by W.H. Harrod
~Is That A Pink Fender?
Just like many other young men coming of age, Heywood could vividly recall the day he got his first car. It was, to say the least, a most memorable day in deed. Possibly it was made more so by the way he came into possession of said auto. Long into the future, Heywood could still hear his dad’s voice.
“Well, it’s yours now,” he'd said with a hint of sarcasm in his voice.
Heywood personally saw no humor in this declaration of an official change in ownership of the vehicle in question. Heywood didn’t expect he was the only one to wonder if the wreck parked before him might not be better off if it was put to rest in the nearest junk yard. The whole right front fender was practically gone, plus the hood was also mangled. Where the bumper was now, no one could say. Not exactly how Heywood had envisioned becoming the proud owner of his first vehicle.
Sure, maybe it was Heywood who drove the same vehicle into that inconveniently situated utility pole. He couldn’t recall his dad officially announcing a “You break it, you own it” policy. If that had been clearly stipulated, Heywood was quite certain he would have used a bit more caution while navigating the curvy road that carried the usual Friday night cruising traffic between drive-in, curb service restaurants.
What else was Heywood supposed to do about the lit cigarette that had slipped out of his fingers and fallen into his lap? Certainly none of his pals could be expected to go searching for the offending lung menace. Heywood was all alone on this one. The guy riding shotgun did make an attempt to steer the runaway vehicle away from the telephone pole, but to no avail.
Heywood was a young lad with places to go and people to see. Only now his sole mode of transportation, without imposing upon friends who were becoming less willing to haul him around to all the places he needed to go or see, sat behind the house absent most of its front end. The unrecognizable pieces that urgently needed to be replaced lay in a pile to the side.
If that was not bad enough, Heywood pulled out his trusty old pencil and after making a few calls to local junkyards found out that the replacement parts would amount to over one hundred dollars cash. Heywood had a better chance of getting a call from the attractive young female lifeguard at the city pool - the one who called him a conceited jerk while giving him the middle finger salute - than coming up with a hundred bucks.
Even if he did come up with the cash to get the parts, Heywood had no idea of how to go about replacing almost the entire front end of an automobile. He could take one apart. Heywood could take apart almost anything. Actually, he liked taking things apart. Taking things apart was generally a snap. Putting things together or, in this instance, back together was a waste of Heywood’s talents. He had been told much earlier in life that he didn’t have any of those putting things back together genes. One might say he was an early adherent of the I don’t like to do that theory. Admittedly most everyone else was slow to pick up on this idea, but not Heywood. When it came to doing mostly what he wanted to do, he was well known as a trendsetter.
There were other issues, such as the car’s heater and defroster system wouldn’t warm up a glove box. Then there was that hole in the floor on the front passenger side. Wind, water, road noise, and exhaust fumes all ended up inside the vehicle. Maybe that didn’t matter much during the dry summers, but during the cold, inclement weather periods, one’s pucker factor increased by the ton. Try to get a girl to go to the drive-in movie with you in that thing when there’s snow on the ground.
The most embarrassing of all deficiencies was that the car had a six cylinder engine with but a single exhaust pipe. How un-cool was that? Can one even imagine just how stupid it looks to cruise through one of the many drive-in restaurants on a Friday night - your steady girl sitting by your side and not being able to rev up a V-8 engine with a pair of glass pack mufflers?
Heywood was in a pickle. He needed a car badly and his only prospect presently was an ugly, before we say another word, wreck, sitting out in the driveway with the front end torn off. He needed a hundred bucks to buy all the parts to repair the wreck, and he definitely needed to find someone dumb enough to help him do all this repairing once the required pieces miraculously appeared.
Heywood put his brain to work and, amazingly, found a solution. It wasn’t that difficult, actually. First thing he did was tell his younger brother, the one who had exhibited some mechanical talent a couple of years earlier when he helped one of his friends fix a car that had also undergone a front end smashing, that he would tell their parents it was his brother who fed the laxative infused dog food to the neighbor’s yapping dog that stood at the fence and barked towards Heywood back door for hours at a time, thereby, causing the owner to have to replace about every piece of carpet in the house.
Heywood began a campaign to convince his father that he was getting real, real close to thinking about turning over a new leaf. “Maybe dad is right,” Heywood commented aloud on more than one occasion. “Maybe it is time for me to grow up and begin to take some responsibility for my own upkeep.”
“All of us have to grow up sometime,” Heywood said knowing his dad was in earshot. He also got the old push mower out and sharpened the blades one weekend when he was sure his dad would be around to observe the miraculous event.
A stroke of genius? Heywood thought so. Why else would his dad have offered to loan Heywood the hundred bucks to get that wreck fixed so he might have a better chance of becoming gainfully employed.
If something showed real promise in furthering his ambitions, Heywood was capable of moving at a much more accelerated pace. Still not fast, mind you, but certainly quicker than the usual it’s on my to do list pace. So much quicker, that Heywood, with the help of his mechanically adept little brother, soon had all the parts he needed to fix his car piled out behind the house and ready to be attached.
Heywood was surprised at just how fast the parts went on. In no time at all, his ride was ready to be reintroduced to the world. His little brother even went to the trouble of patching that pesky hole in the floorboard. “Maybe this deal wasn’t going to be so bad after all,” Heywood mused. No more having to ask his dad for the car, no more having to explain why a wash tub full of empty beer bottles was in the back seat, or, most importantly, no more having to demur when asked by a girl if he would be available next week to give her a ride to the pool.
Of course, he would. He had his own car now. This is exactly what the founding fathers were talking about in that Declaration of Independence. Heywood had rightly assumed his own separate and equal station. More importantly, he was no longer subject to that long train of abuses and usurpations regularly imposed upon young people by parents everywhere.
All in all, things were looking great with the exception of one little thing, that is. That one little thing was a humongous thing. He and his little brother, in spite of their best efforts, were not able to secure exact duplicates of the parts that needed replacing on Heywood’s new personal vehicle. They had stood there for the longest time considering the ramifications of settling for something less than an exact duplicate. In the end though, the eagerness to get his personal car on the road cancelled out his reservations.
The car was solid white. The replacement fender and hood were pink. Through the euphoric haze that had clouded his reasoning, Heywood allowed his little brother to talk him into going ahead and buying the offending and prominently displayed pink replacement parts.
What Heywood ended up doing was typical. He figured he’d give it a road test to see how his friends reacted to his personal rolling social parlor. He got the message real quick. The sounds of derisive laughter resonated in his ears long after his two-tone pink and white ride departed the first drive-in restaurant lot he cruised through.
Horns were honking, so-called pals were laughing, and way too many cute girls were staring at him with looks that might well have been caused by someone letting loose a beer fart right under their noses.
Fifteen minutes later Heywood pulled back
into his home driveway swearing never to take that loathsome vehicle back to the mean streets until that forevermore hated pink color was purged from his memory. That meant he needed to get back with his little brother and apologize profusely for not honoring his pledge to allow the single person who did all the work to be the first to take it out on the streets.
Fortunately, the kid was a good soul who pledged to find a solution within their budget. That was a chore in itself as their entire budget now amounted to about four dollars and eighty-five cents. Wouldn’t you know it, the kid came through again. For just a few pennies short of their total budget, his brother secured two spray cans of white metallic paint, metal sand paper to get rid of much of the remaining pink color, and a big roll of masking tape.
A full week passed before his little brother proudly proclaimed the offending pile of metal had been transformed into something that was not at all cool, but presentable, and if not presentable, at least not so likely to provoke hysterical laughter.
Heywood was so overjoyed he actually allowed his younger brother to drive the car around for the whole afternoon. Heywood did make him pay for his own gas, and he agreed in principal to consider allowing his little brother the use of said vehicle on other non-primetime occasions in the future. Heywood actually felt real good about being so accommodating to his little brother. All in all, his little brother was a very lucky young man to have such an understanding role model as Heywood.
But wouldn’t you just know it. In no time at all, Heywood came crashing up against that ubiquitous wall of monetary necessity. Meaning, he needed money. Cars cost money, and he didn’t have any, to speak of, excepting the few bucks he got from his dad each week. As a proud car owner, he now had to provide for gas, oil, insurance, license plates, and maintenance. Heywood realized he needed a job.
This turned out to be something of a problem as Heywood really didn’t like to get up early or working hard. Actually, he only wanted the money, he didn’t want the work, but for some weird reason, all the employers insisted on the two being dependent upon one another.
“This sucks,” Heywood often said to anyone listening. But in due course, he gave in and deigned to being employed at a major supermarket bakery. Heywood figured this would be the lesser of many possible evils, with evil, of course, being defined as any kind of hard work. The things that attracted Heywood to the job were numerous. It paid a whopping two seventy-five an hour. Just how sweet was that? And just for baking things, he reasoned. Secondly, the work would be at night from eleven to seven. That would allow him time to sleep during the early part of the day when there wasn’t anything important going on and party at night before going to work. Thirdly, he absolutely loved pastries. If it was up to him, that’s all he would eat. That and meatloaf. Heywood did like meatloaf. He also liked the mash potatoes and gravy that were essential if one ate meatloaf. To be fair, he also liked the green beans his momma always served with the other essential parts of his non-pastry favorite meal. Plus to be really, really honest, Heywood did like those fluffy biscuits his mom always made to go along with the meatloaf. But that’s all. Only pastries and that meat loaf ensemble was all he liked to eat. But then again, he did like ice cream, and as he reasoned that ice cream wasn’t actually a food but rather a member of the dessert family, he could exclude that also.
The job Heywood was assigned to on the first day of employment was assisting an older fellow who proudly announced to Heywood that he had been on the job at the same bakery placing large trays of pastries into a conveyor oven for almost twenty years. Heywood was quite sure the man wasn’t bragging, although it seemed to Heywood that if he was being assigned to the same job on the very first day, he was not presently in the company of a baking master. All they did was roll big racks of raised pastry trays ready for the block-long conveyor belt oven up to the gaping mall of an opening and feed the trays onto the always moving conveyor belt. About twenty five or thirty minutes later, the same platters would come back around looking nice and brown ready for the wrapping department half a building away.
After some time Heywood could not help but notice that his thumbs were getting sore from lifting the heavy trays. There was also the discomfort caused by the large oven giving off so much heat. He actually got to feeling somewhat faint. The guy he was working with did not show any effects from the heat radiating from the oven opening. However Heywood astutely noticed that the same guy was the only one who always walked several paces away to a large white refrigerator room where he brought back rolling racks of raised pastry dough on large trays. It was these trays they subsequently placed on the conveyor belts after removing the returning trays revealing all those brown, tasty looking rolls.
Heywood was no dummy. The reason his grinning co-worker looked so comfortable was because he was constantly cooling down in that big refrigerator. Heywood decided he would put a halt to this situation real fast. Maybe he didn’t have twenty years of experience sticking big trays loaded with pastry dough into block-long ovens, but he’d figured out this scam.
“Just one second there, Hoss,” Heywood said the next time Mr. Deformed Thumbs (from lifting heavy trays for twenty years) made a move towards the big ice box. “I’ll get the racks this time,” he stated with a hint of defiance.
His co-worker looked somewhat surprised at this cheeky attitude so suddenly displayed by the new guy. But, with a smile and the wave of the hand towards the fridge door, he stepped aside.
Heywood could not help but grin at just how easily he’d went about letting the old-timer know he was not some rube just getting to town on the back of a hay wagon. He was a well-known player in his neighborhood. He could take up for himself when the need arose.
The several paces to the big white door, behind which Heywood was sure he would receive the jolt of cool air he wanted so badly, took but a few seconds. Then with an obvious sense of urgency, Heywood jerked open the door and scampered into the much needed refreshing cool air, slamming the door behind him.
Heywood’s giggling co-worker dragged his limp body back through the same door a minute later gasping for breath as if he were just pulled from the bottom of a swimming pool. The ice box Heywood expected to enjoy turned out to be one of those contraptions referred to as a proofer. A proofer was an enclosed space filled with very hot air, which is essential for causing the pastry dough to rise prior to baking. The temperature inside was a lung gasping one hundred twenty degrees.
It took some time for Heywood to regain his senses and realize that he’d been had. Turns out incidents like this occurred often when new guys came to work in front of the big oven. Heywood knew he’d been played. But that was okay, he’d asked for it. He didn’t mind working around people who had a sense of humor. Heywood liked humor. His time would come. Mr. Deformed Thumbs would be hearing from Heywood one of these days.
After some time, Heywood did finally get somewhat use to getting up and going to a job on a regular basis even if getting up was at 10 p.m. Monday through Friday, leaving him an hour to get ready and get to the bakery. Sure enough, just as he expected, the foreman came around one night and informed Heywood that starting the next week, he would be working at another job on the night shift.
Heywood tried hard not to gloat during the remainder of his shift. Already someone in management had recognized his vast potential and promptly decided that this talented young man needed to be moved along to bigger and better opportunities. Even his friends, the ones who were always on him for not being able to cruise the streets and drink beer with them, were impressed when told about his somewhat meteoric rise in the company hierarchy.
It stood to reason that Heywood was confused the next week when, right after arriving at work, he was directed by the foreman to a part of the plant he had not yet gotten familiar with. What kind of job they expected him to do in this area of the building where, as far as he could see, there was nothing but stacks and stacks of crusty old baking pans, Heywood didn’t have a clue.
“Over
here,” yelled the foreman as Heywood lagged behind while taking in his new surroundings.
What Heywood saw as he approached the area, where the company official stood awaiting his arrival, was a heavy wooden topped table with a stack of those same crusty old baking pans. Also nearby was a vat of oily liquid. Heywood was at a complete loss as to what he might be expected to do with this mess.
Surely they don’t use this stuff to prepare the bread products they ship to supermarkets all over the state? he thought as he stood there mouth agape.
“What’s all this stuff?” Heywood finally asked.
The foreman smiled diabolically as he broke the news to Heywood that this was going to be his new job location.
That response caused two thoughts to come to Heywood’s mind. What kind of job will I do here? What happened to the guy who used to do this job?
The foreman’s smile had just a hint of mischief in it as he broke the news to Heywood that the most recent employee who quit the job only the previous Friday said he was going to the doctor to check on his sudden loss of hearing and never came back. That explained why the large room was practically filled with stacks of dirty baking pans.
Then as Heywood scrunched his brow evidencing his confusion, the foreman picked up one of the nastiest pans and promptly turned it upside down and banged it hard on the sturdy table top causing burnt pieces of bread crust to go flying over a wide area. Next he dipped an oily old mop handle-like stick with an oily rag tied to the end into the vat of oil and summarily into one of the crusty baking pans he’d retrieved from one of the hundreds of stacks in the very large room. The final thing the foreman did before turning back to Heywood with a mischievous smile on his face was to place that same, now de-crusted and re-oiled baking pan on a conveyor belt that transported it to an adjacent department where it would be filled with fresh bread dough before being placed in one of those block-long ovens.
Viewing the mess surrounding his new workstation, Heywood, being somewhat prescient, admitted that most likely his earlier thoughts relating to being promoted were a mite premature.
The foreman ultimately turned away heading for the big double doors, but before he got too far, he made one last comment. “Whatever you do keep that conveyor line filled with pans going into the next part of the plant where they put the bread dough in before arriving at the ovens. We have to get enough bread out by tomorrow morning to fill the shelves in stores over this entire part of the state.”
Heywood was suddenly all by himself, he and about a million crusty pans to get back on line so all those unsuspecting consumers would be able to purchase bread manufactured under conditions not suitable for consumption by cloven hoofed creatures.
“Is this a great country, or what?” Heywood derisively commented aloud as he reached for one of the pans he needed to bang on the table before slopping it with a substance that looked more like used motor oil all the time.
For the greater part of the next eight hours, that was Heywood’s life. Banging and slopping baking pans that had not been washed for at least the last three hundred years?
Somewhere during those first hours, as Heywood continued his planned climb up the already ever receding into the distance management ladder, he determined never to eat store bought bread again. His mama’s homemade biscuits and cornbread were looking better and better all the time.
Another thing that exasperated Heywood was the obvious fact that a living, breathing human being could not do this job bad enough to get transferred to some other menial task. You couldn’t get the pans any dirtier nor, he finally determined, would it make any difference if he did not even bother to slop or bang the old burnt crust out of the pans. Down the line someone who gave a crap even less would still plop fresh baking dough into the pan and send it on down the line. Obviously, whoever did that job had by now also come to the decision never to eat anything put on any shelf that displayed their employer’s name.
As the seemingly never-ending drudgery filled hours passed by day by excruciating day, Heywood began to believe he’d detected a subliminal rhythm to his existence. He’d heard the word used by one of those college professors he saw on TV one day while checking to see if he really could watch something that didn’t involve a sporting event, a horse, an army tank, or a baseball. Ended up he couldn’t, but he did remember a guy with black-rimmed glasses and a really goofy haircut talking about something subliminal. Heywood determined he would find out what the word meant and make use of it from time to time. The most recent instance was the second time. The other time didn’t go so well when he tried to work it into a conversation with a girl at the pool wearing a two piece bathing suit. He told her she looked subliminal. She told her football player boyfriend who took offense and told Heywood he would be doing something subliminal to his head if he ever talked to his girlfriend again.
In the end, the so-called rhythm wasn’t subliminal at all. It was nothing more than a repetitive bang, slop, clang as the metal bread pans made contact with the metal rollers on the conveyor line.
Heywood had read something about some old codgers in India who went around the country barefooted begging for food and would sit down alongside the dirty roads and do something called meditating. They hummed a bunch of nonsensical words that put them in some kind of spell so they could endure all sorts of pain.
Well, Heywood was also in a lot of pain from banging the crust from all those nasty pans. He tried to meditate, but the pan banging would not allow him to get anywhere close to the meditative place those Indian guru guys got to. He made a mental note to write a letter to India telling them this stuff did not work where he lived. Possibly, if he could just sit quietly with no one bothering him he, too, could achieve some level of quietude, but not where he toiled to scrape out a living. You sit in a corner and start humming where Heywood lived, they would put you in the county psyche unit or make you pick up cigarette butts around the courthouse.
Fortunately for Heywood, one of his fellow inmates who worked in a part of the plant where the bread was sliced and packaged quit, necessitating the company decision to use Heywood’s untapped talents in a replacement role. Once again he faced having to work hard for about thirty-five seconds to learn a new job.
This time he would be handling the fresh baked bread in between the time when it came out of the oven but before it got shoved into the thin cellophane packaging and sent to markets. All of about eleven brain cells were required for him to perform this task. This suited Heywood as he really didn’t want to put forth a whole lot of mental energy here either. Just tell him what you wanted done and then stand back and let him do it. After all, it wasn’t rocket science.
Ah, but wouldn’t you just know it? Heywood did, in fact, manage to screw this job up. All he had to do was take the pans of bread off of the oven conveyor belt and shove them on to racks that were then moved to a slicing and packaging line where the loaves were placed in cellophane wrappers. Upon the completion of this simple task, the individual loaves were then loaded on to various conveyances and shipped to area markets. End of story, right?
Turns out very few of the loaves Heywood came into contact with that day made it anywhere. The individual retrieving the bread from the oven (Heywood again) was not forewarned to treat the very hot items with compassion. Otherwise, those puffed up and very hot individual rolls were susceptible to collapsing like deflated footballs. Heywood paid no attention to the contents of the metal baking pans he nonchalantly tossed onto the awaiting racks.
Heywood was adamant that whatever had happened was not his fault. He had been instructed to retrieve the individual pans from the oven and place them on racks as fast as he could so the warm loaves could be rolled over to the packaging line for final preparation before loading onto trucks for delivery to stores all over two states.
Unfortunately, that’s not how management saw it. The plant general manager paced around the large room where Heywood, along with the rest of the baking crew, awaited their fate. Some of the
old-timers were really scared about the possibility of a mass firing. Heywood could see the fear in his fellow workers’ eyes. Conversely, he didn’t really give a big rat’s ass. He was becoming weary of this whole baking debacle by the minute. He didn’t give a crap as to what actually caused what, apparently to all the suits and ties, was a historical catastrophe. If they wanted him to handle the right-out-of-the-oven product with kid gloves, then tell him that. If someone had not put enough yeast in the product, then have those people taken out back and shot. If it was about the bread having risen too fast, then go get all those guys and tell them about it. As far as Heywood was concerned his days in front of the ovens were numbered.
Heywood did not get fired that day just as his fellow workers did not. Heywood did receive a few snide remarks from a couple of the old-timers, the ones who hoped to keep their jobs until retirement. Heywood tried to act sorry for what had happened, but as more of the old-timers attempted to shift the blame in his direction, he began to lose interest in the whole thing. He went out of his way to let a couple of them know he could care less about what they thought of his work ethic. Heywood had no real idea regarding what kind of suitable gainful employment would ultimately grab his attention, but he was damn sure it wouldn’t be in the baking industry.
Over the next couple of months his status at the plant entered into something akin to the “Twilight Zone.” Heywood knew he was just passing time until he could find another job. He did, from time to time, confide to a couple of the younger guys that he was soon to be outta there. They mostly felt the same way he did. As for the older guys, Heywood just ignored them. They were trapped in their jobs. They knew how to bake bread for a large company and that’s all. Anyone doing anything to put their jobs at risk was scorned. As they were old-timers, they did not intend to get blamed for mistakes. Whatever happened, they looked for someone else to blame it on.
The end finally came a few weeks later when Heywood was part of a crew marched before the plant superintendent’s office to answer for the offense of allowing the bread to be over baked. By this time Heywood didn’t even bother to listen to the red-faced manager’s harangue. Heywood was as good as already out the door. He still had no idea as to what he was going to do with his life, but he was sure he could find some people somewhere who were not so screwed up as this group was to do it with.
Heywood intended to give two weeks’ notice, as was customary, but things just didn’t work out that way. He did, in fact, give notice but, almost immediately, things at the plant descended to a level of nonsense that caused Heywood to expedite his departure or perhaps more correctly, to try to expedite his departure.
Heywood’s plan was to stay low and not make any noise, so to speak, for the two weeks’ notice period he’d apprised the management of the previous Friday. But wouldn’t you just know it. Things happened that Heywood was considered to be a part of. In quick succession more bread was burnt, entire production lines went down for hours, and employees started shifting the blame to one another.
Every single day for the first week of his two weeks’ notice period, whole crews were called before higher management to be held accountable for some, according to management, catastrophe. It was frightened, stern-faced employees that almost daily marched into some manager’s office to be held accountable for some unforgivable sin. All except Heywood, that is.
You see, Heywood didn’t give a crap. Whatever had happened, he didn’t do it, and he wasn’t going to listen to some old red-faced tyrant go on and on about bread not being baked to perfection. So he just blew off the end of day bitch sessions the rest of the scared-stiff workers trudged to daily.
In fact, his final day was the Friday of the first week of his two week notification. Heywood was not going to subject himself to more of their nonsense. If all they intended to do was bitch and moan about everything, practically every employee did, every day, then he had better things to do.
Only the management didn’t see it that way. Heywood was called at home the following Monday by one of the upper management people and told he was going to be fired if he did not present himself at the plant office the next morning. Heywood reminded the caller that he had already given notice but due to all the nonsense going on, had merely expedited his departure date.
The indignant company official then promptly informed him he was fired. Heywood said fine and hung up the phone, glad to be done with those idiots. He’d rather dig holes for a living than put up with their nonsense. He felt relieved to be done with the whole mess.
It might come as a surprise to readers to learn that the next day another management official called Heywood’s home and asked where the heck he was. Heywood calmly told the guy he was in bed and had been enjoying a nice long sleep before being so rudely interrupted. The caller was indignant and informed Heywood that he would be fired if he did not show up at work that very evening. Heywood politely told him he’d already been fired and went back to bed.
For the next several blissful days, Heywood reveled in his new freedom. He’d made a mental note to perform a more in depth examination of future potential employers. He never again wanted to find himself in the company of a group of idiots like the ones who managed the company he’d just escaped from. Heywood planned to take some time before he hired his valuable services out again. A guy needed to be careful.
By the end of the first week of his new found freedom Heywood was starting to come around and was becoming more optimistic by the minute. But that turned out to be short lived. For you see, he received another of those phone calls from hell. His supposedly former employer called again and chastised him in depth for not showing up for work.
Heywood immediately informed the caller that they had fired him the previous week. The caller became irate and informed Heywood that they had no record of him being fired, but he certainly would be if he did not show up that night.
“That’s fine with me,” said an exasperated Heywood. He felt glad to be done with the bakery from hell. That is until several days later when the phone rang just after midnight. Heywood answered and was greeted by a voice from the netherworld, “This is your employer …”