Penning my previous entry for The Voice in the April 5 issue about working on a television assembly line got me into a 367-jobs-I-once-had mode and the fun I endured performing them. Driving a forklift for Budweiser was one job. Working for a beer company would be a dream come true for a connoisseur who appreciates a meticulously brewed grain beverage, and occasionally ends up in a drunken stupor. Not me, of course.
The job involved unloading pallets of beer cartons from box cars and stacking them three pallets high in the warehouse where they rested until ready for the delivery trucks. Once in a while a boxcar wasn’t lined up with the warehouse door, so I had to go outside and move it. It usually happened a little past seven in the a.m. on a cold Winter day. Move a full boxcar? Which Master of the Universe am I? None. Any of you readers who’ve worked for the railroad know it can be done using a tool appropriately and wisely called a Johnson Bar, not to be confused with the reverse lever on a steam engine or one of the many taverns where I spent so much time, the patrons thought I owned the joint.
When the boxcar was in position, it was time to open the dockside door. There were times this simple act drastically could shorten your life. If the car had been banged around and was filled with aluminum kegs, opening the door could send a few 161-pound kegs tumbling out, turning you into a pile of mush called a former employee. It happened to me once, but I managed to duck out of the way. Two of the kegs that hit the ground cracked their bunghole plugs, and sent fountains of Michelob into the air. A couple of co-workers ran out and tried to catch the streams in their mouths.
My own catastrophe occurred when I was zipping down an aisle with a full pallet of cartons of bottled beer. I was in a hurry and didn’t slow at an intersection. Another guy with a full pallet of cartons of bottled beer was turning into my aisle just as I approached. There was a loud, sickening crash as we hit. Like an erupting volcano, cartons and bottles went skyward and came crashing down on us. Luckily, the trucks had protective cages on top, so neither of us got hurt, just wet and left staring at a mountain of slush.
The delivery truck drivers had heir own lounge with a beer-filled cooler, where they could retire to when they were finished with their routes. Some guys finished their deliveries by 10:30 a.m. and spent the rest of the day getting sloshed. Feeling left out, we warehouse guys would buy a can of pop, empty it, and refill it with beer. Cleverly concealed, we thought, because we were allowed to drink pop during the workday, but not beer. How cruel.
One of my fellow drivers was a gruff old guy who never smiled unless he was drunk. This usually happened on Fridays, when he’d bring a half-pint of bourbon and hide it in the space where the lift truck forks were inserted to lift a pallet. This left it about head-high where he could easily grab it on the go. I didn’t know where he’d hid it one Friday and I stuck the forks of my truck into the pallet and broke the nearly full bottle. I made a quick getaway. As soon as he came close he could see the precious liquid running down the beer cartons. He let out a stream of obscenities, then sped to an open area of the floor and started doing high-speed donuts with his truck until it ran out of gas.
What finally made me realize maybe I wasn’t cut out for this job was a day when a helper for one of the drivers didn’t show up, so I was assigned to do the job. The driver was a real hustler and I barely kept up when we dragged cartons and kegs into taverns and stores. The killer was a tavern over a small bowling alley. Access to the storeroom was by way of a steep fire escape. Hauling a two-wheel hand truck backwards, loaded to the top with 187 pounds of beer up a narrow, wobbly, iron-rod fire escape wasn’t exactly like a weekend in Bermuda, not even a weekend in Cleveland. The driver went up ahead of me and stared down and wondered what was taking me so long. Seeing my life flash before me halfway up was my body’s way of screaming it wasn’t looking forward to a double hernia; it said, “Hey dummy, find another job.”
Another career, shot to Hades.