Thanks to my constant drifting from job to job throughout my working life, I was blessed to meet a number of interesting and colorful characters. I greatly enjoyed the friendship of most of them. While working in a wood sash and door plant, I met Perry. He was an older man and his job was to push carts loaded with finished window sash from the packing area down to the staging area. He did his job, all the while yelling out commands to an imaginary team of draft horses. “Giddy up, whoa, hee, haw” could be heard as he made his way about. Eventually, I introduced myself to him and learned he knew my gramps. Both of them in fact. Gramps on my mom’s side had been a teamster with his own team of draft horses, same as Perry. They hauled and drank together in other times. Perry became a good friend, now long gone. Working on the third floor of a machine shop at a tractor plant, I observed a tall black man whose job consisted of sweeping the aisles of our area. If he was sweeping an aisle and a fork truck came along with a load, he would blow a whistle he carried on a string around his neck, wave the truck on and hold up his other hand as if to stop traffic from the opposite direction. His name was George. I asked a fellow running a machine next to mine about him. I was told he used to be a boxer and was hurt in the ring, doing damage to his brain. The man also told me, on paydays George would show up wearing a belt and holster holding a toy cap pistol, and wearing a tin toy badge. He was guarding the payroll. Another time I was hired to help an older man named Joe. Our job was to run the polish department in a plastics manufacturing plant. It turned out, once Joe taught me the ropes, he left it all to me and spent his days pushing a two wheeled cart with an empty barrel, around the plant and talking to machine operators in other departments, especially the females. The empty barrel on the cart was just to make him look busy. Despite this, I liked Joe and we got along fine. Then I met Ron. We both were hired at a plant in the next town, 15 miles away. I had a car, Ron didn’t, so I gave him a ride to work, eventually winding up with five riders. Ron was kind of slow minded. He couldn’t drive a fork truck nor operate a machine, so they put him to work sweeping, picking up empty boxes around machines and baling them. During our breaks Ron would look in all the trash cans for empty pop cans, which he would stash in a box until quitting time. He would take them home and cash them in for the refund. One day at quitting time, Ron grabbed his box of cans, to run to my car. He was always afraid I would leave without him. Someone cut open the bottom of his can box. When he snatched it up, cans fell out and were rolling all over the floor. Poor Ron didn’t know whether to pick them up or run out to my car. Someone assured him I wouldn’t leave without him and helped him pick up his cans. He was a friendly and generous fellow, well like by most. At another factory, I was in charge of the machine room. All the machines were staffed by women. I had always been shy around girls, unless I was drinking. Some of these women were crazy. One I’ll call Tammi, would always grab me around my neck and plant a kiss on my lips, didn’t matter where or when. On the street, in the factory, anywhere. I tried to avoid being around her. Another one would flash me by lifting her sweatshirt up as I walked by. I had to transfer out of there. At one small factory I met Clyde. He worked in the same department and right from the get go, he seemed to harbor some grudge against me. I never saw the guy in my life and couldn’t figure out why he was so aggressive toward me. Not wanting to cause trouble, I said nothing, but a foreman noticed his behavior too. A few days later Clyde was gone. Later still, I found out why he so resented me. It seems one of my uncles gave him a good butt kicking in a bar fight and he wanted to retaliate on me. While working in a plant that built furniture I met Larry. I knew Larry from school days and ran into him later in another small plant. One day Larry and I were sent to pick up a truck load of cabinets from another warehouse across town. On our way back as we slowly made our way up a narrow street, I noticed a woman in a second story window. She was leaning out the window and was nude to the waist. I said, “Hey Larry, that woman in the window back there is naked”. In Larry’s haste to drive back around the block, he took a corner so fast some of the cabinets fell out of the back of the truck and onto the street. We reloaded them and drove on to the plant. I let Larry explain the damaged cabinets. I don’t know what he said but he was put on the night shift alone and disappeared after a week or two. Later, I went to work in a plant that made dry ice. Who did I run into there but Larry from the furniture plant. Somewhere along the line he got religion, and just wasn’t the same old Larry. Driving a taxi wasn’t really work to me. Most times, it was an enjoyable experience. There was an older retired man named Cliff who drove on the day shift. He was a nice fellow, polite and generous. One day he finished a run and radioed our dispatcher that he was empty in the south end of town. The dispatcher told him to find a shady spot and park until he got a call. Cliff parked under a tree in front of a house and settled down to wait. A lady called the dispatcher and asked what that taxi was doing in front of her house and get it away from there. Our dispatcher radioed Cliff to come back to the station because some old crab didn’t like him parked in front of her house. It turned out, the old crab had a scanner that picked up police, fire, taxi and other calls. She called the dispatcher back and gave him what for. I met two Mack’s in those days gone by. The first one worked in the same wood window sash and door plant as I did. Mack was a short older guy and wore thick glasses. Every morning Mack showed up for work wearing a pair of highly polished dress shoes. He would take them off, place them under his workbench and put on a pair of work shoes. One day while Mack was away to the lunch room a guy called Red nailed Mack’s dress shoes to the floor. Mack put on quite a show, walking around with a hammer in his hand yelling for the culprit who did that to his prized shoes. The other Mack I met at a plastic tube manufacturing plant. He was a nice looking older man with steel gray wavy hair and a nicely trimmed moustache. He seemed friendly and we got along well. One day he didn’t show up for work. That evening he was on the nightly news. Seems he was burglarizing upper class homes in a neighboring city. There was a gunfight with the police. He shot a cop in the leg and was shot up a bit as well. Don’t know if he ever got out of prison. While working as a toll collector on a toll bridge, my shift followed a man named Ned. After I arrived for my shift, Ned would check out by counting his cash. And recounting his cash, and checking it again. It took less that fifteen minutes for all the other men to check out but Ned took over an hour. It seems Ned had a perfect record of never ever making a mistake with his deposits. When he was finished, he would leave his bank bag open while he used the restroom before heading for the bank, then home. One day I was tired of his dallying around. While he was in the restroom, I took a nickel out of my own pocket and threw it in his open bank bag. The next day, when Ned learned from the boss that he made a mistake checking out, Ned almost had a breakdown. I felt kind of bad about that. Ned was well liked and friendly to all. I could go on all day, but these are some of the people I worked with from 1958 to 1995.
What a nice story of your associations with interesting people. I remember an anecdote when I was working in the first bank. There was this manager who was amiable to everyone. Not really friends but we got close somehow. After some years, when I moved to another bank, my husband had won a slot as finalist in a songwriting contest. His piece will be performed by a singer and they had to attend the rehearsals. In one of the rehearsals, I went to the venue as support for my husband's team. There was this famed singer named Richard Reynoso who was the singer of one contestant. Since he and my husband had some bonding, I also was able to chat with him. And then the topic of the first bank came out. He was surprised to know that I was a friend of his uncle's.
I've worked in around twelve different jobs, variously in the public, private and charity sectors. It follows, therefore, that I've come across a lot of people. I'd say that by far the widest variety has been when I've worked in sub-Saharan Africa. I couldn't tell you how many different nationalities I met during those periods, but it would be more than 50. There was a Scotsman who had worked in 20 African countries, a Dutch-born Australian who moved straight from the coldest place on Earth (the Antarctic survey) to the hottest (the Red Sea coast), a German-South African who had been to more than 100 countries, a French-born (and raised) West African who spoke absolutely perfect English and a further cast of thousands. There simply wouldn't be enough room to relate even a small percentage of them. One thing that it does show is that people get around. One of the things I often found depressing in the public sector in the UK is the number of people that spend their whole life working for one department. They tend to be similarly unadventurous in their lifestyles. I've always preferred to spend my time with people that have a story to tell!
Deep rooted trees have their place, and potted plants have their place! Thankfully, we are all different!