sixty-four
I was at the Main Post Office today, once again, unloading trucks. What? Look at me - already developing a skill set.
Me and about 50 other guys - 25 truck bays - 2 to 3 guys to a bay - we’d wait for an 18-wheeler to back up to the dock. The driver would saunter back, make some scatological comment about Obama, slide the door up, then the other 2 guys and myself would start grabbing sacks, dragging them back to the dock, and tossing them down the chute for processing. It’d take us about 30 minutes to empty a full trailer. Then we’d start all over again.
As we’re grabbing’ and draggin’, the three of us are talking. The other two guys seemed to already know each other. They’re full-time postal employees and, from what I could gather, they’re Iraq/Afganistan vets - ex-marines. If you’re a service veteran, you automatically get 25 points or so on the test that you have to take so there are a lot of veterans working at the post office. They were nice and all but really into catching up with each other - sort of got the feeling that they went to high school together - but I had a bunch of time to myself which I used to come up with a list of stuff I might want to buy with my first paycheck.
This is what it looks like:
– one 3-pack Fruit Of The Loom underwear, medium, white
– one 5-pack Bic ball-point pens, black
– one fried chicken dinner from Dixie Chicken, slaw and baked beans
– one carton Pall Mall unfiltered cigarettes
– one 750 ml bottle of rye whiskey, the most most expensive that I can afford
– movie tickets for me and Marta, something with George Clooney
– 2-pack of Gold Toe white socks, the kind without the stupid band at the top
– one bag of really good coffee, not that Starbucks crap
– one bag of Murray’s Ginger Snaps
And if I have any money left over I’ll head on over to Diversity Thrift and see if they have anything good in the used cassette bin. The last time I went, I fuckin’ couldn’t believe it - found a a copy of Hooker n’ Heat. It even got Marta up, dancing and screaming, “Auck my gott. Vut eese deese!
