It's hard work keeping my head above the shit but the sun shone down on this dog's ass just when I needed it most. I was sleeping outside the salvation army shelter, slapping mosquitoes from my aching ankles, feeling that life would look up but otherwise spinning my wheels as I pondered how I would get to Mexico.
I had used all my shelter nights and even though it is now 110 degrees every day with humidity making it feel like 210, and the van could be used as a powder coating kiln, I'm optimistic. I want things to improve but I also want things to improve for humanity and though that makes me Christ-like in my martyred crown of thorns, what can I do? It is my nature to defeat this sick corporate colonization that cowards and do nothing cunts have allowed to take root in this land. We did not need to annihilate the Karankawa Indian but they are gone. Will the Arctic wolf follow them. I say, No.
My trail mix came from 12 fucking countries. |
So I get a call that a man will let me stay at his junk yard out by the industrial auto scrap yards. All he had to say was, "I got this Honda Goldwing that won't charge." and I was revving up my van. I will follow any lead at this point.
My new Home. We got $80 worth of aluminum siding off that RV |
You never see Snickers knockoffs...until now. |
"Why are you fucking with our harsh methods," their raised ears seemed to say. "We make the laws because we are stray and have limited food and water to share. Don't meddle where you don't belong."
"You want to fuck with Oggy?" I yelled and swung the broom at one on my left until he fled.
The other two hadn't got the whole flanking hunt method down and they stayed too close together so I could watch them both at the same time. And they didn't coordinate their attack so I was able to counter attack the one on my right. He tried to get behind me and I threw a rock at him. The other wasn't brave enough and didn't try anything but I swung the broom at him just to make sure. When they were all calm again I returned to my van with my broom.
GM 350 V8 motor. This one froze up on the hot rod track but we needed the intake manifold. |
Torque converter to fly wheel bolts are hell to get on and off. |
But the job only allows me a place to sleep with no shade way out of town and a wall spigot for water. I need money today so I got back into my arts mode...
My Jarritos Belt Buckle Project
My favorite part |
At this point I had no idea what to do. |
The coveted Gold Jarritos Cap accents this Mexi-art piece nicely. |
Anyway, I was desperate beyond desperate, eating the rat droppings I found in the abandoned garage, envious when I watched the bats fly around eating moths. Starving and sweating and lonely and still obsessed with a failed Mexican love affair. The radio man says, "Look forward to 110 degree temps the rest of the week. Here's CCR with Bad Moon Rising..." God, I am in Hell.
So, Monday I decided would be the day of decisive action. I needed money. I would go to the scrap yard and ask for work. I would go to the Pik-U-Part salvage yard. I would go to the machine shop. I would go to the motor rebuild shop. I would sell blood...and then the phone rang and I picked it up. Do I want to be a repair man at a trailer park? Yes.
I jump through the hoop of pissing in a cup (luckily I didn't smoke that joint JJ was passing around) and they don't even look at me funny that I'm wearing my "SUPER VAN" overalls with "Chris" on my name tag. I pass the piss test. They want me to start today. Fine. I need to eat. I weighed myself at the drug testing clinic and I came in a 151.9. Most of that is scar tissue and guilt so I drive to the island and show up at the trailer park.
Day 1: Someone has shit in the pool...and it's not a snickers bar. The maintenance man of 10 years fell in love with a girl who drove drunk across a lawn and destroyed a trailer. She got kicked out. He snuck her back in and got caught so he had to choose between the job and her. He chose the girl and he's gone. Enter Oggy...savior with a hammer...first project is a leaking faucet....I can't go into details because it basically included every problem that could be conceived and all plastic trailer home "pipe" and cheap faucets that stink of poverty and china. A good O ring would cost more than the whole faucet. Everything reeked of SSDI welfare. The guy running the Dixie lawnmower gets it stuck between an underground utility post and the water main box, totally stuck requiring Oggy ingenuity involving a post to use as leverage. We get it free. The manager locks herself out of the office. I cross thread the only cheap plastic fitting on the property but manage to make it work by flipping it upside down. The maintenance man's trailer, which he was provided for free as long as he fixed it up, is a total dump/disaster. One small room has 7 electrical outlets. The additions are slanted like a fun house. One ceiling power wire has no switch. One doesn't have power. He has stapled a carpet to linoleum. All the fans wobble. It's 140 degrees inside. My back aches. But it's work and I don't complain as I'm already dreaming of the slice of Spinner's pizza I will eat. The other handyman asks me to cut a piece of sheetrock to fit in a place on the ceiling where it doesn't meet the wall (awful Mexican sheet rockers did a horrible job. I do the most half assed job imaginable, actually hammering the piece into place (crushing one corner) and then using nails to hold it there. THe edges don't match the other ceiling piece. He sees it and says, "Perfect. Exactly what I wanted." and I smile because we understand each other. This isn't the Taj Mahal or even the Indian slum outhouse a mile from the Taj Mahal. This is a trailer in a janky trailer park and it's a rental and this is a custom addition that was once a pot nursery and who cares what it looks like? I move on to tackle the lighting until it's time to go home.
Then I get a call from a preacher who wants me to be a gate guard, camping in the middle of nowhere for $125 a day to sign in truck drivers to hydro-fracturing sites in the Eagle Ford Shale area. Sounds tempting but I'm hungry for Jarritos and God has my feet on his shoulder like a little baby floating me to my salvation and merging me with my intake manifold majesty.
2 comments:
paco would be jealous "..................off my......."
that's some good scribbling. rozi
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