Part Seventeen...

I wanted to work at home for a while. Tramping is a strain on a marriage and family life, and I had a new kid to go along with the other two. When Sam left Charleston for northern climes, I tried to get into some kind of rhythm, but loneliness set in and I wasn't much of a partier. Stopping for a beer after work, going in and cleaning up, going to supper, and back to the room was getting to me. My own Local had no work to offer other than the Eastman, and no way was I going to work there again.

At least I was home. Like I said, the pay at Magnavox was dismal, but we were treated well. The plant had been organized for several years, but basically the folks who worked there and were members of the union didn't have the right stuff. A few years earlier, they went on strike for more pay and benefits. They walked the picket line for several months and then settled for a penny raise. They asked me to join the union, but I respectfully declined. It was a weak union at best, and besides, I was already paying dues to another AF of L-CIO union.

I hoped to pick up some house wiring on the side to help with bills, but the jobs were few. I went to work on evening shift, where I was the only maintenance man present. After a short while, the evening shift was discontinued and I went to day shift where they really didn't need me, but I was good at the work and was willing to work for very little. My supervisor at Magnavox was a fellow named Charlie Green, a baptist preacher and one hell of a fine man. After I was there a few months, Charlie was laid-off, and his supervisor became my supervisor. The new one was no preacher by any means, but he was also a good guy. I've felt badly about Charlie being set aside; he deserved better. I know I took his job, and I wish they had let me go instead of him.

I met some characters while working there, one being a maintenance helper by the name of Roy. He was a slight man, probably in his forties, and had picked up the nickname "Sue" from the other electrician. He was a good guy, but it was easy to get his goat. His favorite retort when someone was giving him good natured grief was " Why don't you take a flying fuck at the moon?". Another guy I met was a kid maned Mike, not long out of high school. He was the truck driver, and managed to overload two light duty Ford dump-trucks to the point the frames bent. It really wasn't his fault; he was following orders from an idiot. Several years later, I would run into Mike again, and we became pretty good friends for a while.

The most memorable thing that happened to me while working there was during summer vacation while most of the plant was shut down. The maintenance crew was required to work, doing things on machinery that had been running mostly non-stop since the previous year's vacation. One production line was working on a rush order of stereo cabinets. The line supervisor saw that they weren't going to get the product out in time, so he asked the other electrician and me to give them a hand. We politely refused, he called the plant manager, the plant manager came to work and began helping the line folk, which was entirely against the union agreement. He even ordered my buddy and me to help. We did so to keep from getting fired on the spot, but at break time, my buddy called the union steward, who was supposed to be present anyway. He also called our boss and he told us to get back where we belonged doing maintenance. Soon, he showed up after a fast thirty mile drive, and the steward was there by then and a big huddle ensued.. Man, those four boys had it hot and heavy for a while. My buddy and and I didn't do anymore line work that day or any other. Sometime during that week, I put an application in with a new Texas Instruments plant that had come to town, not expecting to hear anything from it.

In late September, I quit the job there. No way was I going to meet my obligations on the small pay. One good thing came from my leaving there; they couldn't find anyone to replace me at the pay scale, so they raised it more than a dollar, with more to come. In early November, I loaded up the Dodge truck and headed to Atlanta where the Local union had work. I ended up in Rome, Georgia, which isn't far from the Alabama line. We were building a new Federal building, including a courthouse and FBI office. On my way from Atlanta to Rome, I saw my first ever and last cotton field. I didn't like the job, and Rome offered few amenities for tramps, and I had to stay in a motel which was expensive. Also, gasoline prices were rising very quickly, leading to the first oil embargo from our dear friends and allies, the Arabs. Just biding my time. Then, Texas Instruments called. I had kept in touch with Charlie Green after he left Magnavox, and he became the first maintenance man at TI. He talked the maintenance supervisor into hiring me. So, on December 19, 1973, I went to work temporarily on day shift. In two weeks, I had to go to evening shift, but at least I was home but only making $5.75 an hour.

Next, my year at TI, new friends, and some self inflicted problems...

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...