Super Wash

I work over to the Super Wash. Been there since I got laid off down at the Commings plant, October '98. Had a good job there, tool and die machinist. Made good money, too. Then they got them computers, do it a lot cheaper and do it twenty-four seven. Bunch of us got laid off.

Sometimes I think I should've stayed in the service. I was in the Army, three years. Fought in Desert Storm, 1991. I guess you'd call it fighting. I was a loader in an Abrams M1A1. You don't see much in a tank when you're fighting. Not if you're a loader. You're too busy loading. Hell, the war only lasted a hundred hours anyway. We took down a few T-55s. We got shot at. So they told me. How the hell would I know? I'd sure as hell know if we got hit, but we didn't.

It's a responsible position, being a loader. You got to be quick. You got to get the right ammo for the right job. You can't get rattled. Down at the Super Wash, they won't even let me close up the station.

Each 120mm round we fired off cost about six hundred dollars. I don't know how many rounds we fired in that hundred hours. At least five hundred. We shot the shit out of everything. I figure I spent maybe three hundred thousand dollars in the Gulf War.

You know how long it'd take me to earn three hundred thousand dollars working down to the Super Wash? About seventeen years.

We kicked the Iraqis out of Kuwait, though, sure enough. But I don't know...I think I'd rather have the three hundred thousand dollars. I'd take off these stupid Super Wash coveralls and burn 'em.

posted by greg @ 11:34 PM