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"Haul to Pennsylvannia....now!" - Fate Fairies - book version
This entry was posted on 11/21/2011 2:00 AM and is filed under Fate Fairies:Fate Fairies - book version.
It was late one Friday afternoon getting close to quit'n time. I was covered with undercoating overspray and welding dirt; my wallet was empty. An administrator from the rent-a-truck assembly factory local office hunted me down in my work bay from hell. He said he had pulled my application record because he needed a "big-truck" driver and it looked like I had driven a truck in the Army. I told him it was a 10-ton combat tractor pulling a flatbed and not really what one could call..., an 18-wheeler.
He said, "I don't care. I need someone to start running to Pennsylvania to our corporate headquarters and supply center." One of his local drivers had apparently quit, or gotten fired, or who knows.
I looked at my torn shirt and dirt coated hands and said, "Man, I would like to think about it; let me get with you Monday."
He looked rather perplexed and said, "You don't understand, I need you to leave now."
Jim, my psycho work partner from hell, smiled and suggested I run for my life to the cleaner and more lucrative truck driving job. Jim was my consultant and advocate now since I had saved his life. One day he had managed to electrocute himself by standing in water and..., welding. I had flipped the circuit breaker off.
The night of the driving offer, I had a date waiting, I was dirty, tired and sick of the poor excuse for a job. I declined the offer of, "Haul to Pennsylvania....now!"
I wonder where I would be now if I had taken that job almost 35 years ago?
A few weeks after I declined said driving offer, the word came down abruptly that our whole annex factory that I worked at was to be laid off after the cargo truck order we were working on was finished. It was of course in the throes of the "Misery Recession" of the late 1970s and early 1980s; and we were afterall in the heart of the "Rust Belt." Our main factory in town and that driving position would no doubt keep plugging away.
The day the last rent-a-truck we assembled rolled out the door, I bid my one friend at place farewell. He was a want-to-be-policeman who always brought cop magazines and police gear to work to show off to me. We said our good-byes in the parking lot and..., I never saw him again.
When I got home my mom sized me up. She looked at me with that Irish wit and asked if something was up?
I told her, "We, all got laid off; canned; dumped; got our pink slips; we were shit-canned en masse."
She gave me that Irish glance that could see right through any earthly creature and to the core of one's very soul. She looked at my dirty cloths and then the burns on my arms and the dirt ground into my hands. I stood two heads above her and she looked up at the grit on my face and then said...
..., "I imagine it is just as well."
___________________________
Almost a year and a half later just before I was to get married and move to Dallas, Texas, for better work offerings, I just happened to be at my mom and dad's farm one afternoon. My mom answered the phone as I talked with Dad at the kitchen table.
Mom said, "Hey Bobby, it's for you."
"Who is it?" I asked.
"Some guy about a job or something," she said
"Bob," I said into the phone.
"Hey, you want to come back to work?" the voice on the other end of the line said.
"Who the hell is this?" I asked.
"You were laid off from assembling trucks and I want to know if you would like to come back to work?" the voice said with perky enthusiasm. "We have a great order pending and need good guys like you to come back. We can give you your old spot back in the welding and undercoating bay."
"It has been over a year you fool, you think I have just been waiting by the phone for you to call?" I said, knowing I sounded crass, but the words just spilled out.
The voice did not even pause and said with the same gung-ho tone, "so I can count on you to start on Monday then? I'll write you in as an affirmative.........hello, hello, he..."
Click!
Note: This blog "Fate Fairies" book version Category is a work in progress. The original vignettes are being edited for book form. Go to the Cooldadiomedia Web site and the Fate Fairies Page for an ordered chronology of the book vignettes (chapters).
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