The Fork Lift
"What does your Dad do?" Tommy asked, blinking behind thick glasses, consciously, and earnest, waiting for an answer on the shaded driveway in the summer afternoon, as I took a breath and sighed real slow through the teeth.
He wiped the crumbs off the metal from the conveyor with the greasy red terry rag. He'd been within the mortared concrete walls since 06:30. Eight hours plus "bringing lunch," meant he'd be out at 03:00PM. Some would say "a-whole-nother-day-ahead," if thinking in shifts, and disregarding the human.
"...a machine-Operator?" said Tommy, blinking and not fully processing, "That's cool." Tom Senior was 15 years an accountant. Two plus years of Tommy's life, and never quite gripping imagination.
One more hour, one God-have-mercy one, and Friday would be done. Luck was not with him, or maybe it was, as a test of faith and endurance. The film had ended. The thin transparent Saran type plastic that sealed the Variety Pack. The little mini ounce size packages all coming together into a carton, and then into a larger box, and one on top of the other. He measured his days by tons.
"You mean like a forklift?" Tommy continued, inspired. A man behind the wheel of a truck is in the driver seat and might be King. The machine moves the man, and the Man moves things, on command.
Ninety-six pounds was the roll of film. That's ninety-six to his 126. He was the Machine-Operator. Yet the film was to be lifted, overhead, between spindles, with his bare hands. A Herculean effort at any time, but all the more as the clock wound down on the whole week.
"Well what does it lift?" Tommy persisted, as I grew flustered, throat dry.
...Double Stuff, Nut N' Butter, Toblerone, Oreo, the empty calorie was the thing that suddenly weighed so much on legs that stood all day and fought so hard to not be rendered mindless. "Working the line," he would be told, but refused to fool himself, by the assumption of standing around at the conveyor sorting and counting. He counted, thoroughly, and honestly, and not only the standing weight, box after box, that had to be brought to the line, then unpacked, only to be packed up all over again into a more cumbersome block. There was no "standing around." Operating meant keeping the conveyor running, by running around and adjusting the gears that always fell out of alignment as if in silent protest to the manufactory. The long week had its girth not in steps, but in miles. Tons of miles, and now this extra 96-pounds of deadweight film on top of it all, to lock into place, to finish today and prepare for next week. His only comfort in that it would mean a little distance early in the week before he'd lift another one.
"Cookies," I said in a near whisper, tasting the shame.
He took the heavy paneled pallets round back, like giant wafers, at the end of the day, to where the trucks would pick them up, by forklift, at drop off and pick up the next AM. Oak pallets, he learned, because he'd tried to reclaim a few that were broken and the saw tooth only smoldered and burned, refusing to gnaw through the tough wood. He thought he'd cut the boards, into shelves, paint them and sell them to supplement the near minimum wage. Near, because as machine Operator he earned a whole dollar more than anybody else. It earned him respect, and distain, two herniated discs, and intense back pain.
"Cookies?" Tommy said, a corner of his mouth lifting spontaneously, no doubt imagining a lazy hand stealing a mouthful of broken treats as occupational bonus, "What kind?"
"Nabisco," I said, hoarsely, taking a drink from my water bottle, that grew heavier on the heart, as I emptied it... picturing transparent bottle, after bottle, after bottle... pallet after pallet.
2024 FEB 09