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Chapter Three

THE DOG DAYS OF SUFFERING

“If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put foundations under them.”

—Henry David Thoreau

There I stood, hunched over the dirty yellow railing, hypnotized through the smoke by the automated movements of expensive welding robots. Despite the treacherous locale, I was mesmerized by the solitude of my thoughts when I was ripped back into reality. “Hey, Chris. Let’s go.” It was my close friend Jeff Phillips, keeping an eye on me so that I would not get reprimanded by the lazy supervisors if they happened to leave their air conditioned bear cave offices, as they did once in a blue moon. “Here we go,” I motioned as I turned back to the production line. Looking at the truck frame that this robotic pulley line fed us from a seemingly never-ending supply, I had the duty of inspecting and patching up all holes, imperfections, and/or deficiencies in the frame.

No customer wanted to buy an award-winning heavy-duty truck only to have the part of the truck that needed to be the strongest fail due to human error. Picking up the weld gun in heat in excess of 100°F (40°C), wearing my mandatory long-sleeved uniform, work boots, heavy gloves, and a welding helmet, I welded 380 to 450 frames in one shift. I took a deep breath and thought to myself, “Man, there’s got to be more to life than this crap!” Given the forty-five-minute drive to and from work and the dreaded midnight shift that I was privileged to work, I was like a zombie living in a hell on Earth.