Welcome

The 60's and 70's
The main office was all grey tones of concrete block walls the color of fresh dug attapulgite clay. Grey dust flowed up from the sidewalks to cover my shoes and postage stamp grass: it had settled out of the air years before Clean Air Title I limitations. The front door bore clawmarks and tiny splinters left by the company watchdog's frantic search for human contact. Across the highway concrete posts marked the perimeter of the employee parking lot whose ground had cooked to a fryable crust. Humidity sealed a thick blanket of dust over the smutty swarm of third shift vehicles.

I was partnered with two young men and my career defined me, shaped my thought, my dress, the way I lived. I was consumed with proving a qualified woman could survive in the mining industry but going to work every day was culture shock. One partner's soulmate divorced him and he swam up from a trance only when necessary. The other was loosely bound by normal human constraints; in his self-advancement he could be completely ruthless. Ambition worked in him like tapeworms.
We were like three kids playing in a city gravel pit after the trucks left. On duty five days a week and half days on weekends our corporate team was on 24-hour call for three surface mining facilities. Brainstorming was a clacking monotone as we listened for the slamming door and tap-tap-tap of Walter's boots on the concrete floor. He often altered our advance planning with complicated reasoning which RV and I embraced as our own.
On "miscalculation" days Walter rapidly exited the building after applying his mysterious formula. He left the political fall-out to two naive FSU graduates whose major weakness was pride in their own intellect.

Arriving at 8:00 am sharp on weekends I usually found Walter asleep with his head under the steering wheel and feet in the seat of his dusty pickup truck parked in the VP- Manufacturing reserved parking spot. Or he was slumped in a Naugahyde chair in the conference room, muddy boots propped up on a table, unshaven, hard hat tipped forward; there was no waking him. Asleep he was smiling, the crow's feet relaxed into faint lines and he looked - not innocent for he was never innocent - forever young.
Behind him was a bookcase made of varnished plastic and unpainted boards, only the top shelf visible through the chair back. The shipping schedules, order books, plant railroad track diagrams and a pencil stub lay on top. My other partner drank warmed-over coffee and cooked the books, aka prioritizing orders for the most powerful customers. My expertise was trying to look astonished at revelations that had become familiar and negotiating with traffic managers for all modes of transportation. We couldn't look at Walter without smiling, only we hid our smiles.
Noting his wrinkles and the drift of flesh downward we believed our images were younger.
"Thirty! Dang, R.V., he's old."
"Did he spend the night here?" R.V. asks.
"He was asleep when i got here."
Yawning and stretching he was fond of saying, "I came here straight from the jook.There uddint nothin' but ugly women but they got purtier and purtier by midnight. I took the last one standin' - she was prime on the hoof by then - but I'd ruther uv gnawed my arm off than wake her this morning."
Dragging his chair to the work station he'd haul out his magic formula, pencil and squiggle, make some in-plant calls and complain, "I wish whoever walked on my tougue last night had scraped their shoes first." Fifty yards away big trucks were routinely squealing to a halt on the narrow, two-lane highway, blocking traffic and competing for loading positions. Scraping back his chair, straightening his hard hat and snapping safety glasses into place he'd take the lone cigarette from the pocket of last night's shirt. Then, with stunning originality he almost always said, "I don't believe you folks need me no more today and I got other fish to fry."
And once again he was gone. Back to his dark, dusty little office deep in the heart of the plant. Back to clueless corporate guidelines and a sour workforce. I guess everbody has known at least one great guy like Walter. Next: The 80's and 90's