Sick Fuck From the Wild Wild West

Today pretty well sucked. We seem to be running out of parts again, so some of us got farmed out to do other things, Fred is on vacation, David is gone to work at Wilson Tires, and that left only a few of us to run the guns. At times today it felt very much like we were the small Spartan army facing down the gigantic Persian hordes, especially after Brad left at 2:00 (he has a family medical leave arrangement for his wife), which left me as the only bolt-fitter, and left the cell with only four of us remaining inside. Now this wouldn't be so terrible if the guns were running well, but they were not, and consequently the afternoon sucked big smelly ass. Most of the guns through the day were running at low headspace, which makes it near to impossible to find a bolt that'll fit. Barney showed up with some oversized bolts, which meant that I had to ream some guns and file most of the turned diameters on the bolts, which is fine because I can make any oversized bolts fit a gun some way or another, but then the pre-fire readings went to hell. And then I started to get frustrated and grumpy.

But after work I followed Cooter to his apartment in Claremont. He's been pushing for me to take his kitchen table, since he knows I haven't had one here, so that he can buy a different one. I was hesitant to agree to this sight-unseen, but fuck it, it's a kitchen table. I can always trade up later. It's a little beat-up, and there's some stuff stuck on the top of it in spots, which looks like melted and dried strawberry ice cream, but I figure I can clean that off somehow. My mom might have an idea how to go about it seeing as she's the world's next best thing to knowing Martha Stewart (mom knew how to clean my backpack after some orange tablets exploded all over it in the heat, for instance). While there I visited with Cooter and his girlfriend Amy for a little bit. I've yet to screw the legs back onto the table, however.

At work there's also this old guy named Bob, although we usually call him Getty, for the simple reason that Getty is his last name. He's the guy I was working for during shutdown week when I painted yellow poles yellow and painted the range doors yellow among the many other lousy tasks I had to do that week. At the time I referred to him as 'El Commadante' to Jen when I sat with her out at the picnic tables during lunch, but he's really a pretty nice guy ... when I'm not working for him. Normally, he's our Spider, which means he gets the parts we need to assemble guns with, and also means he's an all-around gofer. Since shutdown he and I have become good buds. He's originally from Turners Falls, once again proving it's a small world after all, so we've done a lot of comparative storytelling about Western Mass, which we both describe as sort of an outlaw land straight from the wild wild west. Between the two of us we paint a pretty descriptive picture of all the trouble you can find yourself in if you wander into the wrong neighborhoods down there, and of course Bob and I have both wandered into those neighborhoods.

We both tell Cooter, who is redneck straight to the bone, that he wouldn't last an hour in Massachusetts, especially in some godforsaken place like downtown Springfield or Holyoke, and that the women of that state would eat him alive and then pick their teeth with his bones. He thinks Amy is a little crazy? The boy should experience some of the shit I've seen down there from Mass chicks. In comparison, Amy is sweet and delightful (I actually think she is). He can't handle when Christy (from our cell) gives him a hard time, and she's the only NHGirl I've ever met who is actually comparable to a hardcore Mass Chick (but she's always nice to me), and I say that with a lot of respect, because Christy is one tough cookie. But she can get Cooter's goat, so it pretty much goes without saying that he'd be toast south of the border. Even Bob agrees with me on this wild generalization. "Yeah, they ARE mean down there."

There's also a running joke between Cooter and me regarding 'whores', which Bob has picked up on in a way that I'm not sure whether or not he's taking me a little *too* seriously with. Just because I happen to know where to find some hookers and whores in Holyoke and/or Springfield doesn't really mean much, because they really aren't hard to find in either city at all. But between that and some of the other running jokes and things we talk about in the cell ... he thinks I'm a sick bastard (although he always says that with a smile, and usually after I've said something reasonably horrible). I'm adding that right after Jen's assertion that I'm "shady", which she decided while we were both at LSI, as proof that my public image has changed a wee little bit from the old days.

A typical exchange will go something like this. He'll ask me what I'm doing that night or something. I'll answer with, "Well, I might pick up a couple hookers and some beer and head home." And then he'll say either a) "You sick bastard", or b) "You've got problems. You know that?"

That always makes me laugh.