Hunkering Down (1999-2002)

Hunkering down in my steel-toed workboots, our backs against this tired warehouse wall, I’m still wondering how we all got this far. Lunchbox Tim will be riding with me today, my new trainee. Maybe a day over 18 with or without his high school diploma or GED, it’s not for me to ask. Me and 20 others are getting our morning drilling on paperwork procedures and how to sell and apply effectively our Rootkiller and to definitely offer our FREE Home Inspections and get signatures that we offered them whether or not they were accepted. My uniform is a company black T-shirt with small white company logo on the front and my tired, work-stained Levi’s. I’ll be paid a monthly stipend for using my own tools and truck. I’m now advanced to Trainer and I’ve only been here three months, it pays to be 56, a former corporate-type for some 30-plus years with great hand tools and a working knowledge before and after 6 years of college on how to use them. It’s the Mechanical Engineering Masters Degree from Berkeley and the Boeing Fellowship through Grad School that really won me this post-corporate job I’m sure, removing tree roots from sewer lines in three Bay Area counties for the next 3 years. (Or maybe it was the Graphic Design Certificate from UC Extension? Or maybe we’re all just hard-up?) Lunchbox Tim quit after three days, I called the number inside his lunchbox, and talked to his Mom, told her I had his lunchbox. After a week of no response, I tossed it into a dumpster, it was not Goodwill material. Se la vi, Muchachos. I guess the cleaning of shrimp debris from the Benihana kitchen floor drains or the urinal Sloan Valve repair in the Men’s room or maybe the hair- and sock-lint hairballs from the multiple home laundry lines for a week just flattened his lunch-time appetite for hands-on sewer line cleaning success. Dylan sang it it best in “It’s Allright, Ma,” – “He not busy being born is busy dying.”

HoneyDo Handyman Song #12A

When all the corporations
I knew went South,
I had to retrain
my brain and my mouth.
I learned to speak
fluent Handymanese
and bought cushioned
knee protectors
for both of my knees.
(I used to do more
than I do today,
but the nastier stuff
I now refer away.
I can fix your small stuff
like sagging gates,
but please no appliances,
or broken plates.)

But if you put on your lipstick,
and miss your lips,
and if your parakeet’s too wide
at the base of his hips,
call me I can be your Handyman.
Call me, I can be your Handyman:
246-8082.
©Peter Bray 2017
All rights reserved

Peter Bray has been writing poetry
since 1970 and is a member of Benicia’s
First Tuesday Poets, Benicia Literary Arts,
the Ina Coolbrith Circle, the Academy
of American Poets and has written
this column since 2008.
Check his songs out on Youtube.com

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