Thursday, September 25, 2008

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.

5 comments:

Steve Malley said...

Sadly, I left the American dream behind.

Happily, I was made my livin's today by drawing pictures on pretty young ladies...

Charles Gramlich said...

That looks like a place where drug deals would go on, and perhaps go awry

Chris said...

Looks like the cover to the first Black Sabbath LP. Very cool.

Capcom said...

I left too. It makes me sad to think of my pictures still hanging on the walls in my lab, and all my things still on my bench just about the way I left it (so I'm told). So I know what you mean about that.

Anyway, glad that you have a chance to make some bucks on your old job. No wonder you're tired lately!

Lana Gramlich said...

Sometimes I REALLY miss Canada. Ironically, when I told my friends I was moving back to the states, some of them actually called me a "traitor" & stopped speaking to me. Pretty bad when your #1 global neighbors don't even have any use for you. <:\