Loose Laces

Part Five...

Due to a miscalculation in August of 1968, by 1970 I was driving a 1966 T-Bird Landau with the sequential turn lights all the way across the back. It is now a classic. The miscalculation was that I thought I would celebrate my 24th birthday by pitching my first drunk... and driving. My uncle Fred, my first cousin Jerry, and I went to the liquor store and and bought a bottle of Mad Dog (cheap Mogen David 20/20 wine for you that have never partaken) and drove back home and drank it. Of course, we had to have more, so off we went in my pride and joy, a 1966 Chevelle SS 396 with 360+ hosses awaiting my command. I had weaseled around and talked my wife into letting me trade a perfectly good '63 Impala convertible which I had bought new for the brand new hotrod Chevelle. Needless to say I totaled the Chevelle that night. I was able to get it home, but I couldn't turn the steering wheel to the right. It was an interesting and sobering little journey. I ended up buying a 1955 Chevy two door sedan with a bored 283 engine that had a wrist pin slapping just to have transportation. Every two or so months, I had to pull the tranny and replace the throwout bearing because it somehow was working its way up on the snout of the input shaft cover. I finally sold it and bought the T-Bird with a 390 engine that seemingly would not top out. It was to carry me into the world of trampdom.

In March, 1970, I went over to the union hall (in Kingsport, of course) to see about finding work after having been fired from the Eastman. All the trade Locals in the Ohio Valley were on strike, and the closest work I could get was through Local 26 in Washington DC. They had a powerhouse job down on Hwy 301 in Maryland, along the Potomac river. Fortunately, they were working a lot of overtime at double-time pay, so I looked to make some big bucks. I left a scale of $4.25/hr at Eastman and went to a scale of $6.90 in DC.

The BA gave me a referral to DC, called and told them I was coming (and no telling what else) and sent me on my way. He failed to tell me others were going there and I could arrange to ride and share living expenses with one or more of them. The following Sunday and with one hundred borrowed dollars in my pocket, I said my goodbyes at about noon and hit the road. I arrived just outside DC in Virginia just before dark, found a motel room and a place to eat, called home, and went to bed, tired and anxious about what would happen the next day.

I got up the next morning and the T-Bird wouldn't start... dead battery. Luckily, I quickly located a used one that wasn't quite as dead as mine, put it in and went to seek my fortune in a place I had no business being.

I crossed the river into DC. Take into account I had never driven in a town bigger than Knoxville, except for a straight-through drive in Baltimore several years earlier. I had no idea where Kansas Avenue NE was except for a road map I bought for the occasion, but I was determined to get there. DC streets are laid out like a bunch of wheels inside a big wheel, at least that is how it seemed to me. I was driving eastward on Pennsylvania Avenue with the Capitol dome in my sights, and I wanted to get on Georgia Ave. heading north, but to my consternation, no left turns were allowed at that time of rush hour. Somehow I missed the turning place anyway, so I drove to the Capitol and around it and was headed in the direction of the White House with my own house beckoning me. I finally made a turn somewhere and drove in circles for a half hour or so, somehow passing the Capitol again, and getting back in Virginia (I think) at Arlington Cemetery. I got turned back around, once again drove by the Capitol building, and ended up on Tennessee Ave., which I thought was a good omen. It was a ghetto. All over everything in those neighborhoods was spray painted the figure of a black panther. They were painting even as I passed by. Was I scared? You couldn't have driven a hat pin in my asshole with a sledge hammer! Here is a car with tags from a southern state driving around in circles in a place where people are very pissed about their lot in life, and are known to distrust anyone white and especially anyone white and from the south. If looks could have killed, 365 days from that Monday, I would have been dead one year.

Somewhere in this wandering I passed near something called the National Arboretum. Didn't have a hillbilly clue as to what that was. Finally I spied the capitol dome once more, and once again kept it in my sights. At a big intersection, I spied a cop car and figured they would be able to point me to my destination. They were pretty far away, so to get their attention, I ran the red light and blew the horn. It didn't take them a minute to have me pulled over. Two very large and very black cops got out. I thought, 'Oh shit, I'm dead meat now or sure'. Actually they were very nice, but neither of them had a clue as to where Kansas Ave, NE was, but one of them did know about Georgia Avenue. It was only about a block or so away, and I felt relieved to get on it and drive northward to see what I could find. It was now 10:00 am, and I was supposed to be at the hiring hall at 7:30 am. Not good. Finally I saw the sign... KANSAS AVENUE NE. In about ten minutes, I was at the union hall.

Their BA wanted to send me downtown on an "assholes and elbows" job for 40 hrs/week. The definition of that is a job where one is bent over all day long running conduit where a floor is about to be poured. You walk by and see nothing but assess in the air and elbows flying, hard at work. I told him no thank you, and if he would be kind enough to point me in the general direction of south, I would be on my way. He got pissed and I got out. Before I could leave the parking lot, he flagged me down and threw a job referral through the window. It was for the Morgantown Maryland powerhouse, the place I wanted from the beginning. Again, I had to find my own way.