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Two seconds from "depraved indifference" - Fate Fairies - book version
This entry was posted on 11/22/2011 1:45 AM and is filed under Fate Fairies:Fate Fairies - book version.
One day at the rent-a-truck and cargo truck assembly plant we pulled the trucks with their unattached cargo boxes, into the welding bay like always. But what was different this day is the snow had accumulated on the top of the cargo boxes. After they sat in our welding and undercoating bay for a few minutes the snow melted and created a small pond under the truck - there was no drain of course. A good shop would have had a bay pit to stand in. Instead we had to crouch in the dirt and water.
My work partner was a little prick named Jim. His hair stuck out from under his hat like a clown's might. He would weld one side of a truck as I undercoated the other, then we would switch (anything wrong with that picture? We frequently got burned badly by the flammable undercoating as it would flare up from the welding sparks).
Jim liked to get high and have a drink of alcohol at lunch so afternoons were rough on me. Jim would throw the welding wand under the truck at me as it sparked on the floor. He loved to heave the pneumatic wrenches at me and then glowered at me from under his side of the truck as they spun and whizzed and bounced into my knees.
On the particular day in question the snow outside was heavy and thick. The bay looked like a small lake after lunch. I told Jim I was going out back to find a wood pallet to bring in and stand on so as not to electrocute myself with the welder. I asked him if he wanted one also. He called me an expletive and flipped me off. As I walked back toward the dock, I heard Jim curse some more and switch on the welder.
By this time you are asking yourself, "Bob, you were in the Combat Engineers, you were an all-conference defensive end, you were a rock climber, you ride a motorcycle in the winter, and you are a weight lifter. Why didn't you fold Jim-the-little-prick into a pretzel?" Jim was a relative of the shop manager. I would have surely been fired. And, that 1970s early '80s hell economy would have no job waiting. And, my father had taught me much better than resorting to muscle.
In 1980, The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) was just a phrase you heard on TV once and a while. When I walked back to the bay there was a buzzing sound. Something smelled foul. As I rounded the truck and the bay partition wall, there was Jim-the-little-prick - slowly being electrocuted. He was stuck on the side of the truck, he could not let go of the welding wand, his boots smoked as he stood in the water, his hair and eyebrows were slowly burning off. He looked at me with watering, bloodshot eyes and mouthed with no voice, "t-t-t-turn i-i-it o-o-off."
I yanked down the big circuit breaker lever near my work station. No one could see us as we worked back in that shit-hole of a bay because of the partition walls. The rest of the assembly plant needed to be protected from our welding glare. Jim fell to the floor, in the water, it sizzled as he slumped his burning face in it. When I pulled the master breaker, it shut down the whole building. It went silent like a mausoleum. Normally, there would be deafening riveting, hammering, and screaming pneumatics wrenches. The supervisors came running from their hiding places.
Their initial response was to chide me for "fuck'n off," and berate the smoldering Jim, "to get up off his, ignorant ass." Once the supervisors' understanding of the saga came together, Jim eventually ended up in the office on a make-shift cot - an office desk. I don't think Jim left that day. He pulled his burnt self together and stayed at work sorting bolts and rivets for the rest of the day - speaks to the urgency of that decrepit economy. In today's medical culture, Jim probably would be put on medical leave for a month.
None-the-less, staying on the job after being severely injured does kind of remind me of the rapidly digressing work conditions in this current decrepit economy we suffer as I write this book. But, I digress.
I had a quirky pal at that job who always brought police accessories to work to show them off. He ordered the gear from cop and sleuth magazines - another story for another day. After the dust settled on the incident, Ol' cop surplus dude, suggested to me on the side that I, "Should have let the little sanctimonious, self righteous, drunk-prick - fry to death."
All I could do was sigh as he showed me his latest set of shiny brass knuckles.
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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