Tag: jobs

Go West Young Man…5

…My routine after work and after supper with my sister and her partner never really varied that much. After a very long walk in the rain, I would hit a local fast food outlet and gorge myself on the standard acceptable food groups of the day: hamburger buns… carbs, hamburger patty… protein; cheese…dairy; fried onions… vegetables, french fries…carbs and starch; topped with mayo…egg whites; relish and mustard…sodium, sugar. It was always the same routine.  Livin the life.

I never met anyone other than family and Sandy the whole time I was out there. I just remember being very lonely while walking up and down those downtown streets at night and in the rain, the mist, the drizzle, the light rain, the light mist and the light drizzle amid the high rise apartments and sky high business skyscrapers, alone with my thoughts and a weird habit of conversing with myself while walking to keep myself company. It didn’t really matter being considered a nut-zo in a city such as this as the streets were almost always deserted. During the day the mice came out to play in the liquid sunshine of course, scurrying about as the city seemed to come to life but at night the place resembled a ghoulish, grey coloured morgue: eerily dark as only Hades himself could appreciate except for the glint of the dull yellow or faint orange glow of its street lights. The inhabitants seemed to be nearly dead and laid up, one on top of the other, in their individually marked trays or cocoons called apartment blocks.

After a couple of months I had had enough. I quit my job and returned home.

The west end of that city appears much the same today as it did 55 years ago.

It still rains. A lot!

Take This Job and…8

Suddenly, we were interrupted by another employee. Without hesitation George yelled.

“How’s she going lad?” The young man waved in acknowledgment then left the room. We wouldn’t have been able to hear him anyway, with all the racket coming from the cheezie making machine.

“Who’s dat?” I asked, expecting the outcome, shortly

Dat’s John.” George offered

“Don’t tell me, don’t tell me. Dat’s John “the giant” Gallant?” For he was a big man.

“No” George said. “Dat’s John Hillside”

“Ah yes” I added “Gallant…from up on the hillside?” I beamed

“No, just John Hillside!” He looked at me, quizzically, suspiciously, as if I was from another planet.

Okay! I give up. But enjoyable really, Maritime logic of a down homer and the personal philosophy of my co-worker George.

George was known to his mates as George “the cheese head” Gallant because back home his family made a cheddar cheese as a side operation on their potato farm.  Perhaps that is why George was attracted to this job. Fate!

The next day I was on my own. No more George. It was an easy job I must say and by noon I had it down cold. I did miss the conversation with George as those cheezies came down the tunnel to the barrels.  Standing there, sampling and chomping away to my hearts content, watching the world of cheezies go by. Every now and then one of the guys from shipping would come over and grab a handful of cheezies out of the barrel to take back to the loading dock. This became a regular occurrence.

I also had my fair share of cheezies. The only downside to all of this is one had a wicked orange stain around the lips, on the hands, fingers and down one’s shirt and pants. The stain was very difficult to get out, much the same as dried egg whites and yokes. And that machine. A work of mechanical art I can tell you. Yet after a while the novelty of this operation began to wear off and my restless nature was beginning to take hold again. I was beginning to see myself as Charlie Chaplin in “Modern Times.” I could envision being caught up in the gears of the contraption and turning into some monstrous cheezie. I am sure they could make a horror movie out of this meme.

Take This Job and…7

…”So now da corn meal gets heated up into dis soup den, and dis is da best part, she gets sucked out down dis here tube to dis here manifold where she gets pushed into dese 10 holes in da wheel here den is fired through and when she hits da cold air temperature on da udder side expands and curls up like a Newfy fart then gets cut up by dis here blade to fall into dis here tray. Each piece here is da same

“Wow” I thought. Unbelievably simple yet effective. Genius really. There they were. Perfect cheezies, slightly curled at both ends to resemble small edible canoe shaped puffs of cheese coloured corn.

“I know, I know what yer tinking.” George was getting excited. “How do dey become orange in colour? Now dis is da second best part.”

He ran over to a third panel, punched two green buttons and all of a sudden this long hollowed out tube like tunnel begins to rotate, somewhat like a cement mixer on a cement truck. On one side are three small chutes and George, overly excited now, pours some salt, oil and orange cheeze powder into these chutes separately.

“Dese mixtures are made up separately” he tells me. Over here in dese tree bins. Marked and labelled, dey are da ready mixed cement? Ha, dat’s a joke, just kidding. You do not do anyting. Dey are made up for you. It’s our secret recipe, trade secret. Just like da Colonel” he beams. He was so full of pride.

“Okay,” I was impressed at the sheer simplicity and effectiveness of this operation

Watching now as the tray holding the individual pieces of cheezies fills then dumps its load into the long tube like barrel. The cheezies seem to fall through the tunnel, up the side walls, falling down again and with the centrifugal force make their way to the end but not before passing through a bath of salts, oil and deep orange liquid cheese, which has been heated to a consistency to allow it to be sprayed all over the insides of that drum.  Amazing.

Finally, George, standing at the end with a large and round stiff hard cardboard 45 gallon container with a clear plastic bag insert, where the individual cheezies fell.

“You just stand dere watching da entire operation unfold in front of you. Da nice ting about all of dis is you get to sample da cheezies as dey come off dis unique but magnificent assembly line.  You never have to bring in a lunch, I tells ya”

George stayed with me for the entire day, ensuring I knew every aspect of the operation. It was easy: really, really easy. The main ting, thing, was the physicality of lifting and dumping 10 bags of corn meal into the hopper.  Everything else ran itself.

George and I just stood at the end of the tunnel filling up those drums with cheezies.  We chatted the whole day, chomping away as we talked. He told me about his cousin Bill Gallant, who was married to another distant cousin of his, Gladys Gallant. And a few of his mates, Frank, Raymond and Fred Gallant, who all came to the big city with George to make their fortune, at this Humpty Dumpty potato chip factory?? Or Intercity Truck Lines, or in roofing. Oh yes he told me, most of the shipping and receiving guys here are from his home county, all Gallants. Even the women working the potato assembly lines are Gallants, either by marriage Gallants – or not Gallants, or from away Gallants.

“Man, you have a big family” I told him. He looked at me with a serious and puzzled look on his face.

“Family?? No, no, no we are not family, not related in the least.”

What? Then he told me about some of his friends. There is Bill “Bologna” Gallant. He got his nickname cause he got caught stealing a tube of bologna many, many years ago. The name stuck. There’s Mary “kiss the cod” Gallant. Her dad was a cod fisherman., inshore like.  Gerry “the greaser” Gallant cause he worked in a garage with his dad. Then there’s Harry “the foreshore” Gallant cause he worked in a marina back home. Finally Don, “from out of town” Gallant cause his family moved to the county when he was a toddler.

“How long ago was that?” I asked

“About 35 years ago.” He said. “He’s not a homer so the nickname “out of towner” stuck…

Pitcher Perfect…5

…My dad worked there until his death in 1971, about 8 years. He loved this job: worked right downtown in the heart of the city and even won some favour and recognition with a few promotions. Just when things were finally improving financially for him, and with his oldest daughter being engaged, he dropped dead of congenital heart failure at the young age of 54.  Of course he loved his Pilsner, his Buckingham’s and did little exercise in his later years except by getting up off of his butt to change the television channel.

Sitting there with my mom on that stoop on that summer evening of 1968, the excitement of my circumstances just seemed too trivial in comparison. I immediately got up off of the step, went into the house, found my dad sitting in his chair and gave him the biggest hug I could muster. I told him how proud I was to be his son and how much I loved him!

The next day and the days after that next day at work were gruesome. I may have been making three dollars and forty five cents an hour but no amount of money could compensate the physical pain and misery of that job. Shovelling gravel into those inanimate buckets, hour after hour, day after day, for the hottest summer on record was pure unadulterated torture. I was dreaming of them.  My bucket list! The only sound heard, besides Zal’s taunts for more “fucking pitch” being the grunts and groans from our bodies and the huffs and puffs of our laboured breaths with every shovelful of gravel taken.  Sweat just poured down every crease and crevasse of our beings. Taking stints up on the flat roof itself provided no relief with a hot glaring sun beating down mercilessly on our lithe bodies.  The humidity was a killer. The hard physical work and the potential for dehydration made it harder and harder to keep our pants above the waist.  As roofers we had the plumber’s crack in spades. It was kind of comical watching everyone on the crew continuously pulling up on their pants or tightening their belts as if stricken by a nervous twitch.  On top of that, by the end of the day, our calloused hands were the worse for wear as newly formed blisters would crack then burst, then sting, as the flayed skin would shed and coagulate with the pus and the blood, which became an ugly brownish red in colour.  The soles of our work boots expanded vertically, about 2-4 inches, as the tar and gravel stuck to the undersides of our boots as we walked around by the area of the hot tar kettle, the conveyor belt and the adjacent pile of gravel. It would take us some time to scrape the gooey mess off of our boots at the end of the day. We felt so tall in our high gravel heels! 

End of the day? Sore and bruised and filthy dirty in sweat and dust. The long ride home on the bus and subway, lost in thought, dead to the world and praying hard and fast for rain on the morrow or watching the clock, counting hard the seconds, minutes and hours before the whole miserable routine would repeat itself. Please, dear God, let it rain tomorrow for when it rained roofers didn’t work. It was Murphy’s Law and not God’s law that ran the day for it only rained on the weekends.

The summer finally ended.  I was in great shape physically, well tanned and had a few bucks saved in the bank. I helped out at home financially, naturally, but I didn’t have to give the majority of my earnings to my parents as I no longer went to the Catholic private high school for boys. I thank God for that! Looking back on that hot and humid summer, my first real well paying job, I could have easily said that life was good. In some respects that summer was Pitcher (sic) Perfect.

 

Zal is dead. His crew is gone. The Maritime Foreman died relatively young. No one could understand his eulogy.

My uncle’s roofing business no longer exists. Jimmy Hoffa disappeared never to be seen or heard from again.  Hal Banks was discredited for corruption and is also dead. 

Everyone has the right to work, union or otherwise.

Pitcher Perfect…4

…Excitedly, I told them the whole story. They were very pleased for me yet I sensed a bit of disappointment, sadness, or melancholy perhaps from my mother as I related the story, especially about my new hourly wage.  My pop just seemed to take it all in stride. Later, on the front stoop, alone with my mother, I questioned her about my bit of good news.

“Are you not happy about this” I said.

“No, no, no, not at all, I mean of course I am happy for you” she reassured me.

“Then what’s the problem” I pressed

“It’s your dad” she said. “Sometimes I feel so sorry for him.  This is nothing against you, don’t get me wrong, but he has been working all of his life and all he has to show for it now is ninety dollars a week. While I am very happy for you, as I am sure your Dad is, it just seems so unfair to me that you are making almost one hundred and forty dollars a week – in this your first real job.”

Suddenly, I wasn’t too excited any more. It did seem so unfair. I was so proud of my dad. He did work hard all of his life. It wasn’t his fault that circumstances beyond his control dictated the path he would take in life.  He was a product of the great depression, a World War Two vet, fought for us and his country then had to make do with whatever non skilled work there was in the big city after the war.  He and thousand upon thousand of other vets were vying for too few good paying jobs. And while he did luck out as a junior accounts shipping and receiving manager for a very large aerospace company, he became a victim of the vagaries of the cold war with its politics and policies and geopolitical mumbo jumbo and smoke and mirrors.  What was lost in translation in all of this political posturing was delusion and the reality that thousands upon thousands of highly skilled professionals, skilled and non skilled workers, lost their jobs in what was to become the city’s, the country’s “Black Friday,” a precedent setting day of a bargain basement deal in the global aerospace industry. The country bowed to international pressures and cancelled a highly sophisticated interceptor aircraft that out performed anything that currently existed or was even planned for.  The aircraft was well ahead of its time and that was its problem.  No, Black Friday, 1959, was not a day of bargain basement deals but a day of financial mourning.  Fourteen and a half thousand direct jobs were lost that day with another fifteen thousand indirect jobs gone that were tied to the company’s supply chain.  On top of the financial and employment woes the country lost a great deal of intellectual property and prestige as well as a great many aerospace engineers and technologists as they ran for the exits never to return again.  My dad was no engineer but no less vulnerable as a human being as these highly skilled men and women. 

I never thought of money, really, or the disparities of a working wage or the harshness, unfairness of life until that very moment.  A sixteen year old shouldn’t have to think about these things. To me it was all a lark. We were living the life.  Our school, the priests, the nuns, my friends, sports, play, have a good time, smokes, and the movies and on and on she goes. I never contemplated where or how we had the means to have a house in the burbs, a car, food on the table, clothes, or the ability to attend the private catholic high schools at St Basil’s and St Mary’s. Never to want for anything! Always excited and never to be let down at birthdays or at Christmas. Looking back on those days now I marvel at the financial ingenuity and discipline of my parents.  How did they do it while managing a host of demands from us kids and responsibilities on such a meagre wage?  How did they get by without granite?

Even at a young age in 1959, I sensed that something terrible had occurred to my dad. After all, I remember one of my boyhood friends, “Nibs” Van Vlyman, left our neighbourhood suddenly with his family for California. I couldn’t connect the dots, of course, and I wasn’t exactly sure what it was that happened. To their credit, my Mom and Dad kept this away from us.  We did not know or fathom how close we were as a family to losing it all, the house, everything.  

My Dad could not afford to be choosy. He had to do anything and everything that came his way to make ends meet. Digging ditches, yes, working for the municipality as a manual labourer, yes, an Orderly in a mental hospital? Yes. Praying hard? Yes. I can clearly visualize his big boots and canary yellow rain gear drying out in the furnace room in our basement. I remember our teachers stressing to us all in those days that if we didn’t get an education all we could hope for in the future was to be a ditch digger for the city.  Imagine my thoughts and horror, shock and utter sadness, in seeing my own father doing just that.  It wasn’t that my dad wasn’t smart or lacked education. No, he was very smart. He was just a product of his times, a discarded remnant of his government’s folly. Not a real person just a statistic.  Yet he was a member of the greatest generation this country ever had.  It is no wonder to me, or surprise, that he threw all of his war medals into the city’s harbour.

After a few years of doing many manual and soul destroying jobs, he did manage to get a junior position at one of the country’s major banks. He acquired this position through his brother-in-law, who convinced him to swallow his pride and accept the job. Being a bank it didn’t pay all that well but it was a living wage and being a bank it was very secure.  In those days, bankers, especially investment bankers, were not the rock stars or the amoral financial wankers that they are today. At best or worst they were extremely conservative, boring and pedantic…