I needed a job.  

I was in Columbia, MO over the summer after my third-year of college and I  needed to find a job.  I had been working in the golf pro-shops at various Country-Clubs in the mid-state for the last four or five summers, but I needed a job now where I could make some “real money”.  Don’t get me wrong, the Pro Shops were a great place to work.  I met a lot of terrific folks, and there was a lot of opportunity for “free golf”.   Especially late in the evening, my favorite time to play.

But, the pay in the Pro Shops was lousy and I knew there was no chance I’d be making a career as a “Golf Pro”.   And I needed to make some money because it was likely that I was going to be taking some time off from school to “get my head straight” and “find myself”.   Long story.  It was the Spring of 1978 and I was 20 years old. There were lots of complicated reasons why “getting my head straight” had become necessary. I was old enough to know I needed to deal with a lot of internal mayhem.  But I was too young to know then that “finding myself” would be a lifelong process. 

What I did know all too well was that as far as I could tell, I was as close to “on my own” at that moment as I’d ever been, I was a little bit scared, and I needed a job.  With my mom and dad firmly in my corner in every possible way, it’s a bit of a stretch to say I was really “on my own”.  Unlike a lot of people I knew,  I always had the comfort of knowing I had the safety net of home and family.  What I did not yet know was that I would never again return to live in my little hometown. 

I had just moved out of the dorm at the end of the school year, and into a downtown apartment in Columbia, upstairs above a pinball and jukebox service center.  It was sort of a spur-of-the-moment decision.  The other guy who lived up there was also an engineering student, and he had told me there was an open place up there.  The building was an old historic firehouse, built of white stone.  The jukeboxes and pinball machines were serviced out of the bays where the firetrucks (and before that, horse-drawn fire wagons) had once parked.  My apartment was the quarters where the firemen had slept.    There was a round plug installed in the hardwood floor, where the old fire-pole had once been.  It was about 4 feet in diameter, and a perfect circle.  For some reason when it was put in, they put the boards on the circular plug running at 90 degrees to the other boards in the floor.   So it was a little jarring to look at, and I avoided stepping on it.   In the back of my mind, I think I was a little concerned that the plug would fail, and I might come crashing down on top of an old Wurlitzer jukebox in the shop below.  

It was an oddly noisy place in the daytime, with bells and buzzers from pinball machines, and the sounds of 1978’s finest disco music blaring from the jukeboxes as they worked on those machines downstairs.   Sometimes they’d take a bunch of the old ’45’s they were taking out of rotation from the jukeboxes and put them in a cardboard box and leave it at the base of the stairs for me and the guy who lived in the other apartment upstairs.  A lot of copies of hits of the day.  Things like KC and the Sunshine Band, and Donna Summer.   At one point I think I had literally several dozen copies of “You Light Up My Life”.   That was fine with me.  It was 1978, and I really had a “thing” for Debby Boone, and thought she could light up my life any time she wanted.   Don’t judge.

But it was a relatively quiet place in the evening and i liked having time to myself to read or walk downtown to the movies.  Best of all, I could climb out of my living room window and onto the roof of the law-office next door, climb a ladder up to the roof of my building, and sit there on a blanket under the stars with my guitar and make poor attempts to play James Taylor and John Denver and Jackson Browne and Gordon Lightfoot and Cat Stevens songs while watching the lights of downtown Columbia and traffic passing on the street below.   It was glorious.  I could also look down and into the windows of Zuppa’s, the Italian restaurant across the street, at the diners who apparently had far more disposable income than I did.

The apartment was also just around the corner from Ernie’s Cafe and Steakhouse.  Ernie’s was a true icon of downtown Columbia if ever there was one.  Ernie’s had been there since 1934, and by the time I moved downtown it was the sort of place where you might go in one morning for two eggs over-easy, toast and bacon, and a cup of coffee (for about two bucks), and find yourself sitting with a lawyer, a plumber, a college professor, a landscaper, the mayor. and a confused college student.  I was the confused college student.  

So on one of my early mornings within a week or so of moving in, I got up, showered, got dressed in my fines, and ventured out confusedly to make my fortune.

I stopped to get a Columbia Tribune out of the rack and seated myself on a stool at the counter of Ernie’s.  I ordered up a breakfast and started perusing the “Help Wanted” section of the classifieds.   

I spied an ad.  “Factory Workers Needed.   Good Pay.  No Experience Necessary”.    There you go.  I took out a red Flair pen, and circled the ad.  No kidding.  Circled it in red.  Just like in the movies.  I think it was the only ad I looked at, because my breakfast had arrived, so I put away the paper and I dived in to my eggs and bacon.  

After breakfast, I got into my 1972 Vega GT, silver with black “racing stripe”.   Right.     I drove out to the outskirts of town to the address given in the ad for the factory job. 

In the parking lot, I took a minute to question my decision.   Did I really want to do this?   No.   HELL no.   But I felt like I had to . 

So, I took a deep breath and walked into the front office.   I filled out an application, and the secretary took it, took a look at me with what I thought was a skeptical eye, and said “Wait here for a minute.”   Soon a man in a short-sleeve shirt and a bad necktie came out and asked me back to his desk to talk.   

Turns out, it was a plastics plant that made PVC pipe.   I did not know it yet, but it was back-breaking dirty, smelly work and I have no shame in admitting I wasn’t really cut out for it.    But, they were short-handed and had no problem offering me a job from the cursory “interview”.  It wasn’t my stellar personal impression.  It was that I was “fresh meat”.   The man asked me when I could start.  

I said, “Any time at all.” 

He asked, “You willing to do second-shift, and maybe some overnights?” 

“Sure.”    I mean, why not?   I could sleep in, eat a late breakfast at Ernie’s, and putz around town until I had to report in at 3pm.   Perfect right? 

So he said,  “Come back tomorrow.   Shift starts at 3.  Get here by 2 to fill out some more paperwork and for a new employee orientation.  Have you got steel-toed shoes?”  

I said no, so he told me I’d have to get some.    It was the last time I ever saw him.    

I went out that afternoon and bought some “work clothes” and the cheapest pair of steel-toed shoes I could find.  As if “cheap” was a good thing. 

One of the very first things they told me when I showed up early for my shift the next day was that I would essentially be pulling “double duty” on the job they were assigning me to.   That is to say, they had me running a continuous processing machine on a production line that *normally* would have TWO people splitting the tasks. 

But they said it was “really no problem” for one person, you’d just be a little busier than normal.

They gave me a blue Hard Hat and a pair of work gloves.  Then the supervisor, whose name I cannot recall, took me out and showed me the machine line I’d be running.  It was an extrusion line for PVC pipe, and then a process to put a “bell” or flange on one end of the pipe.  While doing this job, I would be known as a “Beller”.  One who puts bells on pipe.   Hell’s bells.  

I’m sure it must have been both sad and comical watching me trying to keep up with that line.  Sort of like Lucy at the chocolate factory.  Or worse.   

First, I had to take 12 foot lengths of 10 inch PVC pipes off of the extrusion machine and cut-to-length line.  The pipe was extruded from hot PVC, then a shear ripped it to length.   Then I had to manhandle the pipes over to a “belling machine” (for putting a “bell flange” in one end.)  I had to first put them in a pre-heater, and push a button to clamp and heat, to soften one end.  Then I would take it out of the pre-heater, and literally ram the soft end as hard as I could into a hot “bell”,  to set the flange one one end.  On the bell it would clamp and “set” the bell permanently into the soft PVC. Then I had to take a sponge-stick with adhesive, smear it around in the flange, inserting a rubber gasket.  Then taking the 12-foot lengths of 10″ pipe, flip every-other one around 180 degrees so as to alternate the directions for stacking them on a pallet, and then belt-strapping them with two metal-strips to the pallet when there were 16 stacked to a batch.   When the pallet was full, you had to signal for a fork-lift to come pick up the pallet in order to clear the way for the next batch.   All while more pipes were continuously extruded and cut to length. 

I had on work gloves, but where the saw had sheared the pipe to length, there were burrs and sharp edges on the pipes.  Where that rough part of the pipe hit my arms, even through the shirt-sleeves, it nicked and scraped me up pretty good.  Within about an hour my arms were bleeding with minor lacerations all up and down.  

If you worked fast and made zero mistakes at all, you could *almost* (but not quite) get the pipe you were working on over the pallet by the time the next one was ready for pre-heating and “belling”.      As I said, there would normally be TWO people working together as a team doing this, splitting up tasks …. but I was not afforded that luxury.  The supervisor said he was trying to call in someone to help me, but that for the time being, I’d have to do “both” jobs on the line.   Good shoes would have helped. 

Dear god in heaven.   Sisyphus never had it so good.     

Thankfully, the fork-lift operator took mercy on me and would occasionally jump off his fork-lift and help with strapping the pallets.  But he also did admonish me that I would need to “pick up the pace”.  

The only thing they had insisted on, was to NOT …. under ANY circumstances, do NOT hit the Emergency Stop button on the extrusion line.   That would be bad.  VERY bad.    Unless I had lost a limb and was spurting blood uncontrollably, or if the belling machine was on fire …(apparently that happened sometimes) …. I was NOT to press the Emergency Stop. 

Emergency Stops were a bad thing.   An Emergency Stop would bring people WAY over my pay-grade to the area to figure out what had happened, why some numbskull had stopped the line …  and then with great wailing and gnashing of teeth they would have to restart the extrusion machine, which apparently was a very big deal.  

After about four hours, around 7 in the evening, my supervisor came to check.  Was everything going ok?    I said it was hectic, but I was keeping up.   He said he’d run the machine for a bit while I went and ate my dinner.  “Be back in a half-hour or less”.  

I went out into the cool Missouri Spring evening, and for the first time realized how hot it was in that plant.  I sat in my Vega with the windows rolled down, ate my bologna and cheese sandwich and a bag of Fritos corn chips, and drank two Cokes. I listened to the Commodores on the 8-Track.  “She’s a BRICK …..House.  She’s mighty mighty, just lettin’ it ALL hang out.”    Coca Cola never tasted so good.  

As I went back in to take my place on the line, the supervisor said he was “still working” on finding someone to work with me. 

I really don’t remember how much per hour they were paying me.   It was probably 2 or 3 times what I made at the Pro Shop, but the number escapes my memory.   I do remember though, that as I worked I was continually doing two things.   Cursing the day I was born, and “doing the math” to figure out how much I would be taking home.  

It went on like that for several more hours. 

A little before 11pm, and the blessed END of my first ever shift at manual labor, the supervisor came back out.   I thought he was going to maybe give me a plaque or a trophy or at least a “Job Well Done”, young man.   We’ve never had a beller as good as you!”.   

No.  

What he SAID was, “I’ve still not found anyone to help, and the third shift guy called in sick.   I need you to stick around a while and keep things going until we can get somebody in here.” 

I’m sure I looked stricken.    I WAS stricken. 

He called out, “Hey Charlie!!!  Come over here!!”

A guy came walking over from where he was standing near the time clock and employee break-room.  

“This is Charlie.  Charlie, this is…… sorry, what was your name?” 

“I’m John”. 

“Charlie, this is John.    John, Charlie’s in charge on 3rd shift.  If you’ve got a problem, let him know.   I’m going home.  See you tomorrow”.   

Then he left. 

Charlie walked off to do whatever the hell it was that Charlie did overnight.    

The PVC pipes kept coming off the machine nonstop.    

I wanted to cry, I wanted to throw-up.   

Instead, I belled pipe.    I belled the HELL out of it.  

I’d like to say things got easier.  They didn’t.    My feet hurt, my arms were bleeding, I was wobbly-legged, and I was starting to get sick to my stomach from the smell of the hot and melting plastic.  

By around 2am I was really done.    Had not seen Charlie again.  

I spent the next hour cursing.   Not under my breath …. not metaphorically.   I mean, actually screaming every foul four-letter and eleven-letter and seventeen-letter invective I could think of.    There was never a sailor that had anything on me when it came to my language that night.    I said words, and made specific constructions and combinations of phrases expressing concepts that had never before (or likely since) been uttered by anyone.    Most of it was directed at the machine itself.  But some was for my 2nd-shift supervisor.  Some was for disappeared Charlie.  Some for the Fork-Lift operator.  Some was for the nameless son-of-a-bitch that had called in sick.   But some of it was directed at my own stupid self for being in there in the first place.  

Years later when I watched the movie Full Metal Jacket with R. Lee Ermey as the Drill Sargent, my mind went back to that night at the extrusion line, and I wondered how he had been listening in to the things I’d said and taking notes.  

By 3 am, I was worn out.  Physically worn-out for sure.  But mentally, emotionally, and spiritually as well.  Toast. Kaput.  Done    After 12 hours on the job with only one 30 minute break for disco and bologna, I was done.

I hit the Emergency Stop button. 

I wasn’t spurting actual blood, but somewhere from deep within it felt like something even more precious than blood was gushing out uncontrollably from my soul, and I needed to make it stop.   

There was only one thing I knew to make it stop.    So I did that one thing. 

I hit the forbidden Emergency Stop button.  Screw it.    A red light started flashing.  Screw it.  There *may* have been a siren going off.  Screw it.    

I never did see Charlie. Screw him too. 

The 3^rd shift fork-lift operator (who was nowhere near as helpful as the 2^nd shift guy had been), came screeching up and yelled, “What’s wrong?”   

I just said …. “I’m done”.   And walked off. 

I walked over past the break room, and right out the door to the parking lot without clocking out.  I got in my Vega, spun the tires on the gravel lot, and drove off.  

About a mile or two from the plant, I realized I was still wearing the gloves and the blue hard hat. 

I rolled down the window and flung them as far into the ditch I as could.  

Then I took off those cursed steel-toed shoes and did the same thing.  

I started laughing and couldn’t stop.  

I drove bare-footed back to my downtown apartment.  In the doorway, at the base of the stairs there was a box of ’45 records.  The first one on top of the stack was Gloria Gaynor, “I Will Survive”.   I laughed out loud.  

I climbed the stairs, stripped down to nothing at all, drew up a hot bath in the tub, as hot as I could stand … and lowered myself in.   Washed the cuts and scrapes on my arms, massaged my aching feet, and just sat in there and I soaked and soaked and soaked.   By the time the water was cold and dirty, the sun was starting to rise.  

I climbed out of the tub, dried myself off and went and crashed in bed.   I had a vague notion of the phone ringing at some point, but I didn’t answer it.    By the time I woke up it was very late in the afternoon.

I fixed myself some supper and ate by myself in silence.  I don’t know why I remember this, but what I made was a Polish sausage that I had cut into about 3-inch sections and heated under the broiler in the oven.  And box of Rice-a-Roni.  The San Francisco Treat.  And a PBR. Or two.    A feast fit for a king.  Or at least, for a failed “working man”.  

I read for a while, then I grabbed my guitar and went up on the roof.  

It was a clear Friday night, and with the lights of Columbia twinkling all around and the traffic passing below me on the street I played.  James Taylor was the first thing that came out.  

“You can play the game, you can act out the part …. though you know it wasn’t written for you.”     Full stop.  

Whoa.    Thanks James.   

I resolved right then and there to do whatever I needed to find the part that WAS “written for me”.     

I drove to Mexico the next morning to visit my folks.   Dad was keenly interested in my story about the factory job.  When I told him how it had played out, he seemed at once both upset and comforting.    Upset at the factory for throwing me into something with so little training or support, and just letting me sink or swim.  Ok, letting me sink.    He really tried to be comforting to me, because I think he could tell that I was being harder on myself for my “failure” than he himself would have ever been.   I remember him questioning me about it all enough so he could understand EXACTLY what had happened.   He was especially curious their expecting me to work an additional shift with no relief, and also about my leaving without clocking out.   

He himself had worked in a factory, the AP Green Firebrick Company, his whole life.   I’ve written about his work and his dedication to that job here before.   I know he took special pride in being a “working man”, even though he spent a good portion of the last part of his working life as a white-collar worker.  He had started out as a “Fireman”, one who stoked and tended the fires in the kilns in the brick plant. 

What I would not know until several weeks later was that he taken it upon himself to make a visit to that PVC pipe factory, to talk to them about my experience there, and to insist that they cut me a pay-check for the time I had worked.   After I walked off the job, the notion of getting paid was the furthest thing from my mind. But he made them cut me that paycheck.  A paycheck which he hand-delivered to me, telling me that there was no shame in quitting a shitty job with a shitty company, and that I should hold my head high in the knowledge that I had “earned” the money I got paid for that shift-and-a-half.     

I was not so sure. 

But what I did know for sure was that his going to bat for me was an expression of his love, and that it was important to him for me to learn some kind of lesson from the whole thing.   And though I was a little embarrassed about the whole thing I loved him and so greatly appreciated his effort in doing that for me.

Back in Columbia after my short trip home to Mexico to see my folks, I settled back in to the search for a job.  One early morning a few days later I was back on the street, copy of the Tribune in hand, and headed for Ernie’s. 

I met a man at the breakfast counter that day who, as it turned out, was a horrible and despicable excuse of a man.  He was a man who LITERALLY cheated little old ladies out of their money.  And against all odds, he changed my life for the better in ways that I could not have imagine that morning over runny eggs, white toast and hot coffee.  

But that’s another story.  

Love,

John