Rework at No Charge, My Life in Heat Treating II

Among the drinking men at OMT, there were several who stood out.  On my first day at work I met Jim.  He was a tall slender black man in his fifties with a high raspy voice.  He loved a good natured loud argument.  Jim was a drinking man among drinking men.  He wore cowboy boots.  In one boot he always had a half pint of Old Taylor.

Jim was born in Mississippi and came to the Bay Area when he was a young man.  He had worked at a wide variety of blue collar jobs including driving heavy equipment and concrete trucks.  Drunk or sober he was an expert at driving the fork lift and operating the bridge crane.  He probably kept me from killing myself when I was starting out. I had no experience whatsoever with forklifts and cranes. He was the only one in the shop who tried to teach me the ins and outs of moving large heavy things.  Sometimes the lessons consisted of his taking over from me and saying something like “Here, get out of the way.”  Sometimes he took the time to show me what to do.

Jim lived across the street from OMT in a house owned by his mother-in-law, Mrs. Berry.  The area around OMT was zoned for mixed industrial and residential.  Mrs. Berry owned two dilapidated Victorians that stood next door to each other.  The residents of the houses were mostly family members.  Several members of the Berry family had worked at OMT at one time or another including Mrs. Berry’s son Chuck.  Chuck did not play the guitar.  He worked as a heat treater at a near by Naval Air Station.   That was the premium heat treating employer in the Bay Area.  Chuck was best known for the half pint of 151 rum that accompanied  him wherever he went.

Jim’s day started at 6AM.  He’d walk across the street, get out the company truck, and drive to a liquor store.  There he’d buy a half pint of Old Taylor for himself and a Racing Form for Little Dickie.

His favorite phrase was “Fuck that motherfucker.”  He applied it creatively to many situations without it losing it’s meaning.  He often leaned against the table near the time clock.  He would say “Fuck that motherfucker.  I don’t give a fuck.” Then he reached into his boot, pulled out his half pint, and took a deep drink.

A couple of years after I started Jim became the company truck driver.  OMT had gone through two drivers in two years and needed someone more reliable.  Jim’s immediate predecessor, son of the owner of Little Dickie’s favorite nearby bar, i. e. the nearest one, decided that as long as he had the truck and visited places that had a lot of scrap metal he would go into the scrap business.  He got away with that for quite a while.  Dickie caught him at his father’s bar one day, unloading boxes of bar snacks from the bed of the company truck.

Jim was a good truck driver compared to his predecessors.  He came to work every day and did his pickups and deliveries on schedule.  In spite of his friendship with Old Taylor he never got into an accident.  When he punched out at the end of the day he frequently had trouble getting his time card into the clock and even more trouble putting it back into the rack.

Dickie fired Jim at one point.  The two of them, both drunk, got into an argument that escalated to name calling and, perhaps, a little pushing and shoving.  Dickie fired him on the spot.  The official reason provided when OMT contested Jim’s unemployment claim was the use of foul and abusive language to his employer.  Jim used foul and abusive language to  almost everyone.  It was his normal way of speaking.  He was rehired before the year was out.

Some of the white employees made fun of Jim when he had trouble with the time clock or did other things that showed he was drunk.  “Look at that n*****” they’d say, “He is fucked up.” Jim’s drinking and seeming irascibility masked his intelligence and dignity.
He was good hearted and fair minded.  He was one of my favorite people there.

A few years after I left OMT Jim died of pancreatic cancer, a consequence of his close personal relationship with Old Taylor.

Tags: heat treating, old taylor, OMT