Essays
Broken Hands In Wataga, Illinois;
During Sunset
The cars were cheap.
Maybe $200 bucks.
The kittens were the only thing that thrived in that garage, in that long warehouse on the prairie of Illinois. Cat litter sprinkled across the concrete floor soaked up oil from the cars we tore apart. Kittens that seemed to grow straight from that ground bounced around and were expendable just like everything else in the shop. If one of the kittens died no one would blink an eye. Just like the caged rabbits in the back of the garage, none of the kittens had names. We didn’t name the cars or show up sober. A hangover after a late night at John’s house or the pills Sam was taking or the weed we smoked from Galesburg to Wataga. I needed money more than anything in the world. Gas was five dollars a gallon. Every regular job that I applied for--the fast food joint, the retail store, the gas station—was was held by someone well into their fifties, who needed the money more than I did. I was under qualified and too young to work in a country that had just destroyed the entire housing market. My Grandpa would typically remark in those times,“He’d pick up chicken shit if he had to. Wouldn’t he?” And that was the endearing truth.
There ain’t a lot of pride in one’s employment as a 17-year-old kid with long hair looking to buy his next pack of smokes and a little bit of gas. Besides, in the light of the largest recession this country had seen since the Great Depression, work was work. I come from labor families. Generation after generation of hard work and shit pay. Bricklayers, pipe-fitters, ironworkers, me: a car stripper.
The worksite was a dilapidated old barn turned garage in Wataga, Illinois. The boss, Andy, would take us to the old farmer's fields around the tri-county area. Andy was an average sized guy with a typical midwestern belly, a not so sharp goatee wrapped around his mouth and had a terrible addiction to smoking low level weed out of a one hitter every ten minutes. He sported dirty white t-shirts tucked in under a belt and blue jeans that flowed to the bottom of his legs right on top of his boots. Andy snickered and stammered inaudible remarks or inside jokes that were indeed inside. Nobody knew what he was talking about. Andy, who was about thirty-five at the time, would find cars that had been left in lots, left in tall un-kept prairie grass, left in the industry of archaic farming days. We’d pick up broke down and rusted up cars for absolutely nothing. We: a slew of strange lowlifes stuck in the ass end of economic collapse. John would strap the cars up to the hitch. Sam would smoke a cigarette and talk shit while the rest of us did the work. Then Mike and I would push the old rusted car from its thought of eternal grave onto the trailer and secure it for country roads. Then back to the garage. The business involved me and a ramshackle group of rednecks tearing down cars to every minute piece imaginable. Piece by piece, from door handle, to passenger side front head lamp, to driver side seat belt, to rims of an ‘87 Camaro. Andy made us clean every single piece, take a photo, inventory it, and he would sell them all online. Small transactions. eBay days. A door handle of a 94’ Dodge Caravan was worth about three bucks. But when the whole car was purchased for $200 bucks and sold part by part, he could sometimes clear $1000.
My hourly value was about the worth of a door handle on a 94’ Dodge Caravan. He meant well, the boss that is. I got paid whenever there was money. I washed and polished parts till my hands bled. The hands that wished upon me work and confirmation. In the cold winter air of the prairie, I worked till my skin fell off, till my pride was a the value of the old family van sittin’ behind the barn with grass grown up to the windshield. I knew I had fallen into the trap-of world, society, people, economy.
Car stripping wasn’t the only endeavor the boss had. With his uncanny ability in enterprise, business, and wit, he found his hands in many pots. One was selling a variety of rabbits out the back of the garage. French lops the size of a small dog. Fuzzy lops that were bushy and frail. Pygmy rabbits. All kinds. I never got too acquainted with the rabbits. They were just another commodity like the cars, the workers, and the kittens. The rabbits sat in a 15 x 15 metal cage with individual boxes for each one of them. The container held from anywhere 10 - 20 rabbits on a given day, depending on how many died overnight. At the time I was working, the facility was a disastrous environment for rabbits, humans, cats, and cars. It certainly did not contain any heating units. The best chances for warmth were gloves, coats, and boots. So, as one would imagine, we would find dead rabbits in their cages every morning laying solemn, strange, and frozen next to their icy bowls of water. It didn’t bother me much at the time, this was not my game, my game was cars, not some silly rabbit.
.The first time I went camping in the woods of the Illinois prairie was with my Grandfather. Somewhere on the outskirts of the Mississippi River amongst mosquitoes, bees, ticks, and family we caught fish and built fires. I was barely tall enough to reach the handle of the bright red Chevy Suburban that caravanned me, my cousins, and Grandpa down to the creek. About 15 of us would load up in trucks and SUVs with pocket knives and flashlights. We’d park the trucks about a mile from the water, walk into the woods with equipment on our backs, catch fish, and sit around the campfire. Folks who would in one minute shoot a squirrel, fry it up, and then in the next, walk past the campfire, butt naked, in an attempt to provoke a laugh out of all the boys. Strong men, mostly labor, and mostly military. The type of guys who talk shit, drink, and smoke cigarettes. Not the men they are any more. I’m talking back when the economy was good, Clinton was in office, and the factory was still in town. I’m talking before I ever had to worry about getting a job or buying cigarettes.
We would seine for minnows under an overpass next to the cow pasture near by. Us kids were useful in those moments because we could sneak under the electrically charged herd fences without getting shocked. The minnows were used for bait to set bank poles with. We would set poles in the wet mud banks of the creek. Which meant getting in the water fully clothed and shoving PVC pipe line with a hook and bait into the muddy banks of Henderson Creek. At night we had to watch the poles with flashlights to see if a fish was on. If they were, it was time to get in the water. We would cripple in the cold water with life jackets on bobbing up to the top. Usually the kid duty was at night time when the old men were too tired or drunk to get in the water. We didn’t mind as kids. Besides it was the best time of the night to harvest fish.
We’d keep the fish alive in wire baskets submerged in water and fastened to the sandy banks of the creek until it was time to pack up and leave. Then the abundant amount of catfish that the water had granted us needed to be processed. Near the water’s edge on the sandbar of Henderson Creek my grandfather handed me a sharp fillet knife. This was the first time that I had ever held a fish in my hand. I had never killed an animal before, nor, had the thought beckoned me. But I knew that in the tradition of the family and the way my grandfather looked at me, cleaning a fish would prove my willingness to survive. We started with the sharp blade barely below my fingers as I held the catfish, as I began to slice the under belly, as I slowly moved to slice the head of the fish and watched the blood start to pour. The dead-eyed glance of the creature looked right into my eyes and I knew in that moment that killing was not “okay” but that survival and trade and death were necessary. After the slice had been made around the entire head of the fish, it was time to skin it. With a primal looking style of pliers he showed me how to toss the skin back into the creek and respect of the water around me. We filleted the sides of meat off of the gift given fish and cleaned it in the water we drug it from. He showed me where to slice the skin, how to pull the skin off of the fish with pliers. Cut the fillets and bury the remains. How to bury the perfect creature deep to nurture the earth’s soil.
The kid at the garage who was in charge of dealing with the dead rabbits was the son of the owner and just 5 years old. His name was Jake. He would frantically scour through the mass of caged bunnies in hopes of a dead lop, hair, or jack. I mean Jake was really excited about his given duty. And when he found one, the whole garage new, the block, the neighbors, the next county even. The boy would come charging from the back of the garage between two massive aluminum doors where the bunnies lay, screaming in excitement, championing the dead hare in his hands, grasping the fellow animal by the legs, and would soon, after showing off his find, charge to the burn pile in the back, with gleaming eyes and fire reflecting from his pupils. I would watch the child glow as his prize burned in the flames before him.
We were all numb in that garage--from weather and uncertainty about the future. There was a collective of guys who came in and out of the garage over the few months I spent there. It wasn’t a bad work environment. But there was never a thought that we would ever make enough cash to do anything but by the things that were temporary. We were flat, covered in oil, dead in the eye with broken hands, and bad habits.
Jon was an ex-con who had been imprisoned for fire-bombing someone's house. And every time he worked on cars he would get pissed off and start throwing wrenches. That didn’t make Andy very pleased. He lived on the property in a hallway turned into an absurd apartment. Sam and I used to hang out in there. We had to turn the oven on and open the door to heat the meager excuse for a kitchen. Sam was the one who got us all into this mess. He promised good pay, and cigarettes for the trouble. But the pay rarely came. Which was difficult for all of us. Especially for Mike, this Latino guy who had just left the Marines and didn’t have a shot at getting a job. He did a tour in Iraq and was in a battle over child custody. Mike never talked much any barely gave us the time of day. He was somber and quiet as we tore apart the work that could have been done building new cars not tearing apart old ones. He used to wear his fatigues while we tore apart the cars and complain all the time. I thought he was a real wuss but didn’t realize until a bit later that this guy was really getting fucked.
So when things were getting bad and none of us were having a day that was cooperating, we would sneak in to Jon’s apartment to smoke the pound of weed he had stolen from his brother. Sit and talk shit to each other. Rick would always show up to bother us. He was this older guy probably about 50. He had a lisp that made every “r” sound like “w.” White and wiry. His voice sounded like a squeaky mouse. Long whiskers in white hanging from his lip and head. He looked like Yosemite Sam. The ring tone on his phone was Katy Perry’s “I kissed a girl and I liked it.” Rick would wait till the last possible second to answer his flip phone so that he could eat up every last bit of the song. I think he un-ironically enjoyed it. I had no idea why he was ever at the shop.
I remember the smells of pig shit that would roam the entire neighborhood. The smell of gasoline and the absurd ways to make a transaction. I come from the crop of shit work for shit pay. I did not know that until I began stripping cars apart in Wataga, Illinois. I did not know that I wasn’t alone in the game of the next dollar until I met those folk.
But being trapped in a shit economy in Nowhere, Illinois didn’t give much time to be particular about what business practices were being passed on. There were worse things going on. There wasn’t much difference between Jake’s understanding about life and death and mine. He saw the death of a rabbit as a part of life and kept on moving. I learned how to kill an animal and properly process it.
Just like I saw the labor world as just a part of life. My entire family lineage had been dealt this hand. They knew the Jon’s and Rick’s of the world and had known of them for a long time. I kept telling myself at 17 that “school just wasn’t for me” and the people around me grew to accept and encourage that. My mother used to say to me all the time
“You just don’t seem like the college type.”
And I would think to myself
“Well, ok, guess I’m the car stripping type.”
Whatever the hell that meant. I dropped out of college soon after starting this glorious short term job in a garage in Nowhere, Illinois. Then I quit that job too. Ended up taking a job at McDonald’s where I was faced with frying more chicken and fish than I had ever seen in my life. And years of food service after that. Mass food service. The labor changed but the ideals didn’t. We were broken like the rest of the people before us and stuck in a garage tearing apart the world.