Makin’ Mailing Machines
The single room assembly shop in Chicago was like a horseshoe and also like a working-class United Nations. Work benches rimmed the central area on three sides, full of mailing machines in various stages of completion. On the last side of the room were tall rows of parts in a maze of shelving – numbered, sorted by type, in cardboard slide-out trays, easily available. The best assemblers knew where each part was located without thinking and also which ones were bad, based on whatever portion of the machine they were working on.
Candlers, travel and drive belts, cutting blades, polished stainless steel metal surfaces, a big black tub as the base, legs, nuts, bolts, ring snaps, cotter-pins, air compressors, control buttons, washers, wiring, small axles, copper grommets, a scale, bins, lubricants, peddle controls and a drive motor. Its purpose was to open letters at high speed. It did that well, for its time. Firms could use it especially for billing envelopes … back in the day.
It was the 1980s, bad times for any worker. Several severe recessions, union busting, low wages, a vicious, anti-labor federal government, Reagan times. This was not a union shop so there was no defense, but workers made do. Yes they did. Some would smoke behind the shop in their cars along the alley. Others drank. One hit the weed. Some would spend too long in the single bathroom stacked with porn mags. Once a truck lost a partial shipment of expensive welding torches from its tailgate in the alley, and everyone got to take one home. And then there were the radios – almost one for each.
A grinning old man that looked like a mustached French voyageur announced that ‘we don’t get paid much, but we have fun.’ His wizened older buddy, who listened to the base-ball games and talk radio as much as possible, nodded with a smile. Their younger companion, a baby-faced man with 6 children who never had any money, didn’t seem to be having fun. He ate his lunches out of a small brown paper bag and never ate breakfast - all part of his saving strategy. Each had a sub-assembly to concern them.
Next to them, around the corner, was Ky Moon Chung, the Korean. Quiet, grinning, formerly a store owner in Seoul, he’d made his way to the U.S. with his wife, the nurse. Living together in an overly-expensive house in the ‘burbs was part of their struggle for ‘the American dream.’ She worked all the time, overtime, anytime, rarely being home. Ky contributed his regular, small paycheck, while playing the august role of quality control in the shop. All to pay-off their patriotic and enormous mortgage debt. He also listened to his radio, mostly bad pop music or Korean language tapes about something. Probably about success...
Next to him were the Patels, two Indians from Gujarat. They didn’t listen to music or the radio, but huddled together talking. They were quiet with the rest of the workers and related to the manager Bupee Patel. Bupee came out of the front office occasionally to roust the crew with loud talk and his love of blonde American girls. They worked slowly but surely, not used to mechanical and electrical assembly. But they were kind and considerate, somewhat happy and because they probably wanted to be shopkeepers, out of place and they knew it. It was the ‘80s after all, and Devon Avenue was becoming like a street in Mumbai, lined with Indian shops.
Next was the VJ, a Jamaican. The hard-thinking brains of this outfit. Reggae on the music box. Having long, philosophic conversations with his co-workers was his specialty. He’d mull over things for hours. Big, happy, thoughtful, that was VJ. He worked like he was curing cancer. Jamaican street food was on Howard Street, Kingston patios mafia ran weed in town, while VJ just grooved and thought and smiled at the idiocy of it all.
Next was Charles, the NPR guy. Thin, long-haired, a radical, he listened to rock on his “rock doctor’ boom box when he wasn’t taking in the news. He worked the fastest of anyone and got a bonus for it when the place closed down after new owners bought it. But that is another story. Most in the shop worked slowly so that they wouldn’t ruffle their own feathers, but he liked to get the job done, get it out of the way, get it over with. The rumor was Charles got the job because he brought his 3 year old daughter to the interview, and the woman HR person fell for it. Of course it didn’t hurt that he had years of assembly experience.
Around the next corner by the back door was the Southern hillbilly, Randy. Although ‘hillbilly’ is an insult, it’s not meant that way here. Spent his dime on drink, country music and good times. He had the most broken-down but largest car. Skinny, always moving, a scraggly red beard and reddish curly hair, he’d left home for a good job up in the North. There were plenty of Southerners in town like him…in Uptown especially, where the smarter ones once united with the Black Panther Party – back in the day.
Then there was the dark-skinned brother, George. George was the last hired. Big, he didn’t know how he’d got here, what he was doing, how to build anything and did it anyway. R&B and early Rap was on his radio, in his tape player and on his mind as he sang along.
Lastly were Pedro and Tony, two grinning Chicanos in the 3rd
corner, who called everyone else ‘cabron.’ ‘puta,’ ‘jefe,' 'pendejo' or lastly ‘mierda’ when
they were really pissed – which they never were. Their radios rocked nortenos, tejano, banda or Mexican pop. They talked among
themselves a lot, but got the job done anyway.
The steady hum of Spanish from their corner was like water running.
This little United Nations never fought, never got angry, never struggled – unlike the real one. They were all equal in this shop, no overlords, as in the real one. They got along, they enjoyed their poorly-paid jobs, they made it to work on time, they grooved. Especially one day.
That was the day that “Rockit” by Herbie Hancock started coming on the air on local Chicago stations. Now if you’ve ever heard ‘Rockit,’ it’s a techno-hard beat, electronic instrumental monster. Hancock was a jazz pianist who decided to do a fusion with rock. It came out in 1983 and blasted out of MTV and later at the Grammys. It had DJ scratches, synthesizers, vocal samples, electronic drums, African drumming, Santeria bam. Not your usual fare, especially for such a diverse bunch of ‘losers’ in a dingy, forgotten shop in Chicago. Yet…
Most had heard the song before. The next time it came on, Charles the NPR boy told everyone – “Quick, Rockit is on WXRT.” Every radio in the shop turned to WXRT, aborting the previous stations. Every radio blasted out the mix. All playing the same song, in the big, concrete room, which functioned like an echo chamber and woofer in one. Eight radios, a surround-sound, blue-collar concert hall. Randy the hillbilly rocked out, as did George. The Voyageur did a wiggle. The Chicanos whooped. The NPR boy bopped the beat on his work bench. VJ smiled like a house on fire. The rest nodded their heads in time to the beats. Even the Patels tapped their feet. After all, it wasn’t quite Bollywood but it worked, even for them.
After the song ended, everyone slowly turned their radios back to whatever station they had been on. The quiet click of tools and hum of human movement took the place of the raucous symphony, while the radios softly bandied out their tones. It was a good day at the factory. Music, the versatile universal. Class, the controversial universal.
May Day has collections of short fiction stories. Come in and buy one!
Contribution by C.G.
Gibbs
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