at 0600 hours in the Personnel
office. Just like old times, I fell into a herd of a couple dozen
reclaimed shoprats, each of whom were taking long drags from their
cigarettes and peering deep into their own separate nowheres. Within
moments, a necktie with a pink head attached would enter the room,
return our ID badges and guide us back into the Land That Time (and a
half) Forgot.

As we waited, i scanned the faces behind me. Slumped in a chair away
from the rest of the group was Dave Steel. He was wearing his
traditional scowl, looking for all the world like

a man boarding a boxcar for Belsen. I had to chuckle. No matter how
many times they yanked us in and out of this buggy palace, Dave and I
always managed to keep being paired together. I drifted over to say
hello.

"Hey, wallflower, what's a semi-educated telecommunications expert like
yourself doin' in a place like this?"

"Go to hell." Dave groaned. 's much as this is necessary,

I'd almost prefer death."

I felt better already knowing that my reentry into assembly life would
be a little less harsh now that Dave was around to glaze the mood with
his steady roll call of anguish and inspirational negativism. Misery
loves company and a mutual loathing for the same ugly reality might not
seem like a very constructive way of dealing with the winds of fate, but
sometimes it's the only way.

Along came the bouncing necktie to scoop us up for deployment. Like some
proud corporate Johnny Appleseed, he led the way, scattering an
occasional rat into one of the boisterous orchards, all the while
conferring with a clipboard the size of a storm window. We plunged on
through the Motor Line, the Final Line, the Axle Line, the
Ten-Items-or-Less Line.

We appeared to be on a one-way, no-frills collision course

with the Frame Line--home to several departments, among them the Rivet
Line. Dave was in a panic. I feigned dejection, but truthfully I
couldn't have been happier.

Ah, the Rivet Line. Just say yes. A nice little spot to

settle down and raise up a blister colony. A place where pipedreams
spawned and delirium tremens held casting calls. A low spot in the
valley where my partner and I periodically returned when the economy
began to play boomerang.

Johnny Appleseed brought us to a halt in front of the General Foreman's
trailer. He ducked inside to rouse the big boss while we stood outside
contemplating our location.

"Mother of whores,'" Dave snarled. "We could wind up

right back on the Rivet Line!"

"That would suit me," I said.

Dave couldn't handle it. "What the hell is it with you and

those goddamn rivets? The place ain't nothin' but a shithole. I think
that you and that Rivethead alter ego of yours are both sick in the
fuckin' head!" "Doesn't it only make sense that I should resume my
God-given specialty?"

"Nothing makes sense," Dave stammered as the boss motioned us into his
trailer.

The General Foreman forced us to listen to his drab little pep talk
about the wonderful new military vehicle we were going to be building.
He mentioned how grateful we should be that the government had chosen
our plant to assemble all of these army trucks. Without the military
contract, we'd all be on the outside a million miles away from any kind
of shoprat redemption. To show our appreciation, it was mandatory that
we return an immaculate product. Our long-term survival depended on
gettin' the boys in the Pentagon all atwitter.

After the rah-rah was completed, the General Foreman told us to follow
along as he escorted us to our new departments.

Panicking, not wanting to leave anything to chance, I suddenly bolted by
the rest of the pack and sprang myself at

the boss. A lurchin' urchin, front and center. "Urn, Mr. Gibbons, sir?"
I said. "Is there some kind of problem?"

"Not exactly. I just wanted to let you know I'm intimately acquainted
with the jobs on the Rivet Line and I volunteer to return to that
department."

The General Foreman gave me a puzzled onceover. Shit, he thought I was
nuts too. He waved the group to a halt and

thumbed through his papers. "What's your name?" he asked. "Hamper, sir."

He flipped a few more pages. "Well, Hamper, my sheet has you down for
assignment in the body drop area."

Oh, shit. Now we were talkin' very dangerous yo-yo slave labor. The body
drop area was where the cab portions of the trucks came zinging down on
cables from the second floor. The cabs plunked themselves down on their
matching frameworks while workers ducked for cover and then humped to
fasten the two together. To top it off, this was where Henry Jackson
camped his fat Nazi ass the majority of the time. I would kill or be
killed within days.

It was time for full-tilt grovel. "Mr. Gibbons, you just spoke to us
about the importance of Quality workmanship, a concept I fully embrace.
I believe that by returning me to the

Rivet Line, I would have more value to the Company considering the
expertise I have in this area."

"Hmm," Gibbons pondered. My knees became butterscotch pudding supported
by broken Slinkys. icebergs danced with suntan lotion billboards. Jets
swooped into the sides of skyscrapers. Drunken herds of hippos shinnied
up radio towers. And then...

"Go ahead and report to the Rivet Line," the big boss stated. "I'll move
someone else over to the body drop area."

I could have kissed the bastard. Instead, I whirled around

to find Dave staring at me. He had been hangin' on the fringe pickin' up
pierces of my sorry butt-smooching. He shook his head. "That had to be
the most pitiful display of brownnosing I have ever witnessed," he said.
"To think that someone would actually go out of his way to be sent to
the Rivet Line. It's too absurd to comprehend."

'At least I know where I'm headed. For all you know, you'll

be stuck heavin' transmissions."

"I'll take my chances," Dave replied bitterly.

The Rivet Line had undergone an extensive facelift as jobs

were rearranged to accommodate the production of the army vehicles. The
change appeared to be for the better. There were more workers to attend
to the extra duties and some of the more aggravating jobs had been
busted up into less strenuous routines.

I was placed on a job directly across from the foreman's

office and picnic table area. The job turned out to be a cinch. The
four-wheel-drive castings and dual exhaust muffler hangers that had been
a part of my old pinup job had been slid down the line and were now part
of my new job. The big difference was that now I wasn't required to
wrestle with the rails or attach any cross members. My groveling had
paid off. I could see plain sailing straight ahead.

Meanwhile, management was having all kinds of problems attempting to
start up the line. The military vehicles were responsible for
introducing numerous new items and it seemed like every time the
supervisors thought they had everything covered, some precious new part
would turn up missing or defective. The line would budge for just a
moment and then some hysterical bossman would come racing down the aisle
bellowing "Stop the line! Stop the GODDAMN LINE!"

About the third day into this herky-jerky chaos, I was sittin' on my
bench when I happened to glance out into the aisle. Passing through to
the foreman's office was Henry Jackson. Shuffilin' along right behind
him was a very dejected-looking Dave Steel. "Hey, nomad, welcome home!"
I yelled. Dave gave me the finger.

After a brief meeting with the foreman, Steel came sulking out of the
office headed in the direction of his old rail-pull job. Poor Dave,
there was no way to dodge destiny, no escape from the undertow of
stubborn fate. His bed was made.

Passing back on his way out of the department, Henry Jackson abruptly
halted in front of my bench. He eyeballed me with that evil glint and
then came struttin' over. "Well, if it isn't

the elusive Mr. Hamper," he hissed.

"Is something wrong, Henry?"

"I've only been searchin' for your ass for three days now. Hamper, you
don't belong over here. You were assigned to the body drop area. I
suppose you think you're so clever you can just pick your own setup, am
I right? Sorry, your ass is mine, Rivethead."

Terrific. Of all the idiots in the plant, Jackson would have to turn out
to be one of the slim minority who was acquainted with my Rivethead
persona. This didn't bode well at all. Just the way he had pronounced
that title told me that I had catapulted right to the top of the Henry
Jackson endangered feces list.

There was absolutely no use in tryin' to explain anything to Jackson, so
I hollered down the line to my foreman to come and straighten this mess
out. As soon as he arrived, Jackson shoved his finger at me and barked
"This man does not belong here!"

"I'm afraid he stays put, Henry. The General Foreman sent him over
personally."

Jackson helped himself to one of my cigarettes lying on my workbench and
glared at me as if I was some kind of repulsive tumor. "Watch your step,
Rivethead," Jackson snapped as he took off for the aisle and his next
appointment with meddlesome tyranny.

I asked my foreman what Jackson was doing here in the first place. Like
me and so many others around me, Jackson was a second-shift fixture.
What were we all doing here lumped

together on days? My foreman looked at me curiously. He explained that
everyone was temporarily workin' the day shift until they got this
military vehicle off the ground. I felt very stupid. I was so out of it,
I hadn't even paid attention to the fact that the factory seemed to be
bulging at its seams and that I hadn't been able to find a parking spot
within three blocks of the plant. Something about 6:00 A.M. brought out
the dunce in me.

I had another question. 'After this is all running smoothly, will I be
able to retain this job on the second shift?"

"The job's all yours," the boss replied. ' Mr. Donlan will be your night
supervisor."

Damn, things were falling together perfectly. I had a pussy job, an
upcoming reunion with Gino Donlan and my beloved second shift, and,
until then, a loafer's life sittin' around doin' absolute zilch while
the brass sorted through the confusion of the new military vehicles.

Feeling relieved, i decided to stroll down and visit Dave on the
rail-pull. I found him sleeping in one of the empty stock bins, a
newspaper covering his face. I gave the bin a hard kick and Dave
scrambled to his feet. "Let's hit the cafeteria," I said. "You could use
a coffee."

"I could use a change of scenery more than anything else," he grumbled.

We went downstairs to the workers' cafeteria. The place was an absolute
zoo. Radios blared, voices shouted, fists banged on Formica. Tablesful
of old geezers were tossin' spades and suckin' on sausage links. The
young guys were lined up by the phones waitin' to rouse their women out
of bed with giddy tittle-tattle about how they were all being' paid to
lounge on their butts. There was nothin' like a prolonged line stoppage
to goose up the morale of the natives.

Dave and I found a couple seats in the back. Dave was eager to tell me
about his brief fling as a desperado. Three days sprung from the jaws of
the rivet tips.

"Christ, I was a renegade," Dave mourned. "Just after you fellated that
General Foreman into sending you back to the Rivet Line, he sent me
upstairs to the paint department. It was great. Just me and these old
coots-no noise, no filth, no bustin' ass. I was rivet-free. The foreman
even said he might have room for me."

"Let me guess," I injected. "Then Idi Amin showed up to piss on your
parade."

"Yeah, that bastard came pokin' around and ruined everything. Right when
I thought I'd escaped the Rivet Line once and for all, I spot Jackson
waddlin' around the corner like a bloodhound from hell. He must spend a
third of his time just seein' to it that I remain miserable."

"Sluggin' rivets appears to be your natural destiny, Dave," I said. "I
suggest you stop buckin' your birthright."

Dave crumpled up his coffee up and sent it whizzin' past my head. He
folded his arms across his chest and slouched down in his seat. "I was a
renegade," he groaned.

We spent the better portion of the next two weeks slurpin' bad coffee,
chain-smoking and concocting this ridiculous idea for a short film. We
needed something to pass the time. Even though the line was only budging
out about one truck per hour, we were required to stay put near our
jobs. The boredom made our drowsy morning brains wander to the absurd.

The movie we were discussing was to be a violent blue collar docudrama
called No Need for the Grievance Procedure. It would be a collection of
short pieces that chronicled the systematic executions of our least
favorite shoplords. I can't recall each piece in detail, but I do
remember my favorite the gruesome dispatch of Henry Jackson.

In our scenario Dave snuck up to the glassed-in office where Henry sat
and shrewdly welded the door shut from the outside. Dave then
commandeered an abandoned fork truck and bore down on the tiny office,
scooping it right off the factory floor. Raising the office several feet
above the ground, he jostled the cubicle violently. Inside the office,
Henry Jackson was slammed to and fro like a mannequin in a cyclone. His
head was bleeding badly from repeated bashings with airborne file
drawers, stapleguns and the old iron coatrack.

After Jackson was thoroughly marinated, yet still clinging to life, Dave
backed up the fork truck and sped off in the direction of the train
trench. At this point, the workers all left their jobs and followed
behind like so many brainless ghouls in a George Romero flick. Dave had
it timed so that a huge cargo train just happened to be barreling down
the tracks.

As the train roared its approach, Dave lifted the battered office high
above the trench, gave it a few last violent jerks and deposited Henry's
welded death cage onto the tracks. Only seconds remained before the
crash. Dave hopped down from the fork truck and stood beside the silent
assemblage of coworkers. Inside the office, Henry was furiously pounding
on the windows, his eyes as wide as Frisbees, his lips mouthing useless
final pleas for forgiveness.

Allowing himself a smile, Dave bent over and flicked the butt of his
cigarette on top of the office. He waved his hand at Jackson while
pointing at his crotch. Just before impact, Dave jumped back and
motioned for the other workers to do the same.

SMASHHHH! The train slammed into the office and began pushing it toward
the gigantic iron spring at the end of the trench. Seconds later, the
office exploded, crushed between the spring and the nose of the
locomotive. Glass and paper and hair and bits of skull flew through the
rafters. An eyeball casually rolled up near Dave's work boot and he
winked at it before kicking it back into the debris.

With nothing left to accomplish, Dave looked at the workers and nodded.
Silently, we turned around to head back to our jobs and finish out the
shift doing our utmost to produce a fine-quality truck. Henry would have
been proud of our commitment to duty.

One morning, tired of movie plotting and fed up waiting for the line to
move, I suggested to Dave that we sneak out of the plant and head for my
new apartment a couple miles down the road. If we were going to be paid
to do nothing, I reasoned that we could do it just as well somewhere
else and Dave agreed.

We arrived at my bachelor dump and as I uncapped the beers Dave rummaged
through my record crates and found some music to his liking mainly
sixties garage crud like Blue Cheer, the Troggs and the Shadows of
Knight. We cranked up the music to a very conspicuous level considering
that it was only about 7:30 and most sensible human beings were still
tryin' to sleep.

Dave moved over to the window and peeked through my curtains into the
parking lot. "Hey, come over here and check this out," he yelled over
the stereo.

"Let me guess." i laughed. "It's Henry Jackson with leg irons and
handcuffs."

"Stranger than that. It's your neighbors herding off to work. Christ,
what a sorry bunch of losers! They should get real jobs like ours."

I looked out the window. "They don't look very happy, do they?"

"They look like they're going to their mother's funeral," Dave cracked.
He opened the window and started hollerin': "$12.82 an hour! I'm makin'
$12.82 an hour to drink Rivethead booze and listen to Rivethead rock 'n'
roll!'

"Shit, shut that window. You're gonna have the landlord over here."

We settled back and kept draining the beers. The heavy euphoria of
escaping the shop, gettin' loaded, listenin' to jams and knowing we were
being paid handsomely to do so was a marvelous thing. Dave was as upbeat
and animated as I'd ever seen him. He had found a worn copy of "Open
Your Door" by Richard & the Young Lions in a stack of old 45's and
played the song over and over and over. Morning spilled into afternoon.

Finally, I had to break the news to him. "We're all out of beer,
rail-pull man."

Dave fished out a twenty and flung it at me. He started the record over
for the umpteenth time and banged away on my coffee table with rubber
spatulas operating as drum sticks.

"Hey, what about work?" I shouted. "For all we know, they might have got
the line runnin'."

"Must you always be so negative?" Dave laughed. He was plastered.

Over Dave's drunken objections, we left my apartment and drove back to
the plant. We weaved our way in through a side door near the rivet line
and looked around. Everyone was gone. The supervisors, the workers, even
Henry Jackson. We looked at each other and then our watches.

"Hamper, this is fuckin' spooky," Dave whispered. "Where the hell did
everyone go?"

Down in the next department, I could see a skilled-trades worker putzing
about on some hunk of machinery. I walked down to talk to him. "Excuse
me, you wouldn't happen to know where everyone went, would ya?"

The guy looked at me as if I was some sort of alien. A very

drunk one at that. "Shit, they were all sent home at ten this morning.
Not enough parts, I guess."

Dave and I headed for the parking lot. "The one fuckin' day they allow
everyone to split early and here we are out there thinkin' we've pulled
the great escape," Dave moped. "That means from ten o'clock on, we
didn't have the edge on anyone.

No matter which route I go, I always end up gettin' rawed." "Just part
of being' a renegade, I suppose."

Dave ducked into his rusty Vega and rolled down the window. "Very
fuckin' funny," he said. "Tomorrow, I'm stayin' put till they release us
early."

"You've cursed us already." I laughed. "We'll probably have to work
overtime now."

Dave's Vega roared to life and sped off for the north unit exit gate. I
stood there for a moment chuckling to myself. A midday hangover was
introducing itself to my forehead. I got in my Camaro and drove home. A
little while later, my neighbors started arriving home from their jobs.
I peered at them through the curtains. They looked neither happy or sad.

A few days later, we were crankin'. The parts to the army vehicles had
finally all been located and distributed to their proper spots on the
line. Let the war games begin.

The setup called for every seventh truck to be a military job.
Management treated these units as if they were gold studded chariots
bound for heaven. If the slightest flaw appeared on one of Uncle Sam's
orders, the line would jerk to a halt and a stampede of frazzled bossmen
would come racin' with red carpet tourniquets.

All attention was reserved for Ronnie's death wagons. The rest of the
trucks slid by like dispensable lumps of Play-Doh. It wasn't the best
time to have a truck on order if your name happened to be John Q.
Public. I used to sit there and think that if the American auto industry
could ever slow down and capture the relentless effort put forth into
one of these sacred army trucks, then the day would soon come when we
could send all of those Japanese Quality mongers ducking for cover
behind the shadow of a real marketplace Godzilla.

After a couple of weeks, it became clearly apparent why management was
in such a commotion to spit-polish their darling new product. With much
ceremony, it was announced

that Roger B. Smith and a flock of Pentagon brass were coming to pay us
a visit. It was time to unveil the first load of army trucks and Roger
himself wanted to be there in person when one General Ball of the United
States Army got all goosefleshed at the headlight's first glare.

As the showoff date edged closer, the honchos at the Truck Plant began
tumbling around like rivets with their heads whacked off. The panicky
pace of the past couple weeks accelerated into one big tremblefest. It
was increasingly obvious that if these trucks somehow turned out to be
puke-colored lemons, there was going to be one vast necktie party and
old Roger B. himself would be the one operating the rope concession.

As for myself and the rest of my co-workers, we were overjoyed about the
prospect of Rog's visit. I went out and had a personalized T-shirt made
up for the occasion. In big block letters it read: ROGER, LET'S GO
BOWLING! I had been on this crusade to commit ten pins with Roger Smith
for nearly three years, and I had written several pieces on my quest for
the Flint Voice. I figured he owed it to me. In turn, I owed it to all
of my proud shoprat ancestors. After all, for almost seventy five years
running, the name Hamper and the words General Motors were damn near
synonymous.

It was time for some recognition from those blockheads. All I was asking
was ten frames of bowling with my boss. How damn American could one get?
I reasoned that there were enticements in it for GM as well. We were
forever hearing how management and the work force needed to develop more
sturdy bonds. Here was their perfect opportunity to put their headpin
where their mouth was. We could bring in the networks and press. The
entire media would gobble it up. The walls of mistrust would tumble.
They'd slap a photo of Smith and me on the cover of Time. Jesus, what a
vast public relations coup dangled just beyond the yonder three-ten
spare!

When the big day arrived, I was pumped. So were all my linemates. Even
Dave had dropped his usual scowl and was behavin' giddy. Within a few
hours, our big gray barn would throw open its doors for THE MAN. The air
was positively electric. History was in the making.

Then, around 9:30, a very strange thing happened. Our foreman came
strolling down the line informing us we were

being sent home at 10:00. We all stood at our jobs wonderin' if our
chains were being' jerked. They couldn't send us home now. The fuckin'
MAN was on his way.

I cornered our foreman as he traced his way back up the line. "Let me
get this straight," I said. "Management is sending us

home in a half hour? Smith won't even BE HERE by then!" "That's right."
He grinned. "By the way, nice T-shirt."

"What's the problem? Did Cab Shop break down again? Are we out of
parts?"

"No problems. They've just decided to give you people the rest of the
day off."

The rest of the day off?. TODAY? No problems? Something reeked big-time.
Impromptu generosity wasn't a part of their nature. And then it dawned
on me: the bastards didn't want us around when Smitty showed. They
wanted the factory rat-free! No unseemly peons pollutin' the promenade.

I was infuriated. We deserved to be on hand. We were the ones who built
all the trucks. It was our labor, our stinkin' elbow grease, our drudged
midwifery that plunked out the product. Those trucks didn't just show up
droopin' out of a stork's jawbone. How could they ignore the human
element of the project? What was an assembly line without assemblers?

Just before I left for the day, I propped up a sign that faced out into
the aisle next to my job. Chances were some bosshead would remove it,
but what the hell. It read: SORRY TO HAVE MISSED YOU, KISS MY ASS.
SINCERELY, THE RIVET HEAD. It was always the thought that mattered most.

When the opportunity came, I wasted no time transferring back to the
night shift. It felt good to be home. The evenings once again crawled by
indistinguishable from each other and every Thursday Roger Smith would
send me a lumpy paycheck as proof of what a good boy I'd been. The money
was fine, but I still clung to my dream of bowling with Smith. I would
never give up.

It was during this period, somewhere in early '83, that the Flint Voice
expanded statewide, resurfacing as the Michigan Voice. I still didn't
know how Mike was ever able to pull it off. Here he was up to his
eyeballs in debt and his remedy was to expand. Love him or hate him
(there was no in between in

Flint), you couldn't help but marvel at Moore's tenacious resolve to
keep his publication suckin' air.

Along with the expansion of the Voice came sweeping changes. The paper
became more political than ever. The boot was given to several longtime
staff members, many of whom were close friends of Moore's dating back to
high school. New columnists were introduced, intellectual sorts and
heavy hitters. Syndicated hotshots were marched in like hired guns. To
my total surprise, "Revenge of the Rivethead" survived the facelift. My
editor knew that the core of the realership were blue-collars, so I
remained on board as a representative of the average lunk. Besides, by
this point in time, I was generating more fan/hate mail than the rest of
the staff put together. I bought my first typewriter and droned on.

The timing of the Voice expansion jibed perfectly with my new gig on the
Rivet Line. My job was such a breeze that I had plenty of free time to
write in between my duties. I developed a pattern where I could race
through my job in thirty seconds and shoot back to my bench for a
luxurious minute and a half of observation and composition. It was like
working two jobs at once, neither of which demanded much effort. The
best part was that the clock moved by quickly.

What a great scam to be able to sit there, night after night, as much a
man of letters as just another weary errand boy. The Rivethead
flourished, a peeping Tom buried in pitchblende. I began peering deeply
into the malignant drudgery that entombed those who surrounded me. Their
monotonous travail was like ballet for the dead. Something so remarkably
unremarkable that I sometimes wondered if I was actually witnessing
anything that even qualified as living.

For instance, I could spend an entire shift wondering to myself just
what it was that was going through the mind of the poor soul across from
me on the steering gear job. He was a young rehire, doomed beyond his
own recognition by a job that all the rivet vets referred to as "the end
of the line." The setup was a thorough ball-buster, an eight-hour mule
train of uphill grind.

The nights rolled on. I'd lean across from the guy and watch the sweat
pour off his chin. And, somewhere in this factory town, I could see his
wife curled up on a sofa bed

awaiting the return of her reclaimed assembly man. It wasn't hard to
visualize just how she might shudder when the door flew open each night
and in trudged this chewed-up mutation of a football star who, once upon
a time, looked awful drooly pastin' petals on the prom float, but now,
staring back at her from the other side of the meat grinder, resembled
nothing more than a heap of defeat with limbs attached. Dreams died fast
around here and, more time than not, there simply wasn't sufficient time
to hunt down a decent headstone. One day lured, the next day skewered.

I became obsessed with the steering gear man. He seemed so stoic, so
reconciled to the brutish misfortune that defined his routine. I
wondered what he thought all night long. I wondered if he ever thought
about the fact that only fifteen feet away sat a lazy owlhead perched up
on three boxes of unopened rivets.

yawning, chain-smoking, doodlin' in his stupid notepad- while he was
flirtin' with hernial blowout and draggin' it back and forth like
Quasimodo Doe.

The steering gear man never asked about this nor anything else. He just
kept bustin' it. I really didn't understand it. The apportionment of
duty in the plant was so inconsistent that you would have half of the
work force breaking their backs and chugging the work load while the
other half were off playing cards, sifting through boxscores and
plumpin' down their idle fannies. It gnawed the shit out of some guys
and who could blame 'em for bitchin'.

The steering gear man never spoke up. Not for a while, at least. Then,
ever so slowly, his resolute facade began to fade. He had found a
confidant. It wasn't me. It wasn't anyone. The steering gear man found
the bottle.

He chose his spots at first. A few cocktails at lunch, a couple slugs
during a line stop. I would lean over to put in my spring casting and
the heavy aroma of bad whiskey would hover between us. The booze made
the steering gear man sweat more than ever. I'd sneak a peek as he spun
in his screws and the poor bastard would be drippin' like a faucet. He'd
be hummin' to himself and I wanted for all the world to believe he was
happy. If anyone deserved a shot at happiness, drunk induced or
otherwise, it was the steering gear man.

The drinking began to escalate quickly. Oftentimes, he

would arrive at work already packin' a snootful. He began to talk. Not
with me, not with any of the other workers, not with the guy who
delivered his stock only to himself. There began a running dialogue that
sputtered beneath the din, private confabs and secret asides, a drunken
litany of some damn shit that I could never untangle.

The mutterings driveled on as the weeks limped off to the grave. And,
layer by pickled layer, the steering gear man began to unravel. He no
longer seemed the impervious soldier, the tragic hero of my yellow
notebook. It became a regular routine for him to show up for work
completely trashed. On these occasions, he somehow managed to stagger
out the shift operating on nothing more than ingrained reflex.

Before long, he was gettin' so plastered that we all had to chip in to
keep him from falling too far behind. The spring man would tighten down
his screws for him while Randy, the left side muffler hanger man, and I
would take turns hittin' his rivets at the front of the frame. These
rivets at the front of the frame were right at groin level. The way the
steering gear man kept leanin' into the frame for balance scared the
shit out of Randy and me. We were afraid he was gonna rivet his dick off
leanin' in like that. Vasectomy via rivet gun surely would've been the
most painful way of shuttin' down the old baby wand imaginable.

Not long after this pattern of super stupor developed, the matter was
resolved in a very ugly way. It happened on a Saturday. I remember the
steering gear man showed up absolutely goosed to the gills. Randy and I
helped him get rollin'. We were becoming awfully tired of coverin' for
his sorry ass. We decided it would be better if we just let him sink or
swim, disfigurement or castration be damned.

Twenty minutes into the shift, the steering gear man started yellin' out
for our foreman. It was the first time any of us had heard him actually
speak aloud. Gino came striding over. Thank God, I thought, the crazy
shit was gonna turn himself in. It would've been the wise move.

Gino and the steering gear man huddled secretly for a few moments. Then
Gino started motioning for one of the utility men to come over and take
the job. The steering gear man untied his work apron, turned it around
and fastened it on

backwards. He grabbed his lunch pail and headed for the exit, the apron
flowing behind him like a burlap skirt. Things weren't adding up.

Gino came walking by on his way back to his office. He was doing a
rather poor job of concealing the fact that he was shakin' with
laughter. I asked him what the deal was.

' slight accident," Gino answered, attempting to brush by

me.

' slight accident! He didn't chop anything off, did he?" Gino shook his
head. "Nothing like that."

"What'd he do?" I groaned, "piss his drawers?" I'd seen it happen
before.

My foreman completely burst. "Um, something like that." Cackle, cackle.

Something like that? Wait a minute. The huddle of secrecy...the
bowlegged shuffle...the sudden exit.., the backwards apron? Jesus, it
couldn't be? Not the steering gear man. Not THE ROCK. He was my hero. He
was guts galore.

Please, don't even tell me that...

"HE SHIT HIS PANTS?"

"Bull's-eye," Gino yukked. "Just remember, you pried it outta me."

I was devastated. For months, I had been praising the stoic gallantry of
the steering gear man in the pages of the Michigan Voice. The way I saw
it, he was one hundred times the hero that any headline-mulchin' fraud
on the cover of Time or People feigned to be. The world was only a
bloated bedpan full of shams and leeches wallowing in petty victories
that, when sheared down and hung in front of a dyin' twilight, didn't
come close to approaching the regal triumph of the steering gear man.
Fuck the Donald Trumps and the Ross Perots. The closest thing I ever saw
to an authentic American champ for the masses was a sweaty piece of
ground chuck in a Black Sabbath T-shirt who strode upon Hades' own
loading dock, night after hopeless night, as invincible in his death web
as he was invisible to the rest of the feeble globe.

Now he was gone and the myth had been destroyed. The steering gear man
proved to be as fallible as the next joker. The boss had to suspend him
for intoxication in the workplace. I could live with that. But turdin'
in his skivvies? I had to draw

the line somewhere. Heroes couldn't go around crappin' themselves. Even
the astronauts found a proper way to dump it.

On his return, the steering gear man hopped over to the vacant spring
job next to me. I continued to refer to him as the steering gear man in
all my columns. He'd rode that bull a long time without ever
complaining. That was a conquest that would never be tainted.

The steering gear man's name was Doug. He had very yellow teeth and a
tattoo of a rodent on his arm. Above the tattoo, the word "shoprat" was
inscribed. It looked like a homemade job, most likely accomplished with
a hot coat hanger at the tail end of some ferocious bender. In the
summer, when things really broiled, it shined on brightly, but maybe
that was just due to infection.

The switch to an easier job seemed to bring Doug out of his shell. He
would chat on and on with me as if he were tryin' to make up for all
those silent evenings he'd spent luggin' around steering gears. Happy
jabber flowed forth. This, I found, wasn't necessarily a good thing.

One afternoon as we were startin' to roll my ex-hero came to me speaking
about beards. I mentioned that I never wore a beard because they always
made me look like some goofy leprechaun. In response, Doug complained
that his beard didn't grow well on his left cheek area. He pointed it
out and, sure enough, there was a definite barren patch.

"i know why it's not growing there," he said. I tried to appear puzzled.
In fact, I was. "It's cuz when I was a kid in school, I always leaned on
my desk like this." He then demonstrated by adopting the thinker's pose,
propping his face up with his left fist. "I think sittin' like that all
day long, for all those years, pushed all the hair back into my face for
good."

I nodded and grabbed another muffler hanger. "Makes perfect sense to
me," I lied.

There were those in the immediate vicinity of my job, including Doug,
who began to express curiosity as to what I was scribblin' in my
notebook every night. I wasn't about to come clean. I had no idea of how
they might react if they were to find out I was dissecting their drab
little lives for column fodder in a muckraking leftist monthly with a
circulation of

60,000 readers. There was the distinct possibility that they wouldn't
take kindly to my in-house voyeurism. The few who were aware of my
column seemed to really enjoy it. That was fine, but I politely asked
them to keep it to themselves. For the time being, anonymity seemed the
safest route.

It all ran smoothly until the fateful day that I allowed my editor to
talk me into writing a piece about deer hunting, the most sanctified of
blue-collar blood rituals. I tried to tell my editor that I knew nothing
of this redneck amusement. He persisted and I gave in as usual.

The resultant article was nothing more than one long cynical defamation
of deer hunters. I celebrated the fact that these yahoos often ended up
shootin' each other's brains out in their orgasmic frenzy to go boingin'
some Bambi. I chuckled about all the oldsters who huffed their way right
into cardiac rrest in the frigid autumn air. To hell with 'em. I liked
deer just fine. The whole idea of slingin' a deer carcass over the hood
of your Buick seemed rather unhinged.

My big mistake was including one of the good old boys from the Rivet
Line as a central character in the article. His name was Polson, one of
the banana sticker Cro-Mags. He was forever singing the praises of the
National Rifle Association, a tired old tune that he often enlisted when
tryin' to buffalo a fellow linemate into buying some stupid $15
membership into his gritty boys' club. We managed to get along pretty
well considering we hated each other.

The day after the issue with my deer hunting article came out, I was
horrified to learn that someone had brought several copies of the
Michigan Voice into the plant and was spreading them about. I knew that
eventually someone would show my piece to Polson and he'd go apeshit. I
gambled with my own ploy. Rather than wait around for the inevitable, I
decided to present the article to Polson myself and act as though I'd
intended to give him a harmless ribbing. Perhaps by doing so, I could
defuse any confrontation. I should have had my brain X-rayed instead.

Twenty minutes after presenting Polson with his personalized copy of the
article, I heard the unmistakable sound of jackboots thumping up the
line. It was Polson, all right. Six feet two, eyes of blue, 245 pounds
of snout and gristle. The

thought I'd try to humor him. "Hey, Rambo, so what'd ya think

of..."

I made it that far and would have gone further, however windpipes are
such nagging mechanisms. They require a flow of air in order to have
much success with speech. At the moment, mine was being used for a
conceina.

"I should kick your worthless faggot ass!" Polson shouted. There was
really no need to yell. Our mouths were almost touching. "I bet all your
candy-ass writin' pals think you're clever. Let me tell you what I
think. You're nothin' more than a dumb cunt with diarrhea mouth. The
only way you can get your garbage printed is by suckin' up to commie
assholes who've got nothin' better to do but sit around, all doped up,
tearin' this country down."

When Polson was finished with his critique of my vast writing talents,
he wadded up the article and flung it at my feet. As he stormed away, I
thought to myself how wonderful it would be to somehow wedge his fat
head in between the iron pincers of my rivet gun. To pull the trigger,
over and over, watching as that thick cranium of his splintered like a
moldy coconut.

When lunchtime arrived, I drove up to the liquor store with Dave to grab
a cold forty-ouncer. I slammed it down quickly, hardly pausing for air.
Dave, who worked right beside Polson, couldn't resist the urge to
comment on my situation.

"Christ, have you ever got Polson seem' red. I'd keep my eyes open the
rest of the shift. A few of his redneck pals are down there eggin' him
on and gettin' him stoked. Oh, by the way, did you know that you're a
faggot-commiepinko-candyasspunkrockdope-fiend?" "You don't say." I
managed to laugh. "I hope none of that gets back to my pastor."

We headed back into the factory. I glanced over at Polson as I passed
his job. Dave had been right on the dimc our little spat was far from
finished. Polson's eyes bore through me as if i were a twelve-point
buck. As I walked on toward my job, I began thinking of new hobbies
outside of the writing field. Projects that wouldn't require the use of
one's arms and legs.

The horn blew and everyone resumed their duties. I kept

one eye on my job and one eye glued down the line. From my vantage
point, I could see several rednecks fuelin' Polson's rage. They'd pick
up a Voice, read a section, and point in my direction. I would have
stood a good chance paired with any one of those miserable shits. But
Polson was out of my league. That maniac could've whomped on a grizzly.

Suddenly, it was time for round 2. Out of the corner of my eye, I could
see Polson jumping the line and heading in my direction. He had another
copy of the Voice balled up in his fist. Damn, what I wouldn't have
given for a stun gun and a can of mace right about then.

Polson stormed up to my job and pinned me against my workbench. Despite
appearances, he wasn't here to dry-hump. He spread the deer article open
and slammed his fist on it. Meanwhile, my job was going down the line
unattended. It wasn't my greatest concern at the moment.

Polson started in. "Where in the hell do you get off writin' that I
rented my wedding tux from Outdoor Life? Listen, shitbag, I'll have you
know I was married in my MARINE DRESS OUTFIT! And what about this part
where you state that the NRA stands for Nuts Run Amuck? Where do you
come up with this crap?"

"Just a joke," I answered. "Can't you take a simple joke?" "This whole
goddamn article is a joke. Do you realize if it wasn't for dues-payin'
members of the NRA, the deer would overpopulate and starve to death?"

Christ, not that stale serenade. In other words, I was supposed to
believe that out of the boundless mercy of their hearts, these wildlife
assassins were willing to trek 200 miles to the northern timbers to
blast large holes in deer bellies, all in the name of preservation of
the species. I guess part of it made sense: if you were dead, it was
unlikely you'd be crowdin' anyone's rump out of the chowline.

"If you ask me," I injected foolishly, "I think you just enjoy killing
things."

'And faggots are at the top of my list!" Polson exploded. it took A1,
our no-bullshit Quality man, and a couple other beefy sorts to pry the
bastard off me. The ruckus brought Gino out of his office. He hustled
over and instructed us to settle our differences elsewhere. He wasn't at
all pleased that we had

been letting our jobs sail by incomplete. GM didn't give a shit about
dead deer or humorless rednecks or commies. They needed all available
muscle attending to the production of recreational vehicles and military
gas hogs.

After work let out, I prepared for an ambush that never came. Polson
sped off in his pickup and I went out and got miserably drunk. From that
night on, we avoided each other completely. He went back to his gun
manuals, I returned to my little yellow notepad.

When Mike Moore got wind of my close call he suggested that I make
Polson a running character in my column. My editor surely loved to stir
up trouble. "Fat fuckin' chance," I responded. 'All these bikers and
tough men and gun freaks belong in someone else's diary. I'm supposed to
be on shoprat detail, remember?"

Mike nodded and put his chin on his fist. I was tempted to tell him that
such posture was a proven element in the stunting of one's facial hair.
Instead, I said so long and headed for the factory where several
thousand rivets were waiting to be pummeled. It was nice to be needed.

Go to any General Motors plant in Flint. Turn your back to the building
and gaze directly across the roadway. I guarantee you'll be peering at a
tavern, perhaps several of them. This bit of truism is as unfailing as
spotting a bail bondsman's office across from a jail or a motel next to
an airport. Find a factory, you'll find a bar.

Our local version of this concept was a long, dark room located right on
the ribs of the train tracks called Mark's Lounge. It was here that the
coverall brigade would retire each night to suck 'em down and spoon-feed
one another a thousand years' worth of their dead fathers' lies. The
conversation always consisted of shop talk: denunciations of tyrant
supervisors, unwanted mandatory overtime, sore joints and dreary labor.
Second verse, same as the first.

Dave and I quickly adopted Mark's Lounge as our post shift sanctuary. In
a way, we were outsiders. We enjoyed the atmosphere, the red Naugahyde
booths cloaked in darkness, the ice-cold beer however, we weren't much
into jabbering about what we'd just left behind in the factory. Nine
tedious

hours of nothingness spoke for itself. Mostly, we'd end up staring at
the natives and listening to the trains roar by like herds of thunder.
Where all those trains were headed at that time of morning was anyone's
guess. Their destination was the private mystery of important men.

Night after night we'd descend on Mark's Lounge searching for a booth in
the most remote corner. Night after night the very same waitress would
inquire as to what we were drinking. This always pissed me off. Couldn't
she get it through her stacked beehive that we were confirmed Budweiser
addicts? It seemed as though everyone else in the bar had their brand of
libation tattooed on their foreheads. Hoss would roll in and a bottle of
Pabst would hit the bar before he was seated. The same went for Clem and
his Southern Comfort. Ditto old Marty and his tall beaker of vodka and
orange. Why was it that we always had to go through the customary
ordering procedure as if we were out-of-towners fresh off a tour bus?

"What is it with us?" I'd gripe to Dave. "We must be the most
insignificant dullards on the face of the planet."

"We're just not part of the hierarchy yet," Dave reasoned. "We haven't
beaten anyone up, we haven't offended anyone's girlfriend, we haven't
thrown up on the carpet. There's nothing for them to remember us by."

I sat and stewed. "Well, how many of these guys in here are published
writers and host their own radio shows?"

"Look around you." Dave laughed. "Do any of these gearheads look like
readers of leftist literature or fans of the Butthole Surfers? My advice
to you is that you find someone you can handle and pick a fight."

I surveyed the bar. Nothing but big boys with big thirsts. 'A right,
once I'm done whuppin' your ass, I'll puke in the middle of the bar and
ask the first broad I see whether she'd be willing to give birth to my
mutant offspring, Rivethead Jr."

Dave got a chuckle out of that one. That's all we were really here for:
cold beer and stale jokes. Last call would always come too early on
these nights. They'd boot us out, drunk and invigorated. Dave would go
home to hurl kitchen utensils back and forth with his old lady and I'd
go home and attack my typewriter like i knew what the fuck I was doing.
Due to his wife's grousing, Dave couldn't always attend the

nightly retreats over to Mark's Lounge. I would locate surrogate
drinkin' pals, usually guys I knew from back in my Cab Shop days. It
wasn't the same. Even drunk, these guys were way too serious. All they
liked to talk about was the factory and financial planning. Most of them
had a couple of kids and still had thousands in the bank. I was single
and had $235 in my savings account. I had enough money to buy a complete
set of tires for my car. I always used that as a barometer for fiscal
security.

One night I'm up at Mark's, it's in the vicinity of last call, and I'm
all by my sweet lonesome propped up next to the Beer Nuts display at the
end of the bar. Some damn fool keeps playin' "The Heat Is On" by Glenn
Frey. I hate Glenn Frey. I hate him and all the rest of the Eagles.

All around me are the sounds of my co-workers yapping it up and tossing
'em down. Just another night with the shoprats--- clutching our paroles,
maddened with thirst, looking for any good reason to laugh at ourselves.
One thing we don't need is goddamn Glenn Frey advising us on the heat.
It's hot, we realize. It's hotter than a cobra's dick. It's all brains
afire and radioactive crotches and smoldering flesh piled high at the
watering hole. That old factory labor in the midst of July is all you'll
ever need to greet the heat. The only thing that gets most of us through
is the knowledge that when it's all over there will be several tall cold
ones aimed right for the gullet.

I'm about to pack it in when up strolls this tanked palooka whom I
recognize as a friend of Dave's. The guy's a complete alkie, the
waitresses know his brand by heart. Despite the heat, he is wearing a
Mark's Lounge softball jacket. I hate softball.

"You've gotta tell 'em about the barbed wire," he slurs. This guy
routinely mistakes me as some kind of champ of the underdogs. He's seen
my Rivethead columns and assumes I'm deeply committed to THE CAUSE,
whatever that might be. "You've gotta get that in your paper," he
insists. "Tell 'em about the GODDAMN BARBED WIRE!"

I give a slow nod. "They should know," I reply. This always seems to
make him feel better. As long as I've known this character, the only
topic we've

ever discussed is the barbed wire fence that surrounds the GM Truck &
Bus plant. It must annoy the hell out of him. Others complain about the
overtime or the boredom or the humidity but, with this guy, the
conversation never varies. Always and forever, the barbed wire.

"It doesn't make any sense," he insists. "The barbed wire all faces in.
The shit's pointed right down our throats. They don't wanna keep others
out, they wanna KEEP us IN!" He's right, of course. And here I always
figured that the barbed wire was just so much precautionary neckware
strung around the grounds to ward off would-be Empire looters. Just the
Company's paranoid way of pissing on its boundaries. Hey, you never know
who might drop by and try to pilfer the cookbook.

Silly me. Just one look will tell you that GM designed their security
fencing with one guarded eyeball on their own work force. The barbed
wire does face inward. Maybe they believed that we were all double
agents plotting to swap the recipe for our cherished military vehicle to
a carload of Russian Intelligence parked on the dark side of the
trainyard. The ingredients to Ronnie's new death wagons, even up, for a
dozen cases of StoIichnaya 100 proof.

Maybe they all lived in fear that one hot July evening we'd be smitten
with road fever and roam our bunions elsewhere. We'd all toss off our
gloves, rub axle grease all over our faces, load up our coolers full of
car stereos and carburetors, and flee over the West Wall.

As we marched on toward freedom, the bullhorns would blare: "WARNING! WE
COMMAND YOU RIVETERS TO HALT!" (The shriek of gunfire over a backdrop of
Glenn Frey music.) "REPEAT! THIS IS YOUR FINAL WARNING! HALT IMMEDIATELY
OR NO MORE MICROWAVE POPCORN FOR SIX months!"

Maybe there's nothing to it at all. Maybe some construction boss just
hung the blueprint for the security fencing upside down. An honest
mistake. Then again, maybe GM just strung up all that confounding barbed
wire to give us Midnight Plowboys something to chaw on in between the
beer nuts and the swizzle sticks: the long wait for death and the heat
to go off.

8.

THE BIG CONTRACT WITH THE PENTAGON, COMBINED WITH THE

sudden rebound in truck sales, enabled more shoprats to be recalled from
indefinite layoff. Consequently, the Rivet Line began an overdue blood
transfusion. We embraced new workers from closed factories in Saginaw,
Bay City and Lansing. Off went the disgruntled rednecks in quest of
lighter workloads. In came the greenies to swallow up the vacancies. You
could feel the atmosphere of the department recharging.

The new guys fit in well. Jerry, Herman, Dickie, Tony, Hogjaw, Willie L
an easygoin' bunch who worked hard, partied hard and weren't opposed to
mixing the two together. We were all around the same age--mid-twenties,
single, unshackled. The only surprise to this new group was the
inclusion of a female, a very unfamiliar species in our area.

Of course, we'd seen this happen before. The results were always the
same: an honest attempt, a few hours of overmatched jousting with the
rivet guns, a huddle with the foreman and a quick reassignment. Why they
even bothered movin' women to the Rivet Line is beyond me. The success
rate was abysmal. I think they just liked to keep the ladies guessin',
taunting them

with hectic visions of brute labor. GM was big on useless gut checks.

It turned out that the new female was to be replacing the guy next to
me. The idea suited me fine. God knows I was sick to death of this
idiot. His name was Kirk, a nice enough sort, but I had grown terribly
weary of his nightly blabber. All he ever talked about was how much he
hated his ex-wife and how much he loved bow hunting. Several times I was
tempted to ask him why he didn't just combine his two obsessions and be
done with it.

Henry Jackson ushered my new neighbor over to her job. He went through
the obligatory demonstration of splintering a board between the pinch
cycle of the rivet gun. "Darlin', that could have just as easily been
your hand," he smiled. My neighbor wasn't smiling. She looked downright
terrified. This made Jackson grin all the wider.

"That could also have been a bully's neck," I heard myself mutter.

"You say something, Rivethead?" Henry Jackson demanded. In the
background, I could see my new neighbor stifling a

laugh. It felt good to have momentarily broken the tension. "Just
mumblin' to myself, Henry."

Jackson whirled around to resume his confab. After a few more minutes of
bosshead oratory, he took off down the aisle. Somewhere in a distant
alcove of the plant, there were more greenies to intimidate. More nerves
to unsettle. More useless machismo to dump down the gills of the
unsteady and vulnerable.

Kirk began the slow process of breaking in his replacement. His job
wasn't all that tough, but it did involve a dangerous procedure the
buildup of the military cross members. Affixing the skid plate to the
cross member called for plenty of caution. As with everything else that
went onto these military trucks, the skid plate was double the normal
thickness. It had extremely sharp edges that jutted out from the cross
member at an awkward angle. One slip, one momentary loss of grip, and
the skid plate could carve your arm to the bone or, if dropped, swipe
off a couple toes.

The new female wasted little time pullin' up her sleeves. By lunchtime,
she had already mastered assembling the cross

members. She was also doing an impressive job of hefting the finished
product onto the frames and bolting them down. However, she wasn't
having nearly the success with the riveting portion of the job. She'd
grab the gun, wrestle with it, sway with it, curse at it and invariably
slice the rivet. Exasperated, she'd throw up her hands and grumble.

I could sense that a visit from DI: Rivethead was in order. I let her
mangle a few more rivets before wandering over and introducing myself.

"My name's Ben. For better or worse, I am the local guru regarding the
defiant nature of the rivet gun."

This brought a smile. "My name's Janice and, for better or worse, I'm a
total klutz."

"Believe me, so is everyone when they first get ahold of one of these
guns."

As Janice looked on, I began to demonstrate the proper riveting
technique. I passed on all relevant advice. To wit: Resist the urge to
arm wrestle the gun. The gun will pin you every time. Do not yank the
gun. The gun will cooperate better with a nudge. Wait until the rivet is
aligned. If you strike too early, the rivet will wind up creased or
double-headed. Become a passenger. Let the gun do all the work. Be
patient. Glide instead of lurch. Close cover before striking. Induce
vomiting. You can lead a rivet gun to water, but you can't make it surf.
Blah, blah, blah...

By the end of the shift, Janice was gettin' the feel for it. Her ratio
of bull's-eyes to beheadings was running ten to one in her favor. Not a
bad average for a greenie. It would come. It always did if you just
relaxed. All one really had to do was get over the fact that he or she
was navigatin' a stubborn hunk of cast iron that packed up to 17,000
pounds of pressure per square inch and wasn't awfully picky about its
menu. It would just as soon devour Mozart's fingertips as a boxful of
rivets.

Janice thanked me for my bit of tutelage. Then she paused. "So you're
the Rivethead guy," she said. "I've heard about your columns. My
girlfriends think you're a riot."

"Basically, I'm just a peeping Tom. It helps keep the clock moving."

"I can see how that might be handy around here." Janice laughed. "I'll
see you tomorrow."

"I'll be here."

The arrival of Janice turned out to be a real blessing. She was
intelligent, warm and witty. She was also just as twisted and desperate
as the rest of us when it came to engaging in the assorted hijinks we
used to bludgeon the ruthless minute hand. We quickly became comrades in
the battle to destroy the monotony. Mainly, I would babble, she would
laugh. We were fond of discussing our fates.

"Monkeys could be doing this," Jan observed and gazed around at the
crew. It was a little sad. "I guess they already are," she surmised.

It wasn't easy for a woman on the Rivet Line. They were under constant
siege by legions of moronic suitors. Almost every guy down there
perceived himself as some kind of rodent Romeo. A woman working in the
midst of so many men was looked upon as willing prey. Personality,
looks, marital status hardly mattered. If it had tits and ass and
jiggled along, it was fair game. Being that she was young and
attractive, Jan was swarmed nightly. She deflected them nicely, defusing
their advances with talk about her husband and snapshots of her little
boy. Sooner or later, the vultures would hang it up and drag their
libidos toward the next shapely bottom.

There was also another dreary side to this situation with women on the
line. Due to the fact that Janice and I spent so much time together
goofin' off, it was commonly accepted that we must be involved in some
gooey love affair. Whenever Janice and I would slide out at lunch to
race up to McDonald's, we'd arrive back to a chorus of oooohs and
ahhhhs. The consensus was that we were fleeing at every given
opportunity to find someplace to hump ourselves silly.

It pissed me off. Not that I really cared what others were dreamin' up.
It just bothered me that it was impossible to be close friends with a
female in the factory without a bunch of dick-for-brains assuming that
sex was the only bond. Maybe they were all jealous. Maybe they were
confused as to why the new gal on the block would choose such a bland
gigolo. Regardless, I could have done without their lousy assumptions.

We'd get over to the bar after work and it would start up. How large are
her tits? Is she a screamer? Does she prefer it

on top? Is her old man suspicious? When can we expect an in-depth
article on the proper method of jumpin' factory snatch?

Yuk, yuk, yuk. I'd sit there and drain my Budweisers, smiling wearily.
At least it beat talking about foremen and financial planning. When I'd
tire of the conversation, I would simply agree with everything that was
being said.

"Yep, you boys are right. If I don't slow this thing down, my dick's
gonna fall off. But, at least I'm gettin' a female. It must be rough on
you other guys having to make it with each other every night out in the
parking lot. Come to think of it, that would make for an interesting
article: 'NOT HAVING ENOUGH WANTON WOMEN TO GO AROUND, MY SEX STARVED
LINEMATES WERE FORCED INTO A SHAMELESS HOMO JAMBOREE--GOBBLIN' EACH
OTHER UP, STROKIN' EACH OTHER'S MULES, TWEETIN' LIKE TURTLEDOVES SO
OUTRAGEOUSLY CORRUPTED BY THEIR OWN LUST FOR SUMMER SAUSAGE THAT THEY
PLOWED OVER ONE ANOTHER IN A VILE FEEDING FRENZY FOR ANY OLD CHUNK OF
GENITALIA THAT SPRUNG FROM THE SHADOWS OF THEIR FOGGED-OVER FAG
WAGONS.'"

Before long, we'd be back to talkin' about the usual stuff. Why doesn't
Jack Morris just keep his yap shut and pitch the fuckin' ball? How come
Michelob makes you fart so much? Why don't they kill the bastard who
keeps playin' that Glenn Frey song? Why won't Roger Smith go bowling
with us?

Why? Why? Why?

Exit Dave Steel. During the mad scramble of those who wanted to escape
the Rivet Line, he had filed for transfer to Work Inspection. My nagging
attempts to persuade him to stick around fell on deaf ears. Once the
paperwork came together, he was gone in a wink. Dave couldn't believe
that I wanted to remain. "I believe you are in dire need of psychiatric
help," he suggested.

Dave was way off. After years of being bumped in and out and around the
plant, I was never more convinced that this is where I belonged. Tot lot
for the toothless. A footstool lackey for the Rivet Lords. A snot-nosed
megaphone for the rodents. Comfortable in my stinkin' placement glad
only to scrawl it

down, to sleepwalk to the next greasy errand, the next smudged up
paycheck headed for the whiskey man's till. Departure was nonsense.
Departure was treason.

After Dave had transferred, I occasionally visited him on his new job. I
couldn't find a solitary reason to envy his relocation. All Dave did all
night was shuffle back and forth poking an occasional dipstick into some
half-hidden hole and yawning like a hippo in the mud. His neighbors
resembled Stepford Wives at a linen sale. It was fuckin' eerie. No
revelry, no pranks, no communication, no turmoil, no nothin'. No, thank
you.

Thus began a constant routine between the two of us of sniping at each
other's jobs. I would condemn Dave for wanting to become a part of this
silent mausoleum. I assured him that the clock would eventually tear him
apart in such a lifeless outpost. Dave would counter by insisting that
the Rivet Line was a lake of fire, a dungeon full of lamebrains and
misfits who looked like they were all fresh off triple homicides. On and
on it would go. Denouncements, slander, scorn. The trouble was clear.
Neither one of us could understand each other's motives for the paths we
had chosen.

The simple truth was that Dave had zero use for humanity. Had he been
able to swing it, he'd probably have taken a job sittin' in a shanty on
top of the factory roof fiddlin' with a busted Etch-a-Sketch all night.
Camaraderie was a useless priority for Dave Steel. I was his only friend
and, half the time, I think that was one over his limit.

For myself, comradeship had developed into a must. I needed drinkin'
buddies and fellow clock maimers. The Rivethead was no working class
hero. Not by a long shot. He was only a conglomeration of the hucksters
and slickers around him.

Folks like Janice. Within weeks of her arrival on the Rivet Line, we had
grown to depend on each other for assistance in knockin' down the
humdrum. She became my personal sounding board. On each shift I would
write for a couple of hours before lunch. When I was finished with
whatever I was working on, I'd hand my stuff over to her. Being that she
walked that same murky strip, she was an excellent barometer for what
needed to be said and what should be scrapped. She could tell when I was
on to something. She also knew when I was

just ramblin' on. Several times I used her suggestions for themes in my
Michigan Voice column. Then there was Jerry, the lady-killer from Bay
City. I'd never seen a smoother operator. I quickly dubbed him the
Polish Sex God a handle he was enthralled with, always pestering me to
fork over any articles I might write containing references to his title.

In the absence of Dave Steel, Jerry became my new beer chum. We often
worked out this scam where we would volunteer to work a couple hours
overtime cleaning up the department. As soon as the line stopped, we'd
race for the brooms. Jerry would start at one end of the department and
I would head for the other. We'd begin a furious system of kicking,
sweeping, sliding and hiding the night's debris under benches and stock
pallets. We worked like absolute maniacs for about fifteen minutes. Our
boss had us written down for two hours. However, our boss was long gone
and, soon enough, so were

we.

We'd scram over to Mark's Lounge with an hour-plus still ringing on the
overtime meter. This was a much more agreeable way of earning extra
cash. Dark lights, cold beer, shootin' pool and, without fail, an
encounter with a bunch of tipsy bimbos. Jerry sure knew how to spin that
web.

I can remember one night whisking off for the can and by the time I
returned, the Polish Sex God was holdin' court. He had one chick in his
lap and another one draped on his shoulder. These women were buying him
drinks. I tuned in on some of the conversation and wanted to puke.

"Doreen, has anyone ever told you that you're a ringer for Natalie
Wood?"

"Are you serious? She's gorgeous!"

"Precisely my point." Jerry grinned.

Only the fact that we were being' paid twenty-some dollars an hour made
this charade tolerable. Doreen was Natalie Wood like my grandma was
Angie Dickinson. Jerry tried interesting me in taking the two bar babes
out to his van with him. I was as horny as the next guy, but I did have
some requirements as to who, when and where. This scenario included none
of them. I told Jerry that I'd just meet him back at the time clocks at
3:00 A.M. to punch out our badges. I sat by myself and savored

the beer. I suppose there were much worse ways of makin' a living than
gettin' sloshed while your buddy was bouncin' around the back of his van
with the new Natalie Wood.

I got together with Doug, Eddie, Dick and Jerry and we created this
grand diversion that we called Rivet Hockey. Rivet Hockey could best be
described as a combination of foosball, soccer, the Civil War and every
Charles Bronson movie made after 1972. It was total mayhem, a
Neanderthal free-for-all that was both violent and one hell of a lot of
fun.

The game was simple. Position a rivet on the floor, scope out an
opposing linemate, and kick the rivet as hard as possible toward the
linemate's foot, ankle or shin. In Rivet Hockey, pain was the payoff. To
connect on a direct hit to a tender tibia, to exact blood through an
opponent's pant leg, was equivalent to kicking a fifty-yard field goal
in the Rose Bowl. Remorse was forbidden. Revenge was encouraged.
Ruptures were illegal. Every rat for himself.

As for selecting a Rivet Hockey victim, you had to be very cautious not
to put the scope to a linemate who saw no redeeming humor in having his
legs and ankles blasted by screamin' chunks of metal. There were some of
our neighbors who just weren't buyin' Rivet Hockey. They were only here
to make a buck. These grumps gulped coffee, gnawed on salami sandwiches,
pawed through girlie rags and sat out the death march of the minute
hand.

We had problems with one guy we all called Mighty Joe Young. No one knew
his real name and no one was about to ask. He looked like some kind of
science project from Muscle Beach 250 pounds, invisible neck, hands like
hams and a scowl as big as Utah. Unfortunately, they plopped Mighty Joe
right in the middle of our battlefield. His presence began to alter
everyone's game plan. Our savage line drives were exchanged for wimpy
high-percentage pokes. The whole deal began to reek of cowardice and
retreat. No one wanted to risk peggin' this monster in the flannel
shirt.

As self-appointed commissioner of the North Unit Rivet Hockey
Association, I felt obliged to act. I gathered up all the players and we
retreated at lunchtime to Jerry's van for

strategy and Budweiser. Janice tagged along to take down the minutes.

I began. "Listen, guys. My father was a shoprat. His father was a
shoprat. My father's father was a shoprat. I'm bettin' that your fathers
and their fathers were shoprats." The guys all nodded. So did Janice.
"The point is this. We come from very noble stock. Realizing this, do
you believe for one moment that our forefathers would have put up with
this crap? Here we've hit upon a great diversion, one that'll distract
us from that goddamn clock, and we're backin' down like a bunch of
panty-waist bank clerks. Wouldn't our fathers have embraced Rivet Hockey
and fought to the bitter end for its survival? Huh? HUH?"

	My co-workers pulled on their beers and pondered. I forged on.

"Well, I think the answer is obvious HELL NO, THEY WOULDN'T! They would
have thought Rivet Hockey was a bad fuckin' joke. And that, my friends,
is precisely my point. WHEN THE HELL DID WE EVER DO ANYTHING OUR FATHERS
WANTED us TO DO? NEVER! After all, we're workin' here, ain't we? My
suggestion is that we go back in there and kick the shit out of some
rivets!"

My hokey speech worked. Mighty Joe was soon conquered. He still wasn't
real fond of being' pegged with a misdirected rivet, but I think he
began to realize that our malice wasn't directed at anything that walked
on this earth or chewed on lunch meat or wore a flannel shirt. Shit, we
liked just about everybody. Our only adversary was Father Time. And by
slammin' rivets up against each other's shins, we were only out to jump
that bastard and maim him something silly.

Eddie was responsible for another one of our favorite amusements. He
called it Dumpster Ball. To play, all you did was round up some empty
boxes, fold in the cardboard flaps, set the box on its side, and attempt
to kick it on a high enough arc that it would clear the center of the
dumpster next to the wall across from Eddie's job.

Dumpster Ball wasn't as easy as it might seem. It took practice to get
those boxes airborne. There was a certain art to the required motion
and, before long, Eddie was givin' out lessons. He would demonstrate the
proper approach and follow through. He was damn near automatic, smooth
as Jan Stenerud, powerful enough to occasionally deposit one of the
boxes into the rafter stratosphere. We called these moon shots and they
were truly breathtaking. Everyone in the pack had some goofy talent and,
for whatever it was worth, Eddie's was Dumpster Ball.

In time, we all started to get the feel for it. We'd hustle through our
jobs and race down to polish up our kicking game. All of us kept
improving until we were able to give Eddie some decent competition. Thus
began Dumpster Ball wagering and, with it, Eddie's mysterious backslide
from the very sport he had invented.

The problem was Eddie simply got the yips whenever money was on the
line. We'd bet a dollar a field goal, ten chances per taker. I don't
know whether it was a fear of losin' a few bucks or all the pot he was
smokin' (I used to get contact highs just lookin' at his eyes), but
Eddie just couldn't hit for shit when it mattered most. Eddie would
become so enraged that sometimes he'd kick a box so hard the damn thing
would explode into scrap the moment it met his toe. This was a very
impressive feat, but hardly any way to win your money back.

To lessen the stakes a bit, we started kicking to see who would have to
bring in the alcohol on Friday nights. Kickin' for booze revitalized
Eddie's game. He had an edge on us. Where we all drank vodka or Jim
Beam, Eddie's drink was Hennessy. A fifth of that stuff ran about twenty
bucks a pop. With such a cost discrepancy running in his favor, Eddie
relaxed and soon his towering blasts were once again penetrating the
dumpster's gut, bangin' a good forty feet up the wall.

Eddie was the only guy in the department who could match me drink for
drink. The Polish Sex God was good with the beer, but couldn't handle
the hard stuff. Hogjaw could knock back anything, but had problems with
the long haul. Doug had already shot out his belly and Tony lacked
stamina.

Fridays became special. Eddie and I would start knockin' down the
bottles early in the shift. Whenever we'd get caught short, I would
arrange for Jerry and Janice to cover my job while I snuck up to the
liquor store. I always enjoyed this trek. It excited me to know that I
was up to something that was rigidly forbidden. I was leaving the
department without per mission. NOT ALLOWED! I was wandering off plant
grounds without punching out. NOT ALLOWED! I was intoxicated during
working hours. NOT ALLOWED! I was smuggling alcohol onto GM property.
NOT ALLOWED! I never once got nabbed and it made me feel like laughing
at the bossmen but... NOT ALOUD.

The only problem with Eddie was the more he consumed, the more maudlin
he became. We would sit in my Camaro after the shift was over, uncapping
a new bottle or finishing an old one, and Eddie would start running all
this worthless shit at me concerning race-mingling. It was stupid. So
what if we were different colors? I listened as Eddie let it out.

"Ben, we're all brothers. We all bleed red. Why the hell we gotta
fight?"

"Goddamnit, Eddie, who's fightin'? We certainly aren't. We're drinkin'.
This is supposed to be fun, remember? Why bring up that bullshit? It
doesn't concern us."

"The thing is, i never spoke with any white folk until I was fifteen.
Where I come from, the two just don't get together."

"Well, shit, I wasn't exactly Don Cornelius's houseboy. Listen, Eddie.
If some of these bastards got their heads stuck up their asses, that
can't be our problem. As long as we hit it off, who cares what those
idiots are up to."

"Yeah, I suppose," Eddie replied, content to drop it for the moment, but
hardly convinced of anything that would smooth his doubts on the matter.

The summer rolled on and we broiled in the heat, smuggling our fair
share of amusement wherever we could find it. Jerry had decided to try
out the lock-nut job a few spots down. Taking his place was one of the
college kid "interns" GM hired each summer to cover for guys who were
off on their vacations. His name was Mark, a chubby kid bound for reed
school. For the time being, he belonged to us. We taught him how to play
Rivet Hockey and Dumpster Ball. We even got him to sample an occasional
beer. Before long, he fit right in like a true-blue rivetling.

I remember one day I was just mindin' my own business, molestin' yet
another series of rivets, when our little greenie started yellin' "Holy
shit... HOLY SHIT!" I looked over at Mark and he was motioning
frantically over my shoulder. Could

it be? Roger Smith? Had he relented and come to answer the

dogged plea of the Hamper ancestry? Tonight, we bowl?

I turned around slowly. What I was gazing at was not

Roger Smith. Standing only ten feet behind me was none other than Howie
Makem, his big swollen cat head teetering in the haze. The men began to
howl deliriously. It had been a few years since the last known Howie
sighting. We continued to roar our lungs out as Howie Makem strutted
down the aisle and out of view.

"THE DEAD HAVE RISEN! THE DEAD HAVE RISEN!" I shrieked. I looked over at
Mark. His mouth was hangin'

open like an oven door. He appeared to be in a state of shock.

"What the hell was THAT?" Mark cried.

Introductions seemed in order, yet how did one go about

telling a traumatized bystander that the large CAT he'd just seen
strolling near his job was the living messiah of the masses and the
secret to a Quality work plan all wrapped into one blur of fur? My guess
was you didn't even try.

"That was a big cat, Mark. He must be lookin' for that

mouse we've been seeing around here lately."

Mark asked for a cigarette. I had never seen him smoke

before. "Oh," he said.

After that sighting, I saw Howie on a few more occasions.

The news appeared to be bad. For one thing, Howie looked absolutely
terrible. He seemed to have fallen prey to some dreadful disease. One
night, I actually saw Howie propped up in a fork truck, waving his
feeble paw back and forth, apparently too weak to complete his rounds on
foot. I screamed "Howie!" and that gigantic noggin of his tilted toward
me, a hideous mask of pain. It hit me right there at my workbench: My
God, I think Howie's dying!

How true it all appeared. Just another giant struggling valiantly
against the gravedigger's spade. Death didn't give a shit. Death never
paused for John Wayne. It chewed on him like a warm Swanson dinner.
Howie, nine lives and all, was not immune. All our heroes died.

Just about the time we were preparing weepy eulogies for

the ultimate passing of Howie Makem, he came firin' out of the chute
again. What the fuck was GM up to? Howie was more alive and antimated
than ever. It was all too much. Even I,

possibly Howie's greatest fan, began to cool in my affection for our
schizophrenic mascot. We didn't want drama, we needed something to laugh
at.

A severe Howie Makem backlash developed. Instead of the customary
cheering that greeted Howie, he was now being' heckled unmercifully.
Whenever he appeared in the vicinity of the Rivet Line, he did so at
grave personal risk. We would load up on rivets and toss them at his
generous skull.

A horrible realization began to bother me. After a Howie sighting, I'd
lean back on my bench and think to myself: SOMEONE is in that head.
SOMEONE whose wife and kids lie sound asleep in another part of town
while the stars shine down and the trucks pile up and Daddy haunts the
halls in his kitty costume. SOMEONE who was forced to go through twelve
worthless years of the American Education System only to wind up
jerry-riggin' the same old acid flashback night after night. There
should be exemptions made for men who aspire to do nothing more than
dress up like huge house pets in the middle of factories.

Another thought began to occur to me. If Howie Makem was allowed to roam
the plant as the spiritual ambassador of the Quality Concept, why wasn't
equal time being provided a likewise embodied representative of GM's
FOREMOST preoccupation-the Quantity Concept? An elusive second self that
would lurk among the shadows and pounce upon any worker who dared cause
any kind of stoppage in production.

I decided I might like the role. What the hell, the job would allow for
plenty of maneuverability and I could work at my own pace. It turned out
that Janice had a friend who worked over in the audit area. Through
information passed on by this friend, I learned that this was the privy
location of Howie Makem's costume. I was doubly excited to hear from
Jan's source that Howie actually had a SPARE head stashed away somewhere
in the audit room. It was my resolute intention to swipe the spare cat
head, paint the eyes a violent red, attach large fangs to its overbite,
and carve the word QUOTA on its forehead.

With this accomplished, I, the Quantity Cat, would set out to terrorize
all those who were responsible for assembly line downtime. How many
times had I heard the woesome lament:

"For each minute the line is down, the Company loses another $10,000."
I would fix all that. I would call myself Howie Rakem, Quantity Cat.
Howie Rakem would ambush workers at stoplights. Park next to them at
drive-ins. Claw their bedroom windows during the sex act. Hiss at them
in booths at Mark's Lounge. No man would dare shortchange the coffers
knowing that Howie Rakem was on the prowl. To reward my gallant service,
I would finally be allowed to go bowling with Chairman Roger.

Sadly, I must report that it never worked out. It wasn't due to a lack
of effort. Countless times I made it as far as the very closet where
Howie stored his heads, but the goddamn thing was always padlocked.
According to Jan's source, this was due to the fact that a few months
back some vandals had made off with Howie's legs and torso. All the
Quality people were left with was a couple of disembodied cat heads.
This helped explain Howie's frequent bouts of absenteeism.

Or did it? Now I was really confused. Just because Howie no longer had a
body, what was preventing him from putting on the head and performing
his rounds in jeans or coveralls? The way I had it figured, as long as
you had a head, you had a Howie. Right? RIGHT?

Nope. Janice explained: "The Quality people feel that the workers won't
be able to relate to Howie without the full presentation. In other
words, without the paws and tail and the fur--"

"STOP!" I injected hysterically. "Let me guess. You're about to tell me
that without the paws and tail and the fur... THE WORKERS WON'T BELIEVE
THAT HOWIE IS AN ACTUAL... urn... CAT! Don't lie. That's what you were
about to say, wasn't it?"

Janice began to shake with laughter. She had a rough time gettin' it
out. "Exactly!" she howled at last.

It was all so silly. I brought home over $400 a week for accomplishing
nothing. When everything went just right, I had absolutely no
recollection of what had transpired moments before. If all went
according to plan, I would be eligible for a tidy retirement plan in the
year 2007.

The Quality people had no need to worry. For the life of me, I would
believe anything.

"MANDRELL SISTER ORDERS A SUBURBAN!" the headline announced. I had in
my hand a fresh copy of our in-plant propaganda sheet, the Truckin'
Tribune. It was September 19, 1985, and I was relaxing at the picnic
table near my job, waiting for the line to start rolling.

I continued with the article. I wasn't sure why, but I found the topic
mesmerizing. "Today, Flint Truck Assembly will produce a Suburban for
well-known singer and performer Louise Mandrell. The unit is loaded, has
four-wheel drive and is black and silver with gray inserts. The order
originated in Scottsville,

Ky."

I put the paper down and sat there for a moment. Louise Mandrell. Today.
Suburban. A warm sensation streamed through me. I picked up the Tribune
and read the article several more times. I was becoming infatuated with
the entire concept. A clear vision of lovely Louise plowing right
through the Kentucky dusk, her hair unfurled, her bronzed legs stretched
full, goosin' that big black chariot through a bend in the brush where
the critters all leapt in the glow of her ramblin' fog lights. It was
pretty damn romantic.

Carefully, I sliced the article from the Tribune with my box-cutter
knife. As I was doing so, Doug was taking a seat at the end of the table
to mark his production schedule for the day. I scooted over. Information
this urgent had to be shared.

"Dougie, have you seen today's issue of Pravda?" I asked. He shook his
head and continued marking his manifest. It was never a polite idea to
interrupt a linemate as he was totaling up his schedule. This kind of
outside interference could cause omissions and oversights that would
show up in errors later in the job operation. Schedule-marking was a
solemn, all-absorbing event.

Big shit. I flung the article down in the middle of Doug's manifest.
"You must read this, right now!" I insisted.

Dougie picked up my clipping and read it through. He didn't appear to be
much amused. After all, this was a Friday afternoon and no one really
thawed out until about lunch break when the horn would blow and we'd
gallop off to the liquor store.

"Didn't she get mashed in a car wreck?" Dougie replied while returning
to his schedule.

I moaned. "Naw, you're thinkin' of her sister, Barbara, the gloomy
blonde. Louise is the frisky one. The brunette. The sister who does all
those White Rain hair spray commercials."

"Doesn't she play the fiddle?" Dougie mused. Now we were gettin'
somewhere.

"You better believe it," I yelled.

"So what about her?"

"WHAT ABOUT HER? Is that all you've got to say? Jesus, Doug, you just
read the article. You must realize the significance here. Today we will
be building a truck for a goddamn celebrity. Someone we can attach a
face to."

"Sorry, I still don't get it. Fill me in later, I've got to finish
marking my schedule."

"The hell with your schedule," I exclaimed while shoving

""

Soon, the line began to roll and we moved to our stations. In between
jobs, I raced up and down the line apprising my co-workers of the
impending approach of the Mandrell Sister Suburban. I dangled my
clipping in front of their faces in hopes that it would generate for
them the same type of enthusiasm I was delighting in.

Their reactions varied. While some appeared marginally enthused, the
majority merely shrugged and peered back at me as if I'd finally
teetered over the brink. Alas, my reputation as one who was given to
occasional flights of madness, gibberish, delirium and amphetamine
prattle had preceded me.

However, not this time. I was clean. I was in complete control. I
understood completely the whence and the wherefores. I understood that
Louise Mandrell was having a General Motors four-wheel Suburban built
today. It was to be loaded. It was to be black and silver. These were
inescapable truths. I couldn't help it if it was a Mandrell Sister as
opposed to someone who would have been more shoprat voguePsomeone like
Merle Haggard, Richard Petty or Traci Lords. At least it was SOMEBODY!

The basis for all this mania was simple. For nearly a decade I had
toiled away for the GM Truck & Bus plant. In all this time never, but
never, had I encountered one human soul

who had either purchased, ordered, leased or even hot-wired a General
Motors Suburban. Every night the frames would roll by thirty-eight jobs
to the hour .... and it would mystify the hell outta me as to where all
these beasts were headed.

My Rivet Line pals were just as confused. We would often look up from
our jobs in the middle of another shift and ask "Who buys all these
things?" Obviously, someone had to be doin' it and we were tremendously
grateful to them. We had mouths to feed and bar tabs to resolve. Still,
it often seemed like the trucks we were assembling just vanished out the
door--thousands of them, millions of them--lurching into some enormous
black hole out by the train tracks and barbed wire fences. What a
peculiar way to turn a profit.

Enter Louise Mandrell. She was real. On any given day, you could see her
cavorting across American television with a canister of goop aimed
squarely at her stylish mass of tresses. She lived, she breathed, she
saived an angry fiddle. No longer could there be any denial. What we had
here was an actual entity who was able to confirm for us that what we
were doing every night resulted in some kind of tangible cause and
aftereffect.

There still remained one bitter disappointment. Our plant newspaper
hadn't revealed any information as to which job was to be the Mandrell
Suburban. I made a couple of futile attempts to wangle the job number
out of the management boys but, to no great surprise, was met with an
assortment of lame utterances like "I have no idea" and the old standby
"Hamper, just do your job."

Another factor working against me in my pursuit to identify the Mandrell
Suburban was my work area itself. The Rivet Line was just an ongoing
series of clone-like black frames. Each one was a duplicate of the one
that went before with the exception of the occasional army vehicle. I
doubted rather strongly Louise was gonna get her claws on one of those.
The information that the Mandrell Suburban would be black and silver,
that it would have gray inserts, that it would come loaded, was totally
useless to all of us on the Rivet Line. Everything that went our way was
identical.

It still turned out to be a better than average shift. At random
intervals through the night, I would holler down the line to my
co-workers: "This one could be it. Let's give it the

rivet!" Dougie would whip into a frantic air-fiddle solo, the Polish
Sex God would start making humping motions, Janice and I would genuflect
and we'd give it our best. Above us, the clock would swirl by. Another
day, another diversion.

Not all diversions were of an amusing nature. I recall one that really
gave us fits. GM and the union got together and installed these mammoth
electronic message boards in various locations around the plant. They
only sprung for about a dozen of these boards and, wouldn't you just
know it, with all the available acreage around the factory, they just
had to point one of these bastards right at me. It hung about five feet
above the picnic table directly across the aisle from my job.

The messages they would flash ranged from corny propaganda (green neon
bulb depictions of Howie Makem's face

uttering shit like QUALITY IS THE BACKBONE OF GOOD WORKMANSHIP!) to
motivational pep squawk (A WINNER NEVER QUITS & A QUITTER NEVER WINS!)
to brain-jarring ruminations (SAFETY IS SAFE). The board also flooded us
with birthday

salutes, religious passages, antidrug adages, audit scores, limericks
and the occasional abstract gibberish. (One night the board kept
flashing the phrase HAPPINESS IS HORSES alongside a rather
grotesque-lookin' rendering of a horse head. If I had any idea what it
meant, I'd gladly pass it on.)

I remember the first day the message board went into operation. For the
entire shift, it beamed out one single message. They never erased it. We
kept waiting for another phrase to come along and replace it. No such
luck. The message blazed on brightly like some eternal credo meant to
hog-tie our bewildered psyches. The message? Hold on to your hardhats,
sages. The message being thrust upon us in enormous block

lettering read: SQUEEZING RIVETS IS FUN! Trust me. Even the

fuckin' exclamation point was their own.

Talk about a confused bunch of riveters. we had no idea whether this was
some kind of big bro Orwellian brain-dunk or just some lowly office
puke's idea of a nimble-witted gibe. Whatever it was, we were not
especially amused.

Just for a moment, let's imagine that you worked for the sewage
department. One day you walk into work to discover that the boss has
erected a giant neon sign right next to your

job that insists SHOVELING TURDS IS FUN! Or let's pretend

you're a shoe clerk. You arrive at your workplace to find a huge
billboard that pours forth the adage SMELLING FEET IS RAPTURE! HOW would
you react to such derisive lunacy? You couldn't accept this as normal.
Not in a billion years. C'mon, c'mon. WHAT WOULD YOU DO?

Well, I know what I did. I cut myself up a chunk of cardboard, took a
big red felt marker and etched down the letters CKED. I then crammed a
wad of tape on the back of it, stood atop the workers' picnic table and
slapped those four letters over the N in the word FUN. I hustled back to
my job and turned around to gaze at my handiwork. Oh yes, this was much

better: SQUEEZING RIVETS IS FUCKED! I was such a stickler for

accuracy. My proud correction remained up there for about three hours
until Gino, fearing the wrath of overlords, ripped it down amidst a
chorus of heavy booing. It was all right. Gino was cool. Any other
foreman would have torn it down immediately and reprimanded me for some
muddled violation of Company policy.

This whole incident with the new message board disturbed us. We wondered
exactly who was in charge of this vile effrontery. Were these the same
deplorable loons, the same demented pimps of propaganda that had
shamelessly spermatized the Howie Makem saga? Did these fuckers really
believe that squeezin' rivets was "fun"? If so, why weren't they all
down here having the time of their lives? They'd have gotten no protest
out of us: "Here you be, Jenkins, another dozen rivets to squeeze! Head
'em out! More fun than a whore with three tongues!"

I had several definitions of fun. Riveting was nowhere on the list.
Taking in a Tiger game from the right field overhang was fun. Listening
to Angry Samoans records while gettin' sloshed was fun. The episode of
Bewitched where Endora hexed Dick York with elephant ears was fun.
Dozing past noon with the phone off the hook was fun. Having sex in a
Subaru was difficult however, that was fun too. Squeezing rivets was not
fun. It paid the rent and put Fritos in our kids' bellies, but there was
no way you could classify it as fun. Not yesterday, not today, not
tomorrow.

It made us wonder just what our precious union's involvement was with
this brain-rapin' contraption. They were coinvestors

in the purchase of all these message boards. Weren't they obliged to be
on our side? How could they sit idly by and allow GM to glut the screens
with hysterical lies? Since we paid their goddamn salaries, you would
think they'd have some balky mulehead assigned to monitor the mucus. A
representative of the workin' Joe who would step in and tell GM: "Hey,
you chuckleheads. If you dare beam 'Squeezing Rivets Is Fun!' ever
again, we reserve the right to broadcast 'Squeezing the Plant Manager's
Balls Is a Hoot!'

I believe the thing that grated us most about the giant message board is
that it never once supplied us with anything we didn't already know or
couldn't have cared less about. The possibilities for useful data were
certainly there. For instance, why couldn't they flash the nightly
lottery number? Several of us had money ridin' with Frankie, our
in-plant numbers runner. Why couldn't they post updates on scores from
the Tiger and Piston games? What could be more harmless and righteously
American than lettin' us check in on our local sports heros? Why
couldn't they run silent footage of the Three Stooges or Tom & Jerry
cartoons? No lyin', we'd have settled for home movies of Roger Smith's
valet sortin' through his sock drawer.

All we got was the same daily bullshit. I had a creepy suspicion that
the message board was slowly driving us daft, especially Eddie. His job
was situated just such that the messages were staring him right in the
face. Several times I caught him glowering at the board as if he were on
the verge of goin' bughouse.

Eddie and I began firing rivets at the screen. We'd rear back like
Seaver and Gooden, throwing our arms out in a desperate attempt to shut
down the madness. It was useless. The damn message board must have been
made out of Kryptonite. Once in a great while, Eddie would peg it hard
enough to make one or two of the words temporarily disappear. Everyone
would begin to applaud when, suddenly, the letters would heal up and
reappear.

It ate at Eddie. At times, he seemed to be hypnotized to the board
during which he would engage in absurd conversation. I still recall the
night he motioned me over to answer a question. His eyes were pinned to
the center of the green neon.

"Ben, what's the difference between No Lead Gas and Unleaded Gas?"

're you serious, Eddie?" I chuckled.

"Could you just tell me the FUCKIN' DIFFERENCE!" Eddie shouted. He was
serious.

"Well, I always assumed that the two were just the same."

"Then how come my car runs better on the goddamn No Lead?"

I had no idea. I slid back to my job and hit a few rivets. It wasn't any
fun.

One of the guys from the plant called me up one morning. It was just
after 11:00 A.M. and I was still tryin' to snooze off a hangover.

"Get outta bed and switch on Channel 5," the voice demanded. "Your damn
bowling buddy is holding a press conference. They broke right in on Hour
Magazine!"

"Why?" I mumbled.

My informer wasn't sure. Something to do with plant closings and little
pink slips fluttering down on the heads of the working class. There had
been rumors of such. I went in and turned on the television.

It was him all right. Roger B. Smith, my elusive bowling foe, GM's
resident reducing plan guru. Perhaps the only fella in the entire
Western Hemisphere to possess eight million freckles and yet absolutely
no sense of humor whatsoever. He looked like Howdy Doody presiding over
a hangin' party, a fiendish combination of power, dread, panic and too
much rouge.

Evidently, I had tuned in just after Rug had revealed his roll call of
plants headed for extermination. The walking papers having been served,
it was now time for the heavy Q & A. The media swarmed in on The Boss, a
great sea of gnats luggin' minicams and mic cables. The ultimate
American game show squirming to life with 30,000 potential urchins lined
up behind Door Number One.

I sat there in my underwear wondering if I would be among them. I
wondered what else I could possibly do for a living. I had no training,
no skills, no degrees, no connections. I drank too much to fit into most
occupations and I wasn't

ambitious enough to have a shot at the rest. Above all, I didn't like
poking my head into society. People bothered me. That was the best part
of my factory job: never really having to relate to anyone or anything
other than the awkward-lookin' rivet apparatus that hung from the
rafters next to my job. We understood each other. We got along just
fine.

While I was reflecting on all of this, Roger was doing his best to
explain everything to the media. It was very apparent that as far as
public speakers went, Smith rated far down the dais, say, right behind a
garden hoe or a doorknob. I could sympathize a bit. I'd be a nervous
wreck too if I had his lousy job. Shredding people's livelihoods to bits
before it was time for lunch had to jangle one's nerves.

What I found most alarming was that Smitty appeared totally confused
with the subject matter itself. Specifics like when, where, who, WHY?
Jesus, spit it out, boss. Your ass is covered. You ain't one of the gang
being' upchucked curbside.

Befuddled, Smith began to deflect most of the questions over to his
sidekick, GM President Jim McDonald. Now here was a guy who ate decimals
and divisors for breakfast, lunch and dinner. A real chatterbox in
banker's blue. Jimbo babbled on in the kinda cool-daddy corporate
jumble-thump that plain old numbskulls like you and me and the owl in
the tree could never hope to untangle. If he was clarifying anything, it
still managed to sail about ten feet over my head. (I remember a year or
so later, during GM's angry brawl with EDS, it suddenly dawned on me why
these stiffs ached so bad in their urge to rid themselves of Ross Perot.
It had nothing to do with his loud criticisms or his uppity swagger or
even his beguiling hickoid funkiness. Pure and simple, THAT
SON-OF-A-BITCHIN' BILLIONAIRE DARED SPEAK PLAIN OLD ENGLISH! Show that
goofball the gate!)

I went into the kitchen and opened a can of beer. On the way back, I
overheard what had to be the unquestioned highlight of the entire press
conference.

A reporter in the back of the room leaned forward and, quoting Smith,
hollered: "How can the elimination of 30,000 jobs IMPROVE job security?"
Hey, this hack was on the beam. Even the Rivethead hadn't caught how
hopelessly inane this statement had been. Remaining completely
stone-faced, Roger

Smith glanced at the reporter and reasoned: "For those who are left,
their jobs will become that much more secure." Ouch.

That cinched it. The guy in charge of the largest corporation in America
had a brain the size of a fuckin' lima bean. Not that he was lyin'. It
only figured that anytime you were able to dispose of 30,000 workers you
were going to be able to provide a more secure base for "those who are
left." What had me rockin' in my recliner was Smith's casual infusion of
flat-out genocide as a harmless means of streamlining the roster. He
launched this verbal septic log so nonchalantly, one was left with the
distinct impression that Smith actually believed that what he was saying
would send a soothin' gush of relief through the rattled wits of the
blue-collars. Man, some guys had balls large enough to use on a
demolition crane.

For those who are left. That sounded awful damn grim for a solution that
was intended to come off as some form of reassurance. It was entirely
possible that Roger Smith had missed his calling in life. He could have
been our ambassador to Ethiopia: ' food shortage, you say? Nooo problem.
Simply exterminate a vast portion of your population, stack 'em out of
view where they won't upset anyone's appetite and, PRESTO!, vittles
aplenty for THOSE WHO ARE LEFT."

I swear, somedays it just doesn't pay to get outta bed. As it turned
out, one of the ten targeted plants for elimination was Flint Truck &
Bus. The plan was to close down Line One, the Pickup Line, and move it
down south to a new facility in Pontiac, Michigan. Tastes great, less
workers! New robots, less filling! The end result would mean the
eventual slashing of 3,500 jobs at our plant.

This disclosure tended to fall in step with GM's stubborn desire to keep
its work force forever herding southward. Consider this scenario: at
least half of the guys around me on the Rivet Line were refugees from
closed plants in Saginaw or Bay City. They had to drive south forty or
fifty miles a day to barely hang on in Flint. Now, from the information
I was receiving, in order to retain my job I would have to sign some
transfer sheet and steer my nose fifty miles to the south to the plant
they were constructing in Pontiac. The people in Pontiac were probably
headed for the plant in Fort Wayne, Indiana. The folks in Fort Wayne
were no doubt being packed off for

new jobs at the factory in Shreveport, Louisiana. Meanwhile, these
Cajuns were being prepared to duck under the border and tinker for a
while in Mexico. Notice a trend here? Precisely! Sooner or later, we
were all gonna scrape our heads playin' limbo with the Equator.

And I bet it wouldn't end there. Nope, GM would have us all down there
by the mid-nineties and the robots would be working out just fine.
They'd have some massive burial pit ready and, before any of us could
whip off a letter back home, we'd all be fifty feet under some
godforsaken desert, laid out elbow to elbow with absolutely no recall
rights to anywhere but the bottom of a dusty plaque hangin' over the
middle urinal inside Mark's Lounge.

One thing was for certain. I had absolutely zero interest in signing up
to work at this newfangled gulag in Pontiac. I felt by doing so I'd be
bailing out on my ancestral destiny as the last in a long line of kin
who had spent their entire earning years in the factories of Flint. If
they were bringing down the curtain, so be it. I simply felt I had to be
there when it ended.

Naturally, Dave Steel thought I was nuts. "Forget this town," he told
me. "GM is movin' us south and anyone who chooses to remain behind will
be freezin' their ass off waitin' in line for food stamps and government
cheese."

Tony, our repairman on the Rivet Line, was of the same opinion. He
talked constantly about the supposed benefits of transferring to
Pontiac. Tony: "With our seniority, we should be able to land gravy
jobs. I hear the place is supposed to be climate-controlled. On top of
everything else, they won't even have a Rivet Line down there!"

Hold on a second. No Rivet Line? Jesus Christ, what kind of alien
broomshack were they building down in Ponti-yuk? NO RIVET LINE? No
Rivetheads? No Rivetettes? Don't tell me those damn robotics had finally
eaten away at the one and only profession I'd ever been able to nurture,
conquer and dominate? It was like tellin' a pollywog there was no such
thing as frogs.

To hell with resettling. I'd been at GM long enough to grow accustomed
to their habit of hollerin' "Earthquake!" at every little speed bump on
the road. It only made perfect sense that if General Motors was offering
me a rubber raft in one hand, chances were way more than likely that
they had to be

packin' a harpoon in their other paw. I would call their bluff and stay
put. Go ahead and bring on that World Van you've been whisperin' about.
I know you frauds are hidin' something up your sleeves. I won't be takin
in. Furthermore, I won't be taken away.

The day arrived when we were scheduled to accept or refuse our transfers
to the upcoming plant in Pontiac. Group by group, they called us down to
the small conference room adjacent to the workers' cafeteria. I walked
down with Tony and Kirk, who were heatedly debating which was the better
option. I found myself beginning to flit from one line of thinking to
the next. The plain truth was that I was a complete wuss at decision
making. Maybe that was one of the reasons I chose to become a shoprat in
the first place. GM always made your decisions for you.

Inside the conference room, union reps and recruiters from Pontiac were
seated behind long rows of tables. They all wore large name tags as if
we really gave a shit who they were. Kirk, Tony and I stood in line
waiting to be popped the offer. I spoke with Kirk. He was starting to
vacillate as crazily as I was. Stay put or venture south? It was an
enormous decision, one that would affect the rest of our careers. We
both were able to agree on one thing. The only prospect more dreadful
than having a job at GM was not having one.

My name was called and I slid into a chair across from some
stern-lookin' union shill. I told him I had severe reservations about
leaving my hometown and forfeiting all rights to ever return to Flint in
the future. He asked for my seniority date. "Seven nine seventy-seven,"
I replied.

The union man shook his head. "If you stay here, you'll be out of a job
within two years."

"That's a long time off," I said. "Things could turn around in that
span."

He seemed angry that I would quibble with his assessment of the
situation. 'Anything's possible, but your safest bet would be to
transfer down to Pontiac."

I looked down the tables at Kirk. Further down, I could see Tony. Both
of them were scrawling their signatures to the transfer contracts.
Reluctantly, I followed suit. Though the plant wasn't even entirely
built yet, though it would be another

two years before I ever set foot inside that cretin farm I was now
signed, sealed and delivered as sole property of the Pontiac Truck & Bus
division, Union Local 594. I walked back to the Rivet Line feeling like
a rotten Judas.

That very same night, I found that I couldn't sleep. I felt as though I
had made a terrible blunder. I turned out all the lights in my apartment
and stood at the window drinking bourbon from a plastic mug emblazoned
with the motto: WE

MAKE OUR OWN HISTORYm50 YEARS, UAW. I stared at the

apartment building across from me. Nothing was going on. Just a bunch of
self-assured Americans tucked beneath the sheets with three hours to go
before the alarms started to ring and it would all unwind again. The
meetings. The deadlines. The parking spot. The boss. They were truly
amazing specimens. They adapted to everything.

The next afternoon, I got to the plant early. I was a man on a mission.
I had changed my mind. I would not go south. I stormed through the lobby
and into the workers' cafeteria. I fixed my gaze on the little
conference room that held my treasonous contract with the poachers from
Pontiac. I would resolve this matter quickly. I would rant and rave
until they fetched that fraudulent contract and let me rip it apart. I
would declare myself a loyal domestic, a devoted Flintoid, a rock-solid
pillar on the listing hull. I would throw the doors open and...

HUH? The room was totally dark. I flipped on a light switch and peered
around. The room was entirely empty. No tables, no chairs, no files, no
ashtrays NO CONTRACT! I went back into the cafeteria and pulled one of
the servers aside. "Could you tell me where all of the transfer people
have gone? It seems they've stepped out somewhere."

"What transfer people?" replied the moron in the hair net. "The transfer
people who've inhabited that back room all week! Where'd they go?"

"How should I know. I just work the grill. I don't know any transfer
people."

This had a bad aroma to it. One day ado, the next day adieu. It was
spooky. Where in the hell did those cradle-lootin' nomads disappear to?
I wandered out of the cafeteria perplexed as to my next move. As I did,
I half expected to turn around and catch a glimpse of Rod Serling
ducking out of one of

the phone booths, his hands knotted at groin level, his mocking sneer
poking out of the plume of his eternal Winston. I could almost hear him:

"Witness if you will an enigma, a frustrated punster besieged by his
lack of an appropriate punchline. We may call him the Rivethead, a
self-designation currently on very tenuous footing, obscured amongst the
nervous shuttle of those who would waver between embarkation and a
fostered urge to remain. For here amidst the impossible din, amongst the
sooty backdrop of this macabre garden, nothing is a sure bet. Nostalgia
is as worthless as a slug nickel. A reconsideration only an old key
prying hopelessly against an exchanged lock. However, a contract remains
a contract, a coward still a coward. Now witness if you will a man's
desperate attempt to undo that which is done, a man in need of what is
known, a man's march through darkness into the Transfer Zone."

I raced upstairs to the Rivet Line looking for Gino. I found him in his
office going over a stack of paperwork. I didn't bother to knock.

"Tell me something, Gino," I blurted. "Where in the fuck did those
transfer people from Pontiac go? Their office has simply vanished."

"Yesterday was their last day," Gino answered. "They won't be back until
next spring or summer. What happened, did you miss the boat or
something?"

"No, the damn boat ran my ass right over! I signed their rotten transfer
contract and "

"You've changed your mind," Gino finished for me.

I told Gino about how I had panicked. About how the union guy had
claimed I'd be out of a job in two years if I didn't sign on. I told
Gino that I'd been struck with this vision of myself cramming sugar
paste into the butt end of cream sticks for three bucks an hour while
the repo men tap-danced down the boulevard with my end tables and record
collection in tow. I told him I was possibly the biggest fuckup either
of us had ever met.

"Did they mention to you that, once you signed on, the contract was
irreversible?"

"Yeah," I moped, "they stuck that right in at the top."

"I'm afraid you're locked in. Let me ask around and see

what I can come up with."

"I'd appreciate it."

Gino wasn't able to find a single loophole. Nor was I. For weeks, I went
around shaking down every union rep and boss-type I could find. Their
only response was to ask me if I had inked the transfer sheet. Once I
admitted that I had, they simply shook their heads and wished me luck.
GM wasn't in the habit of lettin' a sucker off the leash.

Pontiac was in the offing. I had a couple of years before I shipped out.
Two years of Rivet Line mania. Two years of the spectacular and the
absurd. I didn't intend to waste a minute of what was left on the meter.
All aboard for clown time. The mayhem was only beginning.

9.

IT WASN'T EVERY AFTERNOON THAT I RECEIVED LONG-DISTANCE

phone calls from folks at the Wall Street Journal. I didn't remember
having any friends who worked there and I was certain that I didn't owe
these people any money.

All the same, there was this guy on the line from Chicago who needed to
talk with the Rivethead. He said his name was Alex and that he had
enjoyed the piece I had written for the December issue of Harper's. He
mentioned that he was working on a story for the Wall Street Journal
about blue collar writers whatever the hell they were. He seemed
convinced that the Rivethead qualified as such. (In time, I was able to
surmise that a "blue-collar writer" was just about anyone tricky enough
to get his junk into print without having to stay sober, suck ass, show
up at house fires, hold a degree or learn his way around a word
processor. Nothin' to it. Hi Morn!)

This Alex guy was full of questions and I did my best to supply him with
answers. "What do your co-workers think about your articles?" he asked.

"The ones who can read seem to like it."

"What has been management's reaction?"

"They only react when I fuck up a rivet. Very seldom, I might add."

"Where do you take your lunch break?"

"In my car."

"Is that where you take down notes?"

"That is where I take down beer and wade through chronic lines of
bullshit."

"Do you consider yourself a factory worker or a writer?" Yechhh.

Why anyone at the Wall Street Journal would be intrigued by all of this
snooze was beyond me. What was happening? Had all the E. L. Hunts and
Teddy Turners knocked off early and disengaged their cellular phones?
Had the movers and shakers suddenly petrified? Was I the last available
mortal for the angleworms of the press mob to collide against? January
always brought out the bleak.

I had to cut Alex short. It was time to go hit rivets. Before I hung up,
Alex mentioned that he would like to come to Flint to continue our
conversation. Like to come to FLINT? Obviously, I was dealing with a
journalist accustomed to lowbrow thrills.

Whatever his goals were, Alex said that he would be arriving in town the
next week. He asked that in the meantime could I see what I could do
about obtaining a pass for him to accompany me to my job at GM Truck &
Bus. He was very excited about the idea of catching the Rivethead in the
midst of his mooring. Confused, I agreed to give it a try.

Having never been in this position before, I had no idea of my first
move in gaining clearance for an outside visitor. Through eight-plus
years on the assembly line, no one I knew had ever expressed an interest
in watching me swing my dead ass around while pinchin' a rivet gun. For
this, I was extremely grateful.

Not that the situation didn't occasionally come about with my linemates.
Every now and then, one of the workers would feel compelled to bring in
his wife or his children or some dolled up galfriend as if by showing
them the horrible nothingness of the layout proved indubitably, once and
for all, that he'd endure any kind of daily martyrdom in return for
their fondness and favors.

I can remember right after Hogjaw got married. Two days into his goddamn
honeymoon, he came paradin' his bride through

the department, showing her the different jobs, demonstrating various
machinery and introducing her to all his shoprat chums. It struck me as
one of the saddest things I had ever witnessed inside or outside a
General Motors facility.

I decided to approach my foreman to see if he knew the proper formula
for obtaining an official visitor's pass. I described for him the
mysterious "blue-collar writer" angle and banged him over the head a
half dozen times with the phrase "for inclusion in the Wall Street
Journal." Gino looked unimpressed. It was apparent that the Wall Street
Journal wasn't a part of his regular reading rotation. "The Walleye
Journal?" Gino mulled.

"Why do they wanna know anything about you?"

He had me there.

I could already see that securing this pass was going to be a real task.
Shit, why couldn't someone representing Motor Trend or Hustler come to
visit me? They'd be sure to give those folks the run of the roost and my
co-workers would be buyin' my lunch straight through to the next model
change. The Wall Street Journal? The Walleye Journal? It all amounted to
one fat zero.

My foreman decided he would have to take it up with his boss. That meant
dickering with the Penguin. No sweat, I figured. Surely that bloated
autocrat would be duly impressed that the businessmen's Bible wanted to
pass the poop with one of his devoted underlings. I returned to my job
feeling semiconfident.

A couple hours later, A1 came over to spell me. He told me that I was
wanted on the phone in the foreman's office. It was Gino calling from
over at the Penguin's place.

"What the hell did you say the name of that paper was-- something about
walleyes?" i made the necessary repairs with the paper's name and hung
up. I began dwelling on the little liquor store near my apartment. How
good it was gonna feel to do some trade with those people tonight.

The Penguin wound up telling Gino that his "hands were tied."
Accordingly, we would have to go through Labor Relations to get
permission for Alex to visit. Gino found someone to cover my job and,
reluctantly, we hiked off for the Labor Relations office.

At this point our story really begins to fester into a cesspool of
terrible dreams. I'm telling you I was on mighty

strange turf for a riveter. An alien frontier full of neckties,
wingtips, belt beepers, bright lights, serious cologne and high command.
Well-groomed fly-boys sucking on silver pens with pictures of children
propped like tombstones on their desks. From nowhere and everywhere came
the strains of Muzak--"Eleanor Rigby" and "Mandy" moanin' in the
boneyard. If there had been a window, I'm certain I would have jumped.

One of the high rollers from Labor Relations motioned my foreman into a
glassed-in office. I was told to stay put. Inside the room I could see
two men wearing very solemn expressions as they chewed it over with my
boss. Now and then, their heads would bob and they would peer out at me
as if they half expected I might try to filch an ashtray or pee on the
carpet. It occurred to me that these men were aware of the Rivethead. It
promised to be an uphill battle from here on out.

When my foreman returned, he said that we would have to go through
Salaried Personnel. "They told me that their hands were tied," Gino
added. This euphemism was growing stale. Why couldn't they just
substitute the truth and admit their spines were putty.

The following Monday, Gino got in touch with Salaried Personnel. He was
told to call back on Tuesday. Tuesday spilled into Wednesday before we
were told that we would have to take up our request with General Motors
Public Relations. In a stunning development, they had explained to Gino
that their hands were not tied, however their feet were webbed and their
heads were hollow.

By Thursday, the day the Wall Street Journal was to arrive, the
situation was still unsettled. It was ridiculous. I probably would have
stood a better chance tryin' to smugtle Ted Bundy through a sorority
house. Had I known beforehand just how difficult this visitor's pass
would be to secure, I would have skipped all the red tape and simply
instructed Alex to bring along some filthy duds and a three-day beard.
With 3,500 workers on our shift, he could have easily waltzed through
the door and taken up residency anywhere he damn well chose to.

Alex Kotlowitz arrived at my place around noon. He was disappointed to
hear about the problem with the visitor's pass. I assured him it wasn't
due to any lack of effort. I recounted the path so far, adding that the
ball now seemed to rest in the

hands of GM's Public Relations office. Alex decided that it might be
best if he gave them a call and explained his harmless intentions.

"Good luck," I said. "If you hear the term 'hands are tied,' you know
you've dialed correctly."

Public Relations listened to the request and told Alex to call back in
an hour. I decided that this was a good time to start drinking. We drove
to a bar. In one hour, Alex called them back. They insisted they needed
more time and to try back in another hour.

"Those idiot paranoids must be tearin' the place apart looking for my
file." I laughed. "Next time I talk with Owen Beiber, I'll be sure to
mention this appalling demonstration of botchery. Goddamnit, heads will
roll!"

By the time I had to leave for work, they were still stringing Alex
along. He said he'd continue wish his attempts on the phone and
hopefully see me later inside the plant. "These people must really have
it in for you," he added. "I've had easier times entering federal
prisons."

I arrived at work just as Dougie bellowed out his resounding "ALL
ABOARD!" As was custom, Eddie shouted back "SHUT THE FUCK UP, FOOL!"
Rituals were rituals. The line began to roll and, just as it did, Gino
came over to tell me that he had just received a call from the Personnel
office. They had wanted to know what kind of worker I was .........
company man or misfit, friend or fraud. The boss said he assured them
that I was fine GM timber. You couldn't force a fib out of Gino.

Moments later, the phone rang again. This time they wanted to see me
down in Personnel on the double. This was not the best of times to be
huffin' beer breath so I crammed a handful of Certs in my mouth. I
trekked off hoping this would be the end of it, regardless of the
outcome.

No doubt about it, this time I was deep inside the GM digestive tract. I
weaved around corners and wandered down hallways that seemed to extend
underground for two miles east of the plant. I had to stop and ask
directions countless times. The further along I went, the brighter the
lighting became, the larger the glass tombs expanded.

I paused for a cigarette and some self-examination. Why, I wondered, had
I ever set myself up for this? What had possessed me to get lippy in
print when, sooner or later, I had to know that I'd become entangled in
my own sarcastic web and be beckoned down a long hallway toward the very
core of everything I most wanted to avoid in life? Why couldn't I be
like all my other buddies and have normal hobbies like snowmobiles,
softball and reefer? Why was it that I wanted to carve out Phil
Collins's eyeballs with a linoleum knife? How come I never watched
Michigan Replay with Go Schembechler? Why hadn't I become a disc jockey
or an ambulance driver like I was supposed to?

They were waiting for me in Personnel. I shook hands with a man in a
three-piece suit and he ushered me into his office. I assumed that this
man had to be someone extremely important. His desk was easily the size
of my dining room.

The questions came. "Precisely, why does this reporter want to enter our
facility?" I explained that Alex only wanted to observe my routine and
ask my boss and co-workers a few questions.

"Why is it that this man has a particular interest in you?" I laid the
blue-collar writer junk on him and mentioned that I wrote a column.
Thankfully, he was obviously unaware of the Rivethead.

"In this column, do you ever broach the subject of General Motors?"

Uh-oh. I began scratching an imaginary itch. A certain evasiveness was
my only hope. "Well, I suppose I've occasionally made small references
to the fact that, yes, I'm a factory worker."

All was silent for a few moments. I could sense a stalemate between the
big cheese and little rat. I lit a cigarette, took a

long drag, and was alarmed to notice a NO SMOKING sign on

the desk. I quickly rubbed out the butt on my work boot as the Personnel
chief stared into space.

Finally, he spoke: "You know, we just can't be too careful. We've been
burned on stuff like this before." I nodded like I knew what he meant.

Just when I was beginning to feel all was lost, he stood up and
announced a compromise. One of his young assistants was introduced and
it was explained that this guy would accompany Alex throughout every
portion of his visit. First, the game rules: "My aide will monitor all
conversation between your man and any member of management. If at any
time an inappropriate

question is raised, my man will intercede and terminate the interview.
At that point, your man will be escorted promptly from the plant."

Your man, my man. My man, your man. I felt like I was

playin' Milton Bradley's Stratego.

Alas, Alex made it inside. With his ever-present guide

lurking nearby, he looked like a captured fugitive. It was quite

hilarious. We exchanged smiles and he went about his interviews.

The grapevine must have been buzzing, for within moments of Alex's
arrival none other than Henry Jackson came strolling down the aisle to
toss in his worthless two cents. I could see Alex and Jackson holed up
in Gino's office. Not surprisingly, Jackson was doing all the talking.

After Alex managed to escape the brilliant ejaculations of

Henry Jackson, he made his way over to my job for observations in
riveting. With no member of management in the immediate vicinity, his
guide gave us some breathing room, standing out in the aisle like some
rigid Aryan lawn jockey. I useD this opportunity to ask Alex what
Jackson had been dumping on him.

"He was very insistent that you were all his boys," Alex

stated. "He expressed a certain fondness for you, claiming he

was a big admirer of your writing talent."

"That bastard's a lyin' ass. He hates my fuckin' guts! I

hope you don't print a word he told you. Henry's about as

corrupt and insane as they come around here."

Just then a guy named Joe, the department's resident

dopehead moron, came buttin' in. Alex took him aside and began
interviewing him regarding my blue-collar writing expertise. I shook my
head and returned to my job. If Joe had read anything in his life, it
was probably only the price tag on a coke spoon or a joke on a cocktail
napkin. Jesus, this was beginning to suck.

"Well, what did Dopey have to say?" I asked Alex on his

return. "Keep in mind that he has never read a single word I've

written."

"He told me you were right on, that your columns were

right on, and that the thing he liked best about them was that they were
"Right on?" I moaned.

'Actually, he used the word heavy."

I suggested to Alex that he interview some riveters who actually read
my stuff. I pointed out Janice, Terry and Dick. He went to them and
began jotting down insights. I hoped he was getting what he was after.
Chicago was an awfully long way to come for "right on" and "heavy."

A few weeks later, Alex Kotlowitz's article about blue collar writers
appeared on the front page of the Wall Street Journal. The piece used
the Rivethead as its main subject; however there was also mention of a
few other scribes of labor--a longshoreman from San Francisco, an
assembly worker from Ohio, some poor bastard who worked in a pickle
factory

men who I assumed were just as bored as I was. In cases such as these,
literature was just an accident waiting to happen.

In the center of the page was a truly demonic-lookin' sketch of the
Rivethead. I looked like a drugged land turtle or a droopy mongoloid. My
head came to a sharp point. Even my girlfriend Amy was shocked. "Truly
hideous," she remarked. "You look like a Korean version of Dick Nixon."

"What's done is done," I replied. "It is time to begin looting the paper
boxes. I will need a copy for every man, woman and child on the
Rivetline. Also, several copies for my ancestors and a few more for
future propaganda purposes."

Amy and I spent the early morning ransacking every Wall Street Journal
box within the city limits. She'd swerve up to a machine, I'd bail out,
slap in the coins, and snatch up a handful of copies. "Drive on," I
ordered. 'After today, all this international coverboy shit will rapidly
dissipate into wasted nostalgia. Only one man per day gets his face on
the cover of the Wall Street Journal and today that wretched face
belongs to me."

When we were done, I thanked Amy for her part in our petty larceny spree
and lugged the newspapers into my apartment. Once inside, I grabbed a
couple Buds from the fridge and sat down to make a thorough scan of the
article. I found myself fascinated by the remarks of the longshoreman.
He described in detail how he would have to protect all these loads of
hides from armies of maggots by scooping steer manure onto the center of
the skin before it was folded and tied. There was a brief passage from
his writings, very good stuff, where he described the stench connected
with his occupation. "People actually flee from you," the longshoreman
wrote. Jesus Christ,

and I thought bangin' rivets was a bleak gig. At least the only manure
I had to deal with was what flowed forth from Henry Jackson's mouth or
the messages on the neon propaganda board.

Reading on, I came across a disturbing part of the article. "The vast
public has not seemed very interested in reading about work," noted a
New York University expert on the blue-collar trend. "Work is not
considered a hot literary topic."

Though I felt angered, I was hardly surprised. After all, who had time
to wade through the murky pathos of an average Joe like the longshoreman
when the best-seller list was clogged with real revelations of the here
and now. Momentous dispatches like "Oaf Surfin' with Belushi's Lukewarm
Corpse" or "I Slept with Shemp Howard." The "vast public" wanted to know
about turds and maggots, but only the name-brand variety who hid behind
ghost writers in the display windows of the local book mart.

If the "vast public" weren't entirely satiated by the trendy grief of
others, they merely got a hold on their own. How many gold-diggin'
knotheads had spun the web of the ever-popular self-help book? Everyone
but the Hillside Strangler and my mailman, that's who! Face it, the
plain truth is that most Americans feel left off the bus if they can't
hitch up their rattled psyches to some fashionable new malady being'
bandied about on Phil and Oprah. The longshoreman or the guy from the
pickle factory were survivors and survival didn't play very well within
a nation drenched to its Valium-gobblin' core with luckless visions of
self-hate and unendurable dejection.

Kotlowitz finished up his story by referring to me as "the Mike Royko of
the rivetheads." Given a choice, I'd have preferred "the Mark Twain of
Mark's Lounge" or "the Johnny Holmes of the second-floor cushion room."
Mike Royko? Shit, they buried his grunt in the middle of the editorial
page. Not many shoprats bothered with that portion of the paper.

It was time to retreat back to bed. The Rivet Line would be beckoning
soon enough and I had to be properly rested. I was almost asleep when
the phone started ringing. It rang and rang. Whoever was on the other
end wasn't giving up. I

stumbled to the kitchen and grabbed the receiver.

"Yes," I said.

"is that you, Hamper?" a voice shouted.

"Yes," I repeated.

It turned out to be some guy I had gone to high school with. Matt
somebody. I hadn't spoken a word with this individual in over a dozen
years. In fact, we never talked way back then. We had never even liked
each other. Hell, I hated the bastard's guts and he'd hated mine.

"Is there something I can do for you?" I asked.

Matthew somebody explained that he was a stockbroker nowadays living in
San Francisco. He was calling me to express his dumbfounded shock at
seeing my swollen face staring back at him from his morning's Wall
Street Journal.

"Christ, I thought my eyes were playin' tricks on me," he said. "What
the hell would Benny Hamper's face be doin' on the cover of Wall Street.
I thought maybe you rolled a bank or something.

I always hated people who called me Benny. "I understand," I replied. "I
have to go to back to bed now. Nice chatting."

I never did get back to sleep. Every time I got close to noddin' off,
the phone would ring. A Flint television station suggested an interview.
A lady representing a film production company in Los Angeles called. A
book agent buzzed in. A few more jerks from high school called. I
couldn't understand it. Since we seemed to be having an impromptu class
reunion on my phone, where were all the cheerleaders? Coverboy or not,
those sluts still hated my ass.

In a startling gesture, my old man called me from Florida. Some bar
patron had shown him the article. The old man was already in the bag. He
mentioned that he was proud of me and asked if I really looked that
ugly. He also had words of advice: "You better watch your ass, son.
Those big boys have no sense of humor. Just look what they did with
Hoffa."

I assured my father that what I was up to would hardly incite either the
union or GM to want to do me bodily harm. I was only writing a column
for an underground newspaper.

"Don't be too sure," my old man countered. "They've got

the muscle to shut you down. Do you own a piece, son?"

'4 piece? As in gun?"

"Well, I ain't' referrin' to no piece of ass!" My old man hadn't changed
a lick. The more he drank, the more he indulged himself in flights of
old-school machismo.

"I've gotta get ready for work now, Dad."

"Just remember to watch out for those bastards."

"Will do," I replied.

I was almost out the door when the phone rang again. It was my editor
calling from the Michigan Voice. "Listen," Mike said, "some producer
from 60 Minutes just called out here for you. He said he wanted to talk
with you and that you should get in touch with him immediately."

I scribbled down the number, grabbed a can of beer and began dialing.

"Sixty Minutes," a voice answered.

"Um, my name is Hamper. I was told you were trying to reach me."

"Oh yes, Ben. My name's Joel Bernstein. I enjoyed the article about you
in this morning's Wall Street Journal. It sounded like something we
might be interested in pursuing for the show. If it's all right with
you, I'd like to fly into Flint next Tuesday so we can get together. How
does Tuesday work out on your end, Ben?"

I paused and took a large swallow of beer. I looked over at the
calendar. Tuesday was blank. Friday was blank. March was blank.
September was blank. Every day of the year was blank. "I think Tuesday
would work out fine," I answered.

"Great. I'll give you a call when I get to town."

I finally made it into work. One of the guys from first shift had
already tacked up the Wall Street Journal on the bulletin board. Several
of my linemates were gathered around readin'

the piece and joking about my face. I wormed in between them. "One
outrageously handsome rivetling, huh?" I snickered.

"Goddamn, Hamper, your face looks like a mudheap," Joe replied.

"Who's your hair stylist, Beldar Conehead?" A1 needled. The Polish Sex
God stepped in. "Shit, whatever you do, don't gaze into those swollen
eyes! Prolonged contact with that satanic gaze could cause unspeakable
damage to one's soul."

Dougie wanted to know who Mike Royko was. i told him he was some guy who
loved softball and wrote about minor social injustices and made twenty
times the money we did.

Janice was reading the article at her desk. Dave Steel stood there
reading over her shoulder. As I approached, Dave

started shaking his head. "I can't believe how much mileage you're
gettin' out of this factory drivel. This guy acts like you're fuckin'
Steinbeck or something."

"Mama didn't raise no blockhead." I laughed. "Find a gimmick and milk
those udders?"

Right then, the horn blew. The line began to lurch and Dave sprinted off
for his inspection job. The rest of us reached above our heads for our
rivet guns.

'ALL ABOARD!" Doug shouted.

"SHUT THE FUCK UP, FOOL!" Eddie responded on cue. Ah, home sweet home.

I bought two cases of beer for the guys that night. We got stupid and
rowdy and started acting like a bunch of Cub Scouts in a titty bar. It
was forty souls vs. that old stubborn time clock and we beat its ass
rather soundly. Nothing like a strange new distraction and a bellyful of
beer to nudge on the night.

The Mike Royko of the rivetheads. Hell, whatever. It kept us laughin'.
All I knew for certain was that for one crazy shift in the midst of a
frigid Michigan winter the crew had plenty to gnaw on. Something that
brought us closer, something silly and offbeat, something that reached
out for the rivetheads and spoke their names, something that attached
our oily grins to a small piece of the puzzle, a visibility or
something, and something was better than nothing.

On Tuesday, Joel Bernstein called to tell me he was staying at the Hyatt
Regency in Flint. He asked that I come down and join him for lunch. I
had a bad feeling about this encounter. I had problems with strangers,
especially when sober, and from what I'd seen of 60 Minutes, these guys
didn't appear to be the most amicable bunch of bubs on television. I
should have insisted on Mark's Lounge. There was something in that dark
Naugahyde shack that made me feel almost human.

I drove downtown and waited for Bernstein in the lobby of the Hyatt. He
came down the elevator carrying a large duffel bag. He looked more like
a paratrooper than an influential television producer. "Ben Hamper?" he
asked. "Urn, yes," I answered, fumbling to light another cigarette.
"Let's find a restaurant. We can talk over lunch."

We took a table over in the corner of this glitzy eatery on

the main floor of the Hyatt. There were plenty of plants and too much
sunlight. I felt exposed and nervous. Bernstein sat across from me in
total silence. I stared out the window at the derelicts who were
trooping by on the Saginaw Street bridge. I wondered how I was doing so
far.

Finally, Bernstein spoke. He asked if I would describe some of the
recent subject matter contained in my Rivethead column.

I mentioned such things as GM's deceptive Quality humbug, their annoying
habit of promoting only suck-asses and snitches, their reliance on
childish propaganda gimmicks and their southbound extermination scheme.
I mentioned the Howie Makem farce and the brainwashing message boards.

Bernstein's face became visibly red. "I'm telling you right now," he
huffed, "I didn't come all the way out here to do an anti-GM piece. I
have no axe to grind with those people."

"Well, if you read the Wall Street Journal story, you had to know I took
the view of an assembly worker. What did you think I was writing about?
The glorious advent of robotics?"

"I'm just explaining that I have no interest in doing a rip job on
General Motors."

"Fine," I said, "let's talk about something else."

We sat there for several minutes without speaking. Jesus, what was wrong
with this guy? Here he represented the most popular muck-slingin'
television mouthpiece in all America and he seemed to be taking the
stance that GM was some sort of hands-off sacred cow. The thought
occurred to me that GM was probably their leading sponsor, their most
consistent meal ticket.

Our conversation resumed, a confrontational tone firmly implanted:

"If you're such a popular writer in this town, how come no one has come
over to greet you?"

"I can only assume they're intimidated by the presence of such an
esteemed visitor."

"Do your columns elicit any reaction from your coworkers?" "In most
cases, mainly laughter." "Then you are an ENTERTAINER!" 'Aren't all
writers?"

"From what you were saying a minute ago, I was under the impression that
there was some type of social significance to your writing."

Outside the window, a vagrant was pushing an old shopping cart across
the bridge. I looked at him closely. He seemed utterly content. There
was no hint of anger or discord. There was no sign of crossfire. There
wasn't much of anything. I swelled with a sudden sense of envy.

The interview was headed nowhere. It seemed increasingly evident that,
besides his producer's title, Joel Bernstein was sworn to another duty
to run interference for the impending spine-removal tactics of a Mike
Wallace or an Ed Bradley. If you managed to weather his test run,
perhaps they would fly in the heavy artillery and your mama would get to
see you squirm in prime time.

I knew I'd failed the test run when Bernstein pointed out my obvious
discomfort with simple conversation. It was true. Talking with people
that I really didn't know tended to make my insides twist and shout.
Maybe that's why I had taken up typing.

"How would you handle it if Harry Reasoner was sitting in my place and
the camera was rolling in on you?" the producer demanded.

By this point, I'd ceased to give a shit. "I'd make sure that I was
drunk," I replied.

Bernstein almost flew out of his chair. "NOT ON 60 MINUTES YOU WON'T!"

So be it. To be honest, it all sounded pretty farfetched from the
outset: beer-stoked Rivet Line smartass cavorting across the Quasars of
the Free World... Diane Sawyer dodgin' filthy palms next to the pool
table in Mark's Lounge... the steering gear man sermonizing atop a
crateful of lugnuts... Howie Makem bounding through the murk like a
ridiculous drum major... Rivet Hockey and Dumpster Ball being' thrust
upon a confused republic weaned on tee ball and putter golf. Do not
attempt to adjust your set. Do not attempt to call your cable company.
That rumble you hear is only Edward R. Murrow swiveling in his grave.

We gave it up and Bernstein walked with me out to my Camaro. He
mentioned that there was always the possibility that a segment could be
worked out at a later date. He handed me one of his business cards and
told me to stay in touch. I said I would. Both of us were liars. As I
drove off around the corner, I

flung the card in the direction of a couple bag ladies standing on
Saginaw Street. May it serve them well, I chuckled to myself.

Alongside the debacle with 60 Minutes, I managed to cross wires with
folks from National Public Radio, Random House, Esquire, Embassy
Productions, Playboy, Penthouse, Voice of America and U.S. News & World
Report. Each of them rang up needin' a piece of this week's rage the
Autoworker/Journalist. i understood. Having your face displayed on the
front page of the Wall Street Journal lent a sudden legitimacy to
whatever the hell you were doing. All at once you were pronounced fit
for active duty in the phone directories of the Mighty Big. It just
happened to be my time. Next week it would be the Fry Cook/Opera Tenor
or the Bank Clerk/Porn Stud.

After a few weeks, the phone calls went away. I returned to sleeping
past noon, safe in the knowledge that the hounds had picked up a new
scent out on the power lines. It was fine with me. After all, I already
had my hands full. There were muffler hangers to attach, spring castings
to insert, rivets to be mashed. There were clocks to duel and antics to
explore.

Idiot labor may not have been much to fall in love with, but it beat the
hell out of flailing around on someone's conference line. High wages,
low thought requirement, beholden to only those you chose. What the rest
of the world wanted was their own problem. Ambition maimed so many of
them. I'm sure they had their own reasons for grasping for the next
rung, but it all seemed so bothersome and tedious.

In contrast, working the Rivet Line was like being paid to flunk high
school the rest of your life. An adolescent time warp in which the
duties of the day were just an underlying annoyance. No one really grew
up here. No pretensions to being anything other than stunted brats
clinging to rusty monkeybars. The popular diversions Rivet Hockey,
Dumpster Ball, intoxication, writing, rock 'n' roll were just
reinventions of youth. We were fumbling along in the middle of a
long-running cartoon.

Having asserted this, it always came as a personal shock and frustration
whenever a core member of our cast slipped away. I felt betrayed and
abandoned. The Rivet Line may have been a shithole but, for christsakes,
it was our shithole! I couldn't grasp the flimsy rhetoric of those who
became bent on relocation. All I could understand was my obstinate
devotion to

the setting. Relocation was the equivalent of graduating. It seemed so
futile and adult-like.

Jerry and Janice decided to move on. Neither were especially excited to
go, but they had fallen victim to that weird undertow that sometimes
swirls by in a shoprat's career one that murmurs deceitful lies, one
that maintains that a change of scenery will induce a grand rebirth.
Assembly lines being the monotonous hangouts they are, confusion often
takes advantage. You can outwit yourself. You can envision things that
aren't really there. Persecution preys on pondering minds. Right becomes
wrong. Suddenly, one man's sandbox becomes another man's quicksand.

Jerry left first, opting to take his pastel muscle shirts and
heat-seeking libido onto the first shift. This left a tremendous gap in
our Rivet Hockey league, not to mention a string of forlorn barmaids and
a half pint of Root Beer Schnapps under the passenger seat of my Camaro.

I tried to talk some sense into him, warning him at great length about
the dealings that awaited the Day Men--the alarm clocks, the brutal
hangovers, the rednecks decked out in camouflage goon suits, the endless
lunkspeak about trout bait, Willie Hernandez, faggots, spooks, kikes,
dykes, nips, spics, hemorrhoids, Jesus and power tools.

The Polish Sex God would have none of it. He argued that now he would
have his workday over by 2:30 P.M. and be able to prowl for kicks and
chicks the rest of the night.

"It doesn't work like that," I told him. "First shift only works for the
married guys. They have a very rigid system.. rush home, drink three
beers, eat supper, watch Wheel of Fortune, hop the old lady and be sound
asleep by 9:00. Clean, decent American living. A bar hound like you will
never beat the clock. You'll miss so much work, your ass will be out on
Van Slyke within a month."

Jerry left anyway and maybe it was best for all concerned. Lately, he
had developed this terrible knack for hijacking his co-workers at
lunchtime and not returning them for the completion of the shift. What
would happen is that we'd all pile into his van at lunch break, begin
hammering the beer and stare off silently into the city lights. Five
minutes before we were due back on our jobs, Jerry would rev up the van
and turn to

whoever was crammed in back. "Who wants to go back in there?" he'd
demand. For those who wanted to avoid certain penalizing, this was a cue
to haul ass. Halftime desertion was something Jerry never joked about.
You either bailed out or were taken hostage. Terry, Herman and I often
went along. Eddie, Doug and A1 always scrambled for the door. We had
much more fun than they did. We had the penalties on our records to
prove it.

The night Janice left, I had a lump in my throat the size of a croquet
ball. For three years, she had been my neighbor, my soundboard, my
confidante and best friend. When she had first arrived on the Rivet
Line, Janice was vulnerable and naive. There were times I thought she'd
never make it. I was dead wrong. She transcended the token female role
and became one of the boys--a description she was utterly comfortable
with

On Friday nights, we had this routine where I'd pull my car up close to
the exit doors and the two of us would sit there drinkin' beer while
scrutinizing the workers as they fled from the plant. We laughed like
idiots, pretending to be able to forecast their destinies. Janice
handled the women and I covered the guys. It went something like this:

"Take a look at this goof," I observed. "Not a lot going on here. He
will drive home cautiously, take a long shower, eat two chicken pot pies
and tune in an old episode of Kojak. This man should be put on life
support. No wonder his wife joined a motorcycle club and never said
goodbye."

Janice would spot one. ' definite party bimbo. I predict she is en route
to a large house where she will become intoxicated on sloe gin and make
a complete ass out of herself dancing to the Big Chill soundtrack.
Eventually, she will wind up having intercourse with the first guy who
offers her a long line of cocaine."

After the parking lot had emptied and all the beer was gone, we would go
have breakfast at some greasy diner. Amidst the clamor of our drunken
co-workers, we would drink black coffee and talk for hours---about
anything, about everything, about nothing at all.

On that last night as Janice prepared to crunch her last rivet, the
croquet ball in my throat had grown to the size of a grapefruit. I tried
to appear busy and unconcerned. It would

be over soon and Janice would stop by and say something sweet. I was
sure I'd begin bluberin'. Not that Janice wouldn't understand. She's
probably start bawlin' too. I just didn't want the rest of the crew to
catch the Rivethead in the throes of some Jimmy Swaggart meltdown.
However, Janice surprised me. Instead of deliverin' some hopeless gush,
she snuck around my workbench and began singing. The tune was "Forward
to Death" by the Dead Kennedys, one of several warped ditties I had
polluted her with. I got a big grin on my face and joined in on the
raucous chorus: "I don't need this fuckin' world, I don't need this
fuckin' world

this world brings me down, I gag with every breath, this world brings me
DOWN, I'm looking forward to DEATH!"

We hugged each other and laughed. It was like being paid to flunk high
school.

When it came time to fill the vacancies left behind by Jerry and Janice,
we got lucky. Henry Jackson, always in a mad quest to break up the
chemistry of the Rivet Line by importing snitches and milksops, bungled
the opportunity and sent us down a pair of jokers who fit right in.

Jerry's replacement was a small black guy named Jehan. He came to us
with excellent credentials. For the past several weeks, Jehan had been
on this dogged mission to keep the line down. He worked one of the
rail-pull jobs at the start of the line situated right beneath one of
the stop buttons. Whenever the mood struck, Jehan would reach above his
head and smack the button. He'd keep the line down until the supervisors
started closing in. You had to admire that kind of suicidal derring-do.
When Jehan was finally busted, Henry sent him down to our area away from
any stop buttons.

The guy who took Janice's job was a big German hulk named Paul Schobel.
He'd arrived with the latest batch of refugees from the closed plants in
Saginaw. He was absolutely ecstatic about his placement on the Rivet
Line. Paul's last job for GM had been working in a foundry, which was a
lot like being sentenced to work in Satan's private bakery. He was glad
to be here and we were glad to have him, especially me. I had plans for
Mr. Schobel. I was baking something too.

I watched in wonder as Paul quickly pulverized his new job

into a brief nuisance. He steamrolled through the entire event. The
cross members looked like twigs in his arms. The rivet gun became his
bitch. He choked its neck like a dead flamingo. It was all so beautiful.
The guy was a plowhorse. After all those years in the foundry, the cross
members and rivet guns must have seemed like birdies and badminton.

As I watched Paul tromp through the motions, lights flashed in my head.
The strategy I had been cookin' up moved straight for the front burner.
My mind began chanting restlessly: "It is time to double-up.., time to
double-up." It was all spread out in front of me. That golden loophole,
that glorious lifeboat, the ultimate clock-killer, autonomy for two. It
would be a cinch. Paul with the brawn, I with the blueprint.

One night I invited Paul out to my Camaro. It was time to run this thing
by him. We drank a couple of forty-ouncers and began to discuss details.
"Paul, after lunch I want you to cover my job."

"Do your job? Who the hell is gonna do mine?"

"I will. It's important that you learn my routine, especially the
sidewinder gun. It's a bit stubborn at first, but I have no doubt you'll
be able to tame it."

Paul looked at me perplexed. "What in the fuck is this all about,
Hamper?"

"It's all about freedom, you fat kraut. We combine our two jobs into one
setup. When I'm handling the setup, you can get lost. The same goes for
me when you're up. Think about it, Paul. It sure beats sittin' round all
night crucified to the time clock."

It took about three hours for Paul to conquer my job. He had little
trouble with the sidewinder gun or, for that matter, anything else. If
some portion of the job played nasty, Paul just sucked in his gut, let
out a growl and bullied the issue into quick submission. The horizon was
wide open.

However, there were a few details we had to tend to before unveiling our
system. First, we had to take into account all the cross members Paul
was required to build each shift. There was no way either of us could
keep up with the line if we had stock to build. We agreed that we would
have to build up the required amount of cross members before we could
begin

doubling jobs. This meant getting to the plant extra early and bann'
them out ahead of time.

Another matter to be considered was supervisional reaction to our setup.
This wasn't the Cab Shop where any two hustlers who could put together a
scam were free to flee. This was the Rivet Line where hittin' the lam
still meant sluggin' a young sheep. In this region, doubling-up was as
much a novelty as shag carpet. I wasn't too much concerned with Gino.
He'd already taken a shine to Schobel and he knew, when it came to
hittin' a good rivet, I was the cream of the crap. Henry Jackson was the
one who posed the definite threat. We would have to watch out for him.

On the eve of our new arrangement, Paul and I retreated to my Camaro for
beer and briefing. There were a few loose ends and precautions I wanted
to make my partner aware of.

"Before we crank this gimmick up, we need to get a couple of things
straight. First off, no more drinking on the job. If I'm gone, there'll
be no one around who can give you a piss call."

Paul rolled his eyes. "Hey, lecture your own ass. You and Eddie are the
ones gettin' tanked every night."

"Not startin' tomorrow. Complete sobriety while working. If we work this
right, we'll have plenty of time off to go drinkin'." "Understood," Paul
replied.

'nother thing," I continued. 'Absolutely no more weed smokin' with Jehan
and Dougie. Every time you get stoned, your eyes get bloody and you get
this stupid, guilty look on your face."

"Hey, smokin' dope relaxes me. What if I wore a pair of sunglasses like
Eddie does?"

"Just say NO, pothead. One more idea. I think it wise that we leave each
other the phone numbers of where we'll be at. I will normally be at my
place, Mark's Lounge or my girlfriend's. If Henry Jackson comes snoopin'
around, have someone call me and I can be back here within ten minutes."

"You're forgettin' something. Where am I gonna go when you are working?"
It was a valid point. Paul carpooled from Saginaw with two other guys.
He only had his own vehicle two times per week.

"I'll take care of it. On the nights you have your car, you

can leave at lunch. On the nights you don't, you can use my car and
apartment. I've got extra keys I'll give you. I'll also give you a map
of some of the better bars around Flint and directions to where the
whores hang out."

"That's sure gonna beat workin' in the foundry."

"That's sure gonna beat workin', period," I added.

The system worked just as smoothly as I had hoped. Schobel and I clicked
perfectly. Even Gino was duly impressed. He looked the other way and
kept his distance. The only thing Gino said to me regarding the setup
was: "I don't even want to know where you two disappear. Don't even tell
me!" I faithfully obliged my supervisor.

Henry Jackson was easy to dupe. He always came callin' early in the
shift while we were still racin' around buildin' up cross members. The
occasional times he'd pull a surprise raid later in the shift after one
of us had vanished, we'd be ready. Tony would holler down the line from
his repair post: 'sshole! Asshole!" That was our cue to spring into a
new formation. Cam, who worked on the other side of Paul, would slide
down closer to Paul's area and Doug would work up the line toward mine.
Henry would strut by, take a quick glance and be satisfied that
everything appeared positioned normally.

It was like 1978 all over again. Four hours' work, eight hours' pay.
Once again there was that certain exhilaration knowing that your job was
being nursed along in able hands while you howled at the screen in
Mark's Lounge after Lou Whitaker had blasted a hangin' curve into the
right field upper deck. Such things seemed to make more sense than
manual labor. To lie there in your sweetheart's bed, shakin' off the
post-ejaculatory sweat, gigglin' like a schoolboy, a paroled hedonist
smiling from a third-story window far removed from the numbness and
drudgery of Greaseball Mecca.

Above all, I liked the idea of outsmarting all those management pricks
with their clean fingernails and filthy bonuses. They weren't much
competition but, all the same, they couldn't earn their paychecks
outside the walls drinking and fucking and evading and watching home
runs sail on through the twilight. However, I could. I was a career
opportunist. My time card was germinating in the corporate greenhouse,
ladling out the loot to an emancipated hooligan who regularly dipped

beneath their radar screens and hid himself in the red Naugahyde like a
clever fox full of someone's mutton. They were in THERE! Only an
earthquake could bring them out. I was out HERE! Only an emergency phone
call could bring me in.

And goddamnit all, it did. RINNNNNNG! RINNNNNNNG! It was a Monday night.
I was sitting around my apartment watching a game and eatin' a pizza.
Schobel and I had been working the scheme for a few months without the
slightest hitch. The world was our Slinky. Then, the phone call. Hell's
own jingle bells. RINNNNNNG! RINNNNNNNG! I got up and answered it.

It was Schobel. He was talking low and fast, "Ben, I'm sorry about this,
but you have to get back to the department RIGHT NOW! I'm afraid we're
in deep shit."

All at once it hit me. Something terribly wrong had happened. This
wasn't any lousy Henry Jackson headcount. This was real disaster. PAUL
SCHOBEL WAS TALKING TO ME! How could Paul be talking to me and still be
covering our jobs?

"Paul, where the hell are you?" I screamed.

"I'm down in the plant hospital. I told 'em I had to call my wife.
They're running me over to McLaren Hospital for surgery on my arm."

Instead of asking Paul how he was doing or how badly he was hurt, the
humanitarian in me opted to blurt: "SHIT, WHO THE FUCK IS DOING OUR
JOBS?"

"Gotta go now, honey." The meat wagon must've arrived. "Do what I asked.
Love you."

I drove with my knee and dressed like a contortionist. I blew through
three red lights and screeched into the No Parking zone at the plant
gate. I sprinted past the guards and time clocks and raced up the stairs
to the Rivet Line. I attempted to walk leisurely to my job. I doubt I
was fooling anyone.

A1 and one of the spare utility men were covering our jobs. A1 looked at
me with what appeared to be a mixture of woesome pity and brooding
contempt. The message was clear: I was a cooked rat, I was thoroughly
doomed, I was popular as a leper, and i had better concoct one helluva
spiel mighty quickly.

I grabbed my gun and waved them off. "Where's Gino?" I mumbled to A1.

"He's still down in the hospital," he said.

"Has Jackson been around?"

"Haven't seen him since before lunch."

Eddie wandered down. "Shit, Ben, I ain't ever seen so much blood in my
life. It was shootin' straight outta Paul's wrist like a gusher. They
mopped most of it up but there's still some down there if you wanna
check it out. Damn, blood was flyin' everywhere. It looked like a damn
shark attack. The funny part is that Paul never said as much as ouch. He
just "

Per usual, Jehan's dope had woven its way deep into Ed's skull. "Fuck
all that, you weed-suckin' ghoul. I don't want to hear about the mess.
Just tell me what HAPPENED!"

"It went down fast. Paul was puttin' a military cross member up on the
frame and the bitch slipped off. Paul caught the skid right across the
wrist. Took it right to the bone. When they picked up the cross member,
the skid plate still had a chunk of Paul's skin hangin' off it."

This certainly wasn't the time to go pointin' blame, yet I found myself
steamed over the cause of the accident. From what Eddie had described, I
knew exactly what had happened. Paul had been guilty of making a very
stupid and dangerous blunder. I had seen him pull this stunt before and
pleaded with him to knock it off. The rule was this: when a cross member
begins to slip or tilt off the frame, let it fall! DO NOT TRY TO CATCH
IT! Tryin' to grab hold of a military cross member as it tumbled off the
frame was as bright as reachin' for a runnin' chainsaw. Unfortunately,
Paul couldn't help himself. It was a reflex thing. The cross member
would slip and he'd play fetch. For this error in judgment, my partner
was now at McLaren General Hospital having his arm reassembled.

The part I was really dreading was now on its way. Down the aisle I
could see Gino Donlan makin' his way back to the department. He didn't
look like the happiest man in the world.

Instead of jumping into my shit, Gino simply walked on by as if ignoring
me. This lack of cognition made me even more uncomfortable. A major
ass-chewing was in order. A flock of penalties were in the balance. I
wanted it over with. My

foreman chose to let me walk that long, lonely plank as if I really
needed more time to ruminate about the damage done.

Finally, he came strollin' over. "I would assume you know what this
means," Gino said. "You can forget about the doubling up right now."

And, that was it. No screeching, no interrogation, no penalties, no
suspension. Gino seemed to realize that I felt bad enough. What had
really saved my butt was the fact that Henry Jackson didn't ever find
out about the particulars behind Paul's accident. He was still in the
dark about our comings and goings. It got me to thinkin'. Maybe someday
in the faraway future we could restore this crashed bird back to its
natural glory. It was a long shot, but, maybe.

Paul stopped in to visit the Rivet Line the next day. He'd just been
released from the hospital and his arm was in a gigantic sling. He had
torn right through the arteries and tendons in his right wrist. He
showed us the maze of stitches. It looked horrible.

Paul pulled me aside. "The damn doctor says I'm finished hittin' rivets.
However, I'll be back. Give me a few weeks and we'll be smokin'. They'll
never shut us down, partner."

That big German was nuts. "Don't worry about it, Paul. Just heal that
arm up and they'll find you a real pussy job. Forget about this place.
You don't wanna return here."

Wrong. Six weeks later, a month ahead of schedule and against doctor's
orders, Paul Schobel was back on the Rivet Line. I swear to Jesus the
guy was a plowhorse. That very same night we sprung into our old
routine. I pleaded with Paul that we should work it in gradually. He
wouldn't hear of it. Gino stood in the doorway of his office staring at
us.

"I assume you know what this means," I yelled over. Gino just shrugged.
His face did everything it could to keep from smiling. It failed
miserably.

A hazy morning in the middle of May. It's around 3:00 A.M.

and the mood inside my Camaro is rather strained. For the second
consecutive evening, Dave Steel has snapped the E string off his guitar
while plunging into the crescendo section of

ussohm Chews Red Man," a pivotal song from our upcoming rk opera about
General Motors factory life.

As Dave begins tearing apart my floorboard for a replacement string, I
hit the pause button on the tape machine and fish two more beers out of
the Igloo cooler. The smokestacks stare down, tombstones older than God.
We're parked beneath one of the huge vapor lamps at the far north end of
the GM Truck & Bus employee lot. Nothing out here but the barbed wire,
the possums, an occasional freight train and two off-key and off-duty
shoprats. It's a long, long way from Abbey Road.

We are sitting out here working on our shop opera or, as we've come to
call it, "shopera," a thirty-tune rock opus concerning the real dealings
of assembly line labor. So far, we've completed five songs to our
liking: "Rat Like Me," "He's a Suck-Ass," "Banana Sticker Republic," 're
You Goin' in Tonight?" and "You're on Notice." Three rockers, a ballad
and a miserable dirge.

Despite the obvious drawbacks of trying to write and record inside a
car, I've insisted on these surroundings for two main reasons. First
off, we'd grown awful tired of the old bitch who lived below Dave
callin' the cops every time we plugged into his amplifiers. The cops
would come and Dave would try to explain that we were dedicated
composers emoting our retched angst against a world that saw us as
nothing more than blockheads and lackwits. The police were not
impressed. Dave was finally faced with turning it off or being' evicted.

The second reason for our whereabouts was a decision I had made. Despite
the hardships, I was convinced we should retire to the scene of the
theme itself. My hunch was that if our proposed rock opera about
shoprats were ever to stand a chance, it would have to be fertilized
directly on the threshold of Greaseball Mecca. It was the musicians who
belonged in studios. It was the poets who belong in bungalows. We laid
claim to neither. Just a couple of nine-year prostitutes of the
Industrial Cycle sniffin' around the back forty for an exorcism you
could dance to.

Dave and I had already been messin' around for the past year in our own
little grunge quartet called Dr. Schwarz Kult. (The name came courtesy
of Dave's shrink.) We had done quite a bit of recording down at the
studios of WFBE where I did my weekly radio show. Admittedly, our entire
playlist was just a bunch of aimless ranting: "Hotbed of Sin," "Bowling
for Teenagers, "Drinking Makes Sense"--anything to annoy. We put out
one cassette appropriately entitled Entire Mire, refused to play live,
never practiced, got bored and disbanded. It was silly. Here we were in
our thirties, dolin' out a bunch of sonic mulch that only appealed to a
handful of miscreants who could've been our kids. What we needed was a
purpose.

That purpose turned out to be General Motors. Not solely General Motors,
but all forms of blue-collar moil and toil. The more we thought about
it, the more sense it made. What it came down to was simple truth and
authenticity. During the past few years, Dave and I had become terribly
weary of hearing a number f these flimflam rock 'n' roll mongers
pluggin' up the airwaves with their detached meanderings of "da average
man, man." Goddamn millionaires mewin' all over the dial about how bad
the grind was. When? Where? How? They should have all been forced to
write songs about cocaine orgies and tax shelters and beluga caviar.
Leave us alone.

----Average man? Shit, Billy Joel wasn't "livin' here in Allentown." He
was twirlin' tongues with Christie Brinkley in some high-rise china
cabinet. If that's average, how come the steering gear man wasn't
bangin' Cheryl Tiegs? Why weren't Dave and I playin' leapfrog with the
Landers sisters?

And what about Bob Seger? He might've been from our neck of the woods,
he might have put out some hot-ass groove before sellin' out to
housewife drivel but he sure as hell wasn't "makin' Thunderbirds." He
was buying them! Probably by the lot load. Get outta here, ya
four-flusher.

Hey, when was the last time you saw a photo or video of John Cougar
Mellonfarm when he wasn't strategically positioned within a five-foot
radius of: a) corn on the cob b) a manure rake or c) some dilapidated
porch brimming with Jed Clampett clones and pregnant Negresses? C'mon,
Johnny, you don't mean to tell us you lug all those things into the
Jacuzzi with ya, huh? Go inseminate a tractor, bub.

Then, of course, there's Springsteen. Who says you can't be 297 places
at once? The guy has made untold zillions hoppin' to and fro in his
house of hallucinations, always emerging on release date as either a
construction worker (The River), a garage mechanic (I'm on Fire), a
minor league batting instructor (Glory Days), the kindred spirit of
Charlie Starkweather (Nebraska)

or some other pockmarked casualty of Crud Corners. No wonder this guy's
concerts run on to half-past never. It takes a heap of time to sing from
A (aviator) to Z (zincographer). Yo, Boss, you didn't happen to have an
older sister named Sybil by any chance?

Before everyone gets cranky and wants to assail me as the bastard spud
of Albert Goldman, chill a moment. All right, maybe it's true these rock
stars have dandy intentions but it just doesn't wash. For instance, you
wouldn't call a heart surgeon to your house to steam-vac your carpet.
Why entrust the blues to a bunch of off-whites? These fickle chameleons
oughtta clear out and take their lousy method acting with 'em. We don't
need them to serenade us on how tedious and deprived our lives are. If
need be, we can do it ourselves.

At least, this was the belief Dave and I were operating under. Workers
should perform the songs of workers. Let assembly workers sing about
assembly lines. Let waitresses sing about waiting tables. Let garbagemen
sing about garbage. No more hired tongues. No more rummaging tycoons. No
more surrogate songsters. No more Bruciemania. No more false prophets.
Get real.

-The night after our clumsy recording session, Dave and I are sitting in
a corner of Mark's Lounge attempting to gather inspirational fodder for
our shopera. We've found this watering hole to be a great source of
relevant information. At times, I've been able to snatch lines from
conversations and use them verbatim in a song. Unfortunately, it's
Friday, and that means disco night at Mark's. Neither Dave nor I have
been able to completely figure out this hideous phenomenon. As a rule,
all shoprats hate disco music. Still it's right back here every Friday.
It's an amazing hoot to watch the rent-a-jock tryin' to coax one hundred
baffled shoprats onto the dance floor with loud bait like "Hey, you
weekend warriors, let's get it down to some Culture Club!" Talk about
your uphill battles. There's maybe five females in the entire place.

As the reflections of the disco ball paint ghoulish images across the
faces of my linemates, I can't help but think to myself that this reeks
of the moronic effrontery I would expect from GM. Goddamn, doesn't that
goofy little rent-a-jock realize that our feet fuckin' ache? All we
needed now was Howie

Makem to hit the floor wearing a sequined glove and three dozen gold
chains. Needless to say, there isn't much dancing. There is severe
drinking, however.

I turn my chair around to escape the vision. 'verage man is a myth," I
remark to Dave. I am getting stoned and obnoxious. "They've hired
mercenaries to sing his song. The shit on MTV is as safe as strained
carrots. Any bastard in this bar could do better. The radio is hopeless,
just a holding tank for miserable shits who don't wanna offend or defy
or speak the truth. They're too bland to even suck. And in the face of
all this deception and betrayal, Michelob Light has the balls to ask us
commoners 'Who SAYS you can't have pinstripes and rock 'n' roll?' I'll
tell 'em who! The peons they've got stuck down in their brewery with six
more hours to go before the sweat subsides and the gears quit grindin'.
The brewers, the fry cooks, the shoprats-that's who! Pinstripes and rock
'n' roll. What's next? Tuxedos and cock fighting?"

Dave just nods wearily. He picks up the bar napkin he's been writing on
during my tantrum and reads: "Don Johnson, asshole deluxe, is making a
rock 'n' roll record. It will no doubt

be an enormous hit with his millions of dedicated fans."

"No doubt." I laugh.

We grab a six-pack to go and head back to the truck plant's employee lot
to see if we can come up with anything. Dave picks up my pawnshop
Alvarez acoustic and begins strumming our anthem, "Rat Like Me." I
fiddle with the knobs on the tape machine and fall in on the second
verse: "Wilbur lost his teeth one night in the pit/When the track took a
jump and the oil pan bit,/Tommy lost a finger to a sheet metal goof/And
they fed it to the pigeons on the North Unit roof./Rat.., rat.., rat..,
they're all rats like me." Shit, we missed the amps on this one.

As far as ratings go, I'm not much of a singer. My guitar playing could
be described as primitive. Dave is much better, he's at least adequate.
Neither of us worry about it too much. We know we can work any damn
guitar better than Springsteen could work a month around here.

10.

BY THE SUMMER OF '86 THINGS WERE REALLY BEGINNING

to unravel on several fronts. Mike Moore called me out the Michigan
Voice office whereupon he informed me that he was very close to
accepting the top spot at Mother Jones. He seemed unusually subdued,
almost morose. I felt the same way. I hadn't a clue as to what a Mother
Jones even was. Were we talking about a chain of rib joints or a
biaxploitation flick?

The damn thing turned out to be a magazine. Apparently, the publication
was in dire need of revitalization, having been neutered along the trail
and alloved to flounder in gutless yuppie dross. Moore was their choice
to restore the rag to its old muckraking intensity. Well, if anyone knew
how to rake the muck it was our man Mikey.

"Shit, your own national magazine," I remarked. "Sounds like a solid
career move."

"Yeah, I suppose," he said.

"Then why the long face?"

"It would mean leaving Flint. San Francisco is a long, long way."

Flint for Frisco? Most locals would've somersaulted naked through a
barn fire for that type of option. Not Moore. He had this goofy love
affair with Flint. I, for one, could empathize with him completely. For
as sure as he was being beckoned to the West Coast, I was beginning to
hear the first faint boot stomps of those rat-snatchers from Pontiac.
They were startin' to reel in those rotten transfer signatures. It was
looking more and more like Mike and I were on our way out of the city
limits one half torn, the other fully shredded.

A couple days later, Moore called to tell me he had decided to accept
the editor's position at Mother Jones. I was hardly amazed. It was the
right decision. Now it was my turn to feel subdued and morose. Without
Mike Moore, the pliers were applied to the damn uvula and the next sound
heard would be the Michigan Voice becoming the Michigan Mute. I wondered
what would become of my festering literary hobby. By no master plan of
my own, I had become extremely reliant on the Rivethead journals as an
outlet for a good deal of my frustrations and malcontent.

Just before he was to leave town, Mike phoned me. He had a proposal he
wanted to discuss. "If it meets with your approval, I would like for you
to get started on your first article for Mother Jones. I'm hoping to use
it for the cover story of my first issue."

"I'm gonna be writin' for Mother Jones?" I sputtered. "Wait, you mean
I'M GONNA BE WRITIN' FOR MONEY?"

"Eight hundred fifty dollars a column," Mike replied. "The cover story
will probably net you sixteen hundred."

Jesus, lug that headstone back beyond the boxcars, Quasimodo. The
Rivethead once again walks among us! Go home and have that typer
greased. Put the Budweisers within arm's reach. Fall to your knees! We
have witnessed the resurrection of the gimmick that wouldn't die. Fetch
those tattered teats, those chapped udders, those benign and bottomless
milk sacs. Farmer Rivethead is taking his cow to market. Do not question
the outlandish logic behind such a command. Far dumber shits have hit
gold, I swear it.

Further oddness was to follow. On his last night in town, Moore came to
see me on the Rivet Line. His flight to San Francisco was to leave the
next morning and this is how he had

chosen to spend his final hours in Flint. I was puzzled. Certainly,
there had to be more attractive options---dinner with old friends, one
more TV interview, a family farewell, gettin' drunk, gettin' laid,
gettin' some sleep, ANYTHING.

After my initial sense of confusion, I think I understood. For a guy who
was born and raised in this Greaseball Mecca, there could be no more
fitting place to go to round up an apropos swan song for one's formative
years than the oily altars of General Motors. Although Moore had never
worked in the factory it didn't necessarily exclude him from being a
semishoprat. The same went for everybody else in this town. There were
chunks of these people orbiting from one end of the building to the
other. The laughs and tears of their ancestors' struggle were entombed
here. The good times and the bad times and all the messy in betweens.

For Mike's visit to the truck plant, I made sure to advise him on the
appropriate wardrobe. "Wear those faded jeans you always have on, put on
your Tiger cap and, please, leave those ugly bifocals at home."

For extra precaution I insisted on the following: "If anyone happens to
stop you, tell 'em your name is Henderson and that you work in Cab Shop.
If they pester you for identification, tell 'em that your ID badge is
upstairs in your lunch bucket. Refrain from using large words. Itch your
testicles freely. At all times, act surly and miffed."

I waited for Mike in a predesignated area of the North Unit parking lot.
I was working on a quart of beer and had an extra one waiting for him.
He didn't drink, but I thought it only proper to extend the quart of
beer as a ritualistic courtesy to one who would soon be entering the
mind stomp of an American assembly line. Beer helped keep things in
perspective.

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 being'
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 foxy 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.

We walked out at lunch (penalty). We threw rivets and gloveballs
everywhere (penalty). We insisted on doubling-up (penalty). We blasted
the radios (penalty). We refused to clean our areas (penalty). We
refused to wear our safety glasses (penalty). We blew whiskey in his
face (penalty). Recognize a pattern? If not, you most certainly deserve
a...

PENALTY! The damn word must've been Sanders's middle name. It proved to
be the key to his success in breaking us. Plain and simple, the bastard
lived for paperwork. He'd have made somebody a fine little stenographer.
Sanders never ranted or raved. When trouble brewed, he merely went
reaching for his arsenal of Bic ballpoints. That was all it took. Before
long, the aisles were plugged with pink paper carbons from his penalty
file. We'd been corralled. The revolution fell apart.

Paul and I had been penalized several times for attempting to double-up.
We simply couldn't help ourselves. We knew what waited on the other side
of that wall and it was a helluva lot more attractive than what was
stacked in front of us. In the end, we had to surrender. We couldn't
keep buttin' heads with Sanders's penalty machine. At the rate we were
being written up, the two of us would be fired within a month.

"Jesus, we should off the bastard," I remember Paul fuming. "This is
ridiculous."

"No, killing him would be ridiculous," I replied. "The penalty for
murdering your foreman is three months off without pay. Let's just pray
he develops arthritis in his writin' hand."

Schobel and I finally reached a pansy agreement with Sanders that would
allow us to double-up just as long as we didn't leave the department. It
sucked. This arrangement was like being told you could vacation in the
Bahamas but couldn't leave the plane.

I went back to my flipped-over garbage can and the world of blue-crud
journalism. Paul made a crude hut out of some cardboard boxes and slept
half the day. Our alcohol consumption hit levels that caused even us
concern. We were beaten and desperate and bored like never before. It
felt as though

something was about to break.

Sadly it did.

Wednesday, July 16, 1986. There was nothing particularly askew on this
date, noting to remotely suggest that this shift was to be any different
than the few odd thousand that had gone before. I weaved my way through
the rivet guns and cross members, the waltz of the unblessed, awaiting
the next frame and the one after that. Thirty-seven frames an hour.
Thirty seven clumsy muffler hangers. Thirty-seven rear spring castings.
Thirty-seven invitations to dance.

First break arrived and I plopped myself down at the workers' picnic
bench for a smoke and a glance at the box scores. It was precisely 7:08
P.M. As I stared at the paper, the words and numbers started swirling
together. I stood up. I could feel a numbness in my arms and legs. I
began having major difficulty trying to catch my breath. I stepped away
from the table feeling totally disoriented.

A stroke, I figured. I'm having a FUCKING STROKE! Thirty-one years old,
a mere minnow in the scheme of the dream, and here comes the big daddy
death rattle himself, smug as can be, marchin' right down the center of
Screwball Lane. What kind of filthy, poetic injustice was this? Choking
over dead like a sack of yams only ten yards away from some moron's
half-tinkered embryo of a Suburban. To top it off,

Sanders would probably write me up for expiring without permission. I
can joke about this now. However, I can assure you, I wasn't then. I was
too busy searchin' for air.

I remember racin' into the phone booth, though I wasn't sure why. I
wasn't sure of anything. All I knew was that I didn't want to die. Then
it occurred to me. I had to dial for help. That's why I was in the
booth. I was in such a state that I couldn't remember the phone numbers
of my best friends or family. I hit zero and told the operator I was
having an impossible time dialing. I had her ring my girlfriend's
apartment. No answer. I should have guessed. As their men stood crackin'
and crumbling in barbed wire vomitoriums, the women were all out at the
mall tryin' on shoes.

I suddenly remembered that Mike Moore was back in town to sell off all
the junk left behind at the Michigan Voice. I had the operator dial out
there, praying that they hadn't disconnected the phones yet. After a
long wait, Moore answered.

"Goddamn, listen to me, Mike. I'm in a phone booth on the Rivet Line and
I believe I'm having a stroke or a nervous fuckin' breakdown. I'm losing
my vision, my arms and legs are tinglin' and I can hardly breathe. Help
me!"

"Try your best to calm down," Mike advised. "It sounds like anxiety. The
best thing you can do is to get the hell out of there. Go home
immediately, then call me back."

I stepped out of the phone booth into a nightmare. Everyone's head
seemed enlarged. Their eyes seemed to converge on me. I made it to my
workbench and grabbed my keys. Paul was buildin' up some cross members
and I approached him. I had to notify Paul I was going. By now, I could
barely speak. It felt like an elephant was sitting on my chest. I wasn't
aware of it at the time, but tears were rollin' down my face.

"I have to leave," I warbled. "Tell Sanders I puked or something."

Paul didn't press the matter. He could see things were seriously amiss.
"Don't worry about Sanders," he said. "Just take off." His voice seemed
to be coming out of a transistor radio.

I bolted out of the factory and into the sweet outdoors. It was a great
relief to be free from that freak show. My memory was shot. I spent
about fifteen minutes trying to locate my car.

When I did, I sped straight for home. The two-mile drive seemed to take
hours.

My mind was completely unhinged. I paused at streetlights and snuck
glances at people in neighboring cars. It was hideous. I saw insects
driving sports cars and frogs driving station wagons. They all seemed to
be staring at me. WHAT THE HELL WAS GOING ON? I was the Rivethead. I had
only wanted to check out some box scores. I didn't belong here driving
around as bugs and amphibians peered at me like I was an alien.

I turned on the radio thinking some music might soothe me down. The
Beach Boys were singin' "Wouldn't It Be Nice," a great song if you could
escape the irony of the title. I began to sing along: "Maybe if we think
and wish and hope and pray it might come true..." Jesus, I started
bawlin' like a newborn. Even Brian Wilson was takin' a poke at me. I
slapped off the radio.

I arrived at my place and called Moore. 'At least we know it's not a
stroke or heart attack," he said. "My guess is some

kind of nervous breakdown. Do you have a doctor?"

"No," I answered.

"Then I will give you the number of someone you can call. Do you
remember Darlene Shea? She's always been a fan of your writing."

"I don't need groupies, I need a damn exorcist!" I shouted. "Darlene is
a physician, a very good one. Call this number first thing tomorrow and
tell her that you must see her at once."

"What if I'm going insane?" I asked Mike.

"Then I would say you're comin' around to your old self." It was a long
night. I paced back and forth through my apartment, unable to think
straight, unable to talk on the phone, unable to relax. I tried to watch
television but all they were showing were sitcoms featuring large flies,
frogs and lizard-things. I went through a fifth of Jim Beam and several
beers. The alcohol at least helped me to pass out. As I slid off to
sleep, I kept thinking maybe I'd wake up to find that this had all been
part of some terrifying dream.

I got up the next morning feeling much better. Except for an unusually
brutal hangover, I felt like my normal self. My

arms no longer tingled, my vision was clear and, best of all, my heart
was beating at its usual pace. I looked out the window to catch a peek
at my neighbors. They looked ugly and beaten and full of malice.
However, they didn't look at all like insects. Whatever it was that had
overtaken me the previous day at work had surely passed through my
system. I didn't bother calling the doctor. I was cured. I went back to
the Rivet Line, a very grateful rat.

The shift went by without incident. Of course, Sanders wrote me up for
walking off my job. He asked what had happened to me. I told him that I
had come down with stomach flu. Sanders said that he hoped I was feeling
better. He crammed the penalty into my shirt pocket and marched off.

On Friday, two days after my bizarre crack-upl I got to work and was
loading my stock bins full of muffler hangers and rivets. Another day,
another dullard. We had about fifteen minutes before the line was to
roll. Dougie was done building up his springs and walked over. He began
chattering about some trivial matter when, clear out of the unholy blue,
everything suddenly flipped. Here we went again! My arms and legs
started tinglin' and shakin'. My heart joined in, an atomic bongo
thumpin' some blue streak lick. Doug was still yappin' when I grabbed
for my keys and hit the aisleway. I didn't wanna be around when he
switched into a grasshopper or something.

I sped home fully realizing that Wednesday had not been the strange
fluke I had hoped it had been. I was fucked up in a big way. This wasn't
like havin' a broken leg. A broken leg would heal. You could retain all
your senses. Who knew about this shit? Who knew what it even was?

Hopefully; Dr. Shea. I got her on the phone and tried my best to
describe what I was experiencing. I doubt that I was even making sense.
She had me come straight to her office.

We talked a while and she came to a preliminary diagnosis. "Ben, you
appear to be suffering from severe panic disorder. This condition often
manifests itself in the symptoms you are currently experiencing the
rapid heartbeat, numbness in the extremities, distorted vision, feelings
of paranoia, disassociation, hopelessness--they all fit the pattern.
What I will have you do is two things, i will prescribe a medication
called Inderal.

Whenever you feel an attack coming on, take one of these pills. They
should help steady your heartbeat. Also, I am going to recommend that
you immediately make an appointment with a Dr. Lee at the Holly Road
Mental Health Clinic. He is very knowledgeable in dealing with this kind
of disorder."

It was one hellish weekend. The panic attacks descended on me one after
another like sharks to a rib roast. I took the Inderal but its effects
were minimal. If it slowed my heart down any, it sure as hell did
nothing for the war going on inside my head. Mostly, I drank. I drank
and paced from one room to the next. I was looking for something. I was
searching for my shit.

On Monday morning, I called the Holly Road Mental Health Clinic. I asked
for an appointment to see Dr. Lee but was told he was booked up to the
twenty-third century. The receptionist said that a Dr. Kilaru had an
opening the next day. I told her to write me down. In my shape, I'd have
settled for Dr. Seuss.

Dr. Kilaru was a very short man, very pleasant and extremely dapper.
Obviously, this loony business lent itself to the big buck. He was also
very Indian. I had trouble making out his accent. Fortunately, I was
called on to do most of the talking. The doctor listened intently,
occasionally jotting notes, as I told him about my ugly metamorphosis
from Rivethead to Rancidhead.

When I was finished, Dr. Kilaru put down his notepad and spoke. "Ben,
you are suffering from rather intense episodes of panic attack syndrome.
This stems from a condition called acute anxiety. There is not always a
set pattern to when or where these attacks may occur. For treatment, I
am going to recommend weekly psychiatric counseling and medication. I
will prescribe for you a sedative called Xanax. This should help a great
deal. You may still experience small amounts of anxiety. However it's
the episodes of full-blown panic we are out to avoid."

I couldn't have agreed more. For the past four days, I had been
wondering if I'd ever be able to leave my apartment again. I asked the
doctor if it was safe to assume I was not going insane.

"That is a frequent fear expressed by those who suffer

these attacks. Often, a person will become convinced that he or she is
having a complete breakdown, a heart attack or actually dying. You have
a serious disorder: However I believe your sanity is fully intact."

I had Dr. Kilaru write me out a medical excuse for the next couple days.
What I needed was a few days off to check out this Xanax stuff and to
make absolutely sure it would keep the demons at bay. After the previous
week, I simply couldn't afford to hit the Rivet Line with anything less
than a happy, healthy cerebellum.

The Xanax seemed to work well. Bolstered by my new pharmaceutical pal, I
rejoined the fray. At the slightest hint of unsteadiness, I would
scramble over to the drinking fountain and gulp down more medication. I
would have swallowed cat puke, it didn't matter. I knew just one thing.
I'd seen walls sweating and ceilings sag. I'd seen close friends of mine
transform into various insects. I'd seen that great lake of fire roll
down the aisle. If it were to spill over again, I was damn sure going to
be clutchin' on to something buoyant.

Mike Moore called me in August to tell me my article for his first issue
of Mother Jones was being well received by the folks at the magazine. He
wanted to know if I could take a couple weeks off in order to do some
promoting for my cover story. For the first time in years, I headed off
on vacation.

At one point, Mike and I did two newspaper interviews, three radio talk
shows, three television guest spots in five different cities in the span
of twelve hours. We crisscrossed the state from head to heinie. My
futile requests to hit a bar somewhere in the middle of this marathon
were quickly shot down. I sucked down the Xanax like Tic Tacs. The
interviews all followed the same basic format. Moore would harangue
everything under the sun while I sat at his elbow like a real numbskull.
Anytime I was called on to speak, I'd mutter something decisive and
profound like "There aren't enough windows in the factory" or "I once
saw a guy incinerate his pet mouse with a brazing torch."

A few days late; the promo guy from Mother Jones called to tell me they
had scheduled a series of television and radio interviews in Chicago. I
was told that I would have to make this trip solo because Mike was busy
back in San Francisco. I

immediately balked. There was no way I could pull this off alone. After
much grumbling, they consented to pay Dave Steel's way to Chicago.

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 seem' 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. Finall: 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 flai: 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. 'gEl 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
A1 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 Lie 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. 're 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, bloaded 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 being' 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 being 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.

One night it all came to a boil. I was sitting at the picnic bench when
Sanders stalked over and motioned me into his office. I sat down in a
chair wondering what the hell I had done now. My foreman grinned. "I've
called you in here to discuss an article you wrote for the Detroit
Magazine. According to this article, you admit to being off plant
grounds at a tavern across the street while the line was in operation."

Now it was my turn to grin. "Yes?" I said.

's you are well aware by now, leaving plant grounds without prior
permission from a member of supervision is in direct violation of..." It
went on and on. This woeful bleating. This megaphone of hurt. It was
like a strange and intoxicating form of music and I sat there bathing in
it. I blew smoke rings

around the office and stared out at the guys on the line. There was
Eddie and Cam and Schobel and Herman and... "... can not. and WILL not
be tolerated in as far as the recognition betwee management and the
labor force and the agreement pertaining to the aforementioned
transgression..." Something like that.

"Do we have an understanding?" Sanders concluded.

"I understand this," I answered. "I'm gonna write your sorry ass up for
harassment. What I do or say outside of this plant is none of your
fucking business."

Moments later, my committeeman and Henry Jackson were on the scene.
Jackson immediately struck out on the offensive, accusing me of smelling
like a brewery. "I could write you up this minute for drinking on the
job."

"Do it.!" I yelled. 'At least I'm not a fuckin' cokehead like my
foreman."

Sanders's jaw dropped. I knew more about him hat he could have ever
guessed. I knew friends that he'd bought coke from. i had seen him
snortin' lines right in the supervisor's parking lot.

"Now, settle down," Jackson replied. "Do you realize that I could walk
through this department every night penalizing men for drinking and
smokin' pot? But I don't. You know why?"

"Hell yes, I know why! Because you know, as well as I, that those guys
out there are keepin' your fat ass high and dry. Those drinkers and pot
smokers comprise one of the most highly rated departments in this
factory. Don't pretend you're doin' anybody any favors, all you're doin'
is dodgin' the subject. I want Mr. Cokehead written up for supervisional
harassment. He has absolutely no right to lecture me about things that I
pursue outside of this factory."

Things settled down. Sanders was made to apologize and agree to never
mention my writing. I had Jackson so shook up, he even agreed that
Schobel and I should be allowed a bit more slack in our double-up
routine. I think Jackson was convinced that I was gonna instigate a
total rebellion. He overestimated my power with the rivet crew. They'd
have just yawned and gene back to their own private hells. In effect, I
was once again holding a trump card that didn't even exist.

It wasn't only Sanders and Jackson puttin' the eye on me.

There were others watching. Doug was the first to notice. One night he
pointed out some suit-and-tie spy peering around the boxcars at me. He
had a clipboard and a beeper. This went on for a while until I just
couldn't stand it any longer. I ran out in the aisle and hollered "Kiss
me, you fool!" He immediately disappeared.

This was to become a frequent evert. Someone would gesture down the line
with their head and, lo and behold, there would be some mystery man
peepin' around the corner at me. What the hell did they want? If I made
any motion to approach or yell in their direction, they would pivot and
vanish. My nerves were bad enough without all this creepy cloak and
dagger.

Bad enough that another bout with panic let me have it just after we
entered '87, my tenth year at General Motors. This was getting truly
distressing. Every few months I would topple over like some rag doll off
the shelf. Dr. Kilaru relayed that I was also suffering from agoraphobia
an abnormal fear of being in open or public places. This went a long way
in helping explain why I felt that I was being led to slaughter every
time I entered a mall or movie theater, to say nothing of an assembly
plant so large that it took up twenty city blocks.

Agoraphobia, don't leave home without it. Better yet, just don't leave
home. Dr. Kilaru put me out on sick leave and for the next three months
I rarely left my apartment. I did nothing but smoke, drink, watch TV,
sleep, sleep, then sleep some more. I talked on the phone daily with my
new girlfriend in Ann Arbor. I'd met her through a letter she had
written me the previous fall during a period when Amy and I were
experiencing one of our frequent fallouts. Her name was Jan. She didn't
smoke or drink or eat meat. How'd she manage to get stuck with the
Rivethead? Some folks just ain't got no common sense.

Jan was the first to suggest that I leave the shop. I explained to her
that it wasn't that easy. The factory was all I knew. I was a shoprat,
bruised brain and all. I had to forge on.

I went back to the Rivet Line in May. It was a total fiasco. I was
hell-bent on keeping the demons far at bay. To do so, I began drinking
outrageous amounts of beer and liquor. This did tend to squelch the
demons but, at the same time, it was taking a costly toll on my work
record. I was being written up on a weekly basis on a variety of counts
ranging from insubordination to poor workmanship to immoral conduct. My
committeeman was spending more time with me than his wife. Each time he
came around, all I could do was shrug. He would ask me if i wanted to
fight the penalty or enter my own grievance. I always declined. "Nope,
Boogie, I'm guilty as charged."

"Goddamnit, Hamper, you're hangin' yourself. Pissin' in the fuckin'
aisleway? Listen, you have to pull it together or you're on your way out
the door."

My committeeman was an all right guy. I just felt weird calling him
Boogie. The word belonged in an arena full of metalheads cheerin' on a
thundering drum solo. Alas, it was sorta comical and befitting that my
personal liaison between myself and the GM bureaucratic juggernaut would
turn out to be a guy in a sleeveless Jack Daniel's T-shirt named Boogie.
It was like facing a murder rap with an attorney named Killer.

However, Boogie was right. I had to pull it together. I met with Dr.
Kilaru and he once again suggested that I enter the mental health
clinic. This time I agreed.

I was assigned to the Anxiety and Panic group. Each morning would begin
with a rehash of what we had done the previous night. The fact that we
were all afflicted with varying degrees of agoraphobia prevented much of
a chance for any amazing yarns. A typical briefing: "Went home, cooked a
frozen dinner, watched the news, took my medication, went to bed." Next!

The rest of the day was spent attending various sessions: group therapy,
occupational therapy, goal planning, stress seminars, relaxation
techniques and, my personal favorite, volleyball. Hell, everybody loved
volleyball. We'd break up into teams and have at it--the loons, the
paranoids, the manic depressives, the weeping old women, the scary young
men, the multiple personalities. We shrieked and cheered. We dove for
wayward shots and belly-flopped across the waxed gymnasium floor like
crazed barking seals. It was just like fifth grade all over again except
this time around the beards were much heavier and we didn't have as much
to lose.

Frequently, I would feel totally out of place at the clinic. Many of the
woman there had histories that were so tragic I almost felt ashamed
nursing my little phobia in their midst. Women who were abused as
children and whose own children

were ragin' miscreants stashed in penitentiaries. Women whose entire
families had disowned them and left them to weep away in lonely rooms.
When it would come my turn to speak, I'd feel like the world's biggest
sham: "My problem? Urn, I can't, um, relax at my, urn, job."

During my stretch at the clinic, the transfer to my new job in Pontiac
went through. On July 17th, I came off sick leave ready to resume my
calling. I was unaware that I no longer belonged in Flint. I went down
to the Personnel office to hire back in and was immediately pointed
southward. The people in the front office seemed especially excited to
inform me that my tenure at Flint GM Truck & Bus was at an end. Was it
something I had said? They handed me some fuzzy map to my new home at
Pontiac East Assembly and instructed me to be at this destination the
next day at 6:00 A.M.

As I headed for the door, a strange thing happened. Some white-collar
tapeworm came hustling up behind me hollerin' my name. I didn't
recognize this person just another gung-ho errand boy from the bright
tomb district. As I paused, he thrust an index card and a pen at me.
"Would you mind autographing this card for my wife?" he asked. "Her name
is Becky, she's a big fan of yours."

I looked at him incredulously. This seemed beyond the bizarre. The
timing was the strangest part. Here I was stridin' out the door for the
very last time and my last official duty had nothing to do with
spot-welders or axle hoists or rivet guns. Some fly-boy's bored spouse
wanted my signature. What the hell. I took the pen and wrote: "Dear
Becky, I'm looking forward to death. Best Wishes, the Rivethead." The
guy shook my hand and I departed.

Returning to the factory was eerie enough without the added complication
of entering a totally new environment. From everything I'd heard about
Pontiac East Assembly, the place was pure Gulag City. The jobs were
timed-out to make sure the workers wouldn't be allowed a moment's
intermission. Anyone caught reading a newspaper or paperback would be
penalized. The union was nothing more than a powerless puppet show
groveling in the muck. There were as many robots as shoprats.

My sources hadn't lied. Everything about this plant reeked of science
gone too far. They set me up on a ferocious maze,

	something to do with brake boosters. I had so much medication

	flowing through me that I felt woozy. It had to be that way. I'd

	promised myself that, no matter what else happened, I would

	sooner lapse into a drug-induced coma than have another panic

	attack.

		So much for that theory. Driving down 1-75 for my second

	day on the job, I had the grandpappy panic attack of 'em all. I

	got about halfway down there, near a small town called Clarkston,

	when the wheels fell off. I whipped into a rest area and took a

	seat in a bathroom stall. I sat there for nearly two hours,

	alternately sobbing and deliberating. All the while, construc tion
workers and salesmen and gas haulers, men who keep this

	country in motion, were grunting and farting in nearby stalls.

	They were gonna wipe their asses and wash their hands and go

	get it done. It was only a routine, not much different from

	breathing.

		Finally, I snuck out of my stall and splashed some water on

	my face. I got in my car and drove over by Lake Orion to my

	brother Matt's house. He was a shoprat too. The same with his

	wife. I roused them out of bed.

		"What the hell are you doing here?" my brother asked.

	'Aren't you supposed to be working?"

		I walked over and grabbed a beer out of his fridge. "It's

	over," I said.

		"What are you talking about?"

		"I'm talking about General Motors. It's all over between

	US." Actually, I had been a bit hasty in my remarks with Matt.

	It wasn't over though it really should have been. The next day

	I was placed back in the Holly Road Mental Health Clinic. I

	never worked another day in 1987.

		During this period, Jan and I got married. We moved to a

	small town just south of Flint called Fenton. It was a rather

	awkward way to begin a marriage. Each morning Jan would

	set off for her teaching job in Ann Arbor and I would straggle

	off to the mental health clinic for therapy and volleyball. Not

	exactly the way Ward Cleaver worked it. Shit, even Herman

	Munster had a job.

		Dr. Kilaru added a new medication to my supply, a combination sedative
and antidepressant called Triavil. This drug |

made me feel extremely sluggish and apathetic. I thanked him profusely.
Dr. Kilaru also began advising me strongly against ever returning to
work in the factory. He was aware of my wri ting sideline and suggested
that I move in that direction. His intentions were sincere, I had no
doubt that he meant well, but the good doctor was missing the whole
point and I felt that I should inform him regarding the obvious.
"Doctor, in case you're not aware, all I do is write about the factory.
In order to do so, it is absolutely necessary for me to work in a
factory. Otherwise. I'd be an imposter."

"You could write about other topics of interest," Dr. Kilaru responded.

"I have no other topics of interest. I'd just as soon give the factory
one more shot."

And, after seven long months at the clinic, I did just that. I marched
back to Pontiac to continue my quest for my thirty year pin and ten
frames of bowling with a certain freckled automotive czar.

My reception upon arrival was hardly gracious. My foreman took one look
at me as I entered his office and put his hand to his forehead. "Well,
if it isn't the one-day wonder. Tell me, how long do you expect to hang
around this time? An hour? A day? AN ENTIRE WEEK?"

'Anybody's guess," I answered.

The job he assigned me was sheer insanity. I had to lie down inside the
truck cabs, divide all these tangled wire harnesses, tape the wires
along the floorboard in four very specific locations, then bend and
droop them through the dash. Once that was done, I had to race over and
insert two plastic clips onto the four-wheel drive shifter. This
completed, I had to scurry back to the cab and bolt down the shifter
with this cumbersome air gun that kicked like a mule and was as large as
your basic weed-whacker. It was damn hard work, the worst I'd ever come
across. However, I was makin' it. The demons were gnawin' someone else.
I had so much Xanax and Triavil in me that a nuclear war wouldn't have
fazed me. My biggest obstacle was simply keeping my eyes open.

The workers from Pontiac seemed cold, indifferent, resigned to the fact
that their union was nothing more than a charade and that management
took full advantage of the fact. The only

guy I ever spoke with was the worker right beside me, a Pontiac native
named Jim. The guy was a total mess. He used to show up for work drunk
an astounding accomplishment when you stopped to consider it wasn't even
daylight yet. It wasn't long before the two of us were tippin' together.

I'm amazed I didn't kill myself considering all the medication I was
taking. Jim and I would each drink a forty-ouncer at first break,
another one at lunch, then smuggle in a pint or two of whiskey for the
last part of the shift. That was an average day. I recall the time I
inhaled 120 ounces of beer in the span ot° a forty-minute lunch break.
Even Jim was impressed. The demons kept their distance.

This behavior was truly absurd, not to mention incredibly dangerous. It
got so bad that I couldn't even remember making the thirty-five-mile
commute back to Fenton each day. It was as if the Camaro was being
watched over by some freeway guardian angel. My wife was less than
happy. I'd regularly stumble through the door and collapse into bed
without bothering to remove my shoes. The next morning, Jan would ask me
if I remembered driving home the previous afternoon. Driving home? Shit,
I couldn't even recall leaving the plant.

This went on for a while, a very short while. Anesthetizing one's self
in an effort to fend off the dreaded panic was one thing. However,
driving across the median at eighty miles an hour into oncoming traffic
with a booze level that could've boiled mercury was quite another. It
was either drop the drinking or run the risk of killing innocent
commuters. It was a difficult choice. I opted to stay sober.

Things settled down to a point where I truly believed I was gonna make
it. I still had the occasional flirts with anxiety, but I was always
able to talk my way clear of total panic. I would bury myself in my job,
reinducing my old ploy of pretending my job was an event in the
Olympics. I'd muscle and tussle, all the while inwardly narrating the
frantic action: "We haven't heard much from Hamper, the ex-riveter from
Flint, Michigan, who provided such a startling Cinderella story back in
the '82 games. He appears to be in great shape as he prepares himself
for his latest specialty--the four-wheel-drive shifter installation. We
will ever forget the stunning triumph he provided his

country.., blah-blah-blah." Needless to report, I swiped another gold
medal.

I suppose there was always gonna be an April 7, 1988. It just hid there
like a heartless sniper behind the diesel haze and the minute hand. It
knew my name. It knew my brain. It could smell fear a mile away. Its aim
was true. The kill was a clean one.

I felt it on the way down to Pontiac that morning: the numbness, the
screwy vision, the hovering dread, the disorientation. I chewed down an
extra Triavil and drove on. There would be no rest area bailouts this
time around. I was stickin' to the path. I was gonna ride this bastard
until it either dissipated or completely felled me.

Inside the plant, I attempted to bury myself into the strenuous labor of
my rut. It didn't help matters any that my heart felt like a trampoline
full of ferrets. I did my best to avoid eye contact with my neighbors. I
was certain that they were all staring me down. I kept trying to hold it
together. Just let me hang in there until break. April 7, 1988, would
have none of my resistance.

I surrendered. I called the foreman over and asked for a pass to go to
the plant hospital. He immediately started bitchin' about how he was
short of bodies. I assured him that it was an emergency. Reluctantly, he
rounded up the Quality man to cover my job.

It didn't take the hospital nurse long to see I was in bad shape. After
taking my blood pressure and pulse, she asked if I had a doctor. When I
replied yes, she advised that I leave the shop at once and pay him a
visit. She wrote me out a slip to give to my foreman stating that I
should be allowed to leave the plant immediately.

I went back to my department and handed the slip to my foreman. My arms
and legs felt like they had gerbils running through them. Sweat was
pouring down my back. My foreman read the slip and launched into a
tirade. Just what I needed.

"I've about had it with you goddamn pussies that don't want to work," he
yelled, making sure half the department could hear him. "You're a bunch
of sorry bastards and, believe me, I'M GONNA START MODIFYIN' SOME
CHANGES

AROUND HERE!" (This guy loved big words, context and meaning be
damned.)

"Listen, all I know is that I was supposed to give you this slip. I know
exactly what it says so don't try pullin' this bad example bullshit on
me. I'm outta here."

The foreman flew into a rage. He took the slip, wadded it up and threw
it at my feet. In another time and place, under a different set of
circumstances, I would have enjoyed this tantrum to the hilt. However,
right then, I was hardly in the mood for idiot drama.

"Why don't you kiss my ass," I said while brushing past him.

"When you come back, I swear I'm gonna KICK YOUR ASS!"

However, he was out of luck. April 7, 1988, saw to it that he'd never
get that chance.

EPILOGUE.

A BEAUTIFUL, SUNNY DAY NEAR THE END OF A VERY HOT SUMMER.

Since it's Tuesday, the Anxiety and Panic group is out for its weekly
field trip. Typically, not all in our group are present. A few have
chosen to remain back at the mental health clinic, the thought of
mingling about in society simply too abhorrent.

Today's outing is miniature golf. It's not so bad. At least we've
received another week's reprieve from cowering through the mall.

By the third hole, we are already down to a tiresome-- myself, Pat,
Debbie, Marge and our faithful psychologist/babysitter, Lenice. Lucy has
retired to the van complaining about the heat. We shuffle forth, hole by
hole, urging each other on, applauding nice putts. Through the first
nine, I am in firm command of the lead. Everything is running smoothly.

However, on the fourteenth hole trouble brews. Pat has smacked her
orange ball into some swinging donkey appendage and the ball careens all
the way into the parking lot. Evel:yone, including Pat, is in complete
hysterics.

"That'll cost you a penalty stroke, Patty," I announce. "I'm just gonna
play it over," she replies.

"Go for it. It's still gonna cost you a stroke for a ball out of play."

"What DIFFERENCE does it make?" Pat howls. "It's only a GAME! Just like
volleyball. IT'S ONLY A GAME! Why do you treat it so importantly?"

I can't answer. There is no answer. Rivet Hockey is now volleyball.
Putt-putt is now Dumpster Ball. It only makes sense to win.

We play on. With tremendous ease, I'm able to salvage the victory. Patty
cools down. She is old enough to be my mother: I give her a cigarette
and we stand beside the van puin' like fiends. I rib her about how I'm
gonna destroy her ass in volleyball when we get back to the clinic.

Lenice parades us into the van. She hands each of us a small envelope
containing our four dollars in lunch money. We begin our search for an
unpopulated eatery. I take command of the radio and find a Paul Revere
and the Raiders tune on an oldies station. The old women in the back of
the van crack up as I mimic Mark Lindsay's vocal and pound on the
dashboard during the organ solo. The old women love me. They keep
repeating that they wish they had a son like me.

Jump ahead a few months. One evening I decide it's time to pay a visit
to the Rivet Line. I haven't been back there in a year and a half and
I'm curious to see how everyone's doing.

I slide right past the guard booth, right on by the old time clocks, up
the stairway and onto the Rivet Line. At first, it feels as if a day
hasn't passed since I'd been bangin' away on that lurchin' snake. I can
hear the old familiar clang of the carrier chains and the repairman's
chisel. I can smell the eternal aroma of grease, sealer paint, smoke and
sweat.

I begin walking down the line when it suddenly hits me: the jobs all
look unchanged, but the faces are entirely different. There's the pinup
jobs, but no Tommy or Earl. There's the frame rollover job, but no Cam
or Hogjaw. There's the rail-pull jobs, but no Big Red or Willie. And
where are A1 and Dougie and Paul? The place looks the same but, from a
human aspect, it has been almost totally gutted.

Eddie and Dick are still around. We shake hands and swap

information about our old cronies. I ask them whatever happened to
Paul, my double-up sidekick.

"He got laid off soon after you left," Eddie says. "He works

plumbing and heating now."

"What about Jehan?"

"Got pulled over with a gun and a mess of dope. He's been in jail for
months."

"Well, what about Terry and Matt and Joe?"

"They've been out on the street for nearly a year now," Dick reports.
"Ever since they shut down the Pickup Line, it's been here today, gone
tomorrow."

I look over at my old job. Some new guy's leanin' there at my bench. My
faithful rivet gun dangles at his hip. It infuriates me. It's like seem'
your wife being' kissed by a total stranger. As far as I'm concerned,
that damn rivet gun is private property.

I go over to the guy and tell him I'll catch the next job. He looks at
me perplexed and says "Be my guest." I grab a front wheel spring
casting, four rivets and position old faithful. Click, click, click,
click. I still have the touch for whatever that's worth. The rivet gun
hums like a contented child. I look over at Eddie and Dick and they're
both smiling. It's sad and confusing. I almost feel like I belong here.
Almost.

I ask Eddie if he feels like drainin' a few Budweisers at break time. I
have a twelve-pack in my Camaro and nowhere else I have to be.

We park it back by the barbed wire fence and the railroad tracks. The
stars mingle with the smokestacks and the sky whispers winter. I tell
Eddie all about my inglorious swan song. I tell him about the volleyball
wars out at the clinic.

"You can't tell me you'd rather be playin' volleyball than bustin' up a
shin with some Rivet Hockey." Eddie chuckles between chugs.

No, I can't. Nor can I tell him that the only ones who are gonna survive
thirty years on an assembly line are those who can consistently blot out
the gradual and persistent decay of the trick. There really isn't
anything gallant or noble about being a factory hack. The whole
arrangement equals nothing more than lousy prostitution. Thinking tears
you apart. Start peering at the walls too closely or leaning on the
clock too heavily and the whoremaster reality of all this idiocy will

surely gobble your ass up whole. The demons aren't demons. The demons
are you.

"Just about time for that all Aboard,'" I tell Eddie. "I'll drive you up
to the gate."

"You gotta drop by more often, Ben. Next time I'll try and

swing a double lunch and we can have a go at some Hennessy." "We'll do
that," I lie.

I drive away feeling lucky or something like it.