Summer Job
As adults, we no longer have summer jobs. We have job jobs. All year round. Summer jobs are those jobs that give us pocket money after high school, or between semesters in college.
In the mid-to-late seventies, I had one of those jobs. My mother and aunt worked at a Biochemical Plant in Freehold, NJ, and my mother got me a job there.
I call it a Biochemical plant, and that might spark visions of those tanks along the New Jersey Turnpike filled with chemicals, or warehouses stocked with barrels of toxic waste. In fact, it was more of a small building with a series of labs, like classrooms lined along a high school hallway.
My mother got me a job with the maintenance crew.
I need to clarify who exactly this maintenance crew were, and what they did.
This was the seventies, and most, if not all, were Vietnam Veterans. They were intimidating as hell, at least to me they were. These were guys that went deer hunting, not with rifles or bow and arrows. No, these guys would hide in the trees, then drop down on the unsuspecting deer with a Bowie Knife for the kill.
These were not guys there to clean up spills. These were guys to rewire machines, and keep the labs up and running. In one case, a water treatment process was bulky for the space it inhabited. One of the ‘maintenance guys’ not only reduced the space it filled, but basically invented a newer, and smaller, version of the device.
They were no nonsense, and nothing ever phased them.
One day, Tom (I only remember his name because of what happened next) while working at a table saw, cut off his thumb. Blood striped the ceiling and wall like a scene out of DEXTER. Tom wrapped his hand while another picked up the thumb, while a third grabbed a plastic bag, and filled it with ice.
Off they went, thumb in bag, while a trail of blood followed their path out the door.
Tom was back at work the next day, thumb reattached to his hand.
That is dedication.
There was a lighter side to them as well.
In the back of the maintenance shack was an old soda machine. However, it wasn’t for soda. At the end of the work day, for fifty-cents, that machine would dispense a bottle of beer. Each week, the money collected was used to buy more beer.
The circle of life.
Being new, with little to no experience working with machinery, I assisted at best. Also, being the new guy, I got the shit jobs to do.
Literally.
The complex had a waste treatment building, and when a tank back-up and pretty much exploded, I was sent in to scrub the shit off the walls and ceiling.
Also, being new on this job, I did my best to do everything I was tasked, but perhaps too well. It was on this job that I was told to slow down, and whenever I was not working to carry a clipboard and a pencil, to look like I was.
Life lessons, you’ll never know where you’ll find them.
The people were all nice, even when the maintenance guys scared me, they were pretty funny. But there is one person I will always remember.
There was a chemist worked in one of the labs, always said hello to me. Beautiful woman, long brown hair, brown eyes, and wore glasses. Was never good at guessing ages, but probably in her late twenties.
Till this day, I can still see her face in my mind’s eye.
Hey, I was a teenage boy, that face was imprinted on my brain.
However, there is one story that I always tell about my time at this job.
I was not the only summer hire that year, they also hired Rex (no, he wasn’t a watch dog). He was the president of the company’s son, and if it weren’t for him, after what happened next, I definitely would have been fired.
Rex and I roamed the hallway (clipboards in hand) when we stopped outside a particular lab. This lab was scheduled to have work done the next day. They were going to knock a wall down to join two small labs into one big lab.
We went inside. All the equipment and furniture was gone. In there place where a couple of sledgehammers, a tool box, and some tarps.
(You know where this is going)
Rex and I each picked up a sledgehammer, and being the ambitious workers we were, we thought we’d get a jump on tomorrow’s assignment.
From the other side of the room, we each tossed a sledgehammer, like ax throwers, into the opposing wall.
Over and over, holes repeatedly appeared in the sheet rock. We stopped once our arms grew tired. We put the sledgehammers down, and went back to work (clipboards in hand).
When I arrived the next morning, Rex and one of the supervisors greeted me at the door. I was stopped before I even entered the maintenance shack.
“What did you do?”
I looked at Rex, sure he went through the same routine before I arrived.
Not wanting to give us up so easily, I feigned ignorance (which only prolonged the inevitable) so said nothing.
Again he asked, “What did you do?”
Where’s a clipboard when you need one?
Finally, I said (smugly), “I thought we’d get a jump on today’s assignment, and take out that wall.”
My supervisor looked at me, then said, “That’s commendable, except for one thing,”
(You know where this is going)
“It was the other wall that we were going to take down.”
If Rex wasn’t there with me, they would have shown me the door.
Fortunately, summer came to an end shortly after this incident. Off to college, then off to the real world, and off to getting a job job.
Hopefully, with more clipboards and less sledgehammers.
Picture created by https://magicstudio.com/ai-art-generator/
