For The Book!

"Ok... everybody off the roof!!" I was just getting another bucket of tar from the hook and line setup we had to bring it up from the guy working the kettle below. "Heh" I was thinking "your turn buddy"... when our foreman started ordering us all to stop working and get off. I turned to [...]

To try and put it in all at once would be courting disaster. ----------------------------------------- All day. I'm working the kettle. Toxic fumes from the tank, surround me. My skin sweats oil and dirt and chemical waste. All my muscles ache from lifting the cakes of tar, chopping them into manageable chunks and bending over the [...]

"Ya know one o them crazy motherfuckers actually jumped in there last time?" "What?" "Pay attention kid! You actually might learn something." The guy "training" me spits his cigarette on the ground and walks closer. "That's what I'm doing." I say under my breath. I'm holding it of course. Last thing I need is to [...]

And now I’m here. Walking in this town in Kansas. Walking away from a sad, ugly strip club thinking of the strip club Fred brought me to in Omaha. ------------------------------------ Fred had just gotten the job as head of security at Brandeis Department Store. To celebrate, he arranged a babysitter for the kids and took me [...]

Walking. No direction, no purpose, no thoughts. Until one night when I let those guys talk me into coming with them. What a depressing, ugly place. That small, dark, smoky, sad, sad room. Toxic sadness. Sad men, sad women... Sad, leering men.  A few (most with our little group of roofers from Omaha) making an effort [...]

It was windy and an ugly dust was blowing all over them. I could barely see the men as they scrapped, shoveled, wheelbarrowed and threw the ugly, dusty mess over into the chute. Down into a large bin. The dust was everywhere and I didn’t have to be in it (I would be soon enough) [...]

Once this job was finished however, I was sent down to Topeka with the rest of the scabs. --------------------------------------- Well... it wasn't exactly Topeka. That's just where I was told we were going when I asked. "Some God-forsaken hellhole by Topeka." I had no idea what he was talking about. "What's so hellhole-ish about a [...]

There’s no one around and this car is stopping and I’m going to have to deal with whoever it is and I’m tired and hungry and scared. Shit! ------------------------------------- "Where you going son?" My fear disappears immediately as I approach the car window and the man's welcoming smile. Now, I'm just cold and hungry. "Midtown [...]

I can't remember how I got here. Try as I might... it's just not coming to me. All I know is that I'm here, now. On the side of the freeway. State highway seventy two. Well south of I-80. South Omaha. Near the stockyards. I'm on my way home. Heh... home? Am I calling my [...]

My new job working as a scab for the corporate predators and scammers of a big Omaha-based industrial roofing company. ------------------------------------- Ok, so it might be a little unfair to lump everyone in a company that hired me off the street with no job history (that I was going to mention) and no ID, into [...]