Rivethead (35 page)

One night it all came to a boil. I was sitting at the picnic bench when Sanders stalked over and motioned me into his office. I sat down in a chair wondering what the hell I had done now. My foreman grinned. “I've called you in here to discuss an article you wrote for the
Detroit Magazine.
According to this article, you admit to being off plant grounds at a tavern across the street while the line was in operation.”

Now it was my turn to grin. “Yes?” I said.

“As you are well aware by now, leaving plant grounds without prior permission from a member of supervision is in direct violation of…” It went on and on. This woeful bleating. This megaphone of hurt. It was like a strange and intoxicating form of music and I sat there bathing in it. I blew smoke rings around the office and stared out at the guys on the line. There was Eddie and Cam and Schobel and Herman and…“…can not and WILL not be tolerated in as far as the recognition between management and the labor force and the agreement pertaining to the aforementioned transgression…” Something like that.

“Do we have an understanding?” Sanders concluded.

“I understand this,” I answered. “I'm gonna write your sorry ass up for harassment. What I do or say outside of this plant is none of your fucking business.”

Moments later, my committeeman and Henry Jackson were on the scene. Jackson immediately struck out on the offensive, accusing me of smelling like a brewery. “I could write you up this minute for drinking on the job.”

“Do it!” I yelled. “At least I'm not a fuckin’ cokehead like my foreman.”

Sanders's jaw dropped. I knew more about him than he could have ever guessed. I knew friends that he'd bought coke from. I had seen him snortin’ lines right in the supervisor's parking lot.

“Now, settle down,” Jackson replied. “Do you realize that I could walk through this department every night penalizing men for drinking and smokin’ pot? But I don't. You know why?”

“Hell yes, I know why! Because you know, as well as I, that those guys out there are keepin’ your fat ass high and dry. Those drinkers and pot smokers comprise one of the most highly rated departments in this factory. Don't pretend you're doin’ anybody any favors, all you're doin’ is dodgin’ the subject. I want Mr. Cokehead written up for supervisional harassment. He has absolutely no right to lecture me about things that I pursue outside of this factory.”

Things settled down. Sanders was made to apologize and agree to never mention my writing. I had Jackson so shook up, he even agreed that Schobel and I should be allowed a bit more slack in our double-up routine. I think Jackson was convinced that I was gonna instigate a total rebellion. He overestimated my power with the rivet crew. They'd have just yawned and gone back to their own private hells. In effect, I was once again holding a trump card that didn't even exist.

It wasn't only Sanders and Jackson puttin’ the eye on me. There were others watching. Doug was the first to notice. One night he pointed out some suit-and-tie spy peering around the boxcars at me. He had a clipboard and a beeper. This went on for a while until I just couldn't stand it any longer. I ran out in the aisle and hollered “Kiss me, you fool!” He immediately disappeared.

This was to become a frequent event. Someone would gesture down the line with their head and, lo and behold, there would be some mystery man peepin’ around the corner at me. What the hell did they want? If I made any motion to approach or yell in their direction, they would pivot and vanish. My nerves were bad enough without all this creepy cloak and dagger.

Bad enough that another bout with panic let me have it just after we entered ‘87, my tenth year at General Motors. This was getting truly distressing. Every few months I would topple over like some rag doll off the shelf. Dr. Kilaru relayed that I was also suffering from agoraphobia—an abnormal fear of being in open or public places. This went a long way in helping explain why I felt that I was being led to slaughter every time I entered a mall or movie theater, to say nothing of an assembly plant so large that it took up twenty city blocks.

Agoraphobia, don't leave home without it. Better yet, just don't leave home. Dr. Kilaru put me out on sick leave and for the next three months I rarely left my apartment. I did nothing but smoke, drink, watch TV, sleep, sleep, then sleep some more. I talked on the phone daily with my new girlfriend in Ann Arbor. I'd met her through a letter she had written me the previous fall during a period when Amy and I were experiencing one of our frequent fallouts. Her name was Jan. She didn't smoke or drink or eat meat. How'd she manage to get stuck with the Rivethead? Some folks just ain't got no common sense.

Jan was the first to suggest that I leave the shop. I explained to her that it wasn't that easy. The factory was all I knew. I was a shoprat, bruised brain and all. I had to forge on.

I went back to the Rivet Line in May. It was a total fiasco. I was hell-bent on keeping the demons far at bay. To do so, I began drinking outrageous amounts of beer and liquor. This did tend to squelch the demons but, at the same time, it was taking a costly toll on my work record. I was being written up on a weekly basis on a variety of counts ranging from insubordination to poor workmanship to immoral conduct. My committeeman was spending more time with me than his wife. Each time he came around, all I could do was shrug. He would ask me if I wanted to fight the penalty or enter my own grievance. I always declined. “Nope, Boogie, I'm guilty as charged.”

“Goddamnit, Hamper, you're hangin’ yourself. Pissin’ in the fuckin’ aisleway? Listen, you have to pull it together or you're on your way out the door.”

My committeeman was an all right guy. I just felt weird calling him Boogie. The word belonged in an arena full of metalheads cheerin’ on a thundering drum solo. Alas, it was sorta comical and befitting that my personal liaison between myself and the GM bureaucratic juggernaut would turn out to be a guy in a sleeveless Jack Daniel's T-shirt named Boogie. It was like facing a murder rap with an attorney named Killer.

However, Boogie was right. I had to pull it together. I met with Dr. Kilaru and he once again suggested that I enter the mental health clinic. This time I agreed.

I was assigned to the Anxiety and Panic group. Each morning would begin with a rehash of what we had done the previous night. The fact that we were all afflicted with varying degrees of agoraphobia prevented much of a chance for any amazing yarns. A typical briefing: “Went home, cooked a frozen dinner, watched the news, took my medication, went to bed.” Next!

The rest of the day was spent attending various sessions: group therapy, occupational therapy, goal planning, stress seminars, relaxation techniques and, my personal favorite, volleyball. Hell, everybody loved volleyball. We'd break up into teams and have at it—the loons, the paranoids, the manic depressives, the weeping old women, the scary young men, the multiple personalities. We shrieked and cheered. We dove for wayward shots and belly-flopped across the waxed gymnasium floor like crazed barking seals. It was just like fifth grade all over again except this time around the beards were much heavier and we didn't have as much to lose.

Frequently, I would feel totally out of place at the clinic. Many of the woman there had histories that were so tragic I almost felt ashamed nursing my little phobia in their midst. Women who were abused as children and whose own children were ragin’ miscreants stashed in penitentiaries. Women whose entire families had disowned them and left them to weep away in lonely rooms. When it would come my turn to speak, I'd feel like the world's biggest sham: “My problem? Um, I can't, um, relax at my, um, job.”

During my stretch at the clinic, the transfer to my new job in Pontiac went through. On July 17th, I came off sick leave ready to resume my calling. I was unaware that I no longer belonged in Flint. I went down to the Personnel office to hire back in and was immediately pointed southward. The people in the front office seemed especially excited to inform me that my tenure at Flint GM Truck & Bus was at an end. Was it something I had said? They handed me some fuzzy map to my new home at Pontiac East Assembly and instructed me to be at this destination the next day at 6:00
A.M
.

As I headed for the door, a strange thing happened. Some white-collar tapeworm came hustling up behind me hollerin’ my name. I didn't recognize this person—just another gung-ho errand boy from the bright tomb district. As I paused, he thrust an index card and a pen at me. “Would you mind autographing this card for my wife?” he asked. “Her name is Becky, she's a big fan of yours.”

I looked at him incredulously. This seemed beyond the bizarre. The timing was the strangest part. Here I was stridin’ out the door for the very last time and my last official duty had nothing to do with spot-welders or axle hoists or rivet guns. Some fly-boy's bored spouse wanted my signature. What the hell. I took the pen and wrote: “Dear Becky, I'm looking forward to death. Best Wishes, the Rivethead.” The guy shook my hand and I departed.

Returning to the factory was eerie enough without the added complication of entering a totally new environment. From everything I'd heard about Pontiac East Assembly, the place was pure Gulag City. The jobs were timed-out to make sure the workers wouldn't be allowed a moment's intermission. Anyone caught reading a newspaper or paperback would be penalized. The union was nothing more than a powerless puppet show groveling in the muck. There were as many robots as shoprats.

My sources hadn't lied. Everything about this plant reeked of science gone too far. They set me up on a ferocious maze, something to do with brake boosters. I had so much medication flowing through me that I felt woozy. It had to be that way. I'd promised myself that, no matter what else happened, I would sooner lapse into a drug-induced coma than have another panic attack.

So much for that theory. Driving down I-75 for my second day on the job, I had the grandpappy panic attack of ‘em all. I got about halfway down there, near a small town called Clarkston, when the wheels fell off. I whipped into a rest area and took a seat in a bathroom stall. I sat there for nearly two hours, alternately sobbing and deliberating. All the while, construction workers and salesmen and gas haulers, men who keep this country in motion, were grunting and farting in nearby stalls. They were gonna wipe their asses and wash their hands and go get it done. It was only a routine, not much different from breathing.

Finally, I snuck out of my stall and splashed some water on my face. I got in my car and drove over by Lake Orion to my brother Matt's house. He was a shoprat too. The same with his wife. I roused them out of bed.

“What the hell are you doing here?” my brother asked. “Aren't you supposed to be working?”

I walked over and grabbed a beer out of his fridge. “It's over,” I said.

“What are you talking about?”

“I'm talking about General Motors. It's all over between us.”

Actually, I had been a bit hasty in my remarks with Matt. It wasn't over though it really should have been. The next day I was placed back in the Holly Road Mental Health Clinic. I never worked another day in 1987.

During this period, Jan and I got married. We moved to a small town just south of Flint called Fenton. It was a rather awkward way to begin a marriage. Each morning Jan would set off for her teaching job in Ami Arbor and I would straggle off to the mental health clinic for therapy and volleyball. Not exactly the way Ward Cleaver worked it. Shit, even Herman Munster had a job.

Dr. Kilaru added a new medication to my supply, a combination sedative and antidepressant called Triavil. This drug made me feel extremely sluggish and apathetic. I thanked him profusely. Dr. Kilaru also began advising me strongly against ever returning to work in the factory. He was aware of my writing sideline and suggested that I move in that direction. His intentions were sincere, I had no doubt that he meant well, but the good doctor was missing the whole point and I felt that I should inform him regarding the obvious.

“Doctor, in case you're not aware, all I do is write about the factory. In order to do so, it is absolutely necessary for me to
work in a factory.
Otherwise, I'd be an imposter.”

“You could write about other topics of interest,” Dr. Kilaru responded.

“I have no other topics of interest. I'd just as soon give the factory one more shot.”

And, after seven long months at the clinic, I did just that. I marched back to Pontiac to continue my quest for my thirty-year pin and ten frames of bowling with a certain freckled automotive czar.

My reception upon arrival was hardly gracious. My foreman took one look at me as I entered his office and put his hand to his forehead. “Well, if it isn't the one-day wonder. Tell me, how long do you expect to hang around this time? An hour? A day? AN ENTIRE WEEK?”

“Anybody's guess,” I answered.

The job he assigned me was sheer insanity. I had to lie down inside the truck cabs, divide all these tangled wire harnesses, tape the wires along the floorboard in four very specific locations, then bend and droop them through the dash. Once that was done, I had to race over and insert two plastic clips onto the four-wheel drive shifter. This completed, I had to scurry back to the cab and bolt down the shifter with this cumbersome air gun that kicked like a mule and was as large as your basic weed-whacker. It was damn hard work, the worst I'd ever come across. However, I was makin’ it. The demons were gnawin’ someone else. I had so much Xanax and Triavil in me that a nuclear war wouldn't have fazed me. My biggest obstacle was simply keeping my eyes open.

The workers from Pontiac seemed cold, indifferent, resigned to the fact that their union was nothing more than a charade and that management took full advantage of the fact. The only guy I ever spoke with was the worker right beside me, a Pontiac native named Jim. The guy was a total mess. He used to show up for work drunk—an astounding accomplishment when you stopped to consider it wasn't even daylight yet. It wasn't long before the two of us were tippin’ together.

I'm amazed I didn't kill myself considering all the medication I was taking. Jim and I would each drink a forty-ouncer at first break, another one at lunch, then smuggle in a pint or two of whiskey for the last part of the shift. That was an average day. I recall the time I inhaled 120 ounces of beer in the span of a forty-minute lunch break. Even Jim was impressed. The demons kept their distance.