BOBBY WAYNE GETS A JOB
By John Dawson
The ideal thing, on a beautiful sunshiny day like today, would be for me to be all up and at ‘em - uplifted and smiling, beamin’ benevolently on my fellow travelers in life and baskin’ under the idyllic expanse of the azure skies. It’s a carefree kind of day where you go cavortin’ in the park, flyin’ a kite, laughin’ merrily and bein’ devil-may-care until you’re pooped out. A day like today brings that out in me, even though so far I’m just sittin’ here.
Yep, this mornin’ I wake up to what figured to be just another joyless day writin’ about Pineville, and I open the window and bonhomous Old Mr. Sun beams in and bathes me in his roseate – if it ain’t too much of a cliché to say it - glow. A cool breeze blows in and before you know it, I got a bluebird sittin’ on my shoulder singin’ Zip Ah De Doo Dah at me. I’m squeezin’ fresh orange juice – if you call oranges picked in Honduras
Literature tosses us curveballs sometimes though, so basically you can forget all that because even though like I say it’s a Donna Fargo day, I’m not talkin’ about me. I’m fixin’ to tell you about Bobby Wayne, and it’s my sad duty to report that like Buddy Holly, it’s rainin, rainin’ in his heart.
He – Bobby Wayne, not Buddy Holly - is slumped out on the back steps with the unmistakable look of a man who’s got to do somethin’ he don’t want to do and he’s exhausted his brain tryin’ to think of a way to get out of doin’ it. He’s chain-smokin’ Camel Filters and sloshin’ down Pabsts and it ain’t hard to perceive the poor poop’s got a powerful fury ransackin’ his troubled bosom. He’s scowlin’ and mutterin’ to himself and every once in a while he works up a spiteful facial contortion and spurts out a bitter “Ha!” to the world at large. It’s hard to watch the poor man.
He’s snorkin’ up and expectoratin’ globular mixtures of mucous phlegm – if that’s the polite term for it and I spelled everything right - which directed, boom like a cannon, right at the ants, caused rain in their hearts too, because he’s always had a dead-accurate spittin’ aim and no ant, devil-may-care as he or she may be on a day like today, wants to all of sudden find himself swimmin’ in a flyin’ sphere of fetid spit. It makes ‘em antsy.
Have you ever had one of those deals where you get a particular word ping-pongin’ in your head and can’t get it out? You repeat it to yourself over and over and over until it starts to sound funny and doesn’t make sense any more and you feel like an idiot? Bobby Wayne was havin’ a spell right now, and this particular word had started small about twenty minutes ago but had worked its way up his cerebral ladder – didn’t take it long – and was rattlin’ around in his poor skull like a bb in a can of Krylon.
Job! Job. Job! Job! Job Job Job! Job! Job! Job. Job! Job! Job! Job!
And Sears and Roebuck - jointly and severally like Perry Mason says - are the real villains in the dire despicable deal. After all, somebody’s got to be the scapegoat when disaster befalls – Leviticus says that, not me - and Bobby Wayne’s blamin’ the merchandise moguls for his current crisis. Second on his Enemies List - third if you count Sears and Roebuck severally - was Karen Sue next door. Kenny Bob works out at PCP and he’d blabbed at her that they had some openings down there.
Naturally, since women worldwide are in a conspiracy to make men go to work – Junior’s theory, not mine - Karen Sue blabbed to Trina. Trina, affixin’ the bait on the hook, offhandedly mentioned it to Bobby Wayne.
Bobby Wayne don’t even like the word “job” to be mentioned in the house in the first place. It makes him uneasy. The foreboding implication of a real job – as opposed to a broader, more philosophical discussion of ‘em – is makin’ his cerebral cortex thump against the inside of his cranium like an overloaded Kenmore.
On the heels of that, as Florsheim might explain to Thom McAn, next day here comes Sears & Roebuck’s catalog in the mail, and it didn’t take Trina but about three seconds to skyrocket her diabolic agenda from point (a) to point (e):
(a) Sears catalog has things I want;
(b) But pillow shams cost money;
(c) Which I don’t have any of because Bobby Wayne doesn’t have a job;
(d) But there are openings at the plant. Hmmm…
(e) Hmmm-mmmm!
So all week long she and her new cronies Sears and Roebuck - Dick and Alvah to their friends - are chasin’ him around the house, and she’s all amok half the time, cornerin’ him like a cat chasin’ a crippled mouse and flippin’ and fannin’ glossied pages up in his face.
“Ooh, lookie here at this duvet, honey! Ain’t it adorable?” You’d think she was Sears’ Home Furnishings Saleswoman of the Year.
Last night, they’re sittin’ on the sofa and she’s flutterin’ the pages so fast they’re sendin’ a tempestuous rage thro’ the Fleetwood. She’s ooh-in’ at this and aah-in’ at that and hmmm’in at everything in between.
“Hey ain’t this tea caddy cute, honey? I wish we could afford it!”
She leans back and sighs in a wistful sort of way like anybody who’s ever been married to a woman will understand, and Bobby Wayne’s Trina-Delicate-Situation-Warning-Radar beeps, alertin’ him that he don’t want to get caught ignorin’ her.
“Oh yeah?”
He hadn’t caught exactly what she said, but he did know she was jabberin’ about that fool catalog again, dang Sears and his peckerwood stooge Roebuck. And hopin’ that “Oh yeah?” would be enough evidence that he’s interested in whatever she’s talkin’ about, he goes back to focusin’ on Criminal Minds, where Hotch and Rossi are scratchin’ their heads over the Catfish River Killer.
But here comes another wrackin’ cracklin’ flourish and this time she lets loose with a gasp like she just discovered the most fascinatin’ object in the history of mankind – if you can believe it - right here on page 803.
.
“Hmmmmmmm!”
Well, “hmmms” can be your pedestrian or ho-hum hmmm, like when you see somethin’ only mildly interesting, say a three-legged raccoon:
“Hmmm, there’s a three-legged raccoon,” you say.
But a hmmm can also be attention-getting – let’s call it what it really is, an imposition on the innocent bystander to interrupt what he’s doin’ and ask the hmmm’er what in the hell she’s hmmm’in at like that. Such, for instance, as when she starts her hmmm way up on high C and glissandos on down the scale, addin’ a lil’ melisma and draggin’ it out like she’s Mariah Carey doin’ somethin’ especially heartfelt.
“Hmmmmmmm! That three legged raccoon’s ridin’ a tricycle and recitin’ the Oresteia Trilogy!”
Well, you can’t answer one of these “Hmmmmmmms!” with an “Oh, yeah?” When somebody slings a big “Hmmmmmmm!” at you like that, like I say they’re demandin’ you stop what you’re doin’ – you could be curing cancer for all they care - and ask ‘em what they’re hmmmmmmmin’ about. You can’t politely sit there and let a humongous “Hmmmmmmm!” go unheeded, if you’re graspin’ my point and understand your social graces.
Bobby Wayne, about to be snared like a guileless rat in Trina’s efficacious trap – or would be if he knew what efficacious meant – sighs and turns to her.
“Dang it, what are you hmmm’in’ about?”
Snap!
For the next thirty minutes, I’m sad to report, Bobby Wayne’s life was sort of a hellish, Daliistic dream.
Trina took a deep breath – turnin’ the Fleetwood into a vacuum for a minute - shoved Sears in his face, and started pointin’ to pillow shams and bedspreads and duvets and trivets and raindrops on roses and kittens with whiskers, all of which were silently mockin’ poor Bobby Wayne up from the page. A colonial figurine salt shaker came to life and looked up and asked him what makes him so special that he don’t have to work and support his family like everybody else? She flipped another page and a merry red-breasted robin on a kitchen towel flapped his wings and tweeted “cheap-cheap” disapprovingly at him. She turns another page and a gaggle of squirrels on a red-striped kitchen curtain were pointing at him and giggling.
Her voice is bouncin’ off the walls like Heidi sayin’ hello so he hears everything two, three times. So in a trick he developed in infanthood, he crosses his eyes and starts rockin’ back and forth and he drifted off into a sort of escapist private oneirological ozone, usually a safe refuge. But when he gets there it’s full of flyin’ accessories for the home – some of ‘em have faces like the Catfish River Killer – and havin’ demonic toasters comin’ at you in your head ain’t a walk in the park.
“This sure is cute, blah blah blah,” he hears her pratin’ from far off, and she’s spearin’ a Revlon’d fingernail down on one of them coordinated bathroom sets, you know, with the lil’ rug cut out to fit the toilet and the fuzzy matchin’ seat cover deal.
“I’ve always wanted one of these to match the tile just like Nana had, honey,” she goes, nudgin’ him with her elbow and playin’ the Nana card, which he hates.
And this proceeds on, and she’s palaverin’ about this and postulatin’ on that when she pauses - women with catalogs have to calm down at regular intervals – and Bobby Wayne, hopin’ it’s over for now, tries to pick up where he left off with Hotch and Rossi who, in case you’re wonderin’ just figured out that the Catfish River Killer is probably familiar with the Catfish River area. But then she flips the page and puts her painted pink pinkie on some other pretty precious pearl.
“Wouldn’t this look peachy in the kitchen, honey?”
“Oh, yeah?”
And she goes “Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.”
We might as well get it all out on the table. The raw truth of the matter is that Bobby Wayne don’t give a rat’s patootie what color the curtains are or if the towels are two ply or five hundred ply or how that cute lil’ trivet – whatever that is - is gonna look in the kitchen or wherever it goes.
To Bobby Wayne – whom, I might add, certainly doesn’t speak for all men - the kitchen is basically a place to eat and store beer. Everything else is overkill, and he flat out doesn’t understand why the female of the planet – don’t misunderstand, he loves his lil’ Trina like Orpheus loved Eurydice – why the female of the planet needs to all of a sudden clutter up the casa with new crapola – his variant, not mine – like knick-knacks and spice racks and matchin’ thisses and matchin’ thats. It ain’t like Martha Stewart’s comin’ over.
He looks over at her – Trina, not Martha Stewart - and with a roopy croak he chokes out the five words any man with half a brain in his head knows never to utter in the vicinity of his woman.
“And who’s gonna pay for it?”
You got to hand it to Trina, givin’ the blue-eyed she-devil credit. Those were the exact five words she’d been jockeyin’ to hear, of course. She beams up at him like she’s lil’ Thomasina Edison.
“Well, baby, I’ve got an idea.”
Bobby Wayne isn’t possessed of one of the brighter minds in Pineville, and I’m gradin’ that on the curve, too. In kiddiegarden it took him an hour to figure out how to work his finger paints. But after bein’ married to her all these years he can read Trina like a large-print book in a light bulb factory and he knows what it’s all leadin’ up to… she’s gonna make him go… and…and…
Job. Job! Job! Job! Job!
“Blah blah blah out at the plant blah blah good jobs blah blah blah, tomorrow morning, blah blah, honey!”
He sits there like he’s posin’ for Edvard Munch.
The crux of the problem, unveilin’ Bobby Wayne’s turmoiled brain further for you, is that he don’t see in this lifetime or the next the need to go through all the strife gettin’ a dang job simply in order to buy doo-dads they’ve always - until Sears and his pimple-faced toady came along - done just fine without, and there’s no good reason on earth to say they won’t always continue doin’ just fine without ‘em either. It don’t add up. It don’t meet the deserted island test. None of it.
And another thing, all you have to do is shuffle down to the County once a month and look poor and they hand you money. Why mess with a sweet deal like that?
But even if he knew or cared – which he doesn’t - what a duvet, a trivet, and a pillow sham are, it’s an academic point as the Professor said to the coed. Because as a married man he’d learned early on that it ain’t necessarily about what you, the man, want.
You, the man, have to cede some of your preferred courses of action from time to time in order to keep peace with the lady of the house – to wit, Trina - which you don’t want the alternative once you’ve had a taste of it, is about the size of it.
And the piece de resistance – French for ultimate deal – is after cookin’ his favorite dinner - Swanson’s Hungry Man Fried Chicken - she takes a bath and comes out wearin’ a slinky nightie and Tabu, the universal female gesture for a woman wantin’ somethin’ from a man and preparin’ to go to any lengths to get it.
And before it was all over with – I don’t believe you need the details - he promised her he’d go down to PCP and see about a…
Job…job…job…job…job…job…job…Dummy! Dummy! Dummy! You big fat Dummy!
. So that’s why – sorry my exposition’s takin’ so long, I’m just full of filler material today - despite the aforesaid clemency of the day, Bobby Wayne’s mopin’ and slopin’ out on the back steps with a lil’ black cloud over his head like that kid in Peanuts on Valentine’s Day.
He has to get up at seven o’clock – seven o’clock – in the morning and go see some fool about this fool job madness. PCP don’t take applications after nine and from a standpoint of pure logic, like Kant for instance, it seemed to Bobby Wayne that not only are they missin’ out on a large part of the employment pool because some people like to sleep late, but makin’ applicants cow-tow to a nine o’clock deadline is like they’re already bossin’ you around and you ain’t even hired on yet. Plus, the drive all the way out there – must be six, seven miles – and they don’t even pay gas money. It don’t seem like they want to hire people too bad, and if this is how the treat their employees before they’re hired, how are they gonna treat ‘em when they are hired? Jobs are a two-way street.
And for that matter why didn’t Kenny Bob have the good sense to go to work at a pie or ice cream factory? Or a brewery? Now that would be a job you could sink your teeth into.
And another thing. He’s been takin’ his three o’clock nap for years now, and the mere idea of his peaceful daily routine bein’ thrown into disarray like that was deliverin’ a certain foreboding disquiet to his psyche. It ain’t enough they make you get up at seven o’clock and use your own gas to get there, now they’re messin’ with your REM patterns too.
Plus, Bobby Wayne knows from experience that jobs expect you to show up every day and work whether you feel like it or not. Which, in his case, has always resulted in hard feelings for everybody concerned.
He moaned a woeful sigh – imagine Tom Dooly with a toothache- and popped another pathostic Pabst. It’s only merciful to leave him there for now, too, because if I put too much more tragedy in this story it’ll be like Sylvia Plath or somebody and nobody wants that on a day like today.
Meanwhile back at the ranch – ha ha, I’ve always wanted to say that - in the kitchen I mean, Trina and Karen Sue are whippin’ the pages of the accursed catalog so fast the curtains are swishin’ and the neighbor cats are pokin’ their heads in the window to see what the deal is. They’re ooh-in’ and aah-in’ and lookie-herein’ and, well, you know what two women are like when they get a catalog between ‘em.
They’re calculatin’ how much Bobby Wayne’s first paycheck will be, then dividin’ that into curtains, duvets, trivets, pillow shams and other assorted gimcracks and whatchamacallits right down to the last thin Roosevelt . And shoot, the poor boy ain’t even gone to the job interview yet. It’s Euripidean.
Well, the next morning dawns full of promise – forgetful of the broken promises of ‘ere - and it’s another spectacular Pineville day.
The air’s as crisp as an Eskimo’s lettuce, a happy horde of hummingbirds are hummin’ their hearty lil’ hearts out by the hibiscus, and the ants out back are settin’ out for the work-a-day world singin’ “Heigh-Ho” and keepin’ a wary three eyes out for flyin’ phlegm.
Trina, after a refreshing night dreaming she was the rich and beautiful princess Searsanella, popped up out of bed like a grasshopper with a hotfoot and high-tailed it into the kitchen and got busy bangin’ pots and bingin’ pans and bustlin’ and hustlin’ up a ham and cheese omelet, flippin’ it in the air like she’s Waffle House Cook of the Month.
Simultaneously, she’s slingin’ some Pillsbury Doughboys in the zapper, sizzlin’ up some Ore-Ida Potato Buddies on the Hotpoint and smushin’ up the Minute Maid in the smiley-face Kool-Aid pitcher. She’s dancin’ and hummin’ along with the radio, jugglin’ dreams and omelets, and from one minute to the next she’s tryin’ to decide whether she wants the red striped curtains with the squirrels…they’re so cute…or what about the fluffy green ones with the cute daisies on ‘em? They’re cute too… but… the ones with the lil’ roosters and ducks are cute too...hmmm, so many decisions…but one thing for sure, the Chiefs curtains in here are going in the dumpster. And…
Meanwhile in the bedroom – regretfully reintroducing the Plath factor - it’s my sad duty to report that the Condemned Man, after a restless night, is in the final throes of a wretched nightmare. He’s in some big fluorescent office with a clipboard-totin’ cow who’s grinnin’ at him and shakin’ his hand with a cloven hoof and welcomin’ him to the firm.
He wants to get away, but he looks down and his feet are stuck in cow poop and he’s slowly sinkin’ deeper and deeper. But suddenly… the be-aproned bovine metamorphoses into who of all people but Hotch, and he’s lookin’ at Bobby Wayne with that piercing stare he uses when he’s grillin’ the UnSub or negotiatin’ his residuals.
That’s somethin’, havin’ Hotch in your dream, ain’t it? Shoot, the biggest celebrity I ever got was Reese Witherspoon cookin’ breakfast for me one time. Another time I got Shelly Fabares singin’ Johnny Angel at me on a Caribbean island, but I woke up before she even finished waitin’ and concentratin’ on me.
“Moo! Moo! Now get up. Get up. Get up!”
Bobby Wayne peeled his left eye open and shook his foot to see if he can get out of the poopy quicksand.
“Now get on up honey and take your shower and blah blah and come eat on account of today is a big day for you blah blah blah due to you goin’ and gettin’ that job, baby!”
…. job…job…job…job…job…job…job…
You know how when you’re a lil nipper and you don’t want to go to school? You turn over and moan and groan like you’re auditionin’ for a role in a pandemic-virus movie. Bobby Wayne starts writhin’ with fever, chills, headache, fatigue, ague and nausea, plus tryin’ to work up some vomit for good measure. Doin’ a darn good job at it too, havin’ had plenty of practice in the course of a lifetime spent shirkin’ anything that remotely smells like school or work and knowin’ that the more disgusting your symptoms are, the better chance you got.
Well, Trina stands there starin’ at him, hands on her hips - never a good sign in your woman - and she’s narrowin’ her eyes and furrowin’ her brow – which is hard to do at the same time, just try it - and pursin’ her pretty lil’ lips and lookin’ at him like he’s a flea-bit mongrel who just peed on her clean kitchen floor. Disdainful, you know. She sees the poor wretch is fixin’ to call in sick before he even gets hired, and the inner Napoleon that lurks deep inside all women clears its throat.
“Ok mister,” she goes in a we-can-do-this-the-easy-way-or we-can-do-this-the-hard-way kind of voice, and she goose-steps over and without the slightest hint of coquettery grabs hold of his earlobe – quite unlike the sweet little girl he married I wonder whatever happened to her - and she hauls his pathetic sorry-ass carcass – her term, not mine - out of bed like the Catfish River Killer luggin’ his latest poor girl down the cliff. She drags him hollerin’ and screamin’ – imagine the Devil reachin’ up and draggin’ you down to Hell - right into the bathroom and into the shower. She turns the cold water up full blast and sticks a bar of Ivory soap into his stunned, agape maw.
“Breakfast in fifteen minutes, honey!” And with that she shuts the door with a Roma denique vox. She starts hummin’ The Happiest Girl in the Whole USA and waltzes into the kitchen.
Well, it took about a half hour – lambs don’t prance merrily to slaughters - but pretty soon he comes out all squeaky clean and lookin’ like Jim Dandy walkin’ out of the barber shop. He may have laughin’ on the outside – which he wasn’t, I’m just tryin’ to use an aphorism or whatever it is – but he was cryin’ on the inside. The poor boy had a downpour in his heart that’d make Buddy Holly jealous.
He – Bobby Wayne, not Buddy Holly - picked and poked at his potatoes and played Tag with his ham dicelets for a while - as if dilatory tactics with pork and fork were gonna save him at this late date - and all the time Trina’s yakkin’ about new dishes this and kitchen gadgets that and blah blah blah, coldly oblivious to the Euripidean turmoil transpirin’ in his aggrieved bosom.
Desperately, he’s wonderin’ if he can introduce the topic – just for consideration and to look at all sides of the deal logically, like Kant would - of not actually getting a job, instead proposin’ maybe some possible new curtains if Junior can get a line on some. After all, didn’t Dr. Phil say just last week that compromise is key to the success of a good marriage? And…and…but it ain’t no use. He’s a dead duck and he knows it, if you’ll forgive the gruesome imagery.
She finally – after observin’ him play a ham dicelet dodgeball game to a thrilling conclusion - yanks him up, smooches goodbye on him and no-nonsense-misters his sad sack butt out the door.
Have you ever seen the old movie where the grizzled prospector’s up on the mountain with his donkey, and he’s cajolin’ the donkey to move up the narrow trail? The donkey’s lookin’ up at the narrow trail and then over to the precarious precipice, then he looks up at the trail again and then back down to the precipice again, and he’s shakin’ his head no and hemmin’ and hee-hawin’ and snortin’ and actin’ persnickety? Then the prospector whacks him over the head with a skillet. Well, Bobby Wayne could have played the mule.
He shuffles out to the Galaxie, piles in, sighs, pops a Pabst, fires up a Camel Filter, gets his motor runnin and heads for the highway, thinkin’ dark thoughts about Sears, Roebuck, Karen Sue and Sears’ mother that are too shameful for me to relate to you.
We human beings are endowed with the ability to cope with the vichyssoise of life though, and Bobby Wayne’s discombobulated brain was tryin’ to discern somethin’ decent in all this. Eventually – his brain don’t work at warp speed you know - as he’s turnin’ out onto the highway and takin’ a thoughtful sip of pensive Pabst he begins to detect some silver linings in the black clouds hangin’ over his head like the sword of whoever that was.
On the one hand, gettin’ a job would get Trina off his back with that freakin’ catalog, and there ain’t no denyin’ that’s a desirable deal. Plus, give a woman new stuff to play with and she’ll generally be in a good mood and let you alone. That’s a silver linin’ for sure.
But on the other hand, a job, he knows, involves gettin’ up at the crack of dawn and takin’ a shower, showin’ up on time, yes-sirrin’ some fool and followin’ rules, all of which have traditionally made him feel queasy if not downright nauseous. Another black cloud.
But, on yet another hand, there ought to be enough meat in there to feed Ethiopia
On the fourth hand, maybe they’ll give him enough breaks and stuff so he can relax and have a beer and a smoke to break up the monotony. Maybe a refrigerator and TV or some Playboys and video games in the break room, or some dice out back or somethin’. Maybe there’s a softball team. Or some good lookin’ secretaries. And since he’d be new, maybe the work wouldn’t be too hard, maybe just countin’ cows or somethin’, not a problem if there ain’t more than a couple dozen of ‘em. He finally had it all calculated down:
(a) Well, I’ll consider it, but I ain’t wearin’ no apron
(b) I ain’t wearin’ a hair net either
(c) I need at least twelve dollars an hour
(d) Maybe plant security stinks
(e) Maybe I can figure out a way to keep the Chiefs curtains. Truck?
So he was chewin on all the ergonomics but also wonderin’ – the practical man considers all his alternatives - what would happen if he just drove into a tree and they called Trina from the hospital and told her he was all tragically bloody and broken legs and stuff. Knowin’ Trina though, she’d probl’y tell ‘em to put a Band-Aid on him and make sure he got to the plant before nine. Then he started wonderin’ how far it was to South America .
But before too long – 7.36 miles for my cartologist readers -he wheeled the reluctant turquoise Galaxie into the parkin’ lot.
PINE COUNTY PORK & COW PROCESSORS CO.
You can’t Beat Our Meat™
Since 1959
PROUD OF OUR ABOVE-AVERAGE SAFETY RECORD
DON’T PARK IN FRONT UNLESS YOU ARE A VISITOR
COW DELIVERIES TUESDAY-FRIDAY ONLY
NO PIG DELIVERIES OR SALESMEN ON FRIDAY
~
HELP WANTED $10.00 HOUR
All employees wear hairnets and aprons for hygiene
Undercover plant security on duty 24 hours
No gambling alcohol pornography drugs video games or tobacco products permitted Random drug testing Video surveillance
Well, most of us, in our lifetimes, don’t get the chance to smell a lot of cow blood, and…
AUTHOR’S NOTE: I write for people the world over including vegetarians,
and if you’re a Vee-gan of the Universe or Sacred Cow fan or a bearded liberal or anybody else with a weak stomach for hearin’ about meat-packing plants, or, if in your reflective moments you wonder why we even have meat packing plants in this cruel world in the first place, I’m all ears and I’d love to hear about it sometime. But one strives – indeed one aspires - to please even one’s carnivorous readers so thus, I would urge all my readers – pro-cow-eatin’ and anti-cow-eatin’ - to set aside their personal differences and talk to one another, maybe gather around in a circle and sing Hey Jude. But anyway, the point is I can hardly write - about meat-packing plants I mean - without describin’ the atmosphere, and you can’t make lemonade without lemons or whatever they say.
Finishing off his Pabst – no tellin’ how long he’d be in there and he didn’t want it to get warm – Bobby Wayne shuffled on in.
Have you ever seen a meat packin’ plant in the flesh?
First off you notice The Smell. Old-timers will tell you that you get used to The Smell after while and it gets so you don’t even notice it. That may be true, but the first time you walk in you think your nose has gone insane. Nothing smells this bad, your rational brain – your Kant brain - is thinkin’, but your nose, dependable up until now, seems to think it’s in a men’s locker room with a backed up toilet and a pile of rotting skunks stuffed with limburger cheese on a hot day. And it’s not just a smell smell, you know, it’s a pervasive smell that’s so poignant – that might be pungent, I can’t remember - it makes your eyes water. I can’t think of any other way to describe it other than the time I was helpin’ Junior with his Aunt Kay’s pool and I caught a whiff of muriatic acid smack in the puss and it felt like a firecracker goin’ off in my nose. So when the old timers say you get used to it, what it means is that that their entire neurological systems have just give up.
If you’ve never been in PCP before – or even if you have, for that matter – what you see when you walk in is first, you’re in an airplane-hangar lookin’ thing – you can see the rafters way up – and it’s plumb full of worker bees in white aprons and hair nets runnin’ round on scaffolds, puttin’ cow and pig parts on conveyer belts and sloppin’ intestines and stuff all over the place. Imagine the emergency room at Pine County Hospital
The whole deal is full of slaughter machinery – unpleasant, I know, but what can I do - and they got these huge crane deals totin’ cow carcasses and pig parts on a hook. You know at the dry cleaners when they push the button and the rack deal starts spinnin’ ‘round till your stuff shows up? Well, that’s what it’s like in the plant except carcasses instead of sweaters.
These carrion conveyors, for lack of better writing, are whirrin’ and whirlin’ and swingin’ sides and shanks and shoulders and stuff until the whole deal stops and somebody whacks off a piece off whatever’s in front of him. Then it starts up again and moves down the line where it stops again and somebody else whacks another piece off it, and so on, and by the time the circuit’s done the poor whole cow’s been whittled down to short ribs.
The actual innards or viscera or guts and eyeballs and stuff flyin’ off the deceased end up in either the Organ or Refuse vats, where Omar, a polite young gentleman from Nigeria – he’s Head Mopper and Vat Apprentice – cleans ‘em out. Allah, though, ain’t too happy with Omar due to him working around all the unclean pork, which gives Omar a groot kopseer – African headache. But, he needs the job and it sure beats totin’ water up to the village. What Allah don’t know, of course, is that PCP prides itself on plant cleanliness and he’s way off base about Omar workin’ with unclean pork.
Then there’s the noise. Sawin’, clippin’, snippin’, whackin’, hackin’ – you name it, if it involves the vivisectional arts it’s goin’ on - and the business of packaging America
I myself have never heard a dogie in person – I don’t get out on the lonesome prairie much – but far off, from way out back in the Final Corral, you can hear the baleful bawlin’ of a critter choir singin’ O Bury Me Not on the Lone Prairie in cow talk, sayin’ goodbye to their friends and rememberin’ the good times.
“Bleat! Bleat! Snort! Maa-maa!” is about the closest I can come to it.
It’s disquieting, too, if you know what I mean, sort of like hearing a bunch of moaning people on deathbeds out in the back yard and there ain’t nothin’ you can do for em’ except eat ‘em.
Anyway, pretty soon Bobby Wayne was up some steps in an office talkin’ to Vern Snavely who’s been plant boss for years. Vern had “Vern” stitched on his starched white shirt and had Bobby Wayne’s application clipped to his clipboard. He spoke in a clipped tone of voice at a rapid clip. He pointed an immaculately clipped fingernail at Bobby Wayne.
“Now look here. You clock in at seven, and not one minute later .There ain’t no smokin’ on the floor. You’re gonna show up on time, you’re gonna work hard, don’t fudge on your breaks, don’t steal the product, no drinkin’ before work or at lunch, do whatever you’re told to do, and if you don’t have good morale I’ll fire your ass. You get a ten minute break at ten. You get hungry at noon and eat, but you got to be back at twelve forty-five , and not a minute later. You punch out and go home at four and not one second sooner. Don’t loiter on the floor when you ain’t on the clock. Don’t…”
Well, Vern goes on indoctrinatin’ him, but Bobby Wayne – havin’ the attention span of a dimwitted dogie - drifted off in his mind like he does sometimes. He rolled his eyes and began rockin’ back and forth, imaginin’ he’s out at Possum Corners crawdad fishin’ with his imaginary teenage girlfriend Heather, who’s wearing – not that it especially matters but I want to give my readers the complete picture – a red tank top complete with what you might call ample bosomic articulation. She bends over and…
“And no daydreaming!” Vern shouts out, destroying what appeared to me, at least, to be the beginning of a pretty decent reverie.
“You got to have focus in the workplace because of all the machinery and you don’t wanna be slippin’ on entrails or fallin’ in the vats and makin’ our insurance go up and OSHA pokin’ their noses around.”
Plus, if you ask me, you could never tell when a cow might go flyin’ off the rack and put your eye out.
“Our accident record ain’t too far out of line with industry standards, and if you maintain your focus and don’t screw up I won’t be jumpin’ on your butt all the time and believe me you don’t want me on your butt. Finally, if you’re lookin’ for a good career with benefits and opportunity for advancement, then meat packin’ might be just the thing for you, boy. We’re buildin’ the meatpackers of the future here.”
Bobby Wayne gaped at him.
“You get $9.50 an hour and make a $5 deposit on your apron and your hair net. Be here at 6:30 in the mornin’ and not one minute later. If you last that long, you get paid in two weeks. Now get out of here and from now on use the back door.”
Bobby Wayne was about to ask if they had a softball team but Vern, fecund with focus, up and strode out. He had an 8:30 meeting with the boys upstairs in re: frankfurter futures, and among the myriad qualities that entail managerial focus – ask Donald Trump or somebody - is punctuality.
“What’s that yucky smell, baby?” Heather interrupted, invitin’ him back to Possum Corners where it looked like a good day for skinny dipping.
Unfortunately though, I got things to do and I don’t have time to relate the rest of what happened out at Possum Corners right now. But remember, it was a real hot day and Heather does somehow seem to lose her inhibitions when they go crawdad fishin’.
Well, that’s how Sears and his ‘partner’ Roebuck – they belong in San Francisco
It involves Bobby Wayne and some of the boys goin’ out to the Pink Pussycat – which coincidentally does have a ten-foot pole - after work two weeks later. But I’ve got some more research to do on it first. It’s always fun to take Junior out the Pussycat. He tips the entertainers and then wins it all back from ‘em with bar tricks and gets thrown out every time.
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