I assume the MESC never followed up on any of it. It was just another way for them to make you feel pressured. They had to know that any shoprat with half a brain wasn't likely to sacrifice his hefty unemployment benefits by accepting a job flippin’ burgers or scrubbin’ toilets. We may have been crazy, but we weren't fuckin’ dumb.
It was fairly ridiculous how much money we were being awarded for
not
going to work. Unemployment paid you $377 biweekly. Add to this the $80 a week courtesy of the GM-UAW Supplemental Unemployment Benefits and you were takin’ in a comfortable $268 a week, hardly anyone's definition of chump change when measured against the fact that you weren't required to do anything but survive the snail plod over at the MESC every other week.
It didn't end there. This being the tail end of the Jimmy Carter era, we were presented another bonus. It seemed Jim had a powerful soft spot in his lust-leechin’ heart for unemployed factory goomers. Before he was booted out of office, he shoved through some bill called the Trade Readjustment Act (TRA) and, yipes, it was feedtime all over again for the old hip pocket.
TRA was designed to provide financial assistance for autoworkers whose plants were closed due to the influx of foreign competition. I gladly took their money, though the pretense seemed rather misguided. I still maintain that blaming it all on the Japanese was a rather cowardly way of admitting “Aw, shit, who was the asshole in charge of mass-producing RHINOS when the public can only afford GERBILS.”
I remember the day I received my lump-sum TRA payment. I had never seen such mirth and hysteria inside the GM-UAW Benefits office. Men were actually smiling and talking to one another. They would go sprinting out the door plantin’ high fives and wavin’ their odd-colored checks above their heads. It was all so contrary to the usual dull isolation of the cattle clog.
When it was my turn, I stepped forward and presented my card. The claims lady handed me a receipt and directed me to the cashier's desk. The cashier handed me my SUB pay and then began typing up my TRA check. Judging from the reaction of my fellow workers, I was soon to be a very exuberant heir. Who'd have guessed that gettin’ canned from your job could be such a bull market? Who cared? Praise the Lord and pass the allocation.
I waited until I got back to my Camaro to look over my TRA check. The greed factor was already consuming me. I felt like a kid on Christmas morning. I held my breath as I glanced over to the amount line. My eyes immediately popped out. Flashing back at me was a check in Bernard Hamper's name for TWENTY-SEVEN HUNDRED AND 00 DOLLARS. Jesus, was I ever glad I had voted for Mr. Carter.
I sped home to the house I shared with my brother Bob. I proudly unveiled my TRA check. Bob looked at it and shook his head. “Generous Motors strikes again.” He chuckled. “What are you gonna do with all that money? Or need I ask.”
“Ask not! As your eldest brother, it is my considered opinion that we call up the crew and convene the next several evenings in one overindulgent cesspool of liquor, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll trash. It's the very least we can do to show appreciation to that peanut-shuckin’ commander in chief and the fierce Japanese who, in emergency tandem, saw fit to impregnate my coffer twenty-sevenfold.”
What other route was there for a young, unemployed party buffoon who didn't give a rip about his bank balance but to squander such a silly gift of generosity on crud that would help dissolve his nightly ennui? It was like free money. Like hittin’ up the Lotto. When all was burned and buried, I had managed to hold back just enough to pay off the loan on my car.
The most silly irony in being laid off during this period was that I was now actually making
more
money by not going to work. When you sat down and averaged in the TRA windfall, I was coming out about twenty bucks per week to the better. It really dampened your enthusiasm for any rapid return to the ranks of the employed. Hell, being rehired would effectively mean taking a cut in pay.
During my layoff I paid a visit to my aunt's house for her annual family reunion cookout. My grandfather was there, holding court, drinkin’ beer with my uncles, and discussing the world at large. I attempted to stay on the fringe, fully aware that my grandfather was bound to switch the subject over to General Motors once he spotted me. He had put in so many years at GM that, though he'd been retired for more than a decade, the shop remained his favorite oratorical topic. He could talk factory until your ears turned blue. I anticipated these conversations with a most definite lack of zeal.
My grandfather saw me and approached. “Y'know, I've been readin’ in the newspaper about all of that TRA money you guys are receivin’.” Uh-oh, prepare to enter the time tunnel. “Pretty good money for not havin’ to work at all.”
“You won't hear me complaining,” I replied.
“I should say not. Christ, you boys today are gettin’ a free ride. In my early years at GM, you were left high and dry when they pulled a cutback. There wasn't no unemployment check or SUB pay and there sure as hell wasn't any of this TRA junk. You scraped up work anywhere you could—tendin’ bar, moppin’ floors, sellin’ apples. You didn't have no pamperin’ union wipin’ your ass at every turn. Shit, no. Back then a foreman could run you right out the door for no reason at all. The next day his brother-in-law would be doin’ your job.”
My grandfather went on and on. I couldn't help but get a little pissed-off. He took it too far, making it sound like I should feel a terrible guilt over all the benefits I was getting. Christ, I couldn't help it if I was born too late to scrounge and suffer. What the hell was I supposed to do? Refuse unemployment insurance? Turn down pay hikes? Demand the removal of my fan? Insist that GM stop paying me such bloated wages and return me to the damn stone age?
It was an uncomfortable stalemate. Two generations of shoprats who simply couldn't relate to each other's era. Indeed, I owed a tremendous debt to my grandfathers and uncles and to all those who bravely took part in the historic sitdown strikes of 1937. They were truly working class heroes who bettered the path for all factory men and women to come. But, hold on, we worked damn hard also. We sweated and humped and hammered it out just as they had. What did they want from us? Our left nuts?
Things had improved immensely due to the efforts of our forefathers. We would always remain grateful to them. However, some things never did change. The factory was still a shithole, comparisons be damned. One large shithole and you'd better believe that that unbearable clock on the wall never moved one iota faster for us than it did them.
GM phoned me. It was bound to happen sooner or later. The big callback. Actually, the timing couldn't have been better. Since I had been laid off nearly nine months, my benefits were in danger of skidding to a halt. I only had two more visits to the MESC before my last extension was exhausted. After that, who knew? My résumé was sorta blank.
I was instructed to rendezvous back up to my old department in Cab Shop. This suited me fine. I hated surprises. As I arrived upstairs, it was as if a day had never passed. The old gang was sitting around—Bob-A-Lou, Robert, Dan-O, Tim, Bigfoot, Ronny, Larry, Armando, Ty, Jimmy. Of course, there was Same-O leanin’ on his broom. The only one missing was Dale. He had opted to quit GM and stay up in Twining with his pigs and combines.
We had a new foreman, rather, foreperson. A beautiful young black woman named Lydia. She asked that we all group around the picnic table. I wedged in next to Ronny. Lydia paused and looked down at her clipboard. Damn, she was pretty.
Lydia began. “Most of you workers are familiar with the Cab Shop. This will make the start-up procedure much easier. I will now read a list of what jobs are still open. If I mention a job you are interested in, please raise your hand.”
She began reading off the job descriptions. Looking across the line, I could see that my old job was already filled. Some older guy was busy fillin’ up the screw bins and stackin’ the pencil rods and clamps. I wanted to kill the bastard. Didn't he realize he was trespassing?
I wasn't even listening to Lydia's job auction when I suddenly felt someone jerk my arm into the air. It was Ronny.
“We'll take ‘em,” he yelled.
“We'll take WHAT?” I demanded.
“The Suburban and Blazer tailgate buildup jobs.”
“Oh.”
Ronny already knew both of the buildup jobs. Hell, he knew practically every job in the entire Jungle. Ronny also knew me well enough to know that I'd work my ass off in order to set up a scheme. He knew that if the two of us worked the tailgates as a partnership, we could fancy out a little system that would allow us plenty of free time. I thanked Ronny for volunteering me. It wasn't the marvelous setup I'd had with Dale, but it was probably the next best thing in the department. Had he not grabbed my arm, I might've wound up boltin’ down cargo beds or fittin’ doors.
We attacked our new jobs. The hitch was to bust ass and built up the tailgates faster than they were pulling them off the end of our feeder line. We each drilled our separate tailgates, leaned them aside, and once we had enough built, it was time to converge and arrange the tailgates on the conveyor line. When the bottom layer was finished, we began double-stacking. When all was completed, the conveyor line was this trudging, two-tiered mountain of gleaming silver slowly creeping toward the buttocks of the nation's finest-built recreational vehicles.
Being twenty-four jobs ahead of the line amounted roughly to forty-five minutes of free time. Not bad, not bad at all. It wasn't nearly enough time to reach last call up at Houghton Lake or hibernate in a cardboard tomb, but it was time enough to play some three-handed euchre with Gary, the door-build guy, or, more frequently, to go wandering down to the cafeteria with Ronny on one of his massive feeding frenzies.
The GM Truck & Bus cafeteria—Dachau for the average stomach lining, a linoleum nightmare, Guyana soup kitchen for the famished and foolhardy. The place always looked yellow to me as if the air itself had contracted hepatitis. The inedibles were provided by an outside catering service who when asked the proverbial probe “How do you handle a hungry man?” must have replied “Botulism, just say ahhh.” The astonishing part of it all was that so many workers partook in this bow-wow chow on a daily basis. I guess that's what happens when you're subject to a monopoly. There was nowhere else to eat. Your only alternatives were a few vending machines stocked with tantalizing entrees like canned chili, vinegar-flavored potato chips, pork rinds and stale Zagnut bars. Fasting was both a popular and intelligent option.
On one side of the cafeteria they served what they called “Full Course Meals.” For about five bucks you would receive a slim gray slab of cow-thing, a side of artificial tater goop, a washed-out rainbow of veggies, a rectangle of lime Jell-o and a carton of warm milk.
The other side of the cafeteria featured “The Grill.” This is where Ronny always did his serious chowin’. He had a soft spot in his hardened arteries for their cheeseburger deluxe with extra bacon. Watching Ronny consume two or three of his favorite monster burgers was both hilarious and hideous. All you could hear was this incredible suction noise punctuated by various slurps and burps. He wasn't eatin’ the damn cheeseburgers as much as he seemed to be having oral sex with them.
I often had to warn Ronny to slow down. “Watch it, Jethro. You're gonna gnaw off a fingertip if you're not careful.”
“Grrrrabll-aggaga-mooshrrrr,” Ronny would respond, his mustache gloomed with mayo, his eyes glaring back at me like some fevered boar. What could be said. A boy and his burger. It was as inherently American as Washington crossing the Delaware or Billy Carter pissing on an airport runway.
THE SHOP FOOD MATCH GAME
Hey, just for kicks. Here's the directions: simply match the food listings in the numbered column with the corresponding taste sensations in the lettered column. No fair approaching a shoprat for assistance. Scoring: 9 or 10 correct—ready to dine on the set of a snuff movie. 7 or 8 correct—consider moving to the Republic of Mylanta. 5 or 6 correct—too wimpy to have a beer gut. Less than 5—pray that you never become blue-collar.
1. Mashed Potatoes
2. Beans & Franks
3. Reuben Sandwich
4. Chicken Soup
5. Tater Tots
6. Turkey
7. Coney Dogs
8. Patty Melt
9. Cole Slaw
10. Salisbury Steak
A. Construction Paper
B. Alan Trammel's Sweat Socks Immediately After a Doubleheader
C. Sunoco High Octane 260
D. Airplane Glue
E. Embalming Fluid
F Sam Kinison's Shower Mat
G. Squirrel Death
H. Golfball Skins
I. Collie Dung
J. Grated Crickets
ANSWERS: 1-D, 2-C, 3-B, 4-E, 5-H, 6-F, 7-G, 8-A, 9J, 10-I
Bob-A-Lou developed a total, heart-stompin’ crush on one of the cashiers down in the cafeteria. She was this sassy, glam-babe blonde whose sole mission on earth seemed to be nothing more than providing herself as groin-swell for the hungry droves who wove through the slop lines. She'd lean there on her cashier's stool with her cleavage tumblin’ out of her shrunken smock, her legs all stacked up for maximum eyeballin’, a Doral forever dangling from the corner of her mouth. It was all just a game of show & tell.
Not for Bob-A-Lou. He was in love with the cashier queen. It all amounted to one terrible mismatch—the brutal cock-teaser and the hopeless romantic. Bob-A-Lou had never even had a girlfriend before. He was thirty-one years old and still lived with his mother. He was a complete innocent with a heart as big as a house. It all spelled trouble.
For the next couple months, Bob-A-Lou asked the cashier out repeatedly only to be given some lame excuse. Bob-A-Lou remained undeterred. Sooner or later, his cashier queen would agree to a date. I couldn't bring myself to tell Bob-A-Lou he was in for a terrible letdown. What I wanted to do was approach the cashier and ask her why she just didn't tell Bob-A-Lou she was engaged or something. C'mon, mercy kill the poor bastard. Let him down, bitch. Let him down before he proceeds with the wedding invitations.