I awake in the van on the street. Someone has either slammed
their door or honked their horn or a garbage truck has crushed a load. My arm
is asleep and my vision is bad. I sleep with my eyes open so any light
irritates my eyes even as I sleep. Sometimes my dreams incorporate what I see,
such as the time I was visited by Ted Nugent in a spaceship.
When I roll over on the right side of my head I can hear nothing because my
left ear is nearly deaf. A hearing doctor once asked me to describe the sound.
"It sounds like a swarm of locusts," I responded and watched him
pause for a second and then write it down.
I remember that today is the day I have to get something going, one way or
another. I need to make a few dollars, not read more civil war history in the library.
Then I think, no. Fuck work. I won’t make any money. I’ll probably get injured.
It’s futile. I’m better off at the library looking for a real job. Then I see
myself from above, sleeping in an old van, wearing my socks to bed to stay
warm, a moped and a ton of tools actually stored in the van with me, like a
garage on wheels. When it rains I have to direct the water away from my bed
with torn plastic milk jugs. It’s insane by any definition. I’m living
completely on the fringe of society, a microcosm of lunacy, reusing dental
floss, shitting into old newspaper, and drinking puddle water. I could plant a
garden in the fertile soil under my seats. But I am parked next to $300,000
condos. I stare at the Flashdance soundtrack LP above my bed and meet
Jennifer Beal’s vulnerable yet determined eyes. How am I going to turn the
abstract performance art that is my life into a small cabin or mobile home with
a wife and children puttering about as I hang storm windows or play the piano? My life is something Leonard Cohen would sing about and I want the song to be written by Cole Porter; how will that happen? By working? Maybe, I rationalize, I’ll get a good temp job that will turn into
a long term assignment. Good things always happen to me. Think positive. Today
could be the day.
So I roll out of bed and take my pants out of the protective plastic bag I
store them in at night and put them on. I draw my boots on and tie the laces by
propping my foot on the seat of my moped. The soles aren’t coming off the shoe
yet but they will be ruined by the end of the day. Then I go to piss in a milk
jug that has been with me for 6 months. It’s full but I don’t dare pour it out
on Lincoln Avenue again. I’ve learned that lesson. So I grab the nearest
empty jug of apple cider and piss into that. Then I gather up the curtains and
drink some water from a green 2 liter soda jug that was given to me by an
Evangelist in Quebec. Time to start my day.
The van starts up on the first try. I choke the carb a little and roll all the
curtains up until the engine runs smooth. The inside of the windshield is
totally covered with condensation but I drop it into gear and roll in the
direction of Labor Ready, aiming for the only piece of asphalt I can see.
Men are smoking outside the door, meaning I am late. The lobby opens at 5:30am
and it’s after 6 now. A guy I know nods at me and asks with a smile, “Where’s
that Ten dollars you owe me?”
About 8 men are sitting in the lobby when I go to sign in.
I’ve worked here before, which means I’ve taken the safety test before, but the
dispatcher, Sue, tells me I have to take it again. I don’t argue. The
questions, accompanied by a text with all the answers, are of the common sense
variety.
#5 If you are on the job site and are told to climb a ladder over 10ft tall you
should:
A: Do it and tell your branch office later.
B: Do it only if it is a supervisor telling you.
C: Walk off the job site.
D: Don’t climb the ladder. Contact your branch office.
The correct answer is D. Of course if you are on a job site and are told to do
something then you will probably do it without hesitation because you
understand that if you don’t do as you are told then you will not be invited
back the next day. The company might be fined but how will that help you?
So you climb the ladder and since you passed the test then the labor firm is
protected when you eventually fall off a ladder. You will be out of a job,
injured, and have no legal recourse to get workman’s compensation. Just don’t
fall off the ladder, is the implied meaning of this question.
I answer about 80 questions, double-checking the text to make sure I don’t get
any wrong and also to stall. There is a chance I’ll get a good ticket but there
is a near certainty that I’ll get a terrible assignment. If I got no ticket at
all and just sat there for a few hours I would consider myself even for the
day.
Nearby, two men are talking about their child support payments.
“I got twenty-two grand worth. Try getting it out of me. Just try.”
“When I got back together with my old lady she signed this paper that waived
14K worth of back support. I only owe two grand now.”
The couple had since split up again.
“I think I got my kids this weekend. You know how that goes. It’d be nice if I
could take ‘em to Chuckie Cheese.”
Another man sits down, picks up the paper and turns to the police log.
“Let’s see if I got arrested last night,” he says grinning.
Another guy limps by.
Someone asks him, “How’s your foot?”
“Gout’s killing me. In the big toe.”
“Gout? What’s that?”
“It’s God’s way of making sure you don’t kick your kid’s ass.”
“Haw! My son-in-law pisses me off too. I told him to buy his own cigarettes from
now on. No more handouts.”
“Good luck.”
The man with gout limps out the door.
Another guy with a ponytail is sitting in his underwear for some reason. He has
pants around his ankles like he’s on the toilet but he is on the edge of the
lobby sitting in a plastic lawn chair. No one talks to him. From the waist up
he looks normal. From the waist down he’s only wearing boxer shorts.
Almost every man there lives at the local halfway house called Crossroads. They
kick you out at 5 am with a piece of toast and jam for breakfast. The library
doesn’t open until 8 so they migrate here to the labor ready office and drink
some free coffee. Some wait for tickets and some slip away before their names
are called. I could go to Crossroads but I prefer my van. Spend a night at
Crossroads and you’ll know why.
I finish the test and turn it in just as four men are assigned a job, something
to do with unloading a truck, and handed hard hats. They leave en masse,
resigned to their uncertain fate like marines to a beachhead, neither
enthusiastic nor depressed. It looks like the kids’ll be going to Chuckie
Cheese after all.
I sit down until a job order comes in for detailing cars. For a moment it is up
for grabs but I imagine the inside of my van and how badly it needs detailing,
or at least a light cleaning. Why would I spend all day detailing thirty
strange cars when my one van, my house, needs attention? This is the beggar’s
paradox: he is willing to do for others what he won’t do for himself.
Sue tries to explain the ticket, “You wash the tires, dry the windshield, clean
out the ashtray.”
There is literally no way to make the job sound glamorous or desirable. It
reminds me of the job description of a housekeeper. “Remove all pubic hairs
from drain.” Sue looks in my direction but I keep reading the paper. The man
reluctantly assigned to it, the last man other than me, doesn’t have a car of
his own so Sue closes the office and gives the guy a ride to work. I walk to a
nearby café and order a bagel and egg sandwich with bacon and cheese. I read
the employment news at a counter with lonely retired men staring into their
cups of coffee, insomniacs who worked the first shift for so long they can’t
sleep past 6. They are wondering what a man like me is doing in a coffee shop
on a work day but my look says, “Keep staring at your coffee, grandpa.” In the
paper there are jobs for heavy equipment operators, registered nurses, and
elderly companions. The bagel sandwich arrives. It’s made with real cheese and
I eat half of it before walking across the barren supermarket parking lot back
to the office. Kids are on their way to school with backpacks and poster board
assignments. The yellow and red leaves are all in bags. Autumn is over but real
winter has not yet begun.
When I arrive Sue and another staff member are fighting to get the double doors
open. The deadbolt only retracts so far so it still catches on the other door.
Sue fights it for nearly a minute, swearing, as we jog in place to stay warm.
Finally the door opens with a bang almost breaking the glass. She and another
employee go in first.
Sue says, “Every time I open that door it’s the same thing.”
I look at the latch for a second and in my younger days I would have tried to
fix it. In fact, I would have fixed it because there is nothing I dislike more
than simple maintenance tasks that are ignored and lead to major replacements,
especially in a labor hall where able men sit around and read week old
newspapers in their underwear. The lock needs to be sprayed with some WD-40 so
it slides easier. The deadbolt could be filed down. The whole mechanism is
probably worn out but I’m talking about fixing it in the next ten minutes. I
have some WD-40 and a file in my van but I have learned something at Labor
Ready and that is to do only that which you have been told to do. Ambition or
independent thought is frowned on. Basically, I am forbidden from fixing the
door so I sit down and eat my bagel while reading the paper. There are packets
of ketchup in the bag so I make a puddle of ketchup and dip the bagel sandwich
into the puddle and eat.
The news concerns a domestic sniper being executed after a last meal of chicken
in red sauce. That reminds me that I want to go to the Indian restaurant for
dinner. Another news story quotes the President as he says he is sure that the
terrorist accused of plotting the 9/11 attacks will be executed because he is
plainly guilty. He has no reservations about trying him in a civil court
because there is no chance he will be found not guilty. The trial has not even
begun and the President, a lawyer, has convicted him. I wonder who died and put
Stalin in charge. As I move to the sports section the phone rings and since I’m
the only one in the hall I know my destiny is about to be decided.
“He didn’t show up?...What about…He didn’t either? Well how many you need? I
got one here. You need two or one? I’ll call Dover. Alright.”
Sue hangs up.
“Oggy! They need someone athletic to do some running around. Construction
cleanup.”
I was the youngest man in the hall by a few years but I know I’m in trouble.
“Athletic? Running around?” Do I look like I’m twenty years old? Then I
remember that I recently shaved my salt and pepper beard (for another job
interview) so with my ball cap on I do look like I’m twenty, which is something
I won’t be able to say for long. There is no one else in the hall and no other
job to choose from so I take my ticket. I’m going to Poco Diablos, a
faux-Mexican restaurant in downtown Portsmouth that is receiving a facelift.
There’s no free parking down there and I quickly decide to park near the mill
pond and ride my moped there. I sign out for a hard hat and some gloves and get
in the van. It is almost 9 so I’ve been waiting for nearly 3 hours.
Instead of parking at the millpond where I know the Junior High School kids
will fuck with my van, I drive near the river and end up over by the old
Portsmouth Herald. I throw an old sweater on since it is cold and take my rings
off. The hardhat proves to be a problem for my moped’s storage unit, which is a
mini Coleman cooler. The moped runs rough since it is cold and since the single
piston is worn out but I get to Poco’s in a few minutes, parking and locking
the moped on a telephone pole near the tug boats. I don’t find my supervisor
but I find a worker, John, who is throwing wood into a dumpster.
“You from Labor Ready?”
He says this like an accusation so I shrug as though I’m powerless.
“Ok. Our only job is to keep this place clean today,” he says.
So I start hauling garbage cans full of construction debris and throwing it
into the dumpster. Not too hard. It keeps me warm. Carpenters are tearing a
wall apart and as they toss studs and nails aside I throw them into the trash
can. In between trips to the dumpster I take a note from the safety test and
observe my work environment. There are five pieces of heavy equipment including
an overhead crane, an excavator, an extending work platform, a bulldozer, a
bobcat and a mini excavator. Later a concrete mixer will arrive. Down an alley
a backhoe is digging up a sewer line. The Ferry Landing bar used to be right in
front of me but it’s just dirt now. The area is not big enough for all this
equipment so any time one piece of machinery has to move another has to move
first.
When all the loose debris is in the dumpster I begin to think this is going to
be easy money. I give myself a pat on the back. God gives all things to
industry. Yes, He does. That’s what they’ll put on my gravestone. “Honest” Oggy
Bleacher: He lived and died on the sweat of his brow. Normally at this time of
the day I’m in my van feeling sorry for myself or in the library clicking on
yet another link for a used Triumph motorcycle or a long-shot job in the
Bahamas. Today, I’m proud of myself. I’m in the work force. I’m part of the
Great American recovery. I’m day dreaming of stars and stripes when John leads
me into what used to be the bar.
“I’m going to start breaking this up with the jackhammer. You haul it out in
these buckets.”
Wha? That’s sounds like real work. Just to be sure I pretend like I didn’t hear
him. John yells, “I’M GOING TO START BREAKING….”
That’s the thing about temp jobs: your job description can be explained in two
sentences. Sometimes words aren’t even necessary; John could just point to the
broken concrete and then point to the dumpster.
My worst nightmare has come true. I didn’t just end up with a shitty ticket; I
ended up with the total bottom of the barrel bullshit ticket. A ticket paying
the minimum wage for the maximum manual labor. I’ve got a right to complain.
There will be no easy money. I now see why two other Labor Ready employees
didn’t show up. They knew what was coming and they jumped on those auto
detailing tickets. Right now they’re probably sitting in a Lexus or a Mazerati
pretending they own it, laughing, getting stoned in the bathroom, stealing
quarters they find in the seat, flirting with the sexy girls at the tanning
salon next door. Me? I’m in the express lane for spine surgery.
I need to stall some more so I look at the two five gallon buckets. I look at
the bar.
“How much of this is getting torn up?”
I know the answer and, furthermore, any amount of concrete is too much to carry
in buckets.
John motions to these big areas crisscrossed by a concrete blade. Some already
have been chipped into and sectioned off. Most is still intact. Judging by one
hole there are two layers of 6 inch concrete and one layer of 4 inch concrete
all sandwiched on top of each other over the years as new construction evolved.
We have to expose sewage and water pipes that haven’t been seen since John Paul
Jones got drunk near a two-masted schooner. If I busted my ass, which I don’t
plan on doing, this should take days.
I sigh/moan as I trace the path I must follow from the bar, over a ledge of
broken concrete, through an open door where debris rains down from above,
across a flimsy bridge made of a several 2x4s and a piece of plywood placed
over a moat of mud and exposed rebar (this bridge was later crushed by an
excavator moments after I made one crossing), past the ever-moving excavator,
under an extending platform (ignoring Labor Ready safety rule #37) and up a
loose dirt hill near another rotating crane where the dumpster is. It’s like 40
yards away. The dumpster, by the way, has walls that are almost six feet high
so whatever debris I bring there must then be lifted above my head to dump.
Some carpenters tearing down the deck above us dislodge some plaster onto my
head.
I dreamily remember a ticket I got in Los Angeles. A Walgreens was being built
and for some reason no ditch digging machines were available for the parking
lot borders. Oggy Bleacher to the rescue. I dug with a pick axe and shovel for
8 hours, getting a $64 parking ticket in the process that lost me $10 on the
day. But it was warm and I didn’t need a hard hat and it was in Westwood where
everyone is beautiful. I took my shirt off and drank a gallon of water for
lunch. I was also 5 years younger and felt I was paying my dues to live near
people like David Mamet and Snoop Dogg. It wasn’t going to be easy, of course.
I only needed to be patient.
Flash forward five years to me in the basement bar of Poco Diablo’s on the
opposite coast, everyone in hardhats and sweatshirts, a jackhammer nearby, two
buckets of concrete debris in my hands. I’m not paying my dues anymore. I’m just
trying to get some money coming in. I should have stayed in the van.
“Are you sure?” I ask, implying that this is not a job for plastic buckets and
my Labor Ready ass.
“Yeah,” says John, “We got a ton of concrete to move.”
To keep what little pride have left I say nothing more and grab the two
buckets, marching outside with the buckets on either side of me. A board
tumbles in front of me and I kick it away. The plank bridge wobbles. Two
beeping, belching excavators almost collide in front of me. The dirt pile
collapses when I step on it. Seconds after I leave, John turns on the
jackhammer compressor before he hooks the hose to the jackhammer causing two or
three hundred pounds of air pressure to be directed into a loose hose, which
goes completely berserk before he can shut it off. The hose lashes the side of
the building, nearly hitting an exposed natural gas pipeline (goodbye downtown
Portsmouth), and whips like one of Dr. Octopus’s arms in vicious circles.
Luckily everything it breaks is about to end up in the dumpster. John and I
trade a look of relief. He admits later that he has never used a jackhammer. I
have but I won’t admit it.
While John moves to put the hose on the jackhammer I walk the last 30 yards to
the dumpster and lift the buckets one by one to dump them in. I estimate that
for every full bucket I have to take a minute break. I also estimate that I
will be permanently injured if I take full buckets all day. Truth be told, I
can barely lift a full bucket. It probably weighs 90 pounds. For every half
full bucket I have to take a fifteen second break. I will probably be injured
if I take half full buckets. The weight of a quarter full bucket is still in
the 30 or 40 pound range, which means two buckets of 60-80 pounds total. I
decide that is the absolute maximum and if they don’t like it then I will hand
my hard hat in. John won’t be able to break the concrete that fast anyway. I’ll
be doing everyone a favor if I just take my time and take the minimum. It is
one thing if I have a clear path and a pile to dump it into but I have a
dangerous obstacle course of 40 yards and at the end of it I have to lift
everything above my head. I pick up the empty buckets up and weave my way back
through the obstacle course. When I think I’ve found safety in the bar again it
is filled with concrete dust raised by John, who is now guiding the jackhammer
in small circles. It is deafening. I point to my ears as though to ask John if
he has some other ear plugs and he hands them to me. Another dust cloud
follows. There are no dust masks so the only solution is to hold my breath and
dig frantically in the dust for some chunks to fill the buckets. I am wearing
safety goggles so when chips of concrete hit me in the face at 50 miles an hour
they click off my glasses or sting my cheeks. The generic plastic hard hat has
never fit me right so every time I lean over to pick something up it falls off
my head.
“Motherfucker!” I yell, though no one can hear me over the jackhammer. Worse,
by speaking, I have to breathe the cement dust as I fumble with the hard hat.
“Shit. Fuck!”
I finally toss the helmet on my head, grab the buckets, and blindly try to get
out the door. I trip on the cement ledge, cut my knee on a piece of rebar,
stumble across the wobbling bridge, climb over a mound of dirt, dodge the
excavator, duck under the crane platform, dodge another excavator, jog up a
hill and set the buckets down. I consider walking off the job. I would be
better off playing guitar on the sidewalk for 8 hours. Fuck industry. Fuck God.
Fuck the work. Fuck Poco Diablo’s. I never drank here anyway. I’ll never go
back to Labor Ready so it doesn’t matter if I burn that bridge. Or I could
pretend to get hurt. Pretend? Ha! I am actually limping from the rebar. And my
hands are cramping already. My back hurts. My shoulders are numb. Most people
in my condition were just in a major auto accident. I’m about to throw in the
towel when a carpenter walks by. He sees me massaging my hand and knows I’m a
temp worker, a soft skinned pencil pusher who just got suckered into this
ticket because I’m dumb too.
He says, “Nightmare job, huh?”
“Jeez. No shit.”
“We come in here last week just gonna replace the windows. Turns out the whole
back of the building is leaning 8 inches.”
“Well, fuck. All these buildings are leaning. A few more feet and it’ll be a
tourist attraction. So what?”
“Gotta bring it up to code.”
“That’s just...So…So this?”
I wave at the destruction around us.
“$25,000 change to the order.”
“It’s bullshit.”
“Slaves had it better,” he says.
“Naw, slaves could buy their freedom.”
We laugh mirthlessly but the exchange gives me renewed hope that I am not a
mule. I commit to the effort. We will do what is necessary to rebuild this
god-damn restaurant. I march back into the debris field. A bulldozer is backing
toward me so I hop over a concrete wall into a trench. I bounce over a pile of
broken slabs of concrete and climb back into the bar area. Another man is
standing there. I can tell by his posture and his ill-fitting hard hat that he
is a fellow labor ready employee.
“What’s up, bitch?”
“I shoulda stayed in bed.” He says before adding, for no reason, “I’m on the
waiting list for public housing.”
I nod and toss some concrete into the buckets.
“Mama’s in the cold, cold ground.”
Then the machine starts again and we are both enveloped in a cloud of dust.
Later, we take a break for lunch and are each given a gigantic hamburger and
French fries.
The remainder of the day is spent humping concrete to the dumpster and avoiding
the backhoe. I never get cold but I never get so hot that I remove my sweater,
or even my jean jacket. The hard hat is more of a distraction than a piece of
safety equipment but it manages to stay on for the rest of the day. I pace
myself so I am never completely burned out but with every round trip to the
dumpster I feel the tendons of my arm tremble. On one trip I am carrying two
buckets with hardly any concrete in them. This is because the other worker and
I are keeping pace with the man operating the jackhammer so there is really no
need to carry more than I am able to carry. Furthermore, I am pacing myself to
last the whole day. As I dump the contents of the bucket I see a group of
foremen looking at me. One of the men, either the owner of the construction
company or a lead foreman, points to my bucket and elbows the man next to him.
Then he makes a gesture and I can read his lips. “That guy (lazy fuck) was
carrying about two inches of dust.” They laugh and I can tell they view me as a
complete liability, a shirker of duties, a malingerer, and a loafer. My own
reaction is resignation. I can’t win. I recall how many people called me a
loafer for living in my van in Mexico, surviving on tacos and water, picking up
nothing more than some wood for a fire. Now I’m carrying two buckets of concrete
and am still a loafer. And the people who thought living in a van was
loafing would just think I’m an idiot. Either way, I can’t do 8 hours of this
work, and for what I’m getting paid I shouldn’t do a single hour of this work.
There’s a reason this job was designated to a temp worker. No one could make a
living from this work. You would destroy your body and your clothes faster than
you could make the money to repair them. But everyone already knows this. I
already knew this. But I need the money so I took the ticket. The ticket turned
out to be a killer but does that mean I should walk away from it and not get
paid? That would just make trouble for everyone here. I can do the job at my
pace and still go home in one piece. But doing so means the men in charge will
look at me like a stray dog that should be put down. Fortunately, entering the
work site again requires all my attention and I don’t change my routine at all.
If they want to send me home I won’t argue. If they want to give me shit for
loafing then I will say nothing. If they allow me to stay then I’ll move what I
can move without killing myself.
The other temp and I drag ass the final hour, authentically loafing, standing
by the dumpster for no reason, talking with the carpenters, looking at girls walking
by in long coats, talking about the economy. The end comes mercifully. A man
I’ve never met says they need someone back the next morning and I don’t commit.
They don’t particularly want me back and they don’t care if I come back, but
they need someone because there is still one day of work left in that
bar. I can expect more buckets of concrete and more disdainful stares by the
foreman. I take my signed ticket and walk back to my moped. Except for my
pride, I’m uninjured. That’s the important thing. I can still play the guitar.
I ride the moped back to my van. The van fires up.
On the way back to the labor hall I stop by the donut shop. A week earlier when
the library was closed I sat in the donut shop nursing a hot chocolate and
reading a book. As I pull in the parking space I look across a fence and meet
eyes with Cristos, a friend since 1977, who has recently gotten married. I honk
and wave. Cristos does a double take. I jump out of the van with my hard hat on
and work gloves, covered with concrete dust.
Cristos squints in the neon light, “Oggy, what are you doing?”
“I’m working! Got me a job at Poco Diablos. Lugging concrete.”
He can’t get away and his shoulders sag.
“What happened to you?”
This is his typically obtuse way of pointing out how much I’ve changed from the
Whiffle ball hero of the JFK Center to the hobo work mule. What happened to me?
Let’s just say that at the Baskin Robbins counter of life I want to try all the
flavors, even the ones I know I won't like.
"Trying to get some hustle money, is all," I respond.
"Hauling concrete? Are you an idiot?"
I invite him over to the Dunkin Donuts and he obliges even as he looks at his
watch.
“The first thing I thought when I saw that van was, ‘What a piece of
shit.’"
That’s what most people think.
"It's a good van. You think I can afford rent in Portsmouth?"
I order a hot chocolate and, because I worked today, a pumpkin muffin. I resent
handing 5% of my paycheck to the cashier for twenty cents of sugar and flour.
While I sit at a table and eat Cristos explains that he just got back from a
funeral.
“80 years alive and in the ground forever,” he says of his recently passed
uncle.
"See," I say, picking up a conversation thread we started years
earlier, "That's what I'm talking about. It’s not fair. The rules aren’t
fair.”
“That’s how it is. And you’re just wasting it.” He doesn't even look me in the
eye when he speaks. He's looking behind me at lady ordering glazed munchkins
and coffee.
I start babbling, “This is my life. I get up and try to make something happen.
It’s a big world. When we going to Greece?”
“I just got back from Italy.”
“Look at you. Mr. Italy. Why you go there?”
“Honeymoon.”
“Oh, right. You’re married. How’s that?”
He shrugs. He has settled down and wants to settle down even further. I do too
but like to tell myself I haven’t found a good enough reason to do it.
“So that’s it,” I say.
“Yeah, I gotta go. Come by, buddy. Call me.”
His tone of voice is identical to the one he uses with faceless customers at
his work scalping sports tickets. Maybe that’s because he spends most of his
life using that tone of voice and maybe it’s because I’ve become one of those
faceless customers who keep him from his own interests. Either way, he’s gone
into the night and I return to my dry muffin until my cell phone rings. It’s
the labor hall and Sue wants to know if I went to work and if I plan to come
back to get paid.
I drive over to the labor hall with my hot chocolate between my knees and get
my check.
“They need someone tomorrow at 8.”
I’ve already decided I’m not going back so I say, “I’ve got a job interview
tomorrow.” This isn’t true but at least it makes me look less like a
malingerer.
Sue doesn’t care either way. She merely needs to know if she will be sending
someone new to Poco’s in the morning. Maybe she’ll call a reliable worker
tonight to give him a few extra hours of sleep and allow him to skip the trip
to the labor hall. Either way, my job is finished and I walk out of there with
a check for $50, not enough by my book and too much from where they’re sitting.
No one is satisfied but the sun is down and I’m back in the van and on my way
to a dark street. The library is closed so I will play the guitar until it gets
too cold to be out of the sleeping bag.
I park near the old JFK site and wonder aloud, "What
happened to me? What happened to you? You go around flying around
the world with your fat ass. What about whiffle ball? What about the game? I'd
play right now but they tore the goddamn court down. What happened to you?"
I talk to myself in the van because I like to hear conversations out loud. My
own private theater.
$50 breaks down to $15 of gas, $10 of food and $25 into the Guatemala fund*.
Taking the ticket turned out to be a brush with disaster but it reminded me
that I am too old for that kind of chain gang labor. There was a time twenty
years earlier when I could work 8 to 10 hours with a shovel and not complain
but if I want to make some money and survive I need to get into manufacturing
again. I plan to scour the papers for work and call back several temp agencies.
One agency is in Laconia and has advertised for multiple assembly jobs. Maybe
I’ll go up there. Driving to central New Hampshire in mid November with no job
and no place to live is not a fantastic idea but the alternative is to drive
south into New York and see what comes up. But I don’t even have enough liquid
cash to make that trip. I’m sure the Labor Ready in Manhattan has work and I
could make my way to Florida in stages. As I lay in my van I know I can not
possibly answer every question, but at least I’m asking the right questions. I
needed money so I made $50 without taking my pants off. That’s a step in the
right direction.
*It took 5 years, but Oggy successfully drove his van to Guatemala.