...Starting in junior year — at the parents' insistence — I expand my extracurricular activities to include a few part-time jobs. Right, I am talkin' about "WORK!" For Nancy & Mickey's peace of mind, I accede to let a car wash, a supermarket, and a handful of restaurants try in vain to provide locations and assignments which'll keep me fully occupied and "the hell out of trouble". Most everybody who works in these places — except the guys with their balls in a vice — goofs off. And for the longest time, I'm no exception—content to stay a private among privates. Then somewhere about halfway through Grade 12 — due in part to finding myself more often out on the streets than at home — the minimum wage trickle which'd always miraculously topped my till with discretionary income (i.e., for beer, dope, cigarettes) seems to slow to a drip. And so, not to be confused with any genuine ambition, I decide time's come to find a gig that pays.

I fill out an application at this factory that makes nuts and bolts, where in exchange for my giving up any hope of seeing natural light for four to six hours five days a week I'll be paid 75 cents more per hour than my cook's job. Seems a sweet enough deal — with potential for advancement I'm told. The plant's owned by Mr. Daniel Russ whose son's a classmate of mine — a real "Dobie" named "Danny" (what else!). He says he'll "expedite my app" and plead my predicament to his old man. Thus will pave the way for a perfunctory interview and my immediate hiring. ( I'll later come to understand that this was in fact my introduction to life's thickest of textbooks, How to Play the Game. Specifically, Chapter 3: "Playing the Who You Know Card". It's also the earliest indicator that Modern Geometry won't be the only primer I'm gonna have a huge fucking problem with.)

It's pretty much downhill from the punch-in. Timeclock to toilets everything's gray, smells like oil, tastes like steel. In a week my teeth are jumping outta my scull from some kinda affinity my fillings seem to have with mountains of metal splinters, shavings and shards. In two, I'm beginning to appreciate the outdoors more! Then just like Maynard G., who could hardly hack it stockin' those shelves at Gillis' Grocery, ... and, correspondingly, Dobie's dad could barely abide the Maynard, ... now just three weeks into my tenure at Lake Erie Screw the Russ's and I are realizing how really bad we are for one another's psyches.

59


So, as it happens, this one afternoon I'm in a typical state of miserable when I'm overheard "talking to hisself" by the "concerned" lifer who's running the grinding wheel behind me—that is, whenever he's not off riffin' on the latest shop-floor rumble to the Man. Actually, what the old fart'd heard was me having an innocent little chat with my drill press, the exquisitely indefatigable Mr. Delta (not so odd—Friend Davy talks to his dishwasher Mr. Hobart all the time.). Nevertheless, from Management's perspective I've got 'some 'splainin' to do' no matter to whom the words were spoken. They wannna know if, in fact, I've become " addicted to dexies" to get through my ever-diminishing part-time schedule!

Ironically, right before quitting time, Dan junior approaches my workstation hatchet-chopping his hand across the front of his neck (shop shorthand to "kill power"). I try to shift my concentration from the Mesmer-music of drill-shaft whirr to the whine of the boss's son beginning to tick through a laundry list of how I might clean up my act, ... but the falling pitch of Mr. D's slowing chuck rotation sucks me back into numb napping.

"Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm ... "

Alas, the hum-magnet can only hold me so long; too quick I'm back in the slipstream of the conscious plane again. My mission,—should I find the stomach for it—to locate the sweet spot of boundless benefit which lay somewhere under the tail rudder of one of Russ's fluffier purr-ceptions: "... and, believe me, things'll go a whole lot better, Brian, if you'll only try to get to know some of the guys!"

Hopeful he's in "winding-down mode", I pull the wised-up mask of a proselyte over my broody scowl to wait-out the big finish.

"And, hey man, just between us, you really oughta start taking your breaks in the lunchroom — not all alone at your 'press'," he declares, clearly winding up ... not down.

Okay, I'm lost. I can only guestimate from past witness where Danny's at in his pep talk. I figure he's got at least another several suggestions left to go, with about five different ways to say each of 'em. But, before I gotta hear the one about how he likes to see a worker's healthy interest in sports reflected in playing the football pool (frequently won by Russ, incidentally), my lunch signals it wants to come up and I'm moved to tell him so.

"Dobie, dear, you're the fucking asshole who's gotta keep working here — not me!" is the way I finesse my resignation.

I feel like I'm already out in the chill night air walking the ink dry on my final paycheck even as my eyes continue following Russ's perfect posture through the quarter-acre machine maze that still lay between me and the front office. And these "Fa-fa-fa"'s from the Kinks' song "David Watts" will likely leave my head only after they've sped me home to play all of side one of the Something Else LP!

Whisking my jacket off a thumbscrew on Mr. Delta's belt housing with one hand, I take his pinion shaft handle warmly in the other ... and give it a last spin.