Sometimes

I had to go to the post office this morning to buy stamps (I went twice yesterday and it was closed both times). I had to take the truck because Carrie has our good car again, and it wouldn't start. I knew it wasn't the battery, so I got my big screwdriver and touched the two bolt things together on - I think it's the celenoid. It worked. Yesterday it had two flat tires when I went to get in it. It's snowing and blowing and stinkin cold.

It's days like this that I sometimes wish I still worked at the chimney factory. I would have either walked to work or rode my bike. Punched in. Meandered through sheets and coils of steel back to the DW department. Turned on my machine. Said my hellos. Checked my paperwork and leaned on my seam welder for awhile until I got my bearings together. Usually someone would come and lean on it with me - my machine was good for leaning on and a frequent meeting spot. Eventually I would have started welding together sections of 20 ga. stainless steel. They were mostly either 42", 30", or 18" tall. They were rolled in various diameters from 6" up to 48". I welded the seam down the length, then double welded each end about an inch in because after I was done they got a 7/16" 90 degree flange on each end. The worst part of it was having to wear a welding helmet and the fumes; and I had to wear long sleeves year-round or else my arms would break out (I must have been allergic to the fumes).

If there was nothing rolled up and ready to weld I would sometimes cut the steel off the coils (which was one of my first jobs there), or roll the sections if they had already been cut (this took two people), or if I had elbow or "t" parts I would have to trim a half inch off of each end before rolling and then welding, or.... well, sometimes, honestly, I would just stand and lean on my machine or I would have to go find something to keep me occupied (like hiding in the basement). My supervisor didn't care what we did as long as we got our orders out on time and the boss upstairs didn't come down and catch us standing around doing nothing.

At break time I would sit with Richard, Tom and Vick and drink coffee, eat either a pop tart or a blueberry hostess pie, and we would talk about what we did the night before or something like that. We sat at the coil line cutting table. In the summer the big door would be open behind us, and if there wasn't a train parked there we would look across the tracks at the old depot. In the winter we could only run the furnace a little bit at a time, so we would have to run it until it was unbearably hot, and then let it cool down until it was unbearably cold, then turn it back on until it was hot again. All day long every day. That was worse than in the summer when it was mostly just unbearably hot all the time.

It probably wasn't the greatest place to work, but at the end of the day I knew I had made a contribution to something.

Yep, sometimes I wish I still worked there.