He wound up working at a warehouse. Across the street was a boarding house and on the corner of that block was a small grocery store which mostly sold alcoholic beverages.

He said the warehouse would pay once a week, with small cash advances available for steady employees for a “bookkeeping” fee. The grocery store would cash his check for a fee, and he could pay the boarding house.

The boarding house had a large foyer and an outside porch where folks socialized. More than a few were workers at the same warehouse. He had no need to move beyond this area unless he purchased clothing and pocketbooks from one of the many thrift shops located several blocks away. He had a small TV in his room, a bed and a chair. He was fed breakfast and dinner, and a sack lunch during the week, and breakfast and dinner on weekends. There was access to a pay phone, he had no one to talk with.

He had no need to go any farther than to cross the street twice a day.

(The next chapter. He got sober, got a job driving a cab, bought his own cab, found Jesus, married a woman who also had found Jesus, and had a kid. I lost track of him after that.)

I was doing 12-hour shifts on a vegetable factory line when I was in high school. Two weeks day shift, two weeks night.

She complains that the shit hits the fan in these places over Christmas? What did she expect? She should try the Post Office that time of year. I did that during college.

Static electricity shocks! The horror.

When I was in college, I worked summers on a golf course construction crew, laying irrigation pipe, shaping greens, digging roots out of the fairways, that sort of thing. It was hot, tough work, but I and my hippy workmates: Coxman, Haploid, Fucking Freddy, Big Tim, The Artifact Man, Diebold (yep, the heir to the security lock fortune), Palmetto, and Covey-baby were hot and tough too. It was outdoors work in a beautiful place, right next to Buck Hammock, and we had a great boss, an old Cracker golf course architect who had underbid the University’s own Grounds Department to supervise the job, and was doing it faster and cheaper than they ever could.

One day the University Grounds Superintendent came by to give our boss some shit, and we were unloading a semi full of 80 lb fertilizer bags, stacking them up neatly on pallets in the barn. The Super was outraged that we were singing Beatle songs as we unloaded the truck, and complained to our boss how he could allow this.

“They’ll have that flatbed unloaded in an hour, not an afternoon like it would take your people. They can sing all they goddam want.”

I’m really proud of my work on that golf course. It’s still there. Check it out:

28 04′ 29″N
82 24′ 27″W