Inside the conference room, union reps and recruiters from Pontiac were seated behind long rows of tables. They all wore large name tags as if we really gave a shit who they were. Kirk, Tony and I stood in line waiting to be popped the offer. I spoke with Kirk. He was starting to vacillate as crazily as I was. Stay put or venture south? It was an enormous decision, one that would affect the rest of our careers. We both were able to agree on one thing. The only prospect more dreadful than having a job at GM was
not
having one.
My name was called and I slid into a chair across from some stern-lookin’ union shill. I told him I had severe reservations about leaving my hometown and forfeiting all rights to ever return to Flint in the future. He asked for my seniority date. “Seven nine seventy-seven,” I replied.
The union man shook his head. “If you stay here, you'll be out of a job within two years.”
“That's a long time off,” I said. “Things could turn around in that span.”
He seemed angry that I would quibble with his assessment of the situation. “Anything's possible, but your safest bet would be to transfer down to Pontiac.”
I looked down the tables at Kirk. Further down, I could see Tony. Both of them were scrawling their signatures to the transfer contracts. Reluctantly, I followed suit. Though the plant wasn't even entirely built yet, though it would be another two years before I ever set foot inside that cretin farm—I was now signed, sealed and delivered as sole property of the Pontiac Truck & Bus division, Union Local 594. I walked back to the Rivet Line feeling like a rotten Judas.
That very same night, I found that I couldn't sleep. I felt as though I had made a terrible blunder. I turned out all the lights in my apartment and stood at the window drinking bourbon from a plastic mug emblazoned with the motto: W
E
M
AKE
O
UR
O
WN
H
ISTORY
—50 Y
EARS
, UAW. I stared at the apartment building across from me. Nothing was going on. Just a bunch of self-assured Americans tucked beneath the sheets with three hours to go before the alarms started to ring and it would all unwind again. The meetings. The deadlines. The parking spot. The boss. They were truly amazing specimens. They adapted to everything.
The next afternoon, I got to the plant early. I was a man on a mission. I had changed my mind. I would not go south. I stormed through the lobby and into the workers’ cafeteria. I fixed my gaze on the little conference room that held my treasonous contract with the poachers from Pontiac. I would resolve this matter quickly. I would rant and rave until they fetched that fraudulent contract and let me rip it apart. I would declare myself a loyal domestic, a devoted Flintoid, a rock-solid pillar on the listing hull. I would throw the doors open and…
HUH? The room was totally dark. I flipped on a light switch and peered around. The room was entirely empty. No tables, no chairs, no files, no ashtrays—NO CONTRACT! I went back into the cafeteria and pulled one of the servers aside. “Could you tell me where all of the transfer people have gone? It seems they've stepped out somewhere.”
“What transfer people?” replied the moron in the hair net.
“The transfer people who've inhabited that back room all week! Where'd they go?”
“How should I know. I just work the grill. I don't know any transfer people.”
This had a bad aroma to it. One day ado, the next day adieu. It was spooky. Where in the hell did those cradle-lootin’ nomads disappear to? I wandered out of the cafeteria perplexed as to my next move. As I did, I half expected to turn around and catch a glimpse of Rod Serling ducking out of one of the phone booths, his hands knotted at groin level, his mocking sneer poking out of the plume of his eternal Winston. I could almost hear him:
“Witness if you will an enigma, a frustrated punster besieged by his lack of an appropriate punchline. We may call him the Rivethead, a self-designation currently on very tenuous footing, obscured amongst the nervous shuttle of those who would waver between embarkation and a fostered urge to remain. For here amidst the impossible din, amongst the sooty backdrop of this macabre garden, nothing is a sure bet. Nostalgia is as worthless as a slug nickel. A reconsideration only an old key prying hopelessly against an exchanged lock. However, a contract remains a contract, a coward still a coward. Now witness if you will a man's desperate attempt to undo that which is done, a man in need of what is known, a man's march through darkness into the Transfer Zone.”
I raced upstairs to the Rivet Line looking for Gino. I found him in his office going over a stack of paperwork. I didn't bother to knock.
“Tell me something, Gino,” I blurted. “Where in the fuck did those transfer people from Pontiac go? Their office has simply vanished.”
“Yesterday was their last day,” Gino answered. “They won't be back until next spring or summer. What happened, did you miss the boat or something?”
“No, the damn boat ran my ass right over! I signed their rotten transfer contract and—”
“You've changed your mind,” Gino finished for me.
I told Gino about how I had panicked. About how the union guy had claimed I'd be out of a job in two years if I didn't sign on. I told Gino that I'd been struck with this vision of myself cramming sugar paste into the butt end of cream sticks for three bucks an hour while the repo men tap-danced down the boulevard with my end tables and record collection in tow. I told him I was possibly the biggest fuckup either of us had ever met.
“Did they mention to you that, once you signed on, the contract was irreversible?”
“Yeah,” I moped, “they stuck that right in at the top.”
“I'm afraid you're locked in. Let me ask around and see what I can come up with.”
“I'd appreciate it.”
Gino wasn't able to find a single loophole. Nor was I. For weeks, I went around shaking down every union rep and boss-type I could find. Their only response was to ask me if I had inked the transfer sheet. Once I admitted that I had, they simply shook their heads and wished me luck. GM wasn't in the habit of lettin’ a sucker off the leash.
Pontiac was in the offing. I had a couple of years before I shipped out. Two years of Rivet Line mania. Two years of the spectacular and the absurd. I didn't intend to waste a minute of what was left on the meter. All aboard for clown time. The mayhem was only beginning.
I
T
W
ASN'T EVERY AFTERNOON THAT
I
RECEIVED LONG-DISTANCE
phone calls from folks at the
Wall Street Journal.
I didn't remember having any friends who worked there and I was certain that I didn't owe these people any money.
All the same, there was this guy on the line from Chicago who needed to talk with the Rivethead. He said his name was Alex and that he had enjoyed the piece I had written for the December issue of
Harper's.
He mentioned that he was working on a story for the
Wall Street Journal
about blue-collar writers—whatever the hell they were. He seemed convinced that the Rivethead qualified as such. (In time, I was able to surmise that a “blue-collar writer” was just about anyone tricky enough to get his junk into print without having to stay sober, suck ass, show up at house fires, hold a degree or learn his way around a word processor. Nothin’ to it. Hi Mom!)
This Alex guy was full of questions and I did my best to supply him with answers. “What do your co-workers think about your articles?” he asked.
“The ones who can read seem to like it.”
“What has been management's reaction?”
“They only react when I fuck up a rivet. Very seldom, I might add.”
“Where do you take your lunch break?”
“In my car.”
“Is that where you take down notes?”
“That is where I take down beer and wade through chronic lines of bullshit.”
“Do you consider yourself a factory worker or a writer?”
Yechhh.
Why anyone at the
Wall Street Journal
would be intrigued by all of this snooze was beyond me. What was happening? Had all the E. L. Hunts and Teddy Turners knocked off early and disengaged their cellular phones? Had the movers and shakers suddenly petrified? Was I the last available mortal for the angleworms of the press mob to collide against? January always brought out the bleak.
I had to cut Alex short. It was time to go hit rivets. Before I hung up, Alex mentioned that he would like to come to Flint to continue our conversation. Like to come to FLINT? Obviously, I was dealing with a journalist accustomed to lowbrow thrills.
Whatever his goals were, Alex said that he would be arriving in town the next week. He asked that in the meantime could I see what I could do about obtaining a pass for him to accompany me to my job at GM Truck & Bus. He was very excited about the idea of catching the Rivethead in the midst of his mooring. Confused, I agreed to give it a try.
Having never been in this position before, I had no idea of my first move in gaining clearance for an outside visitor. Through eight-plus years on the assembly line, no one I knew had ever expressed an interest in watching me swing my dead ass around while pinchin’ a rivet gun. For this, I was extremely grateful.
Not that the situation didn't occasionally come about with my linemates. Every now and then, one of the workers would feel compelled to bring in his wife or his children or some dolled-up galfriend as if by showing them the horrible nothingness of the layout proved indubitably, once and for all, that he'd endure any kind of daily martyrdom in return for their fondness and favors.
I can remember right after Hogjaw got married. Two days into his goddamn honeymoon, he came paradin’ his bride through the department, showing her the different jobs, demonstrating various machinery and introducing her to all his shoprat chums. It struck me as one of the saddest things I had ever witnessed—inside or outside a General Motors facility.
I decided to approach my foreman to see if he knew the proper formula for obtaining an official visitor's pass. I described for him the mysterious “blue-collar writer” angle and banged him over the head a half dozen times with the phrase “for inclusion in the
Wall Street Journal.
” Gino looked unimpressed. It was apparent that the
Wall Street Journal
wasn't a part of his regular reading rotation. “The
Walleye Journal?
” Gino mulled. “Why do they wanna know anything about you?”
He had me there.
I could already see that securing this pass was going to be a real task. Shit, why couldn't someone representing
Motor Trend
or
Hustler
come to visit me? They'd be sure to give those folks the run of the roost and my co-workers would be buyin’ my lunch straight through to the next model change.
The Wall Street Journal? The Walleye Journal?
It all amounted to one fat zero.
My foreman decided he would have to take it up with his boss. That meant dickering with the Penguin. No sweat, I figured. Surely that bloated autocrat would be duly impressed that the businessmen's Bible wanted to pass the poop with one of his devoted underlings. I returned to my job feeling semiconfident.
A couple hours later, Al came over to spell me. He told me that I was wanted on the phone in the foreman's office. It was Gino calling from over at the Penguin's place.
“What the hell did you say the name of that paper was—something about walleyes?” I made the necessary repairs with the paper's name and hung up. I began dwelling on the little liquor store near my apartment. How good it was gonna feel to do some trade with those people tonight.
The Penguin wound up telling Gino that his “hands were tied.” Accordingly, we would have to go through Labor Relations to get permission for Alex to visit. Gino found someone to cover my job and, reluctantly, we hiked off for the Labor Relations office.
At this point our story really begins to fester into a cesspool of terrible dreams. I'm telling you I was on mighty strange turf for a riveter. An alien frontier full of neckties, wingtips, belt beepers, bright lights, serious cologne and high command. Well-groomed fly-boys sucking on silver pens with pictures of children propped like tombstones on their desks. From nowhere and everywhere came the strains of Muzak—“Eleanor Rigby” and “Mandy” moanin’ in the boneyard. If there had been a window, I'm certain I would have jumped.
One of the high rollers from Labor Relations motioned my foreman into a glassed-in office. I was told to stay put. Inside the room I could see two men wearing very solemn expressions as they chewed it over with my boss. Now and then, their heads would bob and they would peer out at me as if they half expected I might try to filch an ashtray or pee on the carpet. It occurred to me that these men were aware of the Rivethead. It promised to be an uphill battle from here on out.
When my foreman returned, he said that we would have to go through Salaried Personnel. “They told me that their hands were tied,” Gino added. This euphemism was growing stale. Why couldn't they just substitute the truth and admit their spines were putty.
The following Monday, Gino got in touch with Salaried Personnel. He was told to call back on Tuesday. Tuesday spilled into Wednesday before we were told that we would have to take up our request with General Motors Public Relations. In a stunning development, they had explained to Gino that their hands were
not
tied, however their feet were webbed and their heads were hollow.
By Thursday, the day the
Wall Street Journal
was to arrive, the situation was still unsettled. It was ridiculous. I probably would have stood a better chance tryin’ to smuggle Ted Bundy through a sorority house. Had I known beforehand just how difficult this visitor's pass would be to secure, I would have skipped all the red tape and simply instructed Alex to bring along some filthy duds and a three-day beard. With 3,500 workers on our shift, he could have easily waltzed through the door and taken up residency anywhere he damn well chose to.
Alex Kotlowitz arrived at my place around noon. He was disappointed to hear about the problem with the visitor's pass. I assured him it wasn't due to any lack of effort. I recounted the path so far, adding that the ball now seemed to rest in the hands of GM's Public Relations office. Alex decided that it might be best if he gave them a call and explained his harmless intentions.