Part Fourteen...
Work in the valley was yet to get into full swing, so we picked up a referral to Atlanta, which was completely virgin territory to me, although Sam had visited there several times before. We left on a Monday for a change, and promptly got lost in the big city while trying to find the Local 613 union hall. As we were cruising the ghettos not far from the ball park and on the wrong side of the interstate, a man wearing no shirt came running out of one of the houses and tried to jump over a kid's wagon but tripped and fell. It was obvious he was in a hurry to leave. A second later, another man appeared in the doorway holding onto the arm of a bare-breasted woman with one hand, and waving a handgun with the other. The first man got to his feet and tried to run some more, but the second man shot him down. There were little children playing around the place, but it didn't stop the shooter from having his vengeance. The bullet was fired in our general direction and Sam was driving my car, which had a 390ci engine, and in no time we were on the other side of I-75 and in the vicinity of the hiring hall. Never did hear what the thing was all about, but it seemed fairly obvious that someone got caught stealing in someone else's woodpile.
We got to the local and picked up our job referrals. It wasn't close to downtown like Sam wanted, but was way to the south near Fairburn. On the way down there, we passed Atlanta's big airport, and I saw a Boeing 747 coming in to land. That was the first time I ever saw one. That was the last time I ever saw one. The construction site was for a new Owens-Corning fiberglass plant, and it was deep in the boonies, so we had trouble finding a place to stay. Finally, we located a motel back toward Atlanta in another wide place in the road called Union City. It was a large room with two beds, the rent was affordable, and the mosquitoes were plentiful. We did find a fine scarfing house in Union City that served the best catfish I ever tasted, and their barbecue beef and pig were excellent. It was also affordable and served breakfast. One thing peculiar I found while visiting that restaurant for breakfast everyday... a lot of Georgians either forgot or were too lazy to turn their headlights off. About half the cars in the parking lot had them left on while their drivers were eating.
The second time that it was Sam's turn to drive, he picked me up at my house in a green 1970 Torino coupe. It was plain-jane with a 302 and auto tranny. It rode rougher than the did the '68. A tidbit about driving the '68; it was a road hugger. The last time he had it down there, and on the way back to Tennessee, he drove to Greenville SC as usual, and I took over for the remainder of the trip while he slept in the back seat. A couple of college boys from Florida were on their way to Johnson City and ETSU, and their little Mustang was holding up the horny express. We were going down the mountain from Sam's Gap where there is a stretch of crooked road that had a peculiarity; after going around a certain curve, one could clearly see all the road for the next half-mile or so. I didn't see anything coming, so I pushed the floor shifter up into second gear, whipped out and passed the 'Stang right in the middle of a blind curve. It scared the shit out of those two guys, almost to the point the driver was off the road and onto the narrow curb near a guardrail. They were used to driving the straight roads in Florida, and had never witnessed the like. I stopped at a service station near Erwin to pee, and the Mustang pulled up beside us. The driver was all excited and asked me how I learned to do a trick like that. I told him a partial truth; that is just how we drove the crooked and hilly roads. Sam woke up long enough to catch a bit of the conversation, and asked if he had missed anything. The Florida boys told him what I'd done with his car, and he told them we did stuff like that all the time. After we left the station, Sam told me that if I ever pulled a trick like that again in his car, I would be walking. He was just pissed because I got to show off in front of those kids instead of him. Sweet Torino!
Neither of us liked the job in Fairburn, and to tell the truth, we were sick of grits. In other words, we wanted to get out of there asap. But first, we had to do some nightclubbing in Atlanta. Is every street in that town named Peachtree something-or-other? Someone told Sam where there was good club with lots of women, and it was adjacent to the Georgia Tech campus. I didn't care about the club scene, but I did want to see downtown Atlanta. Off we went with our finest and shiny new clothes on. We found the club, went in, and it was mostly dead. The highlight was me going to pee and walking into a mirrored wall and falling on my ass. I got a standing ovation from the few that were there. We decided the trip was a bust, and as we were driving back through what we called the hippie section, another peculiar thing happened. Sam was driving my car along one of the broad Peachtree streets, and we had the windows down. No one bothered to tell us they washed the streets by turning on the fire hydrants. Just as we stopped for a traffic light, a cop wrenched one on about 10 feet away from my window. It knocked me all the way over against Sam just as he was pulling away from the light and almost causing us to wreck. The cop and little kids that were standing around him waiting to play in the water thought it was hilarious.
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GM had an assembly plant in nearby Doraville. That is where another peculiar thing was going on. Sam and I detected that on a lot of Chevy Novas we got behind while driving, one of the taillights was a bit crooked. I don't remember which light it was, but it was a fact. No one else we mentioned it to knew about it, but soon they all agreed that it was so. For years afterward, I could spot one of the Doraville Novas right off.
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After the downtown fiasco, we were ready to move on to greener pastures. Our local B.A. was of little use, so we called the locals in the valley until we found one with work. It was a little off the normal path, but we went anyway.
Next, Clarksburg WV...
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