neal@weitek.UUCP (Neal Bedard) (12/28/85)
Something Industrial-Strength for all you net.auto folks....
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[From "Squeezing Rivets is Fun" by Ben Hamper, in December's issue of Harper's]
Its in the vicinity of last call and I'm propped up next to the Beer Nuts
display in Mark's Lounge. Someone keeps playin' "The Heat Is On" by Glenn
Frey. I hate Glenn Frey. I hate him and all the rest of the Eagles.
All around me are the sounds of my co-workers yapping it up and tossing 'em
down. We descend on this tavern nightly - clutching our paroles, maddened
with thirst, looking for any good reason to laugh at ourselves. We don't
need Glenn Frey advising us on the heat. It's hot, we realize. It's hotter
than a cobra's dick. It's all brains afire and radioactive crotches and
smoldering men piled high at the waterhole. That old factory labor in the
middle of July is all you'll ever need to greet the heat. What gets most of
us through is the knowledge that when it's all over there will be several
tall cold ones aimed straight for the windpipe.
Up strolls a guy from the truck plant in a "Mark's Lounge" softball jacket.
I hate softball. "You've gotta tell 'em about the barbed wire," he says.
This guy routinely mistakes me for a writer. I believe he's seen my name
printed somewhere. "You've gotta get that in your paper. Tell 'em about the
goddamn barbed wire." I give a slow nod. "They should know," I reply. This
always seems to make him feel better.
As long as I've known this man, the only topic we've ever discussed is the
barbed wire fence that surrounds the truck plant. Plainly, it must annoy the
hell out of him. Others moan about the overtime or the boredom or the rotten
humidity, but with this guy, the conversation never varies. Always the
barbed wire. "It doesn't make any sense," he will say. "The barbed wire
always faces *in*. The shit's pointed right down our throats. They don't
wanta keep others out, they wanta *keep us in*!"
He's right, of course. And here I'd always figured that that the barbed
wire was just so much precautionary neckware strung around the grounds to
ward off would-be Empire looters. Just the Corporation's paranoid way of
pissing on its boundaries. You never know who might try to drop by and
pilfer the cookbook.
Silly me. Just one look will tell you that GM must have designed their
security fencing with one guarded eyeball on their own work force. Maybe
they believe we're all double agents - plotting to swap the recipe for our
cherished Chevy Blazer military vehicle with a carload of Russians parked on
the dark side of the train yard. The ingredients of Ronnie's new Death
Wagons, even up, for ten cases of Stroh's.
Maybe they live in fear that one hot August night we'll be smitten with
road fever and roam our bunions elsewhere. We'll all toss down our gloves,
rub axle grease on our faces, load up our coolers fulla car stereos and
carburetors, and flee over the wall. "Warning! We Command You Rivetheads to
Halt!" (the shriek of gunfire and Glenn Frey records.) "Halt Immediately or
No More Microwave Popcorn for Six Months!!!"
Maybe there is nothing to it at all. Maybe GM strung up all this confounded
barbed wire just to give us Midnight Plowboys something to chaw on between
the Beer Nuts and swizzle sticks, the long wait for death and the heat to go
off.
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I must tell you about the mammoth electronic message board they've
positioned right next to me at my job. I'm sure that someday soon it will
drive me completely mad.
The message board hangs about twenty feet away from me and blinks all day
and all night long. GM sprang for only ten of these boards, and wouldn't you
know it, with all of the acreage they have around this place, they just had
to point one right at me. The messages range from corny propaganda to
motivational pep talks. From birthday salutes to abstract gibberish. (One
day, the board kept flashing the phrase "Happiness Is Horses." Alongside the
phrase was a large computer rendering of a horse's head. If I knew what it
all meant, I would tell you.)
The first day the board went into operation it flashed one single message
the entire shift. They never erased it. It was there when I arrived and it
was there when I fled at 2:00 a.m. The message? Get ready, theologians:
"Squeezing Rivets Is Fun!" Can you believe it?
Imagine you worked for the sewage department and they erected a giant neon
sign right next to you that blinked nothing but "Shoveling Turds Is Fun." Or
that you were a shoe clerk and you were forced to stare all day at a
ten-foot billboard insisting "Smelling Feet Is Rapture." What would you do?
I know what *I* did. I cut me up a hunk of cardboard, took a red crayon,
and etched down the letters "cked." Then I crammed a bunch of tape to the
back of my creation, stood on the worker's picnic bench, and slapped those
four letters over the "n" in "fun." I'm a stickler for accuracy. My proud
correction stayed up there for about three hours, until a guy in a tie
ripped it down amid a chorus of boos.
Now listen, GM. I have a fair idea of what I think is fun. Taking in a
ball game is fun. Listening to rock-and-roll is fun. Behaving like an idiot
is fun. Having sex in a Subaru. That's fun, too. Squeezing rivets is *not*
fun. It pays the rent and keeps Fritos in our children's bellies but in no
way, shape, or form is it *fun*. Not yesterday, not today, not tomorrow.
I think next time GM should go right to the source for their information.
I'm available weekdays from 4:30 till closing. I work next to a guy with a
rodent tattooed on his arm. I install dual-exhaust muffler hangers and hit
tons of rivets. I wear blue T-shirts and am losing some hair.
If you come by, I will teach you my job. Then I will go across the street
to Mark's Lounge. I will pull up a chair at the end of the bar. I will order
a Bud and drink it slowly. It will be fun.
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UUCP: {turtlevax, resonex, cae780}!weitek!neal