More of Dad's Stories: Good and Toasted at the Steel
Dad’s Stories: Tales from Ingot Mold #4
One of the guys I remember Dad talking about from time to time was Soldier Boy. I never heard his real name and I don’t know if Dad knew it himself. Soldier Boy got his name quite simply because he was an ex-soldier from Vietnam. Apparently Soldier Boy started out eager to go or at least resigned to it, but once in Southeast Asia he quickly changed his mind. He thought desperately for a way to get out of the Army and back to America.
Then one of his friends told him that if he smoked lots of weed, he would get bounced. Soldier Boy decided this was a good idea and started toking up at every opportunity. And man did he ever... The Army finally got tired of dealing with him and let him go. Soldier Boy now could stop smoking weed, but by this point he was hooked. Then he discovered a new problem; if he wanted to keep smoking weed he needed work, and few places then would hire someone who showed up stoned out of his gourd. But apparently he had a relative working at the Bethlehem Steel, and the Steel had an unofficial policy whereby they would hire anyone provided a relative at the Steel could vouch for them. It did help mightily if the relative was a useful worker themselves. Best of all, as a veteran who had health troubles because of the war, Soldier Boy would have been protected by both the union and the other employees, many of whom either had long-term problems stemming from their own service or had friends and relatives who did. That meant he couldn’t be fired unless he stole from the company or the like. And he had no intention of getting in that much trouble.
Soldier Boy’s relative was indeed a trusted employee, and SB soon had a job. Now that he had a paycheck again he could get back to smoking pot, right?
Well… one more little problem. He would be allowed into the union after about sixty days or so. Until then, he had to stay straight, or else he’d be thrown out and that was it. Dad remembered the older men in his shop saying that when Soldier Boy first joined he seemed okay and conscientious if a bit twitchy. Every day, right there in line on time, punched in, did his work without complaint or problem, punched out at quitting time, went home. Wash, rinse, and repeat for those first sixty days. Soldier Boy’s relative was often asked by Zeke and the other guys, “Hey, you said he was a druggie! He don’t even touch beer, now why did they really throw him out of the army?” SB’s relation could only shrug with a confused look on his face.
And then sixty days went by and Soldier Boy joined the union. The very next day, he showed up on time… completely stoned out of his mind. He reeked so much of weed that just walking by him would give you a buzz. They tried to make him do his usual ingot mold work, but he fell asleep after about an hour and was taken off to the dispensary. Once there he slept through his shift, only to rise like Lazarus promptly at the sound of the shift whistle’s blow, at which point he left and immediately lit up as soon as he left the plant. This went on for a week, with Soldier Boy showing up toasted every morning. The Ingot Mold foreman, Fat Henny, would walk up to him, look up into his eyes (Henny was very short), mutter under his breath, “Damn! He’s been smoking it again!” and promptly send him to the dispensary where Soldier Boy would sleep through his shift.
The other workers were annoyed at his getting this special treatment -- the usual treatment employees got from the dispensary doctors was a quick look-over and a “Eh, he ain’t about to die. Put him back on the job.” Once one poor fellow got sent back to his department when his ‘shakes’ turned out to be a heart attack, after which the dispensary became slightly more careful. But only slightly. Well, as I said, the guys got annoyed over Soldier Boy’s treatment. Sure, he was a veteran, but disabled? When he did it to himself day after day? This couldn’t be right, could it? But they kept everything under control until they found out that Soldier Boy, despite sleeping through most of his shifts, was getting the same full pay all of them did.
The Ingot Mold workers went nuclear. They stormed down to the Union Hall where they demanded to know what the hell was going on.
“He’s a disabled veteran,” they were told. “He got that way from the war! Ain’t you guys got no heart?”
“Disabled, hell!” Zeke told the union rep. “He didn’t lose no arm or eye or anything like that. He’s just a pothead! You wouldn’t let him get away with this if he was just some slob off the street!”
“Yeah, well he ain’t no slob off the street,” they were told. “And if we let management fire him for being a stoner and missing a shift or two, then they can fire you for getting drunk or calling in sick.”
“That’s beside the point,” Zeke said. “He shouldn’t be getting paid the same as the guys who actually do a whole day’s work. All he does is sleep!”
“And if we let the managers cut his pay, then what stops them from cutting yours when they decide that you ain’t working as hard as you can?”
Zeke and the guys grumbled but there was very little they could do. Officially. Unofficially they decided to discourage Soldier Boy. On thing they did was to start taking his dope stash from him and putting very finely-ground up rubber bands in it. This had no effect on Soldier Boy. He kept right on smoking like a chimney, to the point where if this were a comic he would look like a man with a perpetual cloud of smoke for a head. Only now his odor changed from ‘weed’ to ‘burning inner tubes’. That plan was swiftly dropped.
Next Zeke decided to take Soldier Boy aside and explain things to him. SB was willing but asked Zeke to go along with him to visit a sort of Poconos Woodstock for the weekend. The other guys at work were on tenterhooks waiting for Monday morning and the post-concert report. Soldier Boy and his blue cloud floated in and a disgusted looking Zeke came in with him.
“Well, what happened?” Moose asked him. “Did you get him to agree to knock it off or not?”
“What happened?” Zeke answered him. “First I went to his house. I must have passed by it three times before I realized that it wasn’t abandoned, someone actually lived there. Then I went in and almost passed out from the smell of pot; the whole inside of his house looks blue with the stuff, and he has bongs and spliffs and packets of weed everywhere! Well, he said he’d drive me up but the way he looked I wasn’t about to get in a car with him at the wheel, so I drove us up. I actually found it, in spite of the directions he gave.”
“Well, what was it like?” Moose said. “Did they have naked hippy girls running around?” Zeke shuddered.
“The only naked women I saw should’ve kept their clothes on! He music was awful, what little of it I could hear, and they were smoking so much pot that you’d think you were walking through a fogbank. Once I saw three rattlers coiled up right by me, and even their eyes were rolling back into their heads! Donnervetter, what a mess!”
As it turned out, there would be an even bigger mess before work ended. At ‘Poconostock’ Soldier Boy apparently made moves on a girl that some other fellow wanted. The other fellow being one of Soldier Boy’s suppliers. The angry rival decided to teach Soldier Boy a lesson and made him some special hand-rolled joints that were ‘fifty-fifty’. As in, one half mary-wanna to one half hardcore hallucinogens. Or maybe PCP; Dad said that no one ever did find out for sure. And at work that day, Soldier Boy toked his way through about three of them.
Soldier Boy seemed a bit wired that whole day long but was otherwise oddly focused. Then came quitting time… and as Soldier Boy was leaving the Steel, he suddenly screamed, tore his clothes off, and began racing around the gate, yelling, “The Russians are coming, the CIA put me here to defend the plant because THE RUSSIANS ARE COMING!” Plan security promptly knocked him down, restrained him, and dragged him off to the dispensary. The Ingot Mold first found out about it when a call went over the loudspeaker: “Hey, Ingot Mold, get down here to the dispensary. We got another one of your screwies running around on the loose!”
Zeke and Henny went down and, from what they later told Dad and the others, found poor Soldier Boy all but in a straightjacket and yelling that Russian spies were coming out of the walls after him. With some help from the doctors they managed to calm him down before he got shipped off to Saint Luke’s Hospital. Everyone thought that would be the last they ever saw of Soldier Boy because they all “knew” that drugs made you go insane and never recover.
Well, a week or so later, Soldier Boy was back. He didn’t touch the dope now. Now, he spent all his time when he was supposed to be working walking through the Ingot Mold staring at the walls and ceiling. It didn’t take much of this before the guys got frustrated again.
“Hey, Soldier Boy,” Zeke asked him, “what the heck are you looking for?”
“Russian Spy Planes,” Soldier Boy answered him. “Tiny little ones the size of a model plane. The Russians sent them here to find out how American make steel. I hear them but I can’t always see them. But when I do find them,” he grabbed a heavy wrench laying nearby and waved it overhead enthusiastically, “I’ll smash ‘em good!”
Worried now, Zeke lead a delegation of workers to Fat Henny the foreman. “Hey, Henny, do you know what Soldier Boy is doing? He’s running around with a wrench looking for Russian spy planes flying around inside the shop! We don’t want that guy in here, what if he goes nuts again and attacks us? You go and talk some sense into him!”
So Fat Henny went and spoke with Soldier Boy. And after about fifteen minutes of conversation, Henny returned to the employees and told them that everything was okay.
“He knows there ain’t any Russian spy planes in here?” Zeke said.
“Oh, no,” Henny promised him, “but I’ll help him look for them!” And so Fat Henny and Soldier Boy spent the next few weeks roaming the Ingot Mold all day long looking for Boris and Natasha and their miniaturized spy planes.
Zeke just old the rest of the guys not to even bother going any higher. “After all, when the management is crazier and dumber than we are, what’s the point?”
One of the guys I remember Dad talking about from time to time was Soldier Boy. I never heard his real name and I don’t know if Dad knew it himself. Soldier Boy got his name quite simply because he was an ex-soldier from Vietnam. Apparently Soldier Boy started out eager to go or at least resigned to it, but once in Southeast Asia he quickly changed his mind. He thought desperately for a way to get out of the Army and back to America.
Then one of his friends told him that if he smoked lots of weed, he would get bounced. Soldier Boy decided this was a good idea and started toking up at every opportunity. And man did he ever... The Army finally got tired of dealing with him and let him go. Soldier Boy now could stop smoking weed, but by this point he was hooked. Then he discovered a new problem; if he wanted to keep smoking weed he needed work, and few places then would hire someone who showed up stoned out of his gourd. But apparently he had a relative working at the Bethlehem Steel, and the Steel had an unofficial policy whereby they would hire anyone provided a relative at the Steel could vouch for them. It did help mightily if the relative was a useful worker themselves. Best of all, as a veteran who had health troubles because of the war, Soldier Boy would have been protected by both the union and the other employees, many of whom either had long-term problems stemming from their own service or had friends and relatives who did. That meant he couldn’t be fired unless he stole from the company or the like. And he had no intention of getting in that much trouble.
Soldier Boy’s relative was indeed a trusted employee, and SB soon had a job. Now that he had a paycheck again he could get back to smoking pot, right?
Well… one more little problem. He would be allowed into the union after about sixty days or so. Until then, he had to stay straight, or else he’d be thrown out and that was it. Dad remembered the older men in his shop saying that when Soldier Boy first joined he seemed okay and conscientious if a bit twitchy. Every day, right there in line on time, punched in, did his work without complaint or problem, punched out at quitting time, went home. Wash, rinse, and repeat for those first sixty days. Soldier Boy’s relative was often asked by Zeke and the other guys, “Hey, you said he was a druggie! He don’t even touch beer, now why did they really throw him out of the army?” SB’s relation could only shrug with a confused look on his face.
And then sixty days went by and Soldier Boy joined the union. The very next day, he showed up on time… completely stoned out of his mind. He reeked so much of weed that just walking by him would give you a buzz. They tried to make him do his usual ingot mold work, but he fell asleep after about an hour and was taken off to the dispensary. Once there he slept through his shift, only to rise like Lazarus promptly at the sound of the shift whistle’s blow, at which point he left and immediately lit up as soon as he left the plant. This went on for a week, with Soldier Boy showing up toasted every morning. The Ingot Mold foreman, Fat Henny, would walk up to him, look up into his eyes (Henny was very short), mutter under his breath, “Damn! He’s been smoking it again!” and promptly send him to the dispensary where Soldier Boy would sleep through his shift.
The other workers were annoyed at his getting this special treatment -- the usual treatment employees got from the dispensary doctors was a quick look-over and a “Eh, he ain’t about to die. Put him back on the job.” Once one poor fellow got sent back to his department when his ‘shakes’ turned out to be a heart attack, after which the dispensary became slightly more careful. But only slightly. Well, as I said, the guys got annoyed over Soldier Boy’s treatment. Sure, he was a veteran, but disabled? When he did it to himself day after day? This couldn’t be right, could it? But they kept everything under control until they found out that Soldier Boy, despite sleeping through most of his shifts, was getting the same full pay all of them did.
The Ingot Mold workers went nuclear. They stormed down to the Union Hall where they demanded to know what the hell was going on.
“He’s a disabled veteran,” they were told. “He got that way from the war! Ain’t you guys got no heart?”
“Disabled, hell!” Zeke told the union rep. “He didn’t lose no arm or eye or anything like that. He’s just a pothead! You wouldn’t let him get away with this if he was just some slob off the street!”
“Yeah, well he ain’t no slob off the street,” they were told. “And if we let management fire him for being a stoner and missing a shift or two, then they can fire you for getting drunk or calling in sick.”
“That’s beside the point,” Zeke said. “He shouldn’t be getting paid the same as the guys who actually do a whole day’s work. All he does is sleep!”
“And if we let the managers cut his pay, then what stops them from cutting yours when they decide that you ain’t working as hard as you can?”
Zeke and the guys grumbled but there was very little they could do. Officially. Unofficially they decided to discourage Soldier Boy. On thing they did was to start taking his dope stash from him and putting very finely-ground up rubber bands in it. This had no effect on Soldier Boy. He kept right on smoking like a chimney, to the point where if this were a comic he would look like a man with a perpetual cloud of smoke for a head. Only now his odor changed from ‘weed’ to ‘burning inner tubes’. That plan was swiftly dropped.
Next Zeke decided to take Soldier Boy aside and explain things to him. SB was willing but asked Zeke to go along with him to visit a sort of Poconos Woodstock for the weekend. The other guys at work were on tenterhooks waiting for Monday morning and the post-concert report. Soldier Boy and his blue cloud floated in and a disgusted looking Zeke came in with him.
“Well, what happened?” Moose asked him. “Did you get him to agree to knock it off or not?”
“What happened?” Zeke answered him. “First I went to his house. I must have passed by it three times before I realized that it wasn’t abandoned, someone actually lived there. Then I went in and almost passed out from the smell of pot; the whole inside of his house looks blue with the stuff, and he has bongs and spliffs and packets of weed everywhere! Well, he said he’d drive me up but the way he looked I wasn’t about to get in a car with him at the wheel, so I drove us up. I actually found it, in spite of the directions he gave.”
“Well, what was it like?” Moose said. “Did they have naked hippy girls running around?” Zeke shuddered.
“The only naked women I saw should’ve kept their clothes on! He music was awful, what little of it I could hear, and they were smoking so much pot that you’d think you were walking through a fogbank. Once I saw three rattlers coiled up right by me, and even their eyes were rolling back into their heads! Donnervetter, what a mess!”
As it turned out, there would be an even bigger mess before work ended. At ‘Poconostock’ Soldier Boy apparently made moves on a girl that some other fellow wanted. The other fellow being one of Soldier Boy’s suppliers. The angry rival decided to teach Soldier Boy a lesson and made him some special hand-rolled joints that were ‘fifty-fifty’. As in, one half mary-wanna to one half hardcore hallucinogens. Or maybe PCP; Dad said that no one ever did find out for sure. And at work that day, Soldier Boy toked his way through about three of them.
Soldier Boy seemed a bit wired that whole day long but was otherwise oddly focused. Then came quitting time… and as Soldier Boy was leaving the Steel, he suddenly screamed, tore his clothes off, and began racing around the gate, yelling, “The Russians are coming, the CIA put me here to defend the plant because THE RUSSIANS ARE COMING!” Plan security promptly knocked him down, restrained him, and dragged him off to the dispensary. The Ingot Mold first found out about it when a call went over the loudspeaker: “Hey, Ingot Mold, get down here to the dispensary. We got another one of your screwies running around on the loose!”
Zeke and Henny went down and, from what they later told Dad and the others, found poor Soldier Boy all but in a straightjacket and yelling that Russian spies were coming out of the walls after him. With some help from the doctors they managed to calm him down before he got shipped off to Saint Luke’s Hospital. Everyone thought that would be the last they ever saw of Soldier Boy because they all “knew” that drugs made you go insane and never recover.
Well, a week or so later, Soldier Boy was back. He didn’t touch the dope now. Now, he spent all his time when he was supposed to be working walking through the Ingot Mold staring at the walls and ceiling. It didn’t take much of this before the guys got frustrated again.
“Hey, Soldier Boy,” Zeke asked him, “what the heck are you looking for?”
“Russian Spy Planes,” Soldier Boy answered him. “Tiny little ones the size of a model plane. The Russians sent them here to find out how American make steel. I hear them but I can’t always see them. But when I do find them,” he grabbed a heavy wrench laying nearby and waved it overhead enthusiastically, “I’ll smash ‘em good!”
Worried now, Zeke lead a delegation of workers to Fat Henny the foreman. “Hey, Henny, do you know what Soldier Boy is doing? He’s running around with a wrench looking for Russian spy planes flying around inside the shop! We don’t want that guy in here, what if he goes nuts again and attacks us? You go and talk some sense into him!”
So Fat Henny went and spoke with Soldier Boy. And after about fifteen minutes of conversation, Henny returned to the employees and told them that everything was okay.
“He knows there ain’t any Russian spy planes in here?” Zeke said.
“Oh, no,” Henny promised him, “but I’ll help him look for them!” And so Fat Henny and Soldier Boy spent the next few weeks roaming the Ingot Mold all day long looking for Boris and Natasha and their miniaturized spy planes.
Zeke just old the rest of the guys not to even bother going any higher. “After all, when the management is crazier and dumber than we are, what’s the point?”