Back To The Rendering Plant

I was surprised to get a call to work a few days at my old job, pretty much just filling in so everything can stay on schedule. So many things about that place I miss, the smell of ink, the sounds of the huge four-color machines. I found myself pretty adept at still knowing 60# from 100# matte, text, velvet, or cover. I found boxes of stock that still had my writing on it from May. Tomorrow will likely be my last day, maybe Monday, though. It was a bitch to get there today, $33.00 for a cab. I could've taken a bus to 159th, then walked to 167th then a mile to Pulaski, but all that would have taken two hours. So I'll really get that cab fare back by the two extra hours I got on the clock. Tomorrow it will be like it was in the spring, Bart picking me up at the White Castle on 123rd at 8 AM, same Bat-Time, same Bat-Channel. For those new to my talk of this printing plant, it used to be at 127th, off the Cal Sag Channel. Now its pretty much in the ghetto-end of Oak Forest, where you have a huge drop off on one side of the unpaved lot, a red barn where drug deals often occur, and as taken from the lot itself, a photo of the infamous boarded up crack house. Why foreclose? Claim squatter's rights and sell crack, then wash the mattresses in the barn. The American Dream: 2008. Hey, I'm 49 now and making ten bucks an hour. That whole American Dream bit again.