Haddon Tool & Die

We all got the job at the same time. Me, Don, Eddie, Bomber, Charlie (who was a dead ringer for Pete Townshend), and somebody’s cousin. Graveyard Shift-midnight to 9 A.M. We were supposed to de-burr metal plates that were to be sent to California, and put into a linear accelerator. What we did was de-burr 4 or 5, put them on top of our piles, and go to sleep, or have forklift races, or drink. I had no idea of the purpose of these plates, how they fit into the accelerator, or what a linear accelerator was, nor did I ever ask. The inspector, who was just as lazy as we were, would inspect the top 3 or 4, then go across the street and drink in the bar till 4 A.M., come back with a To-Go drink, inspect 3 or 4 more, then pass out in the employee lounge. He was middle management. It was a nothing job, summer job, throwaway labor, quick cash, going back to college in the Fall anyway job, for the other guys, but not for me. This was the beginning of my being scared witless, everyday, for about 10 years.

There was a man who’d been employed there for about 35 years. He’d started at 17, and at 52, was for all intensive purposes, dead. He was wrung out, pasty, empty. 35 years of sucking propane fumes, bordered by punching in, and out. His job was to watch a machine stamp out plates of rivets. Small rivets with a highly specialized purpose, of which we never learned nor cared. When the rivet machine broke down, he’d make a phone call, and another man would come and fix it, after which time he’d continue watching, until it broke down, then he’d……35 sumbitchin’ years, I couldn’t even look at the guy. The boss still didn’t know his first name.

The summer ended and the guys went back to school. I stayed on for awhile, ate my lunch at 4AM, by the light of the moon, on the banks of possibly the most polluted river in the United States, the mighty Delaware, once proud, now a fetid stream of shit and industrial waste, separating Camden N.J. from Philadelphia. My mother grew up in Philadelphia and went to Overbrook High with Wilt the Stilt, but that didn’t explain what the hell I was doing drinking my lunch at 4AM, outside of a tool and die shop when my guidance counselor in high school told me I’d scored exceptionally high on certain standardized tests developed at the University of Iowa.

I moved on to similar jobs, small rooms, peculiar friends, sadness, followed by small bursts of joy, followed by forced nihilism, alcoholism, a brief interlude of Buddhism, blood in the feces, cross-country car rides, acting lessons, fallen arches, desperation, acceptance. I’ve stayed in touch with Don and Eddie. The job at Haddon Tool and Die was such a departure from the rest of their lives, that they can hardly remember it. A vague recollection like a high school hand job. I have to write about it as a reminder that things could be worse and to keep from fretting….considerably.

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