part 1

Scrapyard Stories

Well, howdy campers.

Sorry I’ve been gone so long, but between Omantel censoring this website (evidently “sucky” is on their proscribed list) and me partaking of my annual 7-weeks worth (Business Class, no less; sheesh…Vegas sucks lately) of vacation, well, I wasn’t here.

However, I’ve been thinking about y’all. Therefore, for your enjoyment (or bemusement), I offer these passages of tales from my life during college. Or: paths leading to how I attained the ridiculously austere, though incredibly affluent, and noble, stature I now so currently enjoy.

For sake of reference:
SC = Sucky Customer (x15)
Me = Your intrepid narrator
Pinky & Czach = your humble owners

Anyways…

After all the brouhaha regarding my last little story of “Idiots in the Abattoir” (that’s “slaughterhouse” for us non-British types), I thought I’d regale the gallery with something a bit different. Tales of when I worked in a scrap yard (“breaker-yard” for all those other than us erstwhile US denizens…that’s it though, you POMs can supply your own translation from here on out, see Dr. Dan Streetmentioner for further clarification).

Up front and first off, I need to note that there’s very little blood, gore, and guts…

…and dead burnt bodies…

…veins between my teeth…

I mean kill…

Oops.

Sorry.

Seems I went a little “Arlo Guthrie” there.

My apologies.

Anyways; regarding blood, gore and guts, there’s very little. And by ‘very little’, I mean there is actually quite a lot of some rather gory stuff; but rest assured, I’ll give you loads of fair warning. I mean it is a scrap yard with all sorts of fun, jagged and potentially lethal tools, extraordinarily heavy bits of sharp, rusty, pointy metal; explosives and the odd helicopter or two.

That being said, let me set the scene: the scrap yard is (was) owned by a pair of brothers of Jewish extraction, by way of Poland and Dachau (they had some very interesting tattoos: “Hey, Pinky. Why do you have a tattoo that reads ‘95673977’?”). Their names were: Pincus (“Pinky”) and Czack (pronounced: “Cjhak” or “Hey, dummy!”). Pinky ran the show and Czack did nothing more than pore over the books, swear profusely and pour from a never-empty Jack Daniels bottle.

To say that Czack ‘could drink’ was like saying that an active volcano is ‘a bit warm’. Czack spilled more booze than most people drink.

He once fell down the stairs with a full litre of bourbon and never spilled a drop.

He simply kept his mouth shut…

Ahem.

Anyways.

Both Pincus and Czack drove identical Cadillacs, which they replaced every year without fail, and drove the 50 or so kilometres from the yard to their home (which they shared, as neither ever married) twice daily. How Czack ever managed to navigate his way home, much less not end up as a lamentable highway statistic, after a usual day of work was one of the mysteries that came with employment at this place.

Continuing; the scrap yard was a veritable Disneyland™ for death and dismemberment. There were literally tons and tons of sharp, rusty, nasty, jagged metal of all descriptions. We took in nigh-on anything metallic and, of course, it was up to me to make sure they were correctly separated (red copper #1 is worth more than red copper #2, you see) and properly binned. We accepted (and had areas for) iron, steel (stainless-A and stainless-B, and et cetera (rare that you actually see that spelled out, isn’t it?), aluminium (although not cans, that fad had yet to begin), chrome, copper (of a variety of classes, not just the two I previously mentioned), molybdenum, brass, bronze (there were at least 4 cast-foundries in my little burg, and we got all the cast-offs) and so on. We also took in rags (once a sneezy month we’d venture to the St. Vincent DePaul’s to pick up a load of old, nasty freebie duds that even a charity couldn’t use), slick paper (magazines and the like), newspaper, cardboard, spoiled newsprint, ad infinitum, ad nauseam…

A quick rundown of the tools and apparatus located at the yard is needed as they figure prominently in the SC discourse (which we will be getting to in just a trice: patience, patience, gentle readers).

We had hammers. You know, the usual entourage: claw hammers, rip hammers, ball-peen hammers, lump hammers, sledge hammers, jack hammers, trip hammers…
Hell.

We had a lot of hammers.

There was a crane with a 6-finger bucket for picking up cars to be deposited into the cuber-crusher (a large metal-munching monster (hydraulically operated) that would reduce a typical family sedan into a 1 meter3 cube), an assortment of oxy-acetylene torches, lances and other fiery items used for detaching exceptionally pig-headed bits of metal from each other. These were also useful for lighting cigars; the “claro” type of which I was fond of at the time (but no longer…maduro is for the refined taste in smokeables), and which Pinky (and everyone else) swiped at every opportune moment.

We also had to, thanks to OSHA, wear hardhats every time we ventured into the yard. I opted for the …very cool …brushed-aluminium ‘Red Adair’-style “tin hat” (which invariably and unfortunately met a cruel fate on my last day of work…).

Most others (i.e., the remaining retinue of the cast of co-workers…) preferred the lighter-weight plastic versions. They weren’t terribly effective, but provided laughs for the crew when someone swiped one of my cigars and lit it with an oxygen lance.

“Um…Stav?”

“Stav!?”

“STAVROVIAN!”.

“Yeah. Wot?”

“Your head’s on fire…”

Anyways.

There was all this and A&W strawberry shakes, too.

About more later.

We were also the proud owners of one of the first-generation plasma cutters. (Editorial aside: plasma cutters work like this: one of various gases, such as nitrogen, argon, or oxygen, is forced, under considerable pressure, through a narrow nozzle, within which is an electrode which pumps electrical current into the gases in a process known as ‘ionization’. Ionization causes the atoms in the gases to jolt around crazily with stimulation (much like college students on Spring Break in Boca Raton), separating the electrons from the nuclei and thereby forming plasma, which is the state of matter pushed to its highest state of activity (sort of like when an SC demands that BOGOF means they don’t actually have to pay for anything). This activity in turn produces an enormous surge of energy that can easily melt down the toughest metallic components (along with nearly anything else in its path: pants, keys, fingers, legs, etc.). For this reason, the beams of plasma cutters are kept carefully contained in a thin arc by means of shielding gases (helium, argon, beer farts) emitted from side channels in the cutter, which subtly exert pressure on the emission and keep it pointed in the direction the wielder intends. Just thought you’d like to know (with appreciation and a tip of the cast-aluminium topper to the Plasma Cutter Information Bureau. Thanks, guys.).

Patience, gentle reader, patience. We’ll soon be getting to a veritable vortex of venal vacuuming in mere moments.

Moving right along, to one of my personal favourite dismembering devices: the “K-12” unit. Basically, it’s a 500 cc. chainsaw engine with a large carbide cutting wheel up front. You can chew through an engine block in minutes with one of these bad boys. Also works a treat on cars parked in the “No Parking – Loading Zone” area.
We also had a rudimentary, albeit quite large, heavy and unwieldy; set of mechanicals that would later evolve into the “Jaws of Life”. These were operated hydraulically, powered by a ‘portable’ (read: “hernia-inducing”) 15-horsepower gas engine. They could exert around 200,000 pounds (or approximately 100 tons) of force. The power head included attachments for spreading, cutting, or just plain smashin’-into. They came in real handy when the National Guard wanted to dispose of a couple of surplus UH-1 ‘Huey’ helicopters or the occasional errant airplane. They were real time, though not back, savers.

We also had a ‘baler’. A baler is a device that converts 15m of loosely packed paper (or aluminium siding or card stock or sheet steel or people we really didn’t like) into a tightly compressed ‘bale’ (hence the name) some 2m x 1.5m x 1m (maximum dimensions; it could also easily form nice, neat, stackable cubes), weighing in around 500-1,000 kg. It basically looked like a large vertical press that dived…no, wait one…that doesn’t look right…dove…no, well, that doesn’t look right either, oh well, never mind…deep into the ground some 5 m. As we will see later, this is not an especially good place to hide from local law enforcement types.

Also at our disposal were loads and loads of relatively slow explosives (deflagrating, rather than detonating…yeah, I do know that of which I speak). I had to take a course at the local technical college (2 Saturdays, sans pay…Yippee.) and was awarded my “Blaster’s Permit”. I still have it, and let me tell you, it comes in really handy after an impromptu 4th of July fireworks display (usually held in any month other than July).

Ahem, again.

We used these charges to break up really big machinery. Things like printing presses, turret lathes, auto body forms (we were in the same town as AmCan Motors, Inc. (otherwise known as the “Incognito Car Company, Inc.”).…www.google.com for more info), tool & die making machines, bank vaults (Yes, bank vaults. Don’t know why, but the local 1st National Farmer’s and Swineherd’s Bank for some reason replaced their vault doors and guess who got tasked with reducing them to shippable (i.e., about 1m x 1m) size? Yep. Right in one.) and the like.

They were also good for busting nuts (off of old rusted, metal parts), splitting “T’s” (pipe joints) and blowing the door off the outhouse (especially if someone’s in there trying to recover from the previous evenings festivities at the local Gasthaus).

I think you get the general idea.

Anyways.

Sucky customers? We had them in droves. (Yes, I hear the whooshing “finally’s” out there…but I needed to set the scene and not deprive you of one picoliter of suckitivity.)

First up was the one I call “The Sneak Thief”. Remember the old adage that: “One man’s trash is another man’s treasure”? Well, this bozo won’t soon forget his seeking treasure, as it probably relieved him of ever again seeking pleasure (sorry, that won’t happen again…).

We had taken in a load of old dental equipment. Seems 5 or 6 neighbourhood dentists decided to retire at near the same time and they, much to their consternation, discovered that old, antique-looking, but not really antique, well used and positively obsolete dental equipment was worth precisely:

Dick.

Hence, we came into possession of them in the scrap yard.

Now, in this pile were 3 or 4 old dental X-ray units. These were radium-powered units and still had the radioactive source ensconced within. At the yard, we dealt with radioactive substances once in a while (we would get old water-well logging tools (with their Americium-137 source, if you must know), radio-tracers from the water department, off-cast filters from the Point Beach reactor facility; typically low-level sort of stuff).

We would remove the sources, and put them into special lead-lined boxes to later be collected by either the local university or agents of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (we were one of few sites that actually applied for a “Radioactive Agent Permit” which was, paradoxically and totally unexpectedly, awarded). However, we were more than a bit lax about the whole affair. The box could be locked (but usually wasn’t), and items were generally just tossed in the box and the lid slammed shut.

Ahhhh…the late ‘70’s…

Anyways…

Now, these radium sources were bright and shiny, looking just like an oversized and metallic Tylenol™. It was odd in that it was warm to the touch (not that we touched them much without protection) and the metal didn’t seem to rust or corrode. This proved to be just too tempting to one SC. We often had people wandering around the yard, looking for this part or that gizmo, so we never really paid wandering folks much mind. However, you had to see either Pinky or Czack to get permission to wander around and the obligatory hardhat, and this character didn’t and hadn’t.

Pinky came out and started screaming that this guy shouldn’t be in the yard. So, Randy and I wander over to where he’d been rooting around and informed him that if he wants to snuffle around out in the yard, he’d best see the owner and get permission.

The guy goes instantly non-linear.

Completely ballistic.

Completely off the rails, upsetting his personal crazy train…

He starts screaming about his rights, and he’ll have us arrested for “detaining him” (when he just wandered in and flabbled around for the last couple of hours), and other sundry threats.

Randy and I exchange looks like: “If you hold him, I’ll kill him”, but decide that discretion is the better part of valour (and at only $28.50/hour, we’re not about to go to the mat with this whack-job).

Pinky runs out and screams for us to “bolt the doors” (the man was absolutely clairvoyant when it came to thieves and pilferers), grabs the SC and holds him until the local cops could show up (he had them on the 70’s equivalent of speed-dial and I’m certain that the police had us on their GPS (or whatever existed at the time that would be a fair substitute)).

Grudgingly, Randy and I corral the miscreant and ask, very politely, if he has on his person anything that he might have picked up in his perambulations of the premises.
And if you believe that, there’s this bridge in Brooklyn that’s just waiting to be sold for scrap. Offers?

WARNING: POTENTIALLY ICKY PASSAGE TO FOLLOW

Of course, he roundly denies any wrongdoing. In retrospect, if he had, he might not have run up such exorbitant bills at St. Catherine’s General.

It took the police about an hour to arrive (theft at a scrap yard just doesn’t rank up there with underage drinking and border-town citizens buying loads of smokes to transport covertly across state lines), so Mr. Sneaky sat in Czach’s office, waiting for the air to clear, Czach’s bottle to empty, and the federales to arrive.

When they finally did turn up, they were treated to a most unusual display: the earlier pilfering suspect was now doing a credible imitation of someone who had just poured a large bottle of organic, pesticide-free Apis-friendly honey in his lap and plonked down on a large busy fire ant mound.

Seems Mr. Sticky-fingers had found an unlocked box which contained several burnished (“Ohhh! Shiny!”), slightly warm-to-the-touch canisters which have spent the last couple of hours cheek-by-jowl (if you will) with his, well, let’s just call it: “his happy place”.

Needless to say, ‘his happy place’ was now none too happy.

In fact, it was downright miserable.

He was the proud recipient of a surfeit of ionizing radiation which was rapidly doing its best to both unravel his DNA and make his reproductive activities from this point onward, well, rather pointless.

He suffered some rather unpleasant and awkward second degree radiation burns, sort of like one would get visiting a nude beach for the first time (in August, in Cabo san Lucas) and forgetting your SPF2000, which was supposed to be applied in certain strategic places.

He was charged with a first degree misdemeanor for theft and a Class A felony for stupidity. Hopefully, the Darwin Award fund will cover his medical costs; short of reconstructive surgery.

Leaving this sordid tale, we delve into yet another. This I call the “Whiner”. Typically, a trailer-trash denizen of the first water. Universally unkempt: smelly, nasty and wholly disordered.

The typical plaints were, once they wheeled in a rusty pram-full of old, soggy newspapers, mouldy magazines or obviously pilfered paraphernalia: “Why won’t you buy this from me? I need money for beer/ skag/horse/crack/my baby.”

“Sorry, but the landfill is the only place where you can dispose of this shit.”, I offered.

Cue NORAD as they proceed to go, yet again, non-linear.

I normally turn these dolts over to Pinky (Hell… it’s his yard.) and let him deal with these bottom-dwellers. But since it was a slow day, I thought it’d be fun to see what colour I could get them to turn.

“But I need (fill in the blank with favourite non-essential), and these are my great aunt’s uncle-in-law’s cousin’s nephew’s best friend’s grandfather’s war medals. They gotta be worth a few bucks.”

“No, perhaps you should wait a decade or two and try to unload them on something that will eventually be called ‘Ebay’.”

Well, no.

Not really.

I explained that we are not a fence, nor a pawnshop and we only deal in scrap. Not mementos. Not war trophies, nor a dump yard (had one old codger bring in a 3-inch cannon shell that he somehow wheedled back from the Pacific…Yee, haw!…), nor useless, nasty and obviously worthless junk. Sanford and Son’s (or Steptoe and Son’s for our Brit buddies…Right. That’s it, no more British translations) we’re not.

Watching the gears slowly grind in the process that passes for thought in these cretins, the slight wisps of smoke are dead giveaways, I await the inevitable.

[“Let’s see…I tried whining. Let’s try false bravado…Yeah!”]

“You have to buy them from me. It’s the law.”

“Well, since you brought up the law, let me call the cops to see if any of your trinkets have recently been reported as missing…”

95 times out of 100, the next thing I see is the SC’s backside as they scurry out of the yard.

This was one of the other 5.

“This stuff isn’t hot!”.

“Perhaps. Perhaps not. I’m just doing what the owner wants. Tell you what…(…I’m nothing if not reasonable…Yeah, right…), leave them here for a couple of weeks and if no one shows up looking for them (we had this happen regularly, just like pawnshops get regular visits from the police), we’ll see if they’re really worth anything. Don’t worry, you’ll get a receipt (and we’ll get your contact information)”.

4 out of 5 times this works and the SC bolts in a flurry of disgust and the vague redolence of old gherkins and kerosene.

This was that one abysmal time where the other 99 simply admitted defeat.

“God damn it. You’re going to give me my money or I’ll kick your…”

“8…9…10…DingDingDing! Yer’ outta here!”

“Put your pencils down and step away from the scrap pile!”

You have just crossed the Rubicon and I am legally empowered to toss your happy ass off the premises.

I used to live for days like this…but, then again, I am a misanthrope.

As I noted in earlier screeds, I am not now, nor whenever had been, what would be considered in any way, shape or form “small” (at the time about 185cm tall and 130kg in mass, plus or minus a gram and/or angstrom unit or two). And I have this wonderful inventory of tools: rip hammers, sledge hammers, (hell, we had lots of hammers), bar stock, angle iron, Hapkido training and a couple of meaty fists at my disposal.

I believe the proper term used was: “Urrk!” as I physically picked the malefactor up by the collar and belt and frog-marched him off the property. He made the most satisfying “splat” as he hit the pavement out front of the yard, closely followed by the merry tinkle of his precious bits and bobs that followed him immediately thereafter. He was either astonished enough by his brief reprieve from gravity or was still trying, like the ‘ball in the cup’ game, to get his somewhat less-than-ample grey matter functioning again.

Luckily, he quickly departed and we never saw him again.

The next thing I knew it was Pinky barking at me that it’s lunch time and I need to bring him a strawberry shake.

We did go to A&W often; but how the hell he always knew in advance was very, very strange…

Next up, there’s this piece of human driftwood, one I christen: the “Nosy on-looker”. Typically not a SC by definition (I believe “a purchase” would necessarily be involved to gain that title), but seriously annoying to the point of wanting to stuff him into a bush hog after 5 or 6 hours of his well-intentioned banter. These characters are usually harmless old pharts; veterans (of course), retired and nothing better to do before the VFW hall opens, than to come over and regale us with endless stories. As mentioned, they never buy/sell anything, just stand on the sidelines and give free advice (which is worth every penny) and a running commentary.

Occasionally, the story was mildly interesting (hell, my Dad could have filled in if one of these characters ever got the sniffles), but sort of lost its dynamism after the 254th telling; particularly when it’s punctuated with the raucous whipsong of a heavy sledge upon the pile of radiators I was currently dismantling.

I didn’t really mind too terribly until after we grew sort of accustomed to them and they seemed to think that our sporadic “Humph.” was an indication that they should press on and they would have full access to the yard.

WARNING: POTENTIALLY ICKY PASSAGE TO FOLLOW

Then, on a bright and sunny day, one venerable old phart was following me around the yard, babbling incessantly, when he perchance sauntered a shade too close to a pile of dismantled scrap aluminium window frames and, well, unbeknownst to us, sliced his arm open from shoulder to elbow.

I think the term he employed was: “Ow.”

Actually, it was more like: “Holy fucking shit! I’m bleeding to death!”

This necessitated our shutting down the yard for a few hours, calling the ambulance, notifying OSHA of an accident and the concomitant reams of paperwork that inevitably followed. Czach, with lightning-fast reflexes and a desire to avoid any additional work, paper or otherwise, opened a new bottle of whiskey.

Then we had to hose down the yard and search for the codger’s watch that he somehow managed to lose during his immediate post-gash decapitated-chicken dance.
Pinky immediately forbade this type of activity henceforth; Jack swore and poured himself another double. All us yard hands nodded in accordance and went to the A&W for chili dogs and strawberry shakes.

We never did find that watch.

Next up in this rollicking cavalcade of suckousity is a relative of our old friend, Mr. Sticky Fingers (mentioned in glowing detail previous): the “Obvious Thief”, of which are two distinct varieties, which I will detail individually. The first is one who comes into the yard dragging the most badly chosen, strangely familiar, yet out of place, items which he (invariably, it’s a he) tries to transmogrify into some quick cash. He brings in items like, oh, let’s say…manhole covers (stamped “Wis. Dep’t. of Public Works”), hundreds and hundreds of meters of weather-beaten, odd-lot sort of bundles of copper cable (marked with the seal of Wis. Elec. Power Co.) and even fire hydrants.

One almost has to admire the sheer get-along-little-doggy bravado of not only swiping a fireplug but actually having the brass (painful pun, as the innards of these critters are finely machined brass and worth, new, a few hundred bucks) to try and sell it off as scrap for a paltry few dollars worth of beer money.

These guys were actually very easy to deal with: we detained them with various degrees of small talk; keeping them in the yard and off guard until the police show up. But to what avail? The recidivism rate for these characters was enormous. It was only a Class “Q” or so misdemeanour (tell that to the person whose house burned to the property lines due to lack of water connections for the fire brigade or the chap who just busted a wheel off his new Range Rover after hitting an open manhole, sans cover) and the police were obliged to come corral these critters, as we were obliged to rat them out.

We had these several of these type of goofs show up almost weekly.

A related species to the “Obvious Thief” was “The Even More Obvious Thief”. This goober would wander into the yard with an empty bag, box or crate. He’d set it down and very, very carefully watch the yard for his chance of grabbing something: typically unusual looking, easily identifiable, invariably expensive (well, you can’t hide everything…), and stuff it in his poke.

He’d (again, always a he) then try to sell it off as his own and try to swindle Pinky and Czack into buying back their own stuff.

Did I mention that Pinky and Czack were Jewish? Far be it from me to perpetuate a stereotype (no fratching here, it’s near verbatim from P&C); but no one, and I mean no one, is going to financially out-clever a couple of grizzled old concentration camp ex-inmates; even with inspired impressionistic knees-bent running-about advancing behaviours.

I mean that with both admiration and approval.

For the record, in Pinky’s own words: “Ain’t no one gonna out-Jew this old Jew.”

For all their tight-fisted reign of the yard, their insane fiscal “scrupulousness” (i.e., they were so fucking cheap), and their seeming photographic (OK, ‘pornographic’ in Czach’s case) recollection; there is no way…no way in hell…no fucking way, someone is going to get the financial better of these two characters.

The entire yard would gather when one of the more obvious clade of obvious thief tried his hand at a quick round of “fleece the owner”. We’d stand around (surreptitiously blocking the only exit) and take in the torrent of abuse and derision Pinky and Czack heaped upon these poor unsuspecting idiots. Never once did Pinky call the cops on this subspecies of vagrant benthos, nor did they ever physically assault them; but at the end of one his and Czack’s tag-team tirades, we’d need an ambulance, a wire brush, Dettol, a fire hose, and mop to clean up the resultant mess.

Don Rickles was Mother Teresa compared to these two when someone dared cross this dual Hebrew Rubicon.

Of course, after all this, we had to go to the A&W to get 2 extra-large strawberry shakes.

Verbal exsanguinations must be thirsty work.

Moving right along, we come to the bane of all scrap yards: “The Scrounger SC”. Typically, some form or another of Yuppified ‘sweater-tied-around-the-neck’, Birkenstock wearing, bleach-blond doofus who recently came into a small inheritance. He had immediate delusions of Bill Gates-ianism and thinks that the rusted-out old shitbox ride he had as a diminutive high-school whelp would be “Primo” if he could only restore the thing.

Bucko. Here’s some advice: call American Hotrods and tell them Boyd Coddington (RIP, sorry, but he passed while this was being written): “I sent you”.

Motorcycle restorers may be dreadful (see Paul Sr., virtually anytime).

“Classic” car restorers are worse.

Invariably, they’ll embark on the epic quest to find that elusive left-door handle for the 1962 Belchfire Supreme that they’re adamant on restoring.

To say he’s always in the way (he crossed a few palms with nickel, if not silver, to gain access to our automotive sanctum sanctorum…hell, that’s where we stash all the good shit for our “classic rides”: our Gremlins, our AMXs and odd Firebird…) is like saying Lake Michigan is somewhat soggy. Damned if he’s not always in the way when the forklift roars through or he’s precariously perched on a 5-deep pile of rusting hulks trying to find that “special lug nut” or “perfect gas cap” when we rev up the crane to dispose of a few carcasses.

Now, personally, I don’t mind animal testing if it’s for a good cause, though I strongly oppose vivisection on advanced animals. But cretins of this ilk are ripe and ready for inclusion to any biomedical study (the more painful, the better).

Except for breeding; that’s right out.

Invariably, they will find the bit, bobble, or piece of automotive debris to make their dream complete. Customarily it’ll be old, rusted, pitted and obviously original.
Whereupon comes the inevitable seiche of suck: “Have you got this in blue?”

Once, and only once, I made the ultimate mistake of actually responding to one of these Faustian nightmares.

“Um. No. No way. That’s the only one I’ve ever seen.”

Queue the gallery.

“Are you sure?”

Is deep crimson a normal Caucasian colour?

“Yes. I am very sure. Totally sure. Absurdly sure. Even more wholly than absolutely sure. In fact, I know every square millimetre of this yard by heart and you, Sir, have recovered the Holy Grail of automotiveness. You’ve found the only (insert trivial piece of ‘classic’ car chromitude) that we have. There are no others, either in this yard or, in fact, on this planet or galaxy. Congratulations. Your parents must be very proud. The check-out desk is over that way. Ask for Czack.”

Assholes.

May your all paint be lead based.

Moving along allegro non troppo (‘brightly, but not too fast’), we come to that most inconsiderate SC: the dead one.

WARNING: POTENTIALLY REALLY ICKY PASSAGE TO FOLLOW

OK, this is where the genuinely icky hits the road.

And walls.

And roof.

You have been summarily warned.

(No one leaves…

I like that…)

We took in practically everything made of metal; anything that could conceivably turn a profit. That included old kitchen appliances. Here I must digress: in the USA, there was a concerted effort to get people to quit dumping old refrigerators.

They are, were, and continue to be: death traps.

They had locking mechanisms, (recall, gentle reader, the time frame in which all this transpired…for those of you disinclined to page back: “the late ‘70’s”) which were totally incapable of being opened from the inside. There were several heart-wrenching stories of children, believing this would make a ‘real cool hideout’, asphyxiating inside old abandoned refrigerators.

I don’t mean in any way to denigrate these poignant episodes, but we were still tasked to retrieve any old, abandoned fridge that was found, and it was, if I may be permitted to make a small NSFW digression, a major pain in the ass.

The upshot, that warmed Pinky’s cardiac cockles, is that he got the (1.) fridge (he usually sent Mark and me out in the scrap yard’s un-tuned and obstinate truck to collect the bloody thing, no matter if it was buried under two meters of Sangamonian glacial clay), (b.) EPA credits for removing a Freon (a CFC…a chlorinated fluorocarbon (dichlorodifluoromethane; if you must know (a fad just starting to gain momentum; right after the outrage at petrol prices and demanding the glassification of all Middle Eastern emirates)) source from the environment, and (iii.) all that lovely copper plumbing, for free.

We regularly went out in the county and retrieved 4 or 5 of these dumped bastards per month.

Most were without doors (dumping an old fridge was bad enough (they made great targets for deer hunters wishing to sight in their new .30/06),
but dumping an old fridge which later contained a cyanotic 9-year old paled beyond most human ken), but some went diametrically the other direction and had the doors sealed with everything from duct tape to heli-arc welding.

Which, sort of round-aboutedly, returns us to the story.

Usually, we’d strip off all the copper (letting all those fine CFC’s vent to the open air…remember, kind reader, the time frame of all this), bust off all the porcelain (which was absolutely worthless), and reduce it to component parts.

Then the fridge posed no problem. We’d use Jaws and rip the thing open, discard the noisome contents (some people actually threw out fridges full of beer and liquor…amazing what a quick wash and CO2 fire extinguisher could do…) and rip apart the body, getting it ready for the baler.

But, one day, the suckiest customer of all suckitude showed up.

Or actually, did not show up; but rather burst, quite literally, upon the scene.

WARNING: SERIOUSLY ICKY PASSAGE TO FOLLOW

Well, Mark and I delivered the 4 or 5 wayward fridges to the scrap yard. Surprisingly enough, Czack set up some sort of incomprehensible paper trail flowchart where odd lots were checked in (there was always a blizzard of paperwork; I can sort of, some what, understand Czack’s infatuation with Jack Daniel’s), registered and summarily of which they were disposed.

Paul grabbed an oxygen lance, one of my cigars (“YOU BASTARD!”), and proceeded to dissect a series of off-cast collectibles which we had collected.

After about an hour, there was a short lapse as Paul sheared off the remaining copper, venting all those wonderful ammoniac and CFC-laden gases Antarctic-ward, then proceeded to lance into the next occupant in the line of the latest gathering of fridges which we had collected.

He had just started torching open fridge number three, when there was a massive explosion.

Pinky yelled: “Marty! God damn it! Enough with the dynamite!”

“Wasn’t me, Pinky.”

This time.

Paul picked himself up; ineffectually brushing off the various bits and pieces of organic debris that followed. We did our best to extinguish the fires. The whole yard rushed over and helped pick up what remained.

Evidently there had been a human body in fridge number 3.

Seems the O2 lance had not only opened up the crypt that was the fridge, but also ignited the gasses of decomposition.

The results were, for the lack of a better idiom: “stunningly spectacular”.

And stunningly spectacularly messy.

Somehow, given the late 1970’s equivalent of CSI, the character inside the fridge was already figured to be, well, seriously, well, dead.

“Bummer, dude”.

Seems the unfortunate occupant was, in all probability, the unwilling and ungrateful recipient of a high-speed, up close, and very personal .45 calibre lobotomy (“execution-style”, according to the official papers: after we rummaged around the yard and found what remained of his combusted coconut hiding in the weeds some 50m distant) who was also very enthusiastically, and very emphatically, deceased when sealed into the fridge.

Some people have no class.

Especially corpses.

Especially corpses strewn over approximately 250 square meters.

Paul had sort of a retroactive case of the jibblies, as he scrutinized the scene and then looked down at the leather shop apron he was wearing.

Suffice to say, he could have answered the casting call for any George Romero movie filming in the area. He looked like he had been wading through the blood tank of a slaughterhouse (see my previous work, available at www.customerssuck.com, for the inner details of the functioning of such a place – Ed.).

He was, well, a bit of a mess.

“Um, Paul. You’ve got intestines all over your pants.” I offered.

Mitch helps him out with: “Yeah. You’ve got brains all over your, ick, hat….”

Paul adds to the chromaticity of the drab scrap yard by promptly regurgitating (a singular tragedy since he just returned from the A&W and the gurgitating of a couple of Poppa burgers and a large root beer), energetically and enthusiastically, all over the landscape.

Luckily, we did have D&D (douse and disinfect) stations all over the yard.

Paul, not caring about local mores and graciousness; stripped down to nothing more than his woolen socks and stood in the cleansing and chilly spray of the shower; upchucking uproariously and cursing the day he ever went to Employment Services.

We were all introspect.

A human being who had his life abruptly terminated by the vicious act of murder had just messily exploded and distributed himself aggressively all over the local landscape and fellow co-worker.

It was a time for solemnity.

A time for reflection.

We silently pondered the human condition and the inevitability of our own mortality.

Yeah, right.

We were all laughing our asses off.

There was literal rolling on the ground in hysterics. Paul was less than amused. But, he persevered, and didn’t quit until that fall when he married and headed east.
Occasionally, I post him packages of beef tripe and lamb’s heads from the Middle East; but only on very religious holidays.

I probably have a contract on me the moment I step into the USA, but I’d wager that Paul is secretly glad cell phone cameras and YouTube didn’t exist back then.
We all went to the A&W for a bag of momma burgers, curly fries and root beers (chili dogs were, for some reason, off the list de jure).

And, yes, we did bring back two strawberry shakes for Pinky and Czack.

Moving right along, we next happen upon that unique individual we shall designate “The Not Sucky Customer” (just to somewhat balance the load).

This person was an oddity in the scrap yard; cautious, courteous and actually possessing more than two brain cells which he could call his own.

We had hordes of “treasure seekers” that would while away an afternoon digging through the piles in hope of finding the proverbial ‘needle in a haystack’, or in this case, the ‘jewel amongst the overburden’.

He was an older gentleman; well-graying of visage, well kempt, and well-mannered. He stood out like a sore thumb against the usual assortment of assholes (workers included) when he was in the yard.

He bade me over to a pile destined to the baler and inquired about an absolutely ghastly piece of ostensible pot-metal sculpture.

“Can I please take a look at that?”, he asked.

“Sure.”

What the hell? Pinky let this guy in and he seems a tolerable sort.

So, I dig into the pile and excavate the surprisingly heavy cast sculpture of some sort of Greco-Roman FTD-Florist sort of demigod.

It was horrific.

He was entranced.

He intently studies it for 15 or so minutes and breathlessly asks me if I’ve ever seen another, perhaps in this very yard.

“Good news, everybody!”

A bit of background; we took in all manner of yard kitsch: lawn jockeys, garden gnomes, and odd-lot assortments of junk that people found the previous tenants’ had left behind. So, an appalling statue of a winged, though tiny-titted (yes…I did look…), nude never caused so much as a blink.

Continuing: I went to search the yard, and found the statues counterpart lying in a bin, destined for Chicago Forge (the place we sold most of our foundry-able materials).

Reuniting the twins nearly brought the old gentleman to tears.

“Do you know what these are?”, he asked.

“Junk?”, I ventured, shaking my head…

Hellenistic sculpture, at this point was, a closed book to me.

‘Closed, burnt and buried’ book was more the truth.

I was more interested in dinosaurs and depositional environments.

Alas, I digress…

Anyways.

“No, no. Oh, my. No. These, if I’m not mistaken, are the “Winged Victory of Samothrace”, or, at least, creditable copies.”

“So?’, I continued, still incredulous with incredulosity, “Junk?”

“No, no. Oh, my. No.”, he continued. “These, if I am not mistaken, are the stolen Nike statues from the H. Howard Hyde House in Chicago. They are very valuable. You know, the house was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright…”

“So, they’re not just ugly pieces of junk?”.

“No, no. Oh, my. No. These are worth a considerable amount. Perhaps in the hundreds of thousands of dollars…”

“PINKY! Need you over here. Now.”

Pinky strolls over and is informed of the value of these objects d’junque.

I figured Pinky would totally wig. I had no idea where they came from or when they arrived at the yard and I figured Pinky would either (1.) hold them for ransom, or (2.) tell the old guy to piss off, he bought them legally, and they’re his.

Surprisingly, he did neither.

He asked for some background and identification from the elderly gentleman. He told us he was a Professor of Antiquities from a nearby private college in the state just south. He often scrounged around scrap yards, as he was gathering data for his paper on “Garbology” (no kidding: check out http:/itech.fgcu.edu/&/issues/vol2/issue2/garbology.htm,), and was well tied-into the hot, stolen or just missing artwork network.

Pinky was obviously impressed. He told the old gent to take them as he didn’t want to be associated with those lower-class bottom dwellers (surprisingly, he wasn’t referring to lawyers) that would steal art and pawn it for profit.

Truth be told, Pinky didn’t want any run-ins with the feds, as receiving stolen property is a major-league no-no.

So, to this day, somewhere in a well regarded, Northern Illinois University are two dreadful quasi-Hellenistic statues bearing the legend: “Donated by Pinky”.

Very few know the real story.

And now, so you do.

So there.

Where after, we went to the A&W for 15 chili dogs (well, it was Tuesday…) and a brace of strawberry shakes.

Continuing, we sally forth into the venue of what I like to call the “Sneak Dumper”. It happened on a regular basis that some people just didn’t want to be burdened with the 20 km trek out to the local landfill to dispose of their unwanted stuff. We were often greeted with a pile of undesirables left clandestinely in front of the main gate. Usually, it was dross of the most un-saleable nature: lawn clippings, bags of leaves, household trash. We grew accustomed to these leavings. We kept the local dumpster-emptying folks in tall cotton for dealing with these off-casts.

But today was destined to be different. I always arrived (thanks to my Midwestern genes and equally weird work ethic) early. Hell, I only lived 5km distant and my hometown was only one of 50k souls.

So, I wheel into work in “Wily (Coyote”, my 1966 Chevy Van…all right, all right…goddamnit…it was the late ‘70’s for fuck’s sake…) to be greeted by a pile of green, nasty looking filtery-looking things.

I examined the pile and was secretly thrilled to find that they were copper-filters, apparently from the local newsrag which had just changed out their 12th century presses for something more 20th, but decided to not inform the local breakers of the load.

Rance wheels in, in his 1978 AMX; and after the smoke clears, he wanders over wondering what the hell was blocking his parking space.

“What the fuck is this?”, he demanded.

“No idea. It was here when I got here.”, I replied.

“Awww…fuck. More junk. Let’s see what we’ve got here…Holy fucking shit! Jumpin’ Jesus on a Saltine™ cracker! You know what these are?”.

Well, no. Not really.

“They’re copper cleaners.”

I hoped he wouldn’t go all Jack Webb on me at this point.

“Were they copper cleaners kleptomaniacally copped by Clark Clager of Cleveland, as on Carson?”

Rance looks at me like I had just teleported in from Andromeda-12.

“What…?”

Never mind.

“They’re worth a fortune. Pinky’ll freak. We can’t let him know these were just dumped here. Quick. Get your van…”

Oh, I feel so dirty.

But, as you will see; I got over it.

We loaded the clandestine copper cleaners (alright, alright, an adequate amount of alliteration…) into my van and presented them to Pinky and Czack when they finally rolled into work.

“Where the fuck did you find all this shit?” asked Pinky.

“It was, well, um, a donation. One I had to pick up in my own personal vehicle. I thought I’d bring it here to give you first chance at all this copper…unless you don’t want it…”

Pinky shoots me a simultaneous “Are you out of your fucking mind” and “Yes, I want these more than paradise itself and more than those bastards over at Silver Repo (to whom which he will eventually sell this stuff)” look.

“All right, you bastards. How much is this going to cost me?”

We both knew the price of clean #1 copper (damn us, damn us both to hell) and let the record show that we allowed our boss, of whom we both loved more than cold beer and cheese curds, a whopping 2% profit margin.

We were nothing if not magnanimous.

We got thoroughly shitfaced in his honor that night at the Pub and Grub.

Strawberry shakes not included.

OK, then.

On with the show: the “Won’t you please take these; I can’t get rid of them anywhere else” SC.

A perennial favourite.

Seems there’s this type of human flotsam that simply must have money for something, but unlike the keratinous cadre of the previous “But I need (fill in the blank with favourite non-essential), and these are my great aunt’s uncle-in-law’s cousin’s nephew’s friend’s grandfather’s war medals.”

They actually have something of value to sell.

However, it’s usually something absurdly personal, deeply (to some) religious or otherwise more price-worthy as a relic, rather than scrap.

Do you think that they’d listen to us?

Delve deeper.

Deeper.

OK.

That’s deep enough.

“I don’t care what it is, what’s it worth?

The mind boggles.

We got urns, reliquaries, crypts…the stuff of obviously great value to someone sometime, but now, relegated as mere scarp.

They were treated with the utmost respect.

They were treated as the respectful icons that they were.

Yeah, right.

We glommed onto those suckers with both hands.

Hey, chuckles, we’re a business. Into the furnace and “How much for that brass?”

But with the utmost respect…

Anyways, up next is fun for the whole family: The freeloading SC – a k a, ‘the bum in the baler’.

We all show up early, as it’s one of those damned days that the sun is shining, the birds are chirping and it’s not raining…in other words: it’s not a day off.

Bastards.

Anyways.

The day began like any other: the usual hangovers, draggers-in and occasional labourers (we, as ‘permanent’ employees, held the Holy Grail of both a key to the scrapyard and a knowledge of Pinky’s predilection for strawberry A&W shakes) trundled in for yet another fun day of potential death and dismemberment.

Yet another day in paradise.

However, this one was well lit.

Sort of like Czack on any Tuesday.

The local constabulary shows up, in full SWAT regalia (evidently of which they just took delivery and were dying to show off), klaxons blaring and forbidding entry to anyone, even Pinky and Czach, to the “locale of a previous felonious activity”.

“Pinky.”, I chided, “They finally got wise to you.”

Sorry, but my keyboard doesn’t allow for the Yiddish equivalent of: “Fuck you.”

Well, it seems that there was a robbery (at dull, rusty knife-point, if my SWAT-Gibberish-English dictionary is of any repute) at a nearby dry cleaners.

Holy shit. If you’re going to go the whole route of armed robbery (in Wisconsin, where a knife is the exact same as a gun), why pick a dry cleaners?
I have no idea, nor do I care to entertain one.

(Useless hyperbole and inflamed rhetoric aside…)

There was one seriously deranged idiot on the loose.

Even worse: he was holed up in the yard.

Even double worse; he didn’t work for Pinky.

Even triple worse: it wasn’t Czach.

Scary.

The law trundles in and with the enthusiasm of a small town police force suddenly writ large, begin to tear apart the yard searching for this unnamed and totally unknown miscreant who might be hiding in the masses of shorn sheet metal and assorted oddments.

We, being the not-now-paid-maybe-sometime-later employees, both tired of the time wasting and being bereft of a day-off (sans pay), reacted as most others would on an enforced, though uncompensated, holiday: lighting doobies and tapping beers brought out from hiding under ones car seats.

A day off is a day off, after all. What the fuck you gonna do?

Unfortunately, it was not to be.

The local police did a sweep and pronounced it clear.

“Sorry for the inconvenience, but the perp simply isn’t here.”

“Perp? Whoo, boy. Another Horatio wannabee.”

I was oddly CSI-prescient.

Yippee. Another day in the pile.

So, as usual, the day progressed: stack siding, load paper, shift rags.

The standard hilarity and intellectual stimulation.

Back to work.

But then:

“HELP!”

“HOLY FUCK!”

“STOP. I CONFESS!”

Across the yard, we all immediately looked to Jim (whom we knew to be the local soft drug dealer, but allowed because he gave us discount rates…well, not to me, as he didn’t deal in Wild Turkey nor Old Style…no, really…no, REALLY…), who straight away pointed at the baler.

“It’s not me! I haven’t been near it today!”

“HOLY FUCK! STOP! STOP IN THE NAME OF ALL THAT’S HOLY!”

Yeah, I grew up in a staunchly religious community.

The baler was working its way downward, eager to receive its 5 or so meters of paper, glossies or sheet aluminium. Unfortunately, concealed in what he thought to be a perfect hole; was the aforementioned miscreant of this little discourse.

Poetic justice, anyone?

Anyone?

Luckily, we found him out before the baler found its bed. Spies tell me he’s still in Mendota babbling on about the “day the sky fell”.

Oh, yeah.

On we go again.

There was this character. The one I dub: “The ersatz mad-scientist SC”.

Needed like a root canal, sans aesthetic.

An older gent (of which the scrapyard drew in droves for some reason), with massive amounts of time on his hands, a heart of gold and a brain evidently of osmium. Definitely a SC of the first water as he would, if the tides were right and the phase of the moon was correct, actually purchase something (something obscure, bizarre or otherwise destined for the blast furnace) that he absolutely needed to complete “his secret project”; typically to do with perpetual motion, getting 100 mpg out of your car (Remember the Gas Crisis of the ‘70’s? Happy days.), or some oddment of radio/stereo/hi-fi technology that allowed him to communicate with his home planet.

Unfortunately, and for reasons never explained, the singular piece of scrap yard debris which had taken him weeks to find, just “wasn’t right” for his project, and could he return it for a refund?

We seldom, if ever, gave receipts…paper trail being as horrible as ever and all that, especially with Czach operating just one step ahead of local conficscatory laws…refunds ranked right up there with “a lightly grilled weasel with fries” and vanilla shakes at noontime for Pinky and company.

So, we had to tell our friend that “you bought it, it’s yours”, and “I don’t run the damn yard, and Pinky says ‘Go to hell’”.

Pinky was a man of few words; well chosen and often four-letter.

Cue the Orchestra Whinging. Cue harp music. Cue plaints, pleas and promises.

“I know I saw what I needed in the yard last week. (“Why the fuck didn’t you buy that then?”) and I if I can just exchange this…”

Cue 45 minutes of my life wasted, never to return.

I was powerless to help him. Even more than powerless, I was apathetic, bored and really didn’t give the tiniest moose shit about his predicament.

Nor was anyone else in the yard for that matter.

Dejectedly, he’d leave, vowing never to return. (“Rant, rail, feeble epitaphs, resignation, oh…what the fuck…never mind…”)

Next Monday? He’d be there, shiny as a new penny, pert as a newly erect dick, forgetting everything that had transpired and champing at the bit to delve into the yard to see what new treasures he could unearth.

Please, take a hammer to me if I ever get this dilapidated.

Did I mention that we had hammers?

Hell, we had a lot of hammers.

Ahem.

Next on the hit parade are our old friends, the local constabulary. Yep, Gomer, Goober and that group often made the rounds to our locale to see what was up, what, if anything, was going on and if Pinky had actually slipped up and somehow got a hold of the brace of brass lion sculptures that somehow disappeared from in front of the local Town Hall.

As I noted before, we lived in a “Car-Town” (no to be confused with someplace exciting like a “Cow-Town”), where a certain lamentable, and now extinct, breed of automobile called home.

Think of a small Detroit-type town; without the charm, but all of the rust.

Well, this particular company, which shall henceforth go by the euphemistic initials of “AMC”, would regularly charge their Research & Development groups with coming up with one form or another of internally-combusted wheeled conveyance that would capture America’s hearts, interest, and, most importantly, their pocketbooks.

Viz: “the Hornet”.

“The Rebel”.

“The Ambassador”.

“The Javelin”.

“The Pregnant Roller Skate”…ack, err.. “The Pacer”.

And these were the models that actually made it into production.

Suffice to say, there were many, many failed attempts at designing the next Mustang or Corvette. All of these went, after many millions of dollars poured into R&D, concepts, modelling, and prototypes; straight into the dumpster.

That’s where we came in.

We joyfully received, on a rather regular basis, the off-casts of designs which would make Homer Simpson’s vehicular creation in “Oh, Brother. Where Art Thou?” look like a Lamborghini Cheetah.

We gingerly, and with utmost respect, took in the tools, dies, forms and sheet metal for these wayward orphans of the Autobahn and gleefully torched, baled and flattened them for their trip to one or another blast furnace.

Hey. We had feelings.

Particularly every other week, on Friday, around 5:00 pm.

Y’know. Payday.

That is, until one load of prototypical material was delivered to us, by mistake.

Instead of going to the Motorcity (where the final tooling and such-and-so-forth was done), this particular load consisted of a model actually destined for production.

So? The auto manufacturer fucks up and sends the prototype to the scrap yard. What will one do?

Call the yard?

Call Detroit?

Call the local fuzz and hope that they can both identify the errant prototype and rescue it from an ignominious doom?

Let’s just see…

Sirens wailing and lights flashing, fully 2/3’rd s of the local police force descend upon the scrap yard.

“Hut, hut, hut, hut, hut…”

Oh, yeah. Yet another day in paradise.

Seeing as how, at that time, they local auto concern employed approximately 80% of the city’s workforce; such possible faux pas’ were held in much the same esteem as Charles Manson on work release in a Chicago Cutlery shop.

They cordoned off the yard, shut everything down and requested, nay, demanded, a list of each and every and all customers in the last fortnight.
Recall what I said earlier about paper trails?

Seldom closer than the Iditarod did a trail ever grow colder.

Seems like Stav and myself had just that morning torched, baled and consigned to Chicago Northwestern freight services a load of tools, dies and sheet metal forms that were sort of, kind of, well, strangely resembled, that is to say, exactly fit the description of, those items for which they were in hot pursuit.

Sorry, folks. But the 1977 AMC Sportabout Excel was stillborn at a scrap yard in Southeastern Wisconsin due to a ridiculous work ethic, diligent workmanship and a desire to get through yet another week and see what the weekend had to offer.

A few years later, the company ultimately went tits-up.

I still feel oddly, uneasily, and somewhat tangentially, responsible.

Reading back, I see this is the space for SC #13.

There is no SC #13.

So there.

Continuing on, yet again, in the vein of automotive experimentation and the vast and varied metal workings necessary, we sally forth to the venue of the myriad machine shops that littered the local landscape in the late ‘70’s, doing the odd job of prototyping, manufacturing and hand tooling the one-offs and other oddments that infest a town with one major employer; upon whom all others are somehow and somewhat dependant.

That is: (“i.e”, for you Latin fans out there) the local machine shop.

Neighbourhood, just-one-step-up-from-the-basement enterprises that all had a singular specialty.

Copper castings? Check. See Bill at #94 East.

Chrome-moly plating? “Chuck’s Chrome-n-such” on West 50 (you think I’m making this up? Ha!)

Beryllium machining? Uke’s machine shop. Just look for the albinos milling about out front (beryllium dust is particularly toxic and demelanizing, but remember folks, this was the ‘70’s).

And so on and so forth.

And us? We readily took in all the flotsam and jetsam of these folks and turned them into filthy lucre.

It was not unusual for us to receive cast iron, cast copper, tin, lead, steel, stainless, aluminium, neptunium and gadolinium (well, OK, very little gadolinium) parts of the most exotic and bizarre design. Finely tuned, handsomely honed, intricately designed and all destined for the scrap heap.

Kind of sad if one was to reflect on that sort of thing. I looked no further than how much it would impact my biweekly check.

Yeah, I was (am/are) a greedy bastard.

Well, we received one week a healthy assortment of the aforementioned and Pinky and Czach were forced to part with the better part of 1,000 fat, 1970’s-grade US dollars. Oh, they were happy to get the off-casts, but were keenly unhappy about having to pay anything for them. All part of business, but the part of business for which P&C never really much cared.

So, off they went. Into the yard, into the bins and into the various bales to be shipped south to be returned as pristine steel, stainless, copper and cadmium-doped beryllium-laden silicon semiconductors…

Right.

Except certain of these pieces were indeed unique and sold without authorization.

Seems that an employee of one of the machine shops was given the gate (i.e, (see previous – Ed.) fired) and snuck out a load of precision parts machined for a particular local car company.

Pinky had just purchased them, as he is wont, that morning.

As were our wont, and want of a pay check, they were bundled into 1,000 kg bales and currently residing in our capacious warehouse.

We spent some 3 days tearing through bales looking for these machined parts. Searched high. Searched low. Never did find them.

Although we did later get a load of stainless tubing from yet another local machine shop. Seems the stainless steel of which they had recently taken delivery had too high a beryllium content and was unmachinable…

Leading, dear gentle, and perhaps masochistic, reader, to this final entry in Scrapyard Stories; about my leaving Pinky and Czack for greener (and as it would prove, snowier, colder and considerably icier) venues and the SC who thinks he can outwit a pair of very nasty Rottweilers named Adolph and Rommel.

Summer, as all good seasons eventually do, grudgingly hunched its collective humid shoulders and slid gracelessly into Autumn.

Autumn, when school restarted; where I could forgo the ritual waking at 0530 (now I was able to sleep-in until the decadent hour of 0600 to attend a particularly onerous 0700 Physical Chemistry class) and go somewhere where I withstood the gruelling possibly of expiring from a paper cut rather than a full-limb dismemberment.

But first, I had to clock out on my last day at the Scrapyard.

Figuring this was something of a bellwether day, I showed up early.

Why? Damned if I know.

I was sitting in my van (who shall remain nameless, I took enough abuse earlier…), having a coffee when Stav, Paul, Mike, Rance and the rest of the crowd rolls in.

I was the only one going to college and these characters, salt of the earth, never let me forget it.

I loved these guys like brothers.

From a large, dysfunctional family.

“Well, College-boy, time for work”.

“Yeah, let’s go, Poindexter”.

I subtly remind them who has the blaster’s permit and who has the keys to the explosives locker.

“Be careful when you start your cars tonight…”

Walk up to the gate, and whip out the key when we find a length of #40 circle-weld cadmium-clad chain and a new Yale padlock where one never existed before.

“What the fuck! Did they finally catch Pinky?”

“Probably Czack. Doubtless locked himself in the office again (a none-to-unusual happenstance, noting his predilection for a particular brownish ethanol molecule).”

Then there arose, with a fume and a clatter, a notoriously noxious noise.

What was the matter?

“Oh, shit. Some idiot crossed Adolph and Rommel.”

Adolph and Rommel were, ironically, Pinky and Czach’s early warning system (they’re Jewish, expatriates of a concentration camp…you work out the irony) . A brace of teeth, sinew and bad temper all rolled into 100kg (each) of nasty Rottweiler.

“Meaner than a Junkyard Dog”? Jim Croce never met Adolph and Rommel.

Pinky and Czach weren’t due for another 45 or so minutes, so I called the local cops and asked what the hell was happening.

“Well, we got a call that the dogs were raising a ruckus; but with it being a weekend, we didn’t want to go in. We didn’t think that Pinky’d mind, so we just chained off the yard and waited until Monday.”

“Yeah. Well, it’s Monday. It’s early and we want to got to work (that is, get paid). So send down someone and open the damned gate.”

“Nah. You guys are there. Go ahead and open the gate. We’ll send someone down in a half hour or so.”

Theodore Kaczynski meet the scrapyard guys.

Guys, Ted Kaczynski.

So, Mike goes off to his car and brings back a bolt cutter (“Never know when one of these might come in handy.”), and cuts the chain.

Rommel and Adolph hit the ground at a flat gallop and damn near cream Stav and Paul. If slobbering and licking were fatal, I’d be calling the coroner. These dogs are the meanest, nastiest, most accursedly horrific beasts this side of a Hammer Horror flick.

If they don’t know you.

If they do, they’re 220 pounds of big, slobbery, moon-eyed puppy.

They love us (we fed them a constant supply of Momma burgers) and hate, with the burning passion of a thousand supernovae, intruders.

“Dolph! Rom! Where are they?”

“Rowf.”

“Bark.”

And associated slathering dog noises.

Up on the pile of aluminium siding and cast-off screens, sits an absolutely terrified, pale, petrified, although none-too-bright, idiot.

Cretin.

Schmuck.

“What the flying Philadelphia French-fried fuck are you doing up there?” inquires Mark, in his inimitable tone.

“Budda…budda…dogs…budda…gonna eat me….budda…”

“Yeah. Would serve you right, asshole. Marty, go get him.”

“What. On my last day? Fuck that. No, wait one. Let me get to the explosives locker…”

Killjoys. Ruin a guy’s fun on his last day and all…

Pinky and Czack roll in, about 2 hours late and demand to know what the hell is going on.

“Well, it’s a cop matter. It’s late, almost noon. Go to A&W and get us a couple of strawberry shakes…”

“…and chili dogs…?”, suggests Stav through his cheesy walrus moustache and unbelievably evil grin.

An hour and a half later, the cops finally arrive. They are greeted by the scene of 10 large, hirsute, laughing characters sitting around an outsized pile of scrap metal, drinking A&W root beers (and bourbon…a truly Satanic combination if there ever was), tossing chili dogs to a pair of slavering Rottweilers who are coming ever closer to some retards feet who just so happens to be clinging to the peak of the aforementioned pile of scrap aluminium siding.

Envoi: I didn’t escape unscathed. Remember my “ever so cool Red Adair brushed aluminium” hardhat? The last I saw of it, it was neatly baled into a 1,000 kg cube of scrap siding.

It read: “AmRty”.

I will never, never, ever forgive those bastards.

The idea here is to add a detailed, totally scientific, in depth power point presentation as a slightly different offering in this space. We will see if the instructions work.

This one’s not for eating, it’s for grossing out the neighbors on Halloween. Or Easter. Or Christmas. Or just for keeping away solicitors of all stripes. Take your pick.

Ahh…forget all that. It’s nothing fancy.  It’s just the USDA Grade-A #1, all American treat: Jello Lung!

And it’s so simple to make.

You will need: (first the easily found bits:)

Funnel
Refrigerator-Freezer
Large aluminum pan (like a turkey pan, or shallow 9”x13” (minimum) cooking pan)
Cooking (or white) cotton twine
Turkey baster with removable bulb
Food coloring (optional)
Soup or chili pot (optional)
Salt (optional)

1-2 cans    Evaporated milk (i.e., ‘Carnation Armoured Tit’)
2 boxes     Strawberry (bloody), Lemon (rheumy), Lime (phlegmy),     etc. Jello (6oz)
1/2 cup     Sugar
3  cup     Water

(Note: recipe might have to be doubled depending on the size of the cow breathing apparatus…they do vary.)

And the not so easily obtained bits:

Go to your local abattoir, knackerman or slaughterhouse and make a special request for a pair of recently deceased cow lungs with (and this is very important) the trachea still attached (often these are severed and the lungs split up, never to be  together again, for processing into “Lung-Goody” treats for dogs). A diagram might be of some use:

See the bits that go from the (1.) nose (the external nares for you science buffs), down the (2.) hose (‘wind pipe’ or trachea) to the (3.) gas bags (lungs)? Those are the bits you need to ask for.

Accept no substitutes.

Demand authentic, genuine bovine respiratory organs.

You’ll be glad you did.

Now that you’ve assembled the necessary ingredients, there’s a small amount of prep (i.e., ‘preparation’) work that you’ll need to do:

1. Take lung/trachea assembly home. Put down paper towelling or newspaper on kitchen counter. Open knacker package.  Take lungs/trachea assembly and set it on aforementioned kitchen counter.
2. Carefully extend the trachea and spread the lobes of the lungs.

3. Look for obvious gashes, slashes or mashes. Small holes are acceptable, large rips or tears need to be repaired or replaced. Remember, this unit will have to be ‘jello-tite’ (see following picture for comparison:)

4. Run a sink full of warm water and wash the lungs/trachea. Remove any excess exterior viscera, mesentery, connective tissue, blood clots, sawdust, kitty litter or other abattoir effluvia. Try not to get water into either the trachea or lungs, as this will complicate matters slightly more in upcoming procedures.
5. Remove from water, and pat dry with paper towels, taking care to separate the lung lobes and get those nice and dried out.

Now you have a choice. You can continue directly to the jello portion of the recipe (the original “floppy” raw version) or perform a bit more labour on the lungs to yield the new, improved “not so floppy, not so raw” version.

Your call.

OPTIONAL STEPS:

OK, for those that desire a bit more structural integrity to their dessert, get a large soup or chili pot, fill with cool water to the 2/3’rds point, and add approximately 1 pound salt. Bring to ‘hot’ (not a necessary boil, but enough totally dissolve all the salt), keep the heat on low to a good roil, and stir.

Slowly, add the bovine respiratory apparatus, lowering by the trachea (which you have sealed off via sewing with cooking twine, or by wrapping a rubber band around its terminus). Be very careful, as the lungs can absorb water, rapidly get heavy and pull off the trachea. In the business of disgusting culinary practices, this is what we call a ‘bad thing’.

Kill the heat, and let the lungs soak in the hot salt water for 30-45 minutes, stirring occasionally to remove any excess blargh from the lungs and make certain that it’s completely soaked in the brine solution.  Remove after the allotted time, and spread on newspapers to dry thoroughly. You should now have a nifty set of pink ones that closely resemble the following

NOT OPTIONAL STEPS:

The filling:

Beginning with the jello recipe (noted previously):

1. Put the evaporated milk in the freezer to freeze for about 5 hours (make sure to shake it well before freezing),
2. A half hour or so before the milk is done freezing, heat the water and dissolve the Jello in it. Let it cool to room temperature ,
3. Put the frozen milk (solid but not too hard) into a large bowl,
4. Beat it until its at least twice its original volume (you’re aerating it at this point, so no need to be gentle),
5. Add the dissolved Jello while mixing ,
6. Add food colouring (if desired) at this point for that exciting Technicolor effect,
7. Add the sugar while mixing,
8. You’re done. At least with this part.

The holder:

You need to pour the unclabbered mixture down the trachea and inflate the lungs. The easiest way is with 2 people, a funnel and some manual dexterity. A cooperative cow:

is seldom available, so you’re just going to have to muddle through as best you can.

The Jello mixture will have the following frothy consistency:

And will tend to begin setting like quick-dry concrete if left to sit on its own. However, being a thixotropic fluid (will flow when subjected to shear), once it’s moving, it pours rather nicely.

Place your lung/trachea set-up into the turkey (or other refrigerator proof) pan, and arrange in a festive, decorative position (the lobes spread and the trachea arranged into an elegant “S”-shape is an cygnian avian favourite).

So, having your unsmiling assistant hold the trachea (see below)

firmly attached to the funnel, slowly pour the jello mixture down the pipe, and into the lungs. Palpate (massage) the lungs to ensure that the jello mixture gets into each and every alveoli.

Pour in enough jello to inflate the lungs slightly, but not over inflate them. They should be fully rounded, firm, lifted and separated. If you’re having trouble getting the jello down the pipe, use the turkey baster (sans bulb) to blow (gently) some air into the lungs, unravel them from the inside and allow the jello to flow.

Once the lungs are properly filled, slowly extend the trachea and fill to spill point with the remaining jello. Here’s where it get a bit tricky: you now have to transfer this whole shebang to the fridge. Keep the trachea extended or it’ll be jello everywhere.  Place into the fridge and tie off the trachea in an extended vertical position. Close the door, and warn everyone what’s cooling off in there. Or don’t. Instead, have a beer or 6 and sit off in a corner waiting for unsuspecting housemates to venture to the fridge for a cold one. Won’t they be surprised?

After at least 6 hours, the lungs will be ready for whatever use you have planned. Remove from the cooler (although I’d leave it in a shallow pan, for as it warms, it will tend to leak a bit) and display proudly. The jello will be sufficiently stiff to allow slicing of the lung (if cooked, it is really quite nasty, though entirely edible) and also allow artistic posing of the trachea. Use your imagination. A hat? A brooch?  A pterodactyl? A longish, flexible hose attached to two rounded, bulbous pink spheres…go nuts.

Envoi:

If prepared correctly, your sliced jello lung should look something like this:

Note the fine definition, the internal texture, distinct compartmentalization and the added artistic touch of the yellow-infused trachea.

This isn’t a picture of a jello lung, it’s actually an image from my daughter’s large animal veterinary textbook of bovine pulmonary emphysema. However, if your jello lung even remotely resembles this figure: congratulations. Mission accomplished and Bon Appétit!

OK, listen up, you goobers. This here is an award winning (Macho Creek,
Texas Chilithon, 1990) chili recipe. It’s a bit involved and will take
up to 3 days to do it right. But, once you taste it; you’ll agree: it’s
damn well worth the effort.
So, read the recipe first, assemble the necessary ingredients and
implements of destruction, follow the directions and do it right.

—–The Carnivorous OPTIONS—–

3 Kg. Lean USDA Prime chunk beef, and/or
3 Kg. Lean Venison backstraps, roast or loin, and/or
3 Kg. Alligator tail meat (available at gourmet
shops and better SW grocerias), and/or
3 Kg. Lean N.A. Bison: roast or steak, and/or
3 Kg. Pork shoulder or roast (not hams), and/or
3 Kg. Lamb roast or loin

—-The Not-Optional Carnivory—-

3 Kg. Hot Pork Sausage or Chorizo – coarse ground

_____________________________________________________________________

—–The Botanical Matter—–

5-8 Large Dutch (yellow) Onions — coarsely chopped
4-6 Med. Large Bermuda (purple) Onions — coarsely chopped
5 Cloves Beeroasted* Garlic — minced (absolute minimum)
4 Large Fireroasted* Green Bell Pepper — cut into chunks
4 Large Fireroasted* Red and/or Yellow peppers – cut into
chunks
1 Kg Yellow Corn Meal (masa)
12-18 Large Fresh-off-the-vine beefsteak or Vinders
tomatoes
2 Bunches Fresh scallions
1 Large bunch Fresh parsley
1 Med. bunch Fresh cilantro
1 Hand Chopped fresh ginger

______________________________________________________________________

—-The HOT peppers—-

To taste

Warm:                  Fireroasted* Anaheim peppers
Warmer:             Fireroasted* Serrano peppers
Warmer yet:     Fireroasted* Chipolte peppers
Med. Hot:          Fireroasted* Jalapeno peppers
Nuclear:            Fireroasted* Habanero (Scotch Bonnet) peppers

______________________________________________________________________

—–The Spices—–

(Note: combine all dry* ingredients in 1/2 stated measure, blend in
a blender to mix, store covered in salt shaker or covered glass pot.
This is “The Rub”.)
20 gm Ground Oregano*
30 gm Chili Powder*
10 gm Ground Coriander*
10 gm Celery Seed*
20 gm Cayenne Pepper*
20 gm Dry Mustard*
20 gm Paprika*
20 gm Madras Curry Powder*
20 gm Gharam Masala*
20 gm Biryanhi Masala*
20 gm Ground Cumin*
20 gm Ground Ginger*
40 gm Garlic powder*
30 gm Onion powder*
20 gm Lemon powder*
30 gm Good old (sea) salt*
30 gm Coarse ground black pepper*
20 gm Caster sugar*
50 gm OR Brown sugar OR
100 ml Blackstrap molasses
1 25 ml Btl. Tabasco Sauce
1 100 ml Btl. ‘Rana’ (or other La. style) “hot” sauce

______________________________________________________________________

—-Other weird ingredients—-

100 gms Smooth peanut butter
100 gms Shelled, crushed pistachio nuts
100 gms Crushed pignolios (pine nuts)
1 tin Sweetened frozen raspberries
50 mls Malt vinegar
1 Med. Mashed papaya
1 tin Crushed pineapple, mashed
75 gms Honey
250 mls Rose’s lime juice
100 gms Semi-sweet or bittersweet chocolate,
shaved or very finely chopped.

—–The NECESSARY booze—–

1 Liter Inexpensive Red, Red Wine (Gallo, etc.)
1 Liter Inexpensive White, Chablis or Blush wine
1 Liter Inexpensive Spanish or domestic port wine
1 case Cheap marinating beer (Falstaff, Schlitz,
Lone Star, Pearl, Olympia, etc.)
1+ 12 pack Not cheap, expensive, imported drinking
beer (Guinness, Foster’s, Fax, Victoria Bitter,
Sheaf Stout, Oranjeboom, etc.)
500 ml Good Kentucky Bourbon (Jim Beam, Wild Turkey,
George Dickel, etc.)
500 ml Good Mexican Agave Tequila (Jose Cuervo, etc.)
500 ml Good, aged Brandy (3 Barrels, etc.)
500 ml Good, Port wine.
1000 ml Good Russian vodka (freezer chilled).
1 good shot Everclear

—-Necessary other stuff—-

1 Hot Bar-be-que grill
5 Kg Smokin’ chunks (hickory, mesquite, etc),
soaked in water overnight
1 Bottle Extra virgin olive oil
1 Damn big Stockpot (at least 25-35 liter capacity)
3-5 3 liter Marinating (covered) plastic dishes
Just Enough Water when called for

Terminology and procedures:

*Beeroasting: In a heavy, covered skillet (cast iron works best) heat
up enough olive oil to cover bottom. Add very coarsely chopped garlic
and saute over medium-high heat until the garlic starts to “turn”;
i.e., become translucent. Quickly pour in 2-3 cans cheap marinating
beer, and slap down the lid. Turn off the heat and set aside until the
steam stops. Fish out the garlic, and mash it in a mortar or under a
heavy knife blade. Save beer for meat marinade.

*Fireroasting: roasting peppers over high heat mesquite or hickory
grill (or gas stove, if not so inclined), until peppers char somewhat
and skin comes loose (CAUTION: fumes from fireroasting jalapenos and
habaneros can cause your eyes to water and burn for days. Exercise
caution!). Scrape off blackened skin, and save. Coarse chop peppers
and also save.

*Marinade: Soak, totally immersed, turning occasionally, in liquids,
with added ingredients, in covered Tupperware <TM> or similar non-
reactive dish, in refrigerator. So there.

*”The Rub”: see mini-recipe under “spices”.
How to do it: (Starting 2-3 days before actual serving time):
1. Get a not-cheap, not-marinating beer. Pop top. Partake.
2. Choose your main meat(s) and their marinades. As follows:
(cut all meats into 1-2 cm cubes before marinating)

Meat —— Marinade (to cover) ————
Beef 1/2 beer, 1/2 red wine, 50 ml lime juice
Venison 1/2 beer, 1/4 red wine, 1/4 port
Alligator 1/2 beer, 1/2 white wine, 50 ml lime juice
Bison 1/2 beer, 1/4 red wine, 1/4 port, 50 ml lime juice
Pork 1/3 beer, 1/3 white wine, 1/3 port
Lamb 1/3 beer, 1/3 red wine, 1/3 port, 50 ml lime juice
(Also, each marinade gets a good, stiff shot of brandy)
(Seafood, poultry and other fowl not recommended in this chili,
unless you really want to….)
Add to each marinade a healthy blast of *The Rub.
Marinade the meat(s) for 24-36 hours, covered, in the fridge. Shake,
turn or otherwise agitate the meat occasionally. This makes it
furious and helps the marinade tenderize the meat.
3. Drink another beer, or 6.
4. Fire up the Weber <TM> or other grill. Get the fire good and hot.
Add a generous supply of soaked smokin’ wood chunks, get a good
smoke going. (Now is a good time to fireroast the peppers you’re
going to use).
5. Drink a beer. Hell, have a shot as well.
6. Remove the meat(s) from the marinade. SAVE THE MARINADE!
Grill the meat(s) over the smoky fire about 1/2 to 3/4′ths the time
you’d normally cook such choice cuts of meat (i.e., leave somewhat
underdone…don’t worry, they’ll get thoroughly cooked…). Set
meat(s) aside to cool, then store in fridge until needed.
7. Whew. That’s the hot work. Better have another beer or 5.
8. Gather up all beeroasting and marinade beer-juice. Put into deep,
heavy skillet or pot. Reduce by half.
9. Brown the hot coarsely ground sausage (or chorizo) in the reducate
(the reduced juice). Do not drain. Let cool.
10. Add enough water to the corn meal (masa) to make a medium-thick
roux; give it a shot or two of The Rub and if it behaves, one of brandy.
11. Pour about 1-2 liters of water into the stock pot. Start to
warm the water, but don’t let boil.
12. Add all the chopped tomatoes and simmer for a while.
13. This will take some time. Get a beer. Add a cheapy beer to the pot,
along with 1/2 the remaining red and port wine, drink another expensive
beer for yourself. Go ahead, you deserve it.
14. While the tomatoes are saucing, gather all the “weird ingredients”,
including the remaining lime juice and combine in a large bowl.
Mash and stir until all liquids are mixed and smooth. Set aside in
fridge and let marry.
15. Take onions, garlic, bell peppers, yellow/red peppers, and scallions and
put into heavy skillet with a smidge of olive oil. Turn up heat and toss
in a shot of The Rub. Heat slowly, until thoroughly tossed (1 minute or so).
While still warm, pour over the vegetables 100 ml each of Bourbon, Tequila,
Brandy and Port. Reduce by half (but slowly), don’t let the vegetables get
mushy or your eyebrows sauteed by ignited EtOh vapors.
16. Chop up hot peppers (your choice and call on volumes) and give them the
same treatment as the regular vegetables in step 15. Be careful! Fumes of
the alcohol and caspsicum from the peppers can be a potent, and painful,
combination.
17. Sheesh. It’s been a while. Have another beer.
IMPORTANT NOTE. If you want to wait until tomorrow to finish, this marks
a good spot to quit for the day. Shove everything (separately) into the
fridge for the night. Sleep well.
18. OK, inventory time: let’s see, you should now have:
a. Soaked, smoked, cooked, drunken meat(s),
b. A bowlful of married “weird ingredients”,
c. A pot of thickened, cooked down tomato sauce,
d. 300 ml of bourbon, tequila, port and brandy (if not, restore to
proper measure)
e. Cooked hot peppers,
f. Cooked not-hot vegetables,
g. Cooked, and swimming, pork sausage,
h. Fresh herbs, including ginger,
i. Masa roux,
j. The remaining Rub, dry spices and hot sauces.
k. 1 shot (50 mls) Everclear liquor and vodka (freezing).
19. OK, let’s get this thing finished…
20. But first, have a beer (or Bloody Mary).
21. Put stock pot, with tomato sauce, on stove; heat slowly.
22. When fairly bubbly, add the meat.
23. Stir. Chop up fresh herbs and add to mixture.
24. Stir. Add not-hot vegetables.
25. Stir. Add a shot or two of The Rub. Stir. Add remaining booze
(except for vodka) and add water to float meat/vegetables. Add
1/2 masa roux. Stir.
26. Stir, stir. Stir. DO NOT EVER LET BOIL.
27. Have a beer.
28. Add all remaining dry spices, hot sauces and brown sugar/molasses.
29. Stir. Have a beer.
30. Add “weird ingredients”. Stir. (Do not taste yet, it’ll be unusual;
it still has a ways to go.)
31. Add pork sausage and beeroast reducate. Stir. Add chopped ginger if
you’ve forgotten to. Stir. Add chopped, blackened pepper skins. Stir
some more.
32. Let simmer for a while. Have at least 2 beers.
33. Now, add the chopped hot peppers. Top off with necessary water. Let
simmer for at least an hour.
34. Adjust thickness by adding corn meal roux. It will thicken upon further
simmering (at least 3 or more hours) so add it gradually.
35. Toss in any remaining booze, except for the Everclear and Vodka. Hit it
with another shot or two of The Rub. Simmer until just right.
(36. OPTIONAL - Let chili cool, and freeze to cure the mixture. Thaw
and continue…if nothing else, let cool overnight before reheating and
service.)
37. Reheat chili. Immediately before serving, stir in Everclear.
38. There, you’re finished. Have a beer. Serve chili with hard sourdough
rolls, warm corn tortillas, or sourdough bread. You’ll be pleasantly
amazed.
39. Oh, yes. Remove Vodka from freezer. Use to sip after eating chili to
anesthetize the taste buds after they’ve been planed off by this chili.
WARNING: Depending on your selection and volume of fireroasted hot peppers,
this chili could be from “somewhat fiery” to “rhyodacite magma”. The booze
tends to hide the initial intensity of the peppers, but the cumulative
effect can be somewhat devastating; although not at all that unpleasant.

I AM IN NO WAY RESPONSIBLE FOR THE SIDE EFFECTS OF THIS RECIPE.

Share and enjoy.
—–

Well, I can’t post the list here. Over a hundred posts of job links would get real old real fast so I’ll just give you the link to it. Some of them, mainly section 12, aren’t working at the moment but we’re getting them back as fast as possible.

The majority of these job links are in the gas and oil industry but there are many more that are general. Have fun with them.

Job Links

Things that I’m really rather ambivalent about living in the Middle East.

1. The ROP, or Royal Omani Police. Otherwise known as the Royal Ostrich Pluckers, or Royally Officious Pricks, depending on what they’re hassling you about.
2. Getting called out because you need to get your car washed? Pluckers.
3. Wasting a day getting new plates because they issued you the wrong plates years ago? Pricks.
4. Arabic food. Shwarmas, samosas, chicken-tikka on a stick, hummus, baba ganoush, pickled vegetables that for some odd reason have turned red, olives of every hue and description, roast goat, fish, sheep, camel, etc. ‘Eh. It’s OK. But to have that same menu each and every time you have an over-lunch meeting or a breakfast buffet at one of the hotels…Colour me unimpressed. Then again, I do like the availability of Ugandan Scotch bonnet peppers.
5. Seeb Airport. Except during Ramadan, the bar’s always open, the folks behind the counter are moderately efficient, the customs crowd are so dazed by their jobs you could probably pass an ICBM through the X-ray and they wouldn’t notice. Somewhat shabby, somewhat new, somewhat OK. Besides, if you want out, it’s the only game in town.
6. The Wahiba Sands. Close enough for a weekend get away, far enough away to get that Lawrence of Arabia feeling. For folks unfamiliar with the desert, I suppose this is the epitome of high adventure. For me (a jaded world traveller), it’s merely another place to get sand in one’s boots. Decent views and nice sorts of dunes. Extremely moderately OK.
7. Majlis al Djinn. On of the world’s largest caves. It’s quite dead (i.e., no running water, hence no growing speleothems), but it’s a fucking huge underground room. That’s it. A great big, mostly barren hole in the ground into which one has to abseil if one wants to visit. I’m whelmed.
8. The Semail Ophiolite. This was really on my “I like” list before I had to deal with the officiousness of the national oil company and the ROP (my book will just have to wait to be published outside the country). It’s a world-class example of obduction (oceanic crust thrust up onto continental crust), with the Moho discontinuity actually at the surface. Great mineralogy, oddball petrology, weird erosional forms…but still, it’s here, it’s there, and once you figure it out, it becomes just another pile of green-brown rocks. Splendidly somewhat neat.
9. The Hawasina and Cenozoic limestone mountains. Again, another of the “Ohhh, Ahh” things when one first gets here. But after years of construction, demolition of some mountains, and building everywhere, the view just pales. Sandstorms that last for weeks, coupled with late summer doldrums, little moving air and you’re lucky even to see the mountains. A real shame, as tourism and sightseeing here could be such a cash cow for the country. Oh, well.
10. Arabs. Ah, the biggie. Arabs, by and large, are great people (and people who make sweeping overweening generalizations are generally whacked). A little weird (at least by my standards, i.e., “those by whom all others should be compared”) in dress, deportment and divinity; but typically affable, friendly and never intimidating. Until you place them behind the wheel of an automobile. There is some sort of genetic Jekyll and Hyde syndrome that must lurk in the DNA of all Arabic types. Once mobile, they transmogrify into the most insane, reckless, brazen, irresponsible, out-of-control whackjobs ever to roll a kilometre. I know, I covered most all this in my previous screed, but it is a most fascinating phenomena: how one group can occupy, simultaneously, both ends of the bell curve. So, carefully measured and evaluated, it yields a great big “Meh”.

So there you have it. A non-definitive list of all things Middle Eastern: the good, the bad, the bogus, the irritating. Summation? Hell, I don’t know. It still beats paying 35% of one’s salary to Uncle Sam, but you still can’t call an asshole an asshole without fear of jail, termination and deportation. Gas is really cheap, but you have to put up with overtly maniacal drivers. There’s actually things to see and do here, but you have to put up with illiterate ignorance in customer service and in the complaint department.

Guess I’ll just continue along and keep an eye on the shit bucket. Who knows? A simple thing like a change of venue (or company) when it comes to employment would mean even bigger buckets. The more full bucket #1 becomes means you can deal with more of the stuff that wants to overflow bucket #2.

*30*

Things I hate about living in the Middle East

a. The heat. I’m not built for heat (I loved living in Siberia…go figure), and it’s difficult to deal with 450C+ and your skin bubbling for 8 months of the year if you venture outdoors.

b. The drivers. See previous entry for great-n-glorious detail.

c. The lack of a First Amendment. I can’t be an Ugly American; I’m over-qualified. I tend to be large, loud and opinionated. I don’t call ‘a spade a spade’; I call it ‘a fucking shovel’. But, if someone here cuts you off and nearly causes you to roadmap the windshield, you’re not allowed to flip him off, yell at him or even mutter dark oaths under your breath. You can be prosecuted if you do any of these if the person who receives your wrath is a local (you can flip off the Jinglys (umm, err…Eastern Expats, i.e., Sub-continentals) anytime) and complains to the ROP. Extra bonus hint: If someone deserves your wrath, don’t flip him the bird; instead stuck your thumb between your index finger and middle finger, and give it a good shake. It’s a Russian gesture very closely related to the flipping of the bird, but I was once told that this strongly resembles an Arabic sign of luck. There, you can tell them what you think of their driving abilities (or, more to the point, lack thereof) with complete impunity. And it is cathartic.

d. The lack of a First Amendment, part deux: You have to be careful of what you speak around here. No negative comments about HM the Sultan, Islam, Sharia Law, Ramadan, or myriad other subjects. It’s like walking on eggshells sometimes, especially for some strident, raucous, brash American who has lived all over the world and doesn’t readily practice self-censorship.

e. Split-unit air conditioners. Pure evil. They freeze up, drip like a flaccid geyser and need constant attention. A simple dust storm sends them into paroxysms of sputtering, coughing and early death. A pox upon these and their inventor. You listening Samsung?

f. Lousy mail service. Mail a letter to the States? Wait 3 months for delivery. Get mail from the States? Hell, I just got a Christmas card in August. From last year.

g. Getting packages here. First you get a slip of paper. Then you have to go to Seeb, Qurum or, most likely, Ruwi, to the Post Office, present your ticket, pay 300 baiza for stamps (Why? How the hell do I know?) and wait. And wait. And wait. Then they bring out your parcel and proceed to rip it apart, looking for contraband, drugs, porn, or who knows what. Then, after arguing that your wife ordered 15 model Breyer horses for your daughters for Christmas, and you’re not going to sell them on Ruwi High Street, you pony up your “Expat Tax”; otherwise known as duty. It’s not that much, but varies day-to-day and item to item. The horses? 5%. Ink cartridges you buy in bulk (because they’re mondo expensive here)? 15%. Cigars? Forget it. They will try to steal them (“They’re not allowed”. Right. That’s why I can buy all the Cubanos I want in town…). Around 25%. I really don’t mind the Duty so much, just keep your mitts off my shit. That really annoys the living hell out of me.

h. Censorship. Let me decide what I see/read/hear and don’t see/read/hear. I’m an adult (well, chronologically, at least) and have been know to make such decisions.

i. Omantel. The Internet/GSM/phone monopoly. You have little choice (Oh, sure, there’s Nawras, but Omantel does represent a near total communications monopoly here in the Sultanate) but to have to deal with these idiots. Heavily censored internet, lacklustre support and customer service? Come for the dreaded Omantel “NOTICE” page, stay for Internet outages every time the wind blows. Sheesh.

j. Lack of Ebay. Sure, you can look and see, but don’t bother bidding. 99.99% of the rest of the world won’t ship to the Middle East. Why? It’s expensive and there’s such a high degree of fraud. Thanks, guys.

k. Illiteracy. It’s rampant. And I don’t just mean people who can’t speak English (which is, of course, the international language that everyone understands, if you speak it LOUD ENOUGH), but Arabs ignorant of Arabic, Indians ignorant of Hindi (or Pashto, or Urdu, or whatever their native tongue is supposed to be), and the Dutch. Try and get some customer service in English from someone to whom English is not just a closed book, but one closed, burned and buried. True, not entirely their fault, but why do international companies insist on putting these cretins in ordering and customer service?

l. Cells phones (a.k.a. “GSM’s”). I hate, hate, hate these damn things. People cannot walk, drive, take a shit without having one of these abominations glued to their ear. In fact, there is a national posture: grab your left ear with your left hand and leave it there all day, no matter what you’re doing. Add to this the idiocy of Bluetooth hands-free ear-stickers. Normally, people wandering alone yakking a blue streak were considered odd, even certifiable. Now, just look and see if Mr. ‘I’m-having-a-conversation-with-thin-air’ has an Uhura-style Star Trek-like device sticking out of his head. Is it possible for one to look any more stupid?

m. Ramadan. I’m rather a-religious, so I don’t really want to get off on a rant here, but the idea that people should not eat or drink in 45C weather during hours of daylight strikes me a bit, well, mad. If they really want to do that (Yeah. I know. It’s one of the 5 pillars of Islam.) who am I to cast aspersions? But why does that mean that I, an extreme non-Muslim, cannot enjoy a coffee or even a glass of water? I have to sneak off and consume in seclusion. C’mon. The fast is supposed to be a tough time, to share in the feeling of pain and deprivation. Why does everyone (including international companies and the government) go out of their way to make it easier one them? Then the crowning turd in the proverbial punchbowl: come the iftar (breaking of the fast) when these characters are all nicely dehydrated, exhausted, hypoglycaemic and drive like maniacs on a good day, they hop in their Prados and race to the restaurants. I’m sure their spiritual progenitors did likewise in the latter half of the 12th century.

n. Galfar. Construction company. Arguably the absolute worst when it comes to HSE infractions. Not only in the field, but on the road. If it’s a roll-over of a 15 m3 dump truck, it’ll have “Galfar” painted on the side. Their crew busses are involved in more accidents (hell, just this year, they had 1 accident that put 35 of them in the hospital and killed 3) than all other contractors combined. Yet, they continue to be one of the largest contractors here. The mind reels.

o. Dishdashas. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know: “National dress”. Yet, I don’t see these characters out pestering camels, driving goats or doing anything even remotely related to surviving in desert climes. Hell, I’m of German extraction. Should I wear my lederhosen to work (now there’s a mental picture…)? And you youngsters that think it’s cool to wear a baseball cap sideways with your dishdasha…you’re so unhip, I’m surprised your bums don’t fall off. And sandals. Do you have to pick your fucking toes during a meeting? For goat’s sake, put your damn shoes on and leave your toe-jam sessions to your private time.

p. Attention-whore kids with ‘hot’ cars. Ricers. Shitty little Japanese cars with bolt-on accessories. Shatti al Qurum. Need I say more? Mass euthanasia is warranted. Think of it as a chlorine treatment for the gene-pool.

q. Pharmacies. Just try and get some decent pharmaceuticals in this place, and no, I don’t mean recreational pharmaceuticals. Most everything beyond Panadol is banned. I needed some morphine for a chronic injury, and, of course, only one pharmacy in the entire Sultanate has it. Get the ‘yellow’ prescription, battle Ruwi traffic, park 1.5 miles away and hump it to the pharmacy. Then, be told by the smirking little shit behind the counter that you need “the white prescription”. Came very, very close to homicide this day. Pity stayed my hand. It’s a pity I left my tire iron back in my truck…

r. Jet skis. Melt these fuckers into tie-clips. They’re useless except for annoying fishermen and killing wildlife. I’m no fan of the local fisherfolk (they tend to go all Japanese and vacuum the sea) nor am I an environmentalist (just the opposite: I’m a cigar-chomping, land- raping, booze-swilling, small furry mammal-abusing oilman), but I really fucking hate jet skis. Nuke them. Nuke them all.

(to be continued)