Tuesday, May 5, 2009

Memories of a Man Named Steve...

These are just a few anecdotes, about a man I met during my short [1 year] career in the railroad industry...a man who would greet you in the morning by dumping a hand full of gravel and bolts down the back your underwear...a man who you would see up on a tanker car with his pants down around his ankles, spreadin' his ass cheeks at you, whilst relishing in your disgust...a man who would wait for you to go to the Porta-John to take a dump, and then throw a big rock down the stink-pipe chimney, so the blue turd-water would splash on your ass...this was a man named Steve Davis...one of the most mischievous fuckers...I have ever had the pleasure of meeting.

7:00 AM,...the Kansas City morning air, pushed it's way in like a blast of Indian food diarrhea to the face, the shitty smelling sewage treatment plant, just over the horizon made breathing a fucking chore. It was like the entire Kansas City Eastside, took a mammoth crap all at once. It did not help, that this days temperature was around 95 to 100 degrees...with ozone warnings...and no sign of cooling down in the near future...swamp-ass was inevitable.

I walked in the front door of the double-wide that served as our business office. My boss, Mike tells me immediately to "Help, Steve"...jokingly...I said "Who'n the fuck is Steve?"...as far as I knew, we had no Steve working there at that time...we were a crew of 13 to 15 guys, including 3 or 4 niggas, 5 to 6 honkeys, some spics, a Cuban, an accident prone Filipino, and one dyke...who reeked of male testosterone and Skin Bracer...which had told me one time in passing, "That she'd came out of mommas pussy, swingin' her dick". One of those statements you could go your whole life without hearing...unless your me.

Mike then explained to me...that Steve Davis was a certified tank welder from the home shop in Atchision, Kansas...he had come down to fix the interiors of a few tanker cars, that developed pits in their floors. We had no certified welder in our own shop...and since fixing the pits was a very delicate procedure, somebody with the experience was necessary...as it was very easy to over weld, and burn a big-ass hole through the tank. I was to man the body wench, that was hooked to Steve, via a crotch harness...in the event he should be over taken by carbon monoxide fumes, from welding in a confined space.

I said "ok...no problem". I had no issue with sitting my fat ass, on top of a tanker car, while watchin' some dude weld inside...to make sure he didn't die.

So I got all the shit together...the wench, the harness, the welder, the air quality tester, the drop light...etc...I was ready to do this shit.

I waited 25 minutes, there in the train yard for this yahoo to show up, amongst the ungodly noise, sparks flying and occasional outbursts of profanity...it was common place for someone to slice off a finger and squirt blood all over the place like a geyser, or burn big cavernous fucking holes in their flesh with hot slag...a beautiful place, for sadists and masochists to work together in harmonious dischord.

And then, from the brown curtain of dust, that hung thick in the breeze...the yard was literally like a dustbowl that day...walks this goober of a gent...I mean seriously, the dude was like a fucking cartoon character...resembling one of The Hanson Brothers from the movie Slapshot...big nose, big glasses, long blond hair and an old red hard-hat, that had seen better days.

He introduced himself...we talked about the process for minute...he was cool, kind of quiet and a little country. It was sure no indication of the man to come.

We got all the shit up on the car...16 feet in the air...lowered all this shit into the tank...Steve put on the crotch harness, and climbed down the ladder. The crotch harness hooks to a steel tripod, above the porthole of the tank...and has a crankable wench on it...which pulls the victim to safety using a steel wire rope. Nice piece of machinery, but heavy and cumbersome...I think we both refered to it as "that piece of shit".

He was now down in the car...I could hear grinding, and see the flash of welding arc. Smoke started to rise out the hole...but the levels were not dangerous...yet.

I was sitting there, almost half asleep...when I hear the sound of a man enraged...I look down in the hole, and see the welder fly all the way across the length of the car...and then, "STUPID GOD DAMN SON OF A BITCHIN' MOTHER FUCKERS!!!"...came echoing up out of the belly of that beast. I hollered down..."What's wrong?!"...he hollered back..."FUCK YOU!!!...I FUCKIN' BURNED MYSELF.", I sat there for a second, kind of dumfounded...and then I hollered down..."FUCK YOU TOO, SORRY!!!"...". Hours later, after he was finished, he came up and apologized...and we had big laugh.

Another incident...Steve and myself would do lunch together a lot...one particular day we chose Dairy Queen...it was close, and the food was fair. We got there, and it happened to be "Take Your Retard to Lunch Day"...or so I coined it.

There was a table, behind us...that must have been the residents of a nursing home and their caretakers. The table consisted of several mentally challenged individuals...but the one that stood out, was this young girl...probably in her teens...who had a very peculiar malady.

The young girl would strike herself in the forehead, as hard she could...and then let out this almost inhuman noise..."AAARRRGHHH!!!"...as loud as she could [believe me...typing this noise out, just doesn't do it justice...it was a truly hideous sound] The caretakers would try to quiet her...and she would calm down for a minute but then, it would happen again...BOOM!..."AAARRRGHHH!!!"...This went on through our entire lunch break...possibly 30 or 40 times. I had my back to her, I never got to see the full show...Steve on the other hand, saw the whole thing..and being the nice guy, he actually was...he kept quiet...at one point, he even muttered to himself..."poor girl". I thought, "wow, this cat's ok".

Later on, back at the train yard...all was fairly quiet...nothing much going on...I think a group of us may have been standing around talking...and then from out of the blue...you see Steve Davis, up on the end of a tanker car...standing there?!...you wonder "what horrors are we in store for"...and then, with one fail swoop, he struck himself in the forehead...and went "AAARRRGHHH!!!", as loud as he could. I laughed until almost pissed myself...and then I did it back...BOOM!..."AAARRRGHHH!!!"...this went back and forth several times...like it was our own private mating call. Yeah, I know...

Over the next few weeks...you could hear Steve, off in the distance somewhere, making this noise...or he'd be on top of the garage doing it. It stuck with ya.

Steve had always wore a hardhat, or a welders cap...at least when I saw him. But then on one of those hot-ass summer days, when we were all suffering...he comes up and takes off his hat...to cool down...

The sum bitch took off his American flag welders cap, and all be God damned if he didn't have the most luxurious blond locks I had ever seen...Heather fuckin' Locklear would have been green with envy...if she had witnessed this unveiling. And this was not like just regular old straight blond hair...it was fucking princess hair...it was Prell hair...like he'd just stepped out of a shampoo commercial. I think time slowed down at that moment...and the breeze caught his locks, like a chick in a Whitesnake video...somebody said..."Steve, your hair is magnificent"., to which he replied..."I know, and my sperm makes great babies". What the fuck!?

Through much observation...my fellow co-workers and I discovered that Steve Davis could literally, fall asleep anywhere...on any surface. You'd come back from lunch, and Steve would be asleep on a pile of bricks, with his head on a big rock...like some narcoleptic that just falls down, where ever they are, and goes to sleep.

A bunch of us would stand there and throw rocks at him, trying to wake him up...thinking about "How funny it would be to nail him"...but then being afraid, because you knew if you hit him just right...his big crazy redneck ass would fly up, chase you down and shove his fist in your mouth...his fist, if you were lucky.

He saw me one day...wiping sweat of my face, with the bottom of my shirt...he then looked at my girth and screamed..."That looks like my wifes ass!!!"

Uncle Roy...

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