MAGIC         PORK

In part one, I talked about Shaky. I promised I’d talk about Jim next but before I get to that, I think I should talk about what we actually did at this job. So yeah I lied, get over it.

This was a summer job for me, and the main task in the summer was to repaint the roads: lines, left-turn arrow, etc. They had a little vehicle that would spray the hot, quick-drying paint and inject little glass beads into the paint as it sprayed it. The beads are what make it reflective at night. Jim would drive that painter thingie to lay down the lines, and when it came to making the symbols, it had a paint wand that you’d use with a stencil.

I wasn’t doing the actual painting so the ways I would help out would be:

1. I would sometimes follow behind Jim in a pickup truck with a little flashing light on top. (More often Shaky would drive, but sometimes I’d luck out and be the one driving.) The painter thingie was small and we didn’t want someone to not see it and crash into it. Plus he moved slowly while painting the lines so if I wasn’t behind him with the truck people might do all sorts of crazy stuff to try to get around him. Not the safest situation so we follow behind with the truck. Also the truck would have the stencils and stuff in it. That was probably the coolest part of my job which tells you just how uncool my job was. But it’s the only time in my life that I’ve been able to legally run red lights. I had to be behind him no matter what, so if the light turned red while he was in the intersection, I was going through a red light. I got to do that once with the police captain following right behind me and not often you can do that right?

2. Get the stencils off the back of the truck and lay them down in the road. Then, Jim would use the paint wand and fill it in with paint while I shook a little canister of glass beads over it. As Shaky pointed out to Jim once, this was doing nothing because the glass beads need to be injected into the paint as it’s coming out. Even if I’m doing it immediately after he sprays the paint, the paint has cooled enough by then that the beads won’t stay in the paint. But there was a problem with the wand where it wouldn’t inject the beads, and that’s what I was getting paid to do, so that’s what I did. I’ve had comparable situations in my software development career. But now when my proverbial glass beads get blown away by the wind, I’m sitting in air conditioning.

That would happen on a good day when the equipment would work. There seemed to be a lot of rain that summer, and we couldn’t paint the roads in the rain. So on those days we’d sit inside and do nothing. Then a nice day would come along so we’d go out to paint the roads and right away something would happen with the painter thingie where it wasn’t, like, painting. Then Jim would get underneath it and monkey around and finally we’d have to just go back inside, where he’d “fix” it. Then on the next nice day, we’d repeat those steps over again.

I discovered my first week on the job that there would be a lot of downtime. So I brought in a book to read. Jim would sit there and read the paper so it made sense to me that I could read a book. But the captain saw me reading and didn’t like it because it looked like they were paying me to do nothing. Which they were. But if I was sitting there and literally doing nothing, it somehow wasn’t as bad. And apparently reading the newspaper is more acceptable than reading a book. I didn’t understand the logic then either but I did what I was told and kept the book closed until my lunch break, when I could sit there and read for an hour, then put it away.

Even though that makes no sense to me, I don’t fault the captain too much. He was a good guy and I think he was a little exasperated by these lazy morons he had to work with in the traffic department. He would sometimes try to find other random tasks for me to do. For example, there was some secretary that I got the impression liked to complain a lot. She was complaining about some drawers in the filing cabinet sticking and being hard to open. So I was given a hammer and a chunk of wax and was told to fix her cabinets. The captain was killing two birds with one stone: It was giving me something to do, and it was getting her off his back because someone was addressing her complaint.

That was a pretty futile effort. I’d grease up the rails with the wax but that didn’t do much. So then I’d bang away at the drawer to - I don’t know - make it skinnier or something? I’m not Mr. Fixit and I couldn’t do a better job today. She was sitting right in front of me and it was embarrassing sitting on the floor in a quiet office banging away at these drawers. I convinced myself they were somewhat better but really they were just banged up now and still didn’t open smoothly.

A less futile task they’d have me do sometimes would be to wash the police cars. I’d actually drive a police car. OK it was only for the 5 seconds it would take to pull it out of the parking spot and in front of the garage - never on the street - but technically I drove police cars! The sheriff pulled in once with his new car that he had just gotten that week and wanted it washed. So I set about washing it while he stood there chatting with Jim & Shaky. He didn’t say anything to me but Jim told me afterwards that I took a long time to wash the car. I washed it like I usually would wash a car but must be they expected something fast so he could get back on the road.

If you haven’t figured it out, I’ll summarize. I had a job that required little effort, and what little I did have to do was pointless or I was inept at.

Another example of my ineptitude: The process by which they would drive sign posts into the ground was a lot simpler than I would have pictured. They made a little hole and lined up the post, with one person holding onto it to steady it, then took this heavy thing with two handles that went over the top of the post (which Google says is called a “manual post driver”, go figure) and pulled it up and down, pounding it into the ground. I found an image of a post driver like the one we used.

They had me try it once. At the age of eighteen my strength showed early promise of a career in software development. Not only was the post not making much progress, it was going in crooked. Shaky was the one to note that it was going to be crooked if they had me continue so they had to finish it themselves while I assisted by holding onto the post. If you think that should have been an easy task, you are overestimating my competence. A sharp edge on the post sliced into my thumb when he drove down on it. It was such a clean cut I just felt a little bit of a sting and didn’t realize I had been cut. It wasn’t a big deal, just needed to slap a band-aid on it. But a couple days later, they asked why I still had the band-aid on my thumb. I said I tried to take it off but it just started bleeding again, to which Shaky said “he’s a bleeder”. For the record, I don’t think I have blood clotting problems.

Next post I’ll talk about Jim, like I promised.

I’ve been meaning to write this post for a long time, but I knew it would be such a long post that I kept putting it off. I want to tell you about my first job. I think you’ll find it amusing. I swear what I’m about to tell you is all true.

That should get you hooked. Nothing intrigues people more than telling them it’s a TRUE STORY.

Faithful readers may have noticed that I don’t talk about work here. This is because none of you would be interested in software stories. As far as the bad things, there’s absolutely nothing bad to say about my job. Ahem. And also, it’s not a good idea to trash where you work or even where you previously worked. It can all come back to bite you. Plus I’m a nice guy. I wouldn’t want to hurt someone’s feelings.

But I’m going to break that rule here. Somehow I don’t think this is going to affect my career. And the only people that I’ll be saying bad stuff about, I don’t really care if they find out. You’ll see why. Hint: Listen for a *DING*.

So on with it already.

I didn’t have a job until I graduated from high school. That summer I got a job with the traffic department of a small upstate NY city. A summer thing, until I started college in the fall. It mostly involved doing things like painting lines on the road, fixing street signs, that sort of thing. I’ll get into that later.

The “department” was located in the garage off of the police station and consisted of two people (plus me): Jim and Shaky.

Shaky

Shaky’s real name was Gordon but everyone called him Shaky. Keep in mind: I’m not making fun of him. It really is what he went by.

Shaky was called that because he had some sort of disorder that caused him to get into shaking fits. Nothing extreme, like rolling on the ground, but his hands and face would start shaking. He was older and just putting in his last couple years so he could retire. He was tall and skinny, with glasses. He didn’t have any teeth. You got used to seeing him that way and then halfway through the summer when he got dentures it looked so odd to see a full set of teeth in his mouth.

Shaky was foul-mouthed and liked to complain about things, but he was pretty good-natured if that makes any sense. He always liked me. He hated Jim but the feeling was mutual. Whenever I was alone with one, he would always complain about the other.

Probably the best way to give you an impression of Shaky is to give a couple of examples. Every day when lunchtime came, he would leave to grab lunch somewhere. I don’t know where he went: a diner or maybe home. Before he left he’d yell out “Time for beans, bitch!”. It was just something he’d yell to no one in particular - whoever was in the room.

Eventually his daily exclamation was shortened to just “Beans, bitch!”. Then by the end of summer he’d just yell “Bitch!”. Sometimes he’d stretch it out “Biiiiiitch!” If you were to ask me to shorten “Time for beans, bitch!” to its core essence, I would say “beans”. The point is you’re going to lunch (beans). Some might say “time” I suppose, as in the point of the exclamation is to draw attention to the time. But we’d all be wrong because apparently “bitch” is the key word there.

I think Shaky really liked that word because another time, he had to put up one of those “Do Not Enter” signs. You know, the ones with the red circle with the white bar in the middle? Here I’ll show you:

Well Shaky told me that it looked like something should go in that white bar. He suggested putting in big bold letters “BITCH”. Since we had a room full of street signs, and extra letters to stick on them, he could have done that. But he wasn’t quite that crazy.

Shaky’s brother visited the garage once, and he was nothing like Shaky at all. He was clean and well-mannered and was some leader (searching online, looks like they don’t have priests and just have “elders”?) of the local Jehovah’s Witness Kingdom Hall. Seemed like a nice guy. I was talking to my uncle that summer and turns out he knew those brothers growing up. They lived in the same neighborhood.

Shaky had a girlfriend named “Big Mama”. That’s what he always called her. I don’t mean just in talking about her, even to her face. She was “Big Mama”. I liked Big Mama. She was short and, as the name implies, a round woman. She was Puerto Rican and I don’t think she spoke much English. She seemed very shy so it was hard to tell if she didn’t speak a lot just because she couldn’t speak English or if she was just shy. Thinking back I don’t know if I heard her speak but I suppose I must have.

Big Mama would come by the garage once in a while and she’d always have the biggest, kindest smile. She was a lot younger than Shaky - maybe in her late 30’s. I didn’t quite get what the deal was there but they both seemed happy with each other. Big Mama was (also as the name implies) the mother to Shaky’s two boys. One boy was 9 and the other 14.

Jim would tell me that everyone thought the oldest boy wasn’t really Shaky’s but he was clueless about that. But the youngest, Jim was pretty sure was Shaky’s because it sort of looked like a young Puerto Rican version of Shaky. He did. I saw him come in a few times. The older one, not so much.

Shaky’s favorite way to waste time but make it seem like he was working was to take the truck out and cruise the streets, looking for obscured signs or signs that were damaged or whatnot. He’d tell his boss, who was a police captain, that he was going out to do that. You could tell the captain didn’t buy it for a minute but there wasn’t much to do that summer and I think everyone was just cutting Shaky some slack, waiting for him to retire. Sometimes he’d bring me out with him and if there was nothing for one guy to do there was double nothing for two guys. Once in a while he would find a branch and cut it down or fix some sign. I would just hang out and watch mostly. And collect the paycheck. Don’t forget the paycheck.

But the vast majority of the time, it was just driving around aimlessly. I’d like going out with him in the truck because it gave me something to do besides sit in the garage listening to Jim. I’ll get to Jim later, but suffice to say he liked to talk.

Jim told me about how Shaky was arrested once for molesting a little girl. *DING* That sound means you just reached the part of the story that explains why I don’t care about talking about Shaky online. He allegedly touched her, you know, in ways he shouldn’t have. I know I just threw the whole mood of this piece out of whack, but I had to bring it up sometime.

Now Jim would exaggerate stories but I never got the impression he’d make things up out of whole cloth. So I can’t say if all of this really happened and I still feel a little bad about mentioning it without any proof other than Jim’s word to back it up. But then again, I haven’t given any last names or even the city this was taking place in. I’ll just say that personally, I never doubted that the basics of the story were true and take that for what it is.

Jim says the police helped Shaky out and got it dropped. That sounds iffy - how exactly would they have done that? I don’t know. But remember, the garage is right in the same building as the police station and they all knew Shaky. Again… just repeating the story I heard.

Well good thing I can’t think of anything else to say about Shaky because I don’t know how I would follow up that creepiness. Whenever I get around to my next post, I’ll talk about Jim. I’ll give you a hint about what it was like hanging out with Jim. I preferred the company of the (alleged) child molester.