Tour of the Rural

"I've got to pee."

What else would I be thinking at 7:30am, standing outside the Watkins Plant Hire Gate under growing grey plumes of smoke, waiting in a crowd of the unemployed but hopeful masses?

There were maybe a hundred and thirty someodd people there with me. Some smoking like me. Maybe a couple had broken toes shoved into steel toe boots. Almost all of us silently listening for our names, praying it'd be called sooner than later. And damn the gatekeepers. No rhyme, no reason. Names called at random and there we were waiting, bated breath -- the whole nine.

And still I had to pee. I had to pee because the only way I was going to make it from 5am in Juliette to 7pm in Oglethorpe was on whatever fumes of coffee and cigarettes I could manage. I managed a pot of coffee and a half a pack of smokes. Two diuretics, one man = having to pee.

But could I? Would it be safe? Should my name be called while I vacated my blatter, would I have a chance to claim a job?

Making matters worse, they wanted two forms of ID but I had only one: my Social Security card. The driver's license I'd grown to love had obsconded with a Bibb County Sheriff. My hopes of getting a new one disappeared in Warner Robins when a lady there told me I brought the wrong papers. And the only other form of ID I heard they excepted was a birth certificate. That I left at home. Oh, I had a sandwich for lunch, a bottle of frozen Powerade and I even had put shock absorbing technology to use in my boots, but no, I left the one thing that'd make any of those things worthwhile.

Worry not, friends, I'm a man of many ruses. The first I used on myself with the coffee and cigarettes. It wasn't to keep me awake, it was to keep me calm enough to actually stand at the gate waiting on my name. I'm a nervous guy when it comes to starting jobs. I hate even getting applications.

The second was for the benefit of everyone around me. I smoked and swayed and occassionally said, "Shit" or "Damn" when there was reason -- everyone there had to know I'm a regular guy. For safety's sake, I daydreamed about kicking in the kneecap of the person I imagined had suspected I'm a double agent for the Man.

My most necessary ruse, however, would be to use my old student IDs covered by the SS card. I'd flash those, get in the gate and refuse to leave even after my rapid drug test revealed I'd been smoking meth that morning.

The bad ass I tried to be for the benefit of everyone else had pursuaded me to go to the bathroom, a porta-potty located on the right hand side of the security gate. When I got there, it was locked. With a lock.

The guard let me go inside the administrative building there and boy it was fun. All that gravel and loose earth. I didn't think about that when I figured my toe would be cool with this project. The constant bending and such didn't sit well with it but hey, this is bigger than just a toe, so I told it to shut the fuck up.

When I returned the crowd had only thinned a tad. I resumed my place and pulled out a cigarette that I only half way finished before I watched a tall, well built man in a hard hat come to the gate, look at his list and tell the woman tending gate that "That looks like Chris Horne" as he pointed at me.

"What's your name?" She asked.

"Chris Horne," I answered, trying not to add some congratulatory note for the hard hat guy since he correctly picked me out of a crowd of mostly shorter, older black men and women. I assume my mother told them a little about my appearance. If she said, "Handsome white man," she might have been technically wrong but it would be close enough.

It was time to deceive the gatekeepers, though.

"I am the keymaster," I proclaimed. They didn't get the reference and asked 'what?'

"I'm Chris Horne," I said as if it was all I'd ever said. They took my three forms of ID -- two college, one social security.

The question on their faces forced me to give up the ghost so in my best 'good ol' boy' voice, I explained I just couldn't find my driver's license and when I went to get a new one, they were about to close. I'm a pathological liar. It comes with an active imagination.

They accepted it -- apparently, and this according to the list she had, college IDs work as long as they have a picture. The hard hat asked if he could 'have him'. The woman with the list said she 'wanted him'. The other woman with the hire slips said I was hers. It was a little unsettling.

I went from a crowd waiting to a line. We stood outside a trailer that looked like someone had purchased on special after its stint in tornado alley. Once inside, we had to pee... strangely, though, I didn't feel the need. At a table sat a middle aged man and a lady who looked close to retirement. Set before them: six or seven small jars of urine. Their job was obviously among the ones I'd crossed off my list a long time ago: keepers of the piss.

I counted in my head and it'd been exactly a month since I slipped up and with Raspy Tina emulated Steve Miller. "Smoker, joker, midnight toker..."

Having passed the only test being given me, I joined a couple dozen people filling out W-2's, applications and such. And still, I had no real idea what it is I was supposed to do whereas work was concerned. All I knew was that it paid a shitload and would include overtime. It'd last a couple weeks and with my earnings, I'd be able to purchase a home on the French Rivera and a penthouse apartment for my mistress.

I paced back and forth hoping to find a knowledgable person with whom I could converse about this here Shut-Down job.

He was wearing a fishnet hat that read: "Go Ahead, Bass. Make my day!" It featured a leaping big-mouth bass with a hook in its lip tied to a fishing pole without a fisherman.

He found me.

"Easiest money you ever made," he explained to me and someone else, completely unsolicited.

"You've done this before?" I asked.

"Yep. Easiest money you ever made."

He wouldn't give me details -- and not for national security reasons either, he just didn't seem to have words. I'd ask and he'd ask who I was on with. I told him I didn't know but that Brandon was my foreman.

"You won't hardly be doing nothing. Yeah, you might break a sweat here and there, but it won't be all that hard."

Cool. Next question: "How long does it last?"

"About 8 or 9 days."

That's considerably shorter than the 14 straight I'd been told and you know what, we weren't working through this weekend so it would be a cake walk compared to the expectations I had. My only loss would be that I wouldn't make as much dough as I expected. That meant I'd have to cut the mistress loose.

After the slow and painful safety video orientation, after the lunch break we all took shattered without shelter, after reassembling again in the break room waiting on our instruction, I found myself staring at a man with tear drop tattoos next to his eye. It wasn't a fearful stare. It was almost with pity.

Once recently, and I could be wrong, but I was talking to Big Hands who said she wondered what people with teardrop tattoos thought about the rest of their lives, having to go around with those things on their face. For this guy, in particular, I recalled that question and believed it had even greater significant because his 'teardrops' looked closer to the leftovers of having had a marker held to one spot too long.

Eventually, my ruminations were dissolved by my foreman who looks an awful lot like a stocky, Southern Kiefer Sutherland.

"You don't understand what kind of stress I'm under here, fellas, so please keep it quiet so I can get through with this as soon as possible, a'right?"

Again, I had to pee. When he finished speaking and my co-workers had gathered to follow him to the tool shop for our hard hats, safety glasses and such, I snuck off to the bathroom. Seconds later, they were gone and I had to find the tool shop myself.

I asked the old man who made us watch the safety video and he described the route to me. "You'll go left outta here and you'll see a big warehouse door with a chain and a little door next to it, go in there. That's the shop."

I did as I was instructed -- I went left -- and found a handful of big warehouse doors, chains and little doors. I entered them one at a time until I came across a pair of welders who I asked to point me in the right direction. They pointed to their immediate left and I saw my group on the other end of the building I was in. Had I only taken the time to look, I would have known where I was going.

Soon enough, I was released for the day and the weekend, set to return by 7am on Monday. It'd been dark when we traveled down 224 from I-75, so getting home would be an exercise in guesswork.

It being rural Georgia, my landmarks were endless fields of cotton that stretched out like plains of three foot deep dirty snow. Silos and dairy farms are no more distinctive so passing them gave me little faith. I just followed traffic and hoped there wasn't a BBQ festival of some sort going on.

There wasn't and I was back riding the familiar confines of our great Dwight D. Einsenhower Interstate System.

Once home, I did a little fooling around on the computer but was soon passed out in my bed having remembered that I'd only had two hours sleep the night before.

Today, I cater another function. This one is inside, which eliminates hills and heat. It should be easier and so there shouldn't be any blog entries related to it. Enjoy your weekend.