Category: A Very Short Story

My parents were always amazed at some of the jobs I landed in no short order cooks:

Lake Simcoe Ice: ice cube making racket where I ran the vertical and horizontal planing buzz saws cutting and chopping two foot by two foot by eight foot long cylinders of ice. All was abuzz in the summer months but cold as hell in the winter. One had to be very careful here as chapped lips were a huge disadvantage but a badge of honour. Our heavy parkas, our toques, our mittens and our boots drew many a stare in mid July. Mild winters were killers for this industry. Brrrr, I quit.

Macdonald’s Tobacco: Good pay! I was their chain smoker. It was an easy job for I quit at least a thousand times. Then I really quit.

AC Wickman: factory that produced diamond bits for drilling operations. My job was to smooth out the flat end of these bits removing any irregularities using a grinder. A thousand bits to a box and when that box was finished, another one miraculously appeared, then another, and another, and on and on it went, bit by boring bit. I quit.

Intercity Truck Lines: my future here could be measured as seen from the back of these 40 foot trailers. I had to reactivate my Teamster’s Union Card though with this particular job. Many of my colleagues were Maritimers with all the verbiage or lack thereof that one could handle. I couldn’t understand my foreman. A co-worker of mine would continuously rant about his 13 year old bride. I wondered if he had any roofing experience. After about a 14 month period we went on an ugly nation wide strike. Ugly in that our promised strike pay never materialized with negotiations being conducted through physical skirmishes, vandalism and fraudulent activity by the union executive and the union’s hard core members. Faster than one could say “comrade,” I was out of there, vowing never, ever to be a member of a union again. I haven’t. And I quit.

Kodak: the Eastman Kodak family had a huge plant in our city. I managed to acquire a good paying but menial job in that plant: the very bottom of the employment rung there but with a promising future nevertheless if I wanted it or, as fate would have it, so I thought. It wasn’t just a plant, more of a campus really with a number of buildings housing an array of activity from a huge storage facility where cleanliness and humidity from the elements was essential, my job, to a paper cutting floor, research labs, administration wing and recreation and messing halls. They treated us all like family there. It was the picture perfect job for someone like me. Not too physical or demanding too much intelligence. Right up my alley. I could make my rounds in record time so much so that I had a number of hiding places where I could read the paper or catch a few winks.

Funny what one remembers about working in places like this so many years ago. Not so much the job but other things. CCR was huge at this time, “Green River” was all over the airwaves and it was the 25th anniversary of the D Day landings. One of my colleagues at Kodak was a Canadian vet, not from WW2 but from the Vietnam War, which was still raging at the time. He wanted to go back! Something about male bondage, er bonding, I think, camaraderie, a hard to describe feeling as he put it. I don’t know. Perhaps the chemicals at Kodak may have been playing havoc with his mind, or he was suffering from something else. No matter. Suffice to say I gave him a wide berth. I quit because I just couldn’t picture a career at this place!

Dow Chemicals: making paint. A chemical job. And I was good in chemistry. I don’t remember too much about this place except that when I came home from work on my first Friday I soon fell asleep and didn’t wake up until Monday morning. Fantastical dreams in kaleidoscope. I think I quit!

Milkman: not too long after receiving my drivers licence, I applied for and received my chauffeur’s licence which allowed one to drive commercially. I then applied for and was accepted as a driver at Moo Miller’s Milk Emporium. They, the owners, felt that “Emporium” had a fancier ring to it than “Factory.” I kind of felt that wow: “Moo Millers” kind of said it all but they didn’t agree with me.

I had this neat little truck with open doors, a long stick shift and with a canopy of wooden cartons all filled with milk bottles, milk bags, eggs, and juice cartons of various sizes and shapes. I had a route to follow and a regular delivery pattern but then I was required to cold sell any of the inventories outside of my normal rounds. I had to be a salesman and an entrepreneur as well as a delivery man. Housewives were our target audience.

Eggs were the worst. Little did I know how hazardous this job could be.  Not just with horny housewives but those nasty juvenile delinquents in the burbs.  As I was delivering a load of milk, some of these young turds would enter my open air truck from my blind side, grab some eggs and start pelting me or my truck with egg whites. This was no yoke as, in addition to explaining the shortfall in product and profits to my superiors, I also had to clean off the truck before I returned to the factory. I mean, emporium. As anyone who has had their house egged during Halloween can tell you it is extremely difficult to clean dried egg whites and yokes off of any surface. While there may have been some fringe benefits to this job, I quit.

 

 

 

 

I had to work and I had a multitude of jobs in those days as there was no paucity of opportunities for someone who wanted to work. Job descriptions were succinct, resume’s non existent:

“Wanted: healthy young males required for hard physical labour. No experience necessary. We will train. References not required: Call 555-5555. Note: Personnel with their own sledge hammers will be considered first.”

“Wanted: dish washers, waiters, waitresses, for a new catering service located in the west end. Uncle Sam’s Catering Service need’s you. Call 555-5555. First come, first served.”

“Wanted: Godfather’s Window Cleaning business is looking for some bright young individuals for our new start-up window cleaning company. Call 555-5555. Acrophobians need not apply. Transparency is crucial. Remember: at the Godfather’s window cleaning business: “We Wipe em Out.””

On and on it went. Get fired one day and have a job the next. It was that simple, that easy. In those heady non Internet, non Social Media and non Social Justice Warrior Days, no one gave a rat’s ass about political musings, posturings, leanings or hurt, frayed feelings.  As long as you could breath and had some smattering of workable English as in: “fucking pitch asshole,” you were hired. Unions ruled the roost, scabs were scattered. The working man was king. White collar was for whusses. You could progress upward if you had the smarts and ambition…

…For all of that horrendous boredom and its corollary of nightmares, I made many friends. One in particular I will never forget: a black guy of about the same age as me. Jonas Jackson I seem to recall was his name.  Black he may have been and from a very different background than I for he grew up in the inner city while I was a product of the burbs. In those days, Blacks were Blacks and Whites were Whites and never the twain shall meet but in those Orange protestant fuelled racist days of that particular city, Catholics like me were considered shit.  Except on that social ladder of shit in that city of shit, Black shit was considered slightly more shittier than Catholic White shit – about one or two rungs down I would guess. And if you were Black and a Catholic to boot, you were considered to be social diarrhea on that shit scale on the social shit ladder of that shit city.  

Circumstances were bred as a manner of chance, of timing, of birth and not choice for our family was as dirt poor as his. He wasn’t even Catholic. Baptists I think. No matter for during those heady, hot, and humid late August summer days we were a tag team in gathering those pods. He was Stan Laurel to my Oliver Hardy, Lou Costello to my Bud Abbott.  His was an intelligent wit hidden by clownish antics and a machine gun delivery once you got him going.  He had us all in stitches and while I do not consider myself to be an individual of high wit or higher humour for some unknown reason we clicked as friends and were able to play off one another and have a bundle of laughs, all the while continuing to service those pods with the great unwashed.  It was great fun and he was, or is, if he is still alive, a great guy.

Racism? It was evident in those days. It was really a product of upbringing and the environment of the day where ignorance bred contempt.  I can remember, years later, when my twin boys were attending a private day school in Hampshire England.  I was on exchange with the Royal Navy at the time living in a small English town in the South Downs area of that home county.  My boys were about 5 years old. One spring day all of the parents were invited to watch the students partake in an afternoon athletic fete, as they called their fairs over there.  We attended and when one of my sons saw his mom and dad he ran over to us all excited for he had made a new friend, as he told us. We were so pleased.  

“Where is he?” we asked him eagerly? He pointed to an area at the side of the playing field.

“Over there” he said to us. “He is wearing the red hat.”

We looked, astonished and somewhat surprised of our son for the boy in question was Black: the only Black boy in the whole playground, wearing a red hat. That to me said it all.  Innocence is color blind.

Alas, summer and the fair ended on Labour day. We said our goodbyes, promised, but lied, to keep in touch and off we went, back to school and the rules of fools. In my case I gave it a good try but quit two weeks after school started. I had my junior matriculation or high school in pedagogical parlance. Why do they complicate things so with words like that?  Pedagogical! What does pedagogical mean anyway? Who thought that one up?  I looked it up! Pedagogical: of or relating to a pedagogue or pedagogy.” That helps! Jonas would know. Thinking about it now only makes me goggy. Perhaps it was a term that arose out of that Catholic priestly liturgy to describe one’s actions in front of alter boys – but I digress.

 

 

…No job? No problem. Within a nano second I had a job as a Shiller. I didn’t know it at the time but shilling was, is, highly illegal. The main thrust of this was to work with a promoter of household goods, a real barker or Grifter. Those Barkers barking their chop and dice machines, cutting boards, chamois, polishers, waxes, anything that would make the business of housework easier.  My job was to go into the audience and at a predetermined agreed upon time, usually just at the end of the presentation, I would yell out: “I’ll take one.” And before you could say “sham wow” everyone took my lead and scrambled for a piece of the action. It always worked. I did have to disappear, make myself scarce, and not come back to the presentation booth until the crowd had dispersed. It was a risky business, yet a seemingly innocent way to make a buck. One had to be very discreet so as not to attract unwanted attention, especially with returning customers. I wore a wide variety of hats, different coloured shirts, sun glasses, normal glasses, even wigs if my boss thought it was necessary. My undoing was a police constable who was very observant and very good at his job.  He took me aside after one of the presentations, told me that I was very good indeed at what I did but to get the hell out of there before he charged me with fraud and public mischief.  I left and that was the end of my glorious days as a gangster.

What now? In what seemed to be another nano second I had a job on one of the fair’s rides.  It wasn’t a thrill ride per se but a cable ride that took people across the fairgrounds, from one end to the other, at a height of about 200 feet. The “SkyView” I think it was called. It was new, it was neat and it was boring work. But it was a job. What did I have to do?  When the cable car or passenger pod came into dock with the terminal at either end of the fairground it was our job to grab the leading edge of the pod and pull it on to another parallel track where it would stop, settle, and then allow us enough time to unload and reload the “great unwashed,” our code name for the paying public. It was hideously boring work.  And 12 hour shifts to boot.  One had to become very creative in a job like this one to wile away the time. I was very lucky in this regard being very disciplined in my work. I could revert to a Zen like state of mind all the while ensuring the safety of the paying public. The looks I received, when I could recall them of course, was a sight to behold: quizzical, weird looking stairs at my glazed eyeballs, the robotic movement of my body as I opened and closed the doors and followed the tracks to offload or on-load these morons.  Silent, no words, no greetings just thoughts of “get off the effin car you stupid idiot” – or something like that. It was the only way one could survive in this mind numbing environment.  I did scare the little ones. 

“Mommy,” I could hear them say “look at that man’s face. He is really, really scary” 

At night I used to have nightmares of this ride with the endless pods of ingratiating people. Pod after endless pod coming straight for me. The great unwashed, faces hideously focused on me as they came into the terminal.  At first they were happy smiling faces giggling with sheer delight with the ride.  Then, while turning toward me, their faces would transform, expanding and contracting, like play dough caricatures, into devilish looking evil gargoyles, or worse, satanic griffins waiting to devour me into their gaping mouths.  It was a terrifying dream as the line of pods grew out to infinity. Pod after pod: hundreds, thousands, millions of them, coming straight at me.  There was no end in sight. I could hear myself scream, and then wake up in a cold sweat: panting, palpitating, and gasping for breath.  It was horrible…

…The same was repeated at the other two booths. I now had six kettles full of delectably delicious, oily and greasy yummy burgers. Mmmm mmmm good.  Off I went, careful not to give anything away as to what had just occurred. Down the ramp pulling that wagon as stealthily as one could pull a wagon stealthily that had five cloth covered kettles on it. One had to be very careful here as the exit ramps were situated in such a way that two 90 degree turns were required to navigate one’s way from the concourse level of the stadium where the fryers were located to the ground below. The very first time I did this I courted disaster.  As I turned from the bottom of the first ramp into the first 90 degree turn and its transition to the second ramp the wagon tipped over.  I was going too fast. The kettles rolled and clanged and rolled and clanged, scraping metal against concrete, a sound akin to a cat’s claws scraping down a blackboard, and rolling along the concrete walkway. The burgers fell out onto the cement ramp. Some of them were so firmly cooked as to roll down the ramps on their sides, turning wildly from left to right, out of control, then twirling rhythmically like a top before collapsing and plopping face down on the concrete surface of the ramp. I was a sight to behold running after these wayward, vagabond burgers: cursing hard and picking them up, collecting them then throwing them back into the kettles while at the same time wiping my greasy, oily hands on my pants, licking my fingers in a juicy disgusting fashion. After a while it became difficult to grasp these slippery burgers.  Lucky for me I was wearing dark coloured pants.

Finally, after a conscious, concerted and panicky effort, I managed to collect all of the burgers and redistribute them into the respective kettles. Covering them up I continued my pace back to the concession stand but in more of a determined and deliberate manner. Returning, stealthfuly, I immediately placed the kettles into the walk in freezer, or fridge awaiting the first call of the day for more burgers.  With the call from the cook they would be placed inside the concession on the floor but beside the grill but in such a manner that when they went on to the grill the paying public had no clue as to the life cycle of our delicious charcoal broiled burgers. I’m sure I saw some customers spitting or picking something out of their mouths after taking a bite or two of those burgs. 

Yes, the charcoal broiled burgers at the concession stand were the best in the whole wide world!

But that wasn’t a reason for my dismissal. No, no! By this time, my third summer at this stand, at this fair, I was considered to be the head “bus boy.” With that came a certain amount of responsibility but without the requisite pay raise. After two glorious summer fairs I was till only making about a buck an hour.  I decided to take action. Lecturing the other three bus boys as to our financial situation and badmouthing, cussing the owners, we decided to walk off the job at shift change when all four of us would be on duty at the same time. We would walk across the roadway in front of the stand and sit on our greasy butts on a grassy knoll refusing to do any work until we had received a pay raise. At first no one took notice of us lowly bus boys. But as the garbage bins began to overflow and the condiment stations ran out of condiments, the supervisor started screaming for us. We just looked and laughed. Taking notice of us she walked over to where we were sitting and ordered us back to work.

“Not very likely” I retorted. “Not until we get a pay raise.”

After about an hour or so one of the owners showed up. He discussed the situation with the supervisor, occasionally looking in our direction.  As the conversation progressed one could ascertain his impatience with us and his anger in the manner in which the business end of his stogey remained red hot.  He just stood there, his hands on his hips, his feet apart, his fat belly hanging out and over his belt and his puffy cheeks aglow with each and every draw on that stogey.  Agitated, yes, and the more agitated he became the more perfectly concentric smoke rings he drew. Finally, he stomped out his stogey and stomped over toward us:

“Morrison” he yelled

“Yes.” I countered

“You’re fired.  Collect your things and get the hell out of here. I don’t want to see you ever again on this site. Understood? The rest of you get back to work. “

And with that my illustrious career as a bus boy came to a glorious end.  I collected my things, my pay and told anyone who would listen about those charcoal broiled burgers.  But it didn’t matter…