Oct 07
Big Angry Cocks 1. “Hey, Jesse. Uhm… What about it?” I was taking a chance leading with Jesse Stocstill’s usual southern greeting. Jesse leaned against the roll-around cart piled high with metal glands I intended to inertia weld to a rack of hydraulic cylinders. By the look of his glassy eyes and the set of …
Sep 30
Thoughts on Prayers Milt, my eighty-year-old live-in father-in-law snoozes on his catnapper Laz-E-Boy. A half-gnawed Slim Jim droops from his clenched fist. His chin rests against his sternum. During fits of wakefulness, he boasts that he’s managed to hold on to his hair. You can almost see it in the afternoon light streaming through …
Sep 23
In The Kingdom of the Blind, The One-Eyed Man Has To See Some Pretty Stupid Fucking Shit I hadn’t been awake for more than five minutes. I’m trying to pour coffee into my Kill Bill coffee mug (a mug some folks would describe as vintage which blows my mind because, goddammit, I …
Sep 16
What If I Just Never Got Political? Until a couple days ago, I didn’t know who the hell Charlie Kirk even was. Being a white, male American of decidedly bad ass Polish stock, I have the luxury of ignoring the completely batshit crazy situations trending on the six o’clock news. Fortunately, I have an …
Sep 09
Sons and Fathers My son is nine weeks into his Hydra experience, working beside me in the chrome shop, plating components which will eventually become hydraulic cylinders used on an array of dump trucks, garbage trucks, cranes, and tractors. Nine weeks without missing a day of work, without so much as a single instance of …
Sep 02
I’m Pre-Emptively Tired of This Future Bullshit, or It’s That Roll Tide Time of Year, Again You can tell football season is upon us once again by the way the boys on the shop floor swagger back and forth between their machines. For the next several months, eighty-five percent of their collective self-worth is going …
Aug 26
Praise Jesus and Pass the Lasagna “Polish Hammer! How’s it going? Ain’t seen you in forever.” Ah, goddammit. This is the reason I try to stay out of the local Foodland. Being a carpet-bagging yankee since ’97, I know that if I’m called out in public, it’s by someone I currently or once worked …
Aug 12
Liquor We were four hours into the graveyard shift, chroming lengths of polished cylindrical steel which would eventually be assembled into hydraulics for garbage trucks. It was important work to somebody, since the company was willing to pay us double our normal rates to work sixteen hours from Saturday night well into Sunday. It was …
Aug 05
No More Tours I first saw Ozzy in concert back in 1992 at the World Music Theatre in Tinley Park just outside Chicago. This was during the No More Tours tour in support of Ozzy’s “No More Tears” tour. Now, I was an Ozzy fanatic from way back, but I fucking hated his newer music. …
Jul 29
This is What We Do to Book Snitches Where I Come From Life has been a blur, lately. Work becomes a weekly series of Bataan death marches. Sixty-six-hour work weeks, four twelve-hour shifts, a blessedly abbreviated ten-hour Friday shift and the obligatory straight eight, 5am to 1pm on Saturday. We’re told this won’t last forever. …
