A mind trying to recover from a night's drinking, the following
morning can and more often than not is, a black chaos-naturally, not
everybody understands this. I don't think my mother could. I lived on
York Street, on the Eastside of St. Paul, Minnesota, it was 1967, late
fall.
I heard the horn honk, it was my mother with her boyfriend,
Earnest Brandt, they both worked at Swift's Meats, in South St. Paul,
they came to pick me up, this being the 3rd month of my employment,
working for them.
No sooner thought than done, I rolled out of my
bed, in my studio apartment, flung my clothes off a hanger, in the
closet, wiped my feet on a clean rug on an unusually dirty floor, and
duplicated my morning a hundred times over, meaning, I would take the
ride to work, I worked on the Hog-kill assembly line. My mother was a
Meatpacker, she had worked there at Swift's going on twenty-two years,
Earnest her boyfriend, thirty-years.
So I took the generously
offed ride, in that, I had resolved I'd go to work today, not every day
did I come to this decision, I think I missed as much work as I worked,
in those days, and in particular at Swift's. I was nineteen at the time,
and on the road to becoming a professional drinker, some call it:
alcoholic. But I never did give it such a distaining name, back in those
days.
Anyhow, it did take me a while to get to the car, I had to
search for my apartment keys through a heap of clothes, as Ernie's face
blazed with wrath, "Where is that son of yours," he asked my mother,
Elsie. And he surely would have used stentorian tones, that vibrated up
to my apartment had my mother not been a few feet from him, but he held
his cool: not that I blame him.
I kind of new I was doomed today, I
had missed a few days this week, it was now Friday, and to be frank and
honest, every day I came in late, or not all, and with a handover, well
there it is, there was nothing left to do but fire me.
The old
man, that's what I called the Manager of our department, would be
frustrated as he was always frustrated with me, or nearly always. And
the Union, at my Mother's beck and call, and Ernie's at request, always
came running to the rescue, and saved my job, three times previously,
and this was only the end of the third month, going into the 4th month,
god forbid, it be more. But I knew the Union would try to iron things
out again, on their behalf, not on mine of course.
I worked hard,
when I worked, and it was of course always with a hindered hangover,
sometimes my teeth rattled and my head ached and sometimes the manager
marveled at that I could keep up with the strong longtime Polish and
Irish men on the line: but I was of Irish stock, and Russian stock, and
Polish stock myself, hard muscled, strong willed, stubborn, and I could
flip the back of those hogs as easily as any other longtime worker, and
these hogs weighed 250 to 400 pounds each, and their backs which ended
up being bacon, were heavy, perhaps a decent portion of that 400-pounds
of hog, and I had to cut the back out of the hog, and flip it over,
180-degrees; and you do that for eight hours see how you feel: you have
to lift them up from the iron-belt and turn them about, after four hours
no simple task.
This morning the manager had called me into his
office. There were several other people in there. I kind of expected it,
"I can't take you anymore," said the Old Manager, "you're driving me
crazy with your chaotic schedule of work, for the fourth and last time,
you're fired, fired, you make me look bad in front of my peers, get out
of my office."
I suppose my face was blank, back in those days, I
showed little emotion, and I was half under the weather to speak of,
recovering from the aftermath of a night's drunk and that so called
black chaos inside the head was stirring, what else would you expect. I
simple smiled, he was a good man, and I told myself: it's really long
overdue. I never said anything but I knew he had a wife whom was
bipolar, and once when he was in a daring mood, and asked me to take a
minute to listen to him, so he could get me to work harder one day, he
told me of all people, about his wife, indicating, I had problems, but
so did he. I'm not sure where he was going with this, but I simply
agreed to work harder that day, in a different department for him.
Anyhow, back to the manager's office, and ridding of his pest.
With
a trembling finger, the old man pointed it at the door, a sign for me
to hit the road. As he went "Ha! Ha!" laughing nearly madly.
For
me, it was not the same snowstorm, as it was for him. I was young, and
he was old. Now writing this out today, I know what it is to be old, and
I know what it is to be youth. Like him, he knew both of them, back
then. I had another forty-five years to go, but I did understand, I got
his goat. And I knew he was putting on a demonstration, perhaps to show
his strength, he was lenient with me in the past. And perchance he
needed to reinforce to his subordinates, he was in charge.
Now again, my mother and Earnest reached out to come to my rescue, they were going to talk to the Union Representative.
"No,"
I told both of them, "I don't want the Union's hot-irons trying to fix
things for me, I deserve what the old man is doing; matter of fact, he's
just doing his job, and I should have been fired long ago."
Well, to be frank, they didn't argue the point.
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