Work saved my life. Even through the misery and loneliness of a collapsed marriage, and no matter how hung over, no matter how stoned, I showed up for work. Work got into my blood.
My first full time job was as a porter at Autoville, the local VW dealership. A regular task was putting new cars up on the rack and shooting them with undercoating. I had just dropped out of art school, and here was a pot or acid enhanced tableau of liquid sunlight pouring through the skylight, igniting the cadmium yellow drums, and highlighting the treaks of burnt sienna compound slopped on the sides of the drums.
From time to time, that lucidity was tempered by someone spraying brake drums with compressed air. The asbestos dust lingered for hours, bringing to mind Wolfflin’s Principles, and his concept of “the intervening atmosphere” that distinguished the Northern masters from the Renaissance Italians.
Nevertheless, I was promoted to be a mechanic. We were paid flat rate, and being the junior member of the team, I was fed the shit work. Oil changes, mufflers, front end alignments. The gravy jobs--brakes, overhauls, went to the old hands.
To adjust front end alignment, you used a spring loaded telescoping bar that had rulings etched where the inner tube slid by the outer tube. To read the condition you placed the bar between the front wheels, located at about 8:00, and then rolled the car forward until the bar was at about 4:00. The difference was the toe-in. To make the adjustment, you raised the car and turned a threaded coupling on one of the tie rods, in or out, depending on the condition.
It’s not necessary that you followed that; here is what is important.
Working flat rate, speed means money. To save a few seconds, I would only raise the car high enough to scoot under it on a creeper. It was not unusual for the coupling to be frozen to the rods. They needed to be busted loose with WD-40 and vise grips.
It came to pass that I was on my back, fighting a severely frozen coupling, and working the vise grips tighter and tighter. I positioned the jaws and with all my might gave a squeeze--but I caught the web between my thumb and forefinger in the vise grips.My hand was trapped up in the wheel well, firmly attached to the tie rod.
You can imagine the agony. But the car was so low that I could not bring my other hand around to release the vise grips. I had to hollar above the cacophony of 19 other mechanics, the chuck chuck of the oil filling pumps, the revving of engines, the Merle Haggards and Bob Dylans on the respective radios.
(Peace meets Grease, as we would say. Meyers, another longhair who crashed at my apartment, was the recipient of a 30” spliff made of lawn clippings wrapped in a newspaper. The greasers gave a chorus of laughter. Meyers laughed, too. We all wore the same blue uniform.)
Finally someone heard me--mercifully, someone with a light touch on the lift valve--and provided the clearance I needed to release the grips. Another opportunity for the greasers to break into laughter.
Injury like that was the norm. Almost every day I would skin a knuckle on the sheet metal shrouding that enveloped the air cooled engines. One little slip, changing a spark plug, produced a flap of flesh and a dribble of blood through the dull grime that coated your fingers and hands. Vermillion on burnt umber. Little scalloped scars, scars on scars, scars on scars on scars.
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