Shortly after turning 17 I began to worry that I wasn't gonna make it to adulthood. Among other problems I had developed a bony growth in the middle of my forehead which I joked was my third eye exploding, but when it grew alarmingly fast and started throbbing I knew something was up.
My parents made an appointment to have it removed but I was nowhere to be found, hiding in a stupor somewhere. The hospital charged them a hefty cancellation fee and when they did finally catch up with me everyone was furious.
Of course, like any good nihilist I thought the whole thing was hilarious, making jokes that they were taking away my alien brain as they dragged me into surgery. In fact what they removed was the size of a walnut and did look remarkably like a little alien brain, with two distinct halves and it's own capillary system.
I was informed that it was a benign cancer called a bony growth, and no I couldn't keep it, as it was now the property of 'science'. I thought about my sister who had miscarried a year before I was born. If she had come into this world alive my parents would have stopped at six kids, essentially denying my existence. I imagined this -along with my extra row of bottom teeth- as a spectral echo of her lost being. My supplanted, semi-parasitic twin, reminding me of how close my soul had come to oblivion.
After this incident my parents broke down and decided that I needed an intervention. This came in the form of a stern sit-down and an ultimatum:
“Son, we're afraid you're gonna hurt somebody, we're afraid you're gonna hurt yourself. So we're gonna send you to live with your brother in New Zealand where you can get the perspective you need and learn to earn your own way.”
I could tell by the way that they looked at me that I didn't have a choice. It was get out of Santa Cruz or die.. and I knew it.
This was their old-fashioned way of caring, tough love and all that. “You gotta throw 'em outta the nest before they can fly”. They couldn't have forced me to go, but agreeing to take the one-way ticket and get on that 15 hour flight was the best decision of my life thus far.
Upon arriving, I settled into the converted chicken-coop that I was to stay in, and the enormity of my isolation began to sink in. Here I was on an island at the bottom of the world, a million miles from anywhere, with no prospects or money, and a brother that needed rent right away. I had grown up on the same rural property as a child and I remember having fun wandering the rainforest and building tree-forts all day, but as a teenager, living out in the boonies was just a pain in the ass. Somehow the five miles I used to cheerfully barge to school every day on my stubby little child legs, now seemed an interminable distance to get to work. I needed a car, and quick.
In desperation I called my Grandmother to ask for a loan of a couple hundred dollars for transport to find a job. Her response shocked me into reality and was one of the best doses of tough love I have ever received.
“Dear, when I was your age it was during the Great Depression *insert Grandson sigh* and I had a job as a kindergarten teacher to put myself through college.” I was exasperated and whiny. “But Grandma, you already had a job. I'm trying to get one.” She wasn't listening. “Well, I had to bicycle all the way to my job and I remember having to scour the dump for spare rubber to patch the tires. You know.. rubber was very scarce in those days and...” as her words faded into my disappointment I stopped listening, but the lesson of what she was saying hit like a thunderclap. “Young man, you are on your own.”
There is a great Doc Watson song 'Walk on Boy' ~ “Walk on boy. Walk on down the road. Ain't nobody in this whole wide world gonna help you carry your load...”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ikW8D4fncoI
I didn't know about Doc Watson at the time but when I listen to it now, it always reminds me of that moment in my life, when I felt so sorry for myself and angry, and yet empowered by the dawning realization it was all on me. No one was there to commiserate with and coddle me, or to kick my ass into gear. If I was to survive, I had to turn my downward spiral upside down.. all by myself.
Luckily, Henderson had a pretty good unemployment office, and within two weeks I was placed as a hole puncher in a sheet metal factory that manufactured BBQ parts. Hole punching was the least dangerous part of the assembly line, and after you had mastered the art of piercing and stacking thousands of sheets a day, they moved you to the massive sheet folding machines, where one wrong move could easily leave you missing a finger, either by the angry, stamping presses themselves, or by the ever-slicing razor-sharp sheets of metal flying around. The company required work gloves but it was impossible to pick up the sheets fast enough to make your quota while wearing them, so you just acquired dozens of fresh cuts in your hands every day. Always the foreman was screaming at someone to get their numbers up, and the endless.. Bowmmp!.. Screee!... Shssss... of the sheet metal folding machines and their fingerless, humpbacked attendants contributed to an environment that I imagine approximates hell.
Every Friday the manager would gather us in the office to give us our checks, but before that happened there were cases of beer lined up that you could buy directly from the company. It was a tradition to polish off quite a few cases before heading home for the weekend. This system insured that the company owner would keep the workers in his pocket, and some of them went to the factory solely to pay off their beer debts to him. This was my first real eye opener to cut-throat capitalism. Keep 'em down, keep 'em indebted, and keep 'em addicted to your supply, and you've got the next most profitable thing to slavery.
My brother's friend Terri saved me from that job, and along the way saved my spirit from shriveling. He and his wife Vicky who lived with their infant son Rueben in the property rental cottage took me under their wing and smoked me out when I would be just dying after a day of pounding metal. He would load up a round of 'tips' into his honeybear bong, crack some beers, and slip some cerebral New Wave into the stereo. As a hardcore punker I hadn't really opened my ears to some of the artsier music going on in the 80's, but Terri's influence broadened my tastes in a whole new direction with bands like The Cure, Joy Division, and The Art of Noise.
Vicky soothed my soul in a different way, insisting that I help her tend and learn everything about her immaculate veggie garden out back. To this day I am thankful for my friendship with her as I remember to use every inch of garden space for my family's sustenance.. as I slow down my day to a merciful crawl with the perfect meditation of pulling weeds.
They had a friend, Bill Zurich, who owned a panel-beater business, which to you yanks is auto-body work, and he was looking for an apprentice full time for $150 a week. I had never heard of such fantastic money, and not knowing anything about the job, I was excited to sign up.
Kicking my dilapidated and uninsured Datsun into gear, I headed out into the cold morning full of naïve promise. Little did I know that this workshop would be the unforgiving forge of my early manhood, as well as a cauldron of workplace and social hazards conspiring to kill me...
No comments:
Post a Comment