Hard Hats and Honky Tonk Music
- Recollections of the first day in a new job
Ours is a town with streets named for tobacco farmers and presidents: the past pokes through like naked bones. The mystery of 1950-something sawed-off shotguns and moonshine still hangs in the air in the honky tonks when heat lightening flashes. You just had to be here in the late 50's.
The Florida Panhandle was blistered and the temperature stuck in the throat at 100 when I first met him. I was 20 years old, fresh out of college and a newlywed. He was said to be a wild one, the spitting image of Rowdy Yates (Clint Eastwood in "Rawhide") and popular with the honky tonk ladies. Rumors of his saloon escapades were topics of conversation in the high brow circles in our town, especially with the mothers. He possessed greater enterprise than discretion they said.
That first morning of my new job he came through the back door of the mining company office carefully stomping wet, grey clay from his boots on a ragged mat. Tracks of dust lined his face squint lines; calcined clay emissions clung to curly dark hair peeking from under his white hard hat. His jeans were banged-up and worn and his mud-caked cowboy boots looked mean. An open pack of Camel cigarettes strained the pocket of his cowboy shirt and a yellow pencil rested back of his right ear. I was stunned and dared not close an eye for fear I'd miss something. "Here comes trouble," I mused. (I remember what he was wearing because he wore a slight variation every day thereafter. )
"Come on over here, Billy and meet our new employee," hollered aging Shipping Clerk, Carl. Acknowleging the introduction with a no favors to bestow smile, Billy lapsed into silence as he pencilled railcar numbers on a schedule and two finger-typed SAL's Switch List. Satisfied with his squiggles on charts he sifted thru stacks of teletyped railcar orders and then slid his pencil back over the top of his ear.
Reversing his path past our crowded metal desks he lit a cigarette and opened the back door without a word or backward glance. Rumbling mills and heat clashed with our humid indoor air when he slammed the door behind him.
And he was gone. Gone back to his dark, dusty little office deep in the heart of the Plant. Back to his radio tuned to a country station and Connie Smith. Back to his ringing telephone and black coffee. Back to a nagging management group and sour workforce.
His exemption from the stress of authority allowed him to carve a path to advance in a system of pitfalls for the rest of us. Had I been smarter I'd have recognized sooner than I did that he crafted the only profitable surface clay mining operation formula in existence.
You just had to be here.
