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. …
Jul 22
A Sacrifice to the Gods of Industry I did not help usher my son into this world so that he could give his life over to Hydra Hydraulics, slaving through twelve-hour shifts in stifling heat for shitheel managers. However, I didn’t intend to have him sit around the house playing video games all fucking day, …
Jul 15
Living Ain’t For Everybody I emerge from my study for two goddam minutes, just trying to grab a cherry limeade Frostie out of the kitchen when I hear a raspy voice pronounce ominously. “119.” I don’t have to ask what the number signifies; it’s all the old bastard has been talking about since the first …
Jul 08
You Gonna Bark All Day Little Doggie, Or Are You Gonna Mourn The Passing of an American Legend I always take off work the week of the fourth of July. I never actually celebrate the holiday. I dislike the government, got too much cool shit to embrace anarchy, so my politics are complicated, but more …
Jul 01
She Has Steve Buscemi Hair (And Eyes) I end the week with a little extra money in my pocket. Perhaps my son’s bills were not quite as harrowing as they had been in past months. I don’t know. It’s likely I forgot to pay something. Anyway, since I don’t believe in saving toward retirement and …
