Skip to main content

Shipping News

The other day, I thought of something that happened decades ago.  I was 18 and a college Freshman, working a minimum wage job for barely a dollar an hour.  Summer...Southern California...no air conditioning and bottom of the totem pole.  The distributorship for Sony tape recorders had recently opened a plant in my home town of Sun Valley.  Cassettes were just coming within reach, video tape was a few years away, but reel to reel stereo recorders were the thing and this business was growing daily.
I packed small electronic parts and weighed them for either United Parcel or the U.S. Postal Service.  I ran errands which could be anything from picking up food orders for the executives when they worked overtime to taking their Cadillacs to be washed and gassed.
By 4:00 in the afternoon we'd load a VW van and whoever was working with me that day and I would take a truckload of small parcels to the post office.  Clean up and one last interoffice mail delivery and that was the day.
I got two 10 min. breaks and a 40 min. lunch break daily.  Sometimes during those breaks I'd wander over to the shipping department where guys loaded big semis with tape recorders for orders that included large department stores or electronics retailers.  Lots of heavy lifting there.  A silver-steel conveyor belt with what looked like roller skate wheels often led into an immense truck backed up to the shipping dock.  The shipping guys were tough.  They worked hard and at the end of each day, most went across the street to a small bar for a few beers before going home and doing it all over again.  Sometimes they fought, sometimes they joked with one another, sometimes they sat with me and talked about baseball, or politics, or what assholes the owners of the company were.

I learned how to swear in Spanish from those breaks.  I saw first hand how most of those guys were trapped in a situation where their labor, non-unionized, was all that they had and there was really no room for discussion of their conditions or rate of pay.  The trucks rolled in and out.  Recorder parts were transformed into units and large lots rolled out.  A couple of beers and it started all over again until one day someone didn't return and someone else was hired.
That's where I met Charlie.  Charlie worked on the shipping dock.  Just one look and you knew immediately here was a guy with a back story.  About 55 or 60, Charlie had been well-built.  His biceps were still outstanding, but when he took off his shirt, not uncommon during the hot afternoons, you could see that the elasticity of his skin was beginning to diminish.  Charlie had been a stunt man in Hollywood.  One of the guys called Gypsy had told me that at one time he'd done very well playing a heavy in films of the 40s.  It was evident; he'd had the body of a body builder.
This was before Arnold's "Pumping Iron."  Charlie was more in the mold of Charles Atlas.  In fact, one day Charlie told me that he'd prefer I use his whole name, Charles Treadwell.
Over the months from June until October, we talked about all manner of things.  Charles was fascinated that I was taking philosophy in college.  When I'd show up for an afternoon shift he was often eager to ask me what philosopher I was currently studying.  From the Greeks like Plato and Aristotle and Heraclitus, to Kant and Shopenour, Charles was enthralled.  One day I happened to mention Spinoza, saying that he called emotions "confused ideas."
The weeks turned into months and the guys in shipping came and went.  One day, I wandered back to the shipping dock after running an errand.  Dickie, the leader of the men there ran up to me and asked if I'd seen Charlie.  "Not yet," I replied.

 "He's been asking about you all day, wants to show you something."
I looked around but couldn't find him so I went back to the mail room.  Two hours later, on my last break of the day I made my way over to shipping.  There was a huge semi backed up and a gang of guys, Charles included, working feverishly.  I didn't want to disturb them so I decided to creep closer hugging the wall.  The conveyor belt was rolling full tilt.  A portable stairway on wheels was just off to the side.  That's where the foreman perched with his clipboard as the units entered the truck. As I neared this scene I could see some letters painted on the side of the stairway.  In dripping royal blue letters I read, "Emotions are but confused ideas"
                                                                   SPINOZA

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

To a Tee

 I'm a sucker for a good t-shirt.  They are the foundational garment of my life.  My day starts with selecting a t-shirt and it ends with sleeping in one.  Once thought of as under garments, t-shirts are now original art and no doubt, a billion dollar business.   You can get a t-shirt with anybody's picture displayed.  You can commemorate an event, a birthday, a death, even a specular play in any sport.  Family reunions usually have a commemorative t-shirt.  Also, any organization that solicits your support in the form of a donation is likely to offer you a t-shirt. Where once I only had the basic white t-shirt, my drawers are filled with all manner of colorful choices.  Some recognize major events in my life, some, spectacular performances or plays I have witnessed, and some unforgettable places I have been.   I say I'm a sucker for a good t-shirt because I have taken the bait on what I perceived as a must-have only to be disappointed. ...

Illusory

What does it take to enrage you?  That moment when your words fly on pure emotion because enough is enough.  Is it a driver that cuts you off at high speed?  What about being an eyewitness to blatant racism or on the receiving end of some obvious injustice? I know some people who never express rage.  I admire them but know full well I am not capable of such distance from that which would bring about such a strong response. Another senseless shooting and 7 people die at the hands of a mentally ill gun owner.  The father of the 20 year old college student lets it fly and somehow millions feel a new sense of relief.  He calls the politicians bastards who do nothing, he wears his pain in public.  The news media responds but we all know that nothing is going to change.  We are the gun country.  We are the place where anybody, anytime, can be cut down just for being there when somebody else snaps. Usually the perpetrators are delusional. ...

Mr. Greene v. Mr. Brown

I want to tell you about something. Something I've carried inside myself for a number of years now. Perhaps if I were a different kind of person I wouldn't need to talk about it. I'm not. My need to tell it is stronger than your need to hear it. Because, however, there are a number of teachers and former students of mine who may read these meanderings from time to time, I need to tell this story all the more. About 7 or 8 years ago I was asked if I would allow a university PhD. candidate to observe an English class. At first I decided against it because I was scheduled to have a student teacher placed with me the second half of the semester in question. After some urging, however, at the request of a respected colleague, I agreed. Soon I was committing to extra meetings, signing documents and explaining to the class in question who the young woman who thoughtfully pounded away on a laptop in the rear of the classroom three times a week was. I knew that the topic of ...