Dad's Stories 3: More Tales From Ingot Mold
Okay, this is a less than pleasant story here, but it’s one I have to tell. If only because I can’t get it out of my mind unless I do this.
Not everyone who Dad knew at the Ingot Mold was especially kindly or gentle -- by most standards, these were very rough guys with a dark verging on ebon sense of humor (they worked around molten metal, after all; and many of them knew all too well what could happen if you failed to pay attention for a moment. My Dad learned that the hard way and was lucky it was only the soles of his feet that got burned) and they would laugh at things that we might wince at. But even they had their limits. And there was this one fellow who didn’t just reach those limits, he dropped his pants and urinated on them.
This fellow (I don’t remember his name, and as you’ll see it doesn’t deserve to be remembered) had been just another member of the crew up until that point. He was noticeably greedy and selfish, but as he didn’t do anything worse than steal coffee he got snarled at when caught and was otherwise ignored. But as Dad told m, there was this one day…
It turns out that his daughter -- let’s call her Anna -- who some of the crew knew as a very lovely young woman who was rather afraid of her father, wanted to get married. Well, no problem. Her father wanted her to get married too. The problem was, neither of them were looking at the same groom.
It’ll sound like a fairy tale, I swear, but this is true. She wanted to marry a young man who was a decent enough fellow, but like a lot of young men just starting out in life he had no money. Of course Anna didn’t care, their love would keep them warm, etc. Her father, meanwhile, wanted her to marry a fellow he knew away from the job -- an older man, much older, not really nasty but a surly grouch. And very well heeled.
“Oh,” Zeke said to him, “you want to make sure that your daughter will be seen to, right?”
“Oh, no,” the father said. “The hell with that. She has a chance to marry a guy with money, who’s old enough that he won’t last very long, and she’s turning it down because of “love’? What kind of a fool did I raise? And besides, the rest of her family could use that money too. She could think about me, you know!”
“Besides,” he added, “she said that ‘she doesn’t love old Mister Tom, and he wants me to go to bed with him’. I told her, ‘you can get poked by a rich man as well as a poor one. Men all get the same model. So stop arguin’ with me and so what I tell you! Besides, you diddle him good and he’ll probably die quicker and then you can get your poor man when you have some cash.’”
By now, Dad told me, the rest of the crew (who were on their lunch break) were just staring at him as though he’s sprouted a second head. Or maybe it would be better to say, if he’d sprouted horns and a tail.
Then Moose spoke up. He was a big beer barrel of a fellow, a bit slow-witted and crazy but no one to cross and a man who put little enough value on money that once when he got a winning lottery ticket to the tune of five thousand dollars he just showed it to his co-workers before tossing it “Because I got everything I need.” And now he said: “You better not do that to your little girl. A man who forces his daughter into a bed where she don’t want to be will burn in hell for it.”
“Burn in hell!“ The father just rolled his eyes as he sipped his coffee, which he taken from someone else‘s thermos. “You want to know what I think about the afterlife? If there is a Heaven, so long as I’m there I don’t care if anyone else ever makes it or not. And if there is a Hell, then I hope there isn’t any Heaven.”
“Why not?” Moose asked of him, voice shaken. Dad said later that he wasn’t the only one who felt a chill. Most of the other guys looked either scared or disgusted.
“Because,” the father said, “I can still be happy in Hell, just so long as I know everyone else is as badly off as I am.” Then he turned back to his lunch. “Now someone pass the sugar if you got any, this coffee stinks!”
Moose just stood up, gave him a long measuring look, and then turned on his heel and walked away. The rest of the crew didn’t like that guy much better afterwards, though given that they all worked together there were limits on how much you could avoid him. He complained bitterly over the next few weeks about how his daughter was fighting him over the planned wedding, “But I’m wearing her down,” he would boast. “That deadbeat she was mooning after got chased off the porch the last time he showed up, and he’d not dare show up. And Anna knows there’s nowhere she could run that I wouldn’t catch her. That selfish brat! Wanting for herself more than for me and her family!” And this went on and on. And he kept stealing coffee, especially from ‘the dummy’ Moose. Moose knew what was going on but he could never catch the guy at it, and said guy made sure to stay away from Moose. That wasn’t hard, as Moose worked the big magnetic crane all day long and had no time to socialize much.
Then finally it happened. One day when everyone was on break, in he strolled with a big grin and waving a photo. “Finally!” he crowed. “Anna finally saw sense and did what I told her to do. She married old Mister Tom after I sent her poor boy off on a bus out of state. We had the wedding over the weekend, and here’s the photos!” He flashed them around with pride. Dad said later that what he was a pretty young girl who looked like she was attending her own funeral, she looked so wretched. Beside her stood an older man, thickset and heavy and not looking much happier than the girl. And behind both with a big smile was her father, who looked to be the only person in the room who was happy.
“Now she’ll do right by me as I’ve done right by her,” her father said, almost dancing for joy. “One day the old fart will be gone, and everything he had will be hers. Which means it’ll be mine. He’s got property, owns some local stores, and pinches every penny. Why, he lives on Fountain Hill (this was the neighborhood where the Steel’s upper management and other wealthy people lived; they also had the Masonic Temple there)! She should be happy that I took such good care of her!”
Just then Moose strolled in, with a big thermos of coffee in his hands. Anna’s father froze. Many of the other men looked on expectantly, maybe hopefully. And Moose? He said nothing. He just strolled to the table, opened his thermos, and took a big swig of what you could smell was coffee as black and strong as a proper-made iron I-beam. Anna’s father looked at the coffee, as he hadn’t had any yet himself.
“Now that’s good, that is!” Moose said. “It puts some life in you, it does.” And just then one of the guys still on shift poked his head around the corner and yelled at Anna’s father.
“Hey, you! Come down to the main office, they said there’s something wrong with your time sheet.”
“What dumbness is this?” Anna’s father said. “There’s nothing wrong with my time sheet!”
“Fine, then you’re the one who’s going to lose money.”
At those words he almost flew out the door with a squawk. And as soon as he left, Moose looked down the hall outside the lunch room. When he was gone, Moose went to the sink and poured all his coffee down the drain. Then he took a bottle of some thick, black liquid out from his pocket and poured it into his thermos. Then he set it down on the table, turned to the other men, and said, “If any of you say anything to him when he gets back I’ll turn you upside down and bounce your heads off the floor.” Then he went into a little room off to the side and closed the door most of the way.
“Come on, Hinkle,” Zeke said to my Dad, “whatever is about to happen, we don’t want to see it.” Zeke got up and left and Dad went after him. On their way out they passed Anna’s father. He went by them the other way, cursing and grumbling.
Dad found out later what happened. When Anna’s father got back to the lunch room, not seeing Moose anywhere he grabbed his thermos and took a big drink -- right before he doubled up and began heaving all over the floor. At that point Moose stepped out from his little room and laughed until he rolled on the ground. The stuff he’d put into the thermos was industrial blacking, and it’s apparently very poisonous. Anna’s father was taken off to the hospital where he spent the next three days on his back, too sick to do anything but let the doctors pour everything from castor oil to mustard and milk down his throat to get the poison out. It didn’t kill him, but he wished it had. Especially when he got out to find out that his daughter had left old Mister Tom (when she explained the whole thing to him, he sadly let her go off with her boyfriend); and when Anna’s father got back in to work he found out that old Mister Tom had asked his neighbors -- the company management, remember? -- to make his job a little more demanding for him. So much so that after a few weeks he left and they never saw him again.
Nobody on the Ingot Mold crew was sorry, either.
The next few tales will be lighter in tone than this, I swear.
Not everyone who Dad knew at the Ingot Mold was especially kindly or gentle -- by most standards, these were very rough guys with a dark verging on ebon sense of humor (they worked around molten metal, after all; and many of them knew all too well what could happen if you failed to pay attention for a moment. My Dad learned that the hard way and was lucky it was only the soles of his feet that got burned) and they would laugh at things that we might wince at. But even they had their limits. And there was this one fellow who didn’t just reach those limits, he dropped his pants and urinated on them.
This fellow (I don’t remember his name, and as you’ll see it doesn’t deserve to be remembered) had been just another member of the crew up until that point. He was noticeably greedy and selfish, but as he didn’t do anything worse than steal coffee he got snarled at when caught and was otherwise ignored. But as Dad told m, there was this one day…
It turns out that his daughter -- let’s call her Anna -- who some of the crew knew as a very lovely young woman who was rather afraid of her father, wanted to get married. Well, no problem. Her father wanted her to get married too. The problem was, neither of them were looking at the same groom.
It’ll sound like a fairy tale, I swear, but this is true. She wanted to marry a young man who was a decent enough fellow, but like a lot of young men just starting out in life he had no money. Of course Anna didn’t care, their love would keep them warm, etc. Her father, meanwhile, wanted her to marry a fellow he knew away from the job -- an older man, much older, not really nasty but a surly grouch. And very well heeled.
“Oh,” Zeke said to him, “you want to make sure that your daughter will be seen to, right?”
“Oh, no,” the father said. “The hell with that. She has a chance to marry a guy with money, who’s old enough that he won’t last very long, and she’s turning it down because of “love’? What kind of a fool did I raise? And besides, the rest of her family could use that money too. She could think about me, you know!”
“Besides,” he added, “she said that ‘she doesn’t love old Mister Tom, and he wants me to go to bed with him’. I told her, ‘you can get poked by a rich man as well as a poor one. Men all get the same model. So stop arguin’ with me and so what I tell you! Besides, you diddle him good and he’ll probably die quicker and then you can get your poor man when you have some cash.’”
By now, Dad told me, the rest of the crew (who were on their lunch break) were just staring at him as though he’s sprouted a second head. Or maybe it would be better to say, if he’d sprouted horns and a tail.
Then Moose spoke up. He was a big beer barrel of a fellow, a bit slow-witted and crazy but no one to cross and a man who put little enough value on money that once when he got a winning lottery ticket to the tune of five thousand dollars he just showed it to his co-workers before tossing it “Because I got everything I need.” And now he said: “You better not do that to your little girl. A man who forces his daughter into a bed where she don’t want to be will burn in hell for it.”
“Burn in hell!“ The father just rolled his eyes as he sipped his coffee, which he taken from someone else‘s thermos. “You want to know what I think about the afterlife? If there is a Heaven, so long as I’m there I don’t care if anyone else ever makes it or not. And if there is a Hell, then I hope there isn’t any Heaven.”
“Why not?” Moose asked of him, voice shaken. Dad said later that he wasn’t the only one who felt a chill. Most of the other guys looked either scared or disgusted.
“Because,” the father said, “I can still be happy in Hell, just so long as I know everyone else is as badly off as I am.” Then he turned back to his lunch. “Now someone pass the sugar if you got any, this coffee stinks!”
Moose just stood up, gave him a long measuring look, and then turned on his heel and walked away. The rest of the crew didn’t like that guy much better afterwards, though given that they all worked together there were limits on how much you could avoid him. He complained bitterly over the next few weeks about how his daughter was fighting him over the planned wedding, “But I’m wearing her down,” he would boast. “That deadbeat she was mooning after got chased off the porch the last time he showed up, and he’d not dare show up. And Anna knows there’s nowhere she could run that I wouldn’t catch her. That selfish brat! Wanting for herself more than for me and her family!” And this went on and on. And he kept stealing coffee, especially from ‘the dummy’ Moose. Moose knew what was going on but he could never catch the guy at it, and said guy made sure to stay away from Moose. That wasn’t hard, as Moose worked the big magnetic crane all day long and had no time to socialize much.
Then finally it happened. One day when everyone was on break, in he strolled with a big grin and waving a photo. “Finally!” he crowed. “Anna finally saw sense and did what I told her to do. She married old Mister Tom after I sent her poor boy off on a bus out of state. We had the wedding over the weekend, and here’s the photos!” He flashed them around with pride. Dad said later that what he was a pretty young girl who looked like she was attending her own funeral, she looked so wretched. Beside her stood an older man, thickset and heavy and not looking much happier than the girl. And behind both with a big smile was her father, who looked to be the only person in the room who was happy.
“Now she’ll do right by me as I’ve done right by her,” her father said, almost dancing for joy. “One day the old fart will be gone, and everything he had will be hers. Which means it’ll be mine. He’s got property, owns some local stores, and pinches every penny. Why, he lives on Fountain Hill (this was the neighborhood where the Steel’s upper management and other wealthy people lived; they also had the Masonic Temple there)! She should be happy that I took such good care of her!”
Just then Moose strolled in, with a big thermos of coffee in his hands. Anna’s father froze. Many of the other men looked on expectantly, maybe hopefully. And Moose? He said nothing. He just strolled to the table, opened his thermos, and took a big swig of what you could smell was coffee as black and strong as a proper-made iron I-beam. Anna’s father looked at the coffee, as he hadn’t had any yet himself.
“Now that’s good, that is!” Moose said. “It puts some life in you, it does.” And just then one of the guys still on shift poked his head around the corner and yelled at Anna’s father.
“Hey, you! Come down to the main office, they said there’s something wrong with your time sheet.”
“What dumbness is this?” Anna’s father said. “There’s nothing wrong with my time sheet!”
“Fine, then you’re the one who’s going to lose money.”
At those words he almost flew out the door with a squawk. And as soon as he left, Moose looked down the hall outside the lunch room. When he was gone, Moose went to the sink and poured all his coffee down the drain. Then he took a bottle of some thick, black liquid out from his pocket and poured it into his thermos. Then he set it down on the table, turned to the other men, and said, “If any of you say anything to him when he gets back I’ll turn you upside down and bounce your heads off the floor.” Then he went into a little room off to the side and closed the door most of the way.
“Come on, Hinkle,” Zeke said to my Dad, “whatever is about to happen, we don’t want to see it.” Zeke got up and left and Dad went after him. On their way out they passed Anna’s father. He went by them the other way, cursing and grumbling.
Dad found out later what happened. When Anna’s father got back to the lunch room, not seeing Moose anywhere he grabbed his thermos and took a big drink -- right before he doubled up and began heaving all over the floor. At that point Moose stepped out from his little room and laughed until he rolled on the ground. The stuff he’d put into the thermos was industrial blacking, and it’s apparently very poisonous. Anna’s father was taken off to the hospital where he spent the next three days on his back, too sick to do anything but let the doctors pour everything from castor oil to mustard and milk down his throat to get the poison out. It didn’t kill him, but he wished it had. Especially when he got out to find out that his daughter had left old Mister Tom (when she explained the whole thing to him, he sadly let her go off with her boyfriend); and when Anna’s father got back in to work he found out that old Mister Tom had asked his neighbors -- the company management, remember? -- to make his job a little more demanding for him. So much so that after a few weeks he left and they never saw him again.
Nobody on the Ingot Mold crew was sorry, either.
The next few tales will be lighter in tone than this, I swear.