When I Became A Working Man

My memories of graduation are fuzzy. I remember all of us gathered in the hallway, waiting to process in, and I remember heckling a little when they announced Mr. Blount would not be returning the next year. My remark brought a comment from Wayne Poole. He looked over and said, “What do you care? You won’t be here.” He was right of course, and I’ve chalked it up to my “boy” side making one last outburst before I moved on.

But that is it. That’s the limit of my graduation memories. I don’t remember walking across the stage or the speeches or anything. Somewhat sad for such a monumental event, huh?

Somewhere around graduation, give or take a week, I applied for and got a job at Maramont. This was the first of only two times in my life that I punched a clock, and the symbolism was even apparent to me. It’s a simple act --- pick up your time card, drop it into the clock and then put it back in the rack --- but it meant so much more than that. It was a rite of passage to manhood. I was no longer a school boy getting paid part time wages for part time work; I was a man making a man’s wage. A productive member of society.

This was the second big step in a very short time. Now, I could start figuring out what I wanted to do with my life and set up some goals; a car, my own place, heck, even a wife and kids. Little did I know that less than a month away was an event that would change everything before I even had time to start.

My first job at Maramont was as a spot welder on the assembly line. The guy one station up the line from me put 3 short pipes between two flanges and sent it down to me. I took it and pressed the ends into a spot welder with 3 heads that lined up with the pipes and welded them to the flanges. I hated it. The first night there (I worked 3 to 11) they gave me nothing for protection, just said, “Here, do this.” Let me tell you, when you hit the pedal to trigger the welder, bits of red hot metal flew everywhere, mainly on me. By the end of the shift, my shirt looked like a sieve because of all the holes in it. Later they gave me gloves, goggles and an apron.

My supervisor didn’t act like he was overly impressed with my work and I was equally unimpressed with him. It was like there was a problem, but he would never say what. Was I slow? Was the work subpar? What? He never said. He just wasn’t happy about something. Finally, he said the thought I wasn’t strong enough, which made sense to me since the pieces weighed every bit of half a pound, but he was the boss, so he swapped me with another guy.

He put me on the boxer at the end of the assembly line and I loved it. It could get busy when the line was in full swing but I didn’t mind. I picked up the finished muffler, put it on a box, pressed a foot pedal and the machine folded and glued the box and then pushed it down into a drying chute. And when the line shut down for whatever reason, well, that was even better. I can remember a period of little more than a week that the line didn’t budge and I sat there the whole shift drawing my pay. Plus, Jimmy Brantley was on the other boxing machine and he had a way of keeping things light.