Fire at Greenstar

We had a fire at Greenstar today! No one was injured. It happened while we were eating lunch, so pretty much everyone was already out of the building, sitting in the concrete “yard” between the plant and the office trailer, mostly huddled in the strip of shade made by an overhead belt for transporting garbage (I prefer the sun — I sit there like a lizard with my sleeves rolled up, one steel-toed shoe crossed over the other, absorbing all the summer I can get). We started hearing voices yelling over on the commercial side (we work on the residential side), and then guys came out hollering for Spider, the foreman. Mo bellowed, “THE MACHINE IS ON FIRE!” Spider dashed over there to deal with it.

[Please pardon the edited-but-included colorful language in this post. You cannot fully appreciate the story without it.]

Smoke started pouring out of the building, and we could smell it. Punkin is my line boss, and Dan is the boss of the other paper line. Punkin said, “That’s the commercial side. That ain’t my problem,” and he cackled. Someone kept calling to Dan (“Dan! It’s a fire! Dan! The machine’s on fire!”), and finally he spread his arms and yelled back in his stentorian voice, “What do you want me to do? I ain’t no mother******g fireman. I ain’t gonna crawl up inside that sh**. I am a N*ggro. We don’t roll like that!”

Howard, ever the lucid doomsayer, waxed eloquent on how that right there was thousands of dollars worth of damage, because those machines aren’t designed for direct heat, and how if that cardboard and that plastic caught fire, it would burn for days, and how someone would have to stand right beside that machine and monitor it through the next shift, even if the fire seemed to be out, because there could be fire in there anywhere. Someone said, “I told them rats about barbecuing at lunchtime!”

Perhaps we should have taken it as an ominous sign that, from morning, there was a very large dead rat under the stairs leading up into the trailer. Everyone kept calling everyone else’s attention to it. Spider said, “It must have expired from being around y’all.” Finally Ron threw it into a trash bin with a shovel. May its little rat soul rest in peace.

As we watched the show, some of the guys were talking about their resumes, and how if you did any kind of work in prison, that looks good on your resume: “You was a cook there? You cook twelve hundred eggs, fourteen hundred pieces o’ bacon, an’ all that sh** has to be ready on time — you think that ain’t experience? You put that on there!” Someone asked if we had any fire extinguishers at Greenstar. Ron, a full-timer, shook his head and said, “Not a one.” (I think he was kidding.) Someone said, “We gotta get buckets o’ water from over there.” Someone else chimed in: “Like a birGADE!” No one got up, except most of the guys went over to peer in through the open doorway into the commercial side. Ralph and I stayed put, taking it all in. I kept soaking up sun, glad that the UV rays were saturating my inner gloves a little, which were spread out on the concrete block behind me. Someone said you could hardly see in there for all the smoke.

Finally Spider came back out, looking sooty (the smoke was getting much worse — darker and thicker, and the smell was stronger) and urgently said, “All you temps sign out. You gotta go home.” Someone said, “We gonna get six hours?” Spider said, “No.” He was more abrupt than usual. James accused me of working too hard and setting the belt on fire.

So we left at about 12:30. We dispersed, with ominous smoke rising in our rearview mirrors.

I would imagine it will be business as usual tomorrow, but you never know. At Greenstar, you never know. As I’m writing this tonight, it’s thundering and raining, so if the plant is out there on Neville Island burning, maybe this will help.

So I took James home to Emsworth (James is my faithful paying passenger), and two other guys rode with me all the way down to the Eat’n’Park in the Rocks, where they catch a bus. They talked nonstop, both on their cell phones and to each other, about their (former?) days of selling drugs. I could tell that much, but it really is a foreign language. Someone only “does purple,” and one guy “had to pull a flooey twice” in his career — I gathered that it’s some kind of weapon. Sounds like there’s a lot better money to be made that way than in just about any other line of work, except sometimes you have to go to prison. One guy was seeing his parole officer later today, but as long as he hands over pay stubs and clean urine, the dude is cool. He doesn’t show up at my man’s crib anymore at 5:00 a.m. to check up on him.

I hope you’re all having an interesting week. I sure am!

 

28 Responses to Fire at Greenstar

  1. fsdthreshold says:

    It’s funny: the new temps at Greenstar almost invariably mistake me for a full-timer or boss of some kind, even though I don’t wear the Greenstar uniform. I think it’s because I look so supremely comfortable there. Heh, heh!

  2. Hagiograph says:

    Fred, if I may “critique” here (as you clearly have insufficient editorial input). You just described a (potentially) major event at a recycling center staffed largely by former inmates and you could only muster one “mother******g” and two “sh***”s. Something tells me you have shorted us about 457 +/- 5 “mother***k”[-ing, -er]s and not less than 873 +/- 8 “sh**”s.

    When discussing resumes with former inmates do you chime in with “Oh you think that was tough! Try teaching english to Japanese students! One pulled a shiv on me once and I had to ****** that mother********* up lickety split! I tell you that! Mother****er won’t be shivvin’ no english teachers again! And what about preachin’ the gospel by playing trombone! You know what motherf***in’ St. F***in’ Francis says: ‘preach the gospel at all times and when necessary use words’. Word. Man that’s some hardcore sh** there. But when it comes to hardcore motherf***ers there’s none better than St. Ignatious Loyalo and the ‘ac cadaver’. Here at motherf***in’ Greenstar you gotta be ‘ac cadaver’. Word.”

    And then quietly go back to your sandwich.

    Oh yeah, get your lungs checked now. You have no idea what has been set ablaze in a waste material fire.

    Something tells me some of your car-mates may have breathed in worse, but you never know.

    • Scott says:

      Nice Hagiograph, but now you’ve got me thinking. Is Fred the Lone Ranger at Greenstar? Or is there other highly educated unemployed workers there just walking the walk and talking the talk trying to fit in?

      Imagined conversation:
      Fred: I like that rat over there, I think I’ll name that one Frodo.

      Co-worker: Word Bro! But that rat looks more like a mf Pippin. Now that mf rat over there, that be a mf Frodo!

  3. Hagiograph says:

    (Oh yeah, make sure to say “Loyalo” so you don’t look like too much of an “egghead” by saying “Loyola”. You gotta keep your street cred somehow.

  4. Morwenna says:

    Oh, dear. RIP to the rat.

    It seems that the rats’ hush-hush science project has literally gone up in flames. I knew it was a mistake to let them keep that chemistry set they discovered in the garbage.

    • fsdthreshold says:

      That’s right! We thought that chemistry set would be educational for them, but you know how rats get when science is involved. In retrospect, I think we went wrong when we hooked up that Bunsen burner for them.

  5. Fred: I must say that I am entirely in agreement with Hagio in regards the volume and intensity of the colorful expletives and varied adjectives, adverbs and interestingly constructed participial phrases (to say nothing of the uniquely conjoined indirect objects) that are doubtless missing from your recounting of the whole affair.
    However, as they say in my line of work: when you are the editor, you edit!

  6. fsdthreshold says:

    In case anyone is worried: it was business as usual today. The only shift canceled was the one right after ours yesterday. Today everything ran smoothly.

    No, Hagio and Mr. B., I think I’m reporting the speech at work pretty accurately. Granted, I didn’t include everything everyone said, but I think I got down the interesting parts of the conversations that I heard.

    It amuses me how the “mf” word is so universal and useful to the guys. It’s generally jovial and friendly — you can call a guy a “mf” to his face, and he’ll grin back at you. It’s the pronoun for everything — a broom, a cat, a rat, a forklift, the sandwich you’re eating. The pronouns “he” and “it” and “that” each have one syllable; “that mf” has five. I don’t know why guys choose the five!

  7. fsdthreshold says:

    Scott, you were wondering if I were the “Lone Ranger.” Remember, I did meet one guy who worked as a temp there who had been in the Coast Guard. We were comparing the “seasickness” induced by a moving belt to what he experienced with a rolling deck on the high seas.

    Anyway, on a more serious note: our friend Daylily was in a terrible bicycle accident. She’s okay and on the mend, but she is in intensive care in the hospital. She is walking again, though, as of today, and eating solid food. A car pulled out right in front of her, and she hit her brakes and flipped over the handlebars and had a seven-point landing on hard pavement. She has some broken ribs, broken hand bones, severe abrasions to the face, a bruised liver . . . you get the picture. But she is in good spirits, and it seems every injury she has is something that will eventually heal, so thanks be to God! If anyone wants to send her a physical get-well card, and if you know my address, you can send it to me and I will forward it to her. Prayers are appreciated, too! (She doesn’t have a computer in the hospital, so she won’t see any e-greetings for awhile–though she will eventually.)

        • Morwenna says:

          Snowflake, I’m looking forward to Mass tomorrow.

          By the way, it is great to see (on my Catholic calendar) that August 14th honors Saint Maximilian Mary Kolbe. I have so many favorite saints, and he is one of them.

          • An excellent observation and a saint certainly worthy (but they all are, right?) of admiration …
            Many of the Hispanics in our parish are looking forward to the 23rd, when St. Rose of Lima is honored. Her story is a great one and she is widely venerated by many of the latina women here.

          • Hagiograph says:

            Wow! HOpefully Daylilly will be back on the bike again and quickly! Yikes!

            As for saints my faves are “Christina the Astonishing” and Simeon Stylites. If being bat**** insane or a massive masochist aren’t worthy of veneration I don’t know what is!

            I once hopped a train to Liege just to say I’d been to Liege in honor of St. Christina Mirabilis!

            And my “icon” on the blog is dedicated to one of my favorite attributions to my saintly namesake: St. Christopher. According to one version of St. Christopher’s story he was so attractive to women that he was constantly being tempted by them to do unsaintly things so he prayed to God to give him the head of a dog so as to not be so attractive and tempted all the time. And ironically THAT IS THE STORY OF MY LIFE! (the other verison of why St. Christopher is depicted as having the head of a dog is because he was supposedly from a race of dog-heads in Egypt but that’s just ridiculous!)

    • Shieldmaiden says:

      Dear Daylily, may your recovery be quick. Sending love and well wishes your way. My thoughts and prayers are with you as you are healing.

        • Shieldmaiden says:

          I am here Mister Brown. I have a little catching up to do for the summer posts and comments, but I am enjoying the archival reading. I drifted away right after the Star Shard weeks, probably because I quit getting the notices, but now, thanks to the webmaster, I’m getting them again. It’s great to see you all again!

  8. Marquee Movies says:

    Goodness, that’s alarming to hear about Daylily. Prayers and good thoughts go out to her. My prescription is to gather up all the most comforting movies you own, Daylily, line them up, and watch them one after another as you recover. Movies that make you feel good help speed recovery by at least 23%, I’ve heard! Drop in when you can – Fred always keeps the door open!

    • Hagiograph says:

      I once had voluntary surgery requiring a couple days of bed rest. Mrs. H. tricked me out with a nice meal from my favorite italian restaurant and the next two days I watched “Plan 9 from Outer Space” (because I’d never watched it all the way through) and various other weird films I’d always heard about but never took the time to watch. And of course lots of fun pain meds to help me come up with movies of my own!

  9. Daylily says:

    Thanks, all, for your prayers and concern! Much appreciated and certainly a factor in quick release from ICU.

    Typing lh only. On 8/11/12, my bicycle wheel fell into a pothole (revised story) and I flew over the handlebars, landing full length. Lots of abrasions, half of face was bruised and skinned, at least 3 broken ribs, two broken fingers (rh), bruised liver, cut on spleen (can’t lift more than five pounds for a month), collapsed right lung (needed chest tube). Ironically, the ride was a fundraiser for Day Kimball Hospital and that’s where I was taken first. And the bike appears to be fine. The helmet did its job and I have no brain damage, though I lost consciousness and have no memory of the accident. Also have no back, neck, or wrist injuries. So I try to be grateful. Certainly lessens my enthusiasm for riding roads; trails are safer.

    Day Kimball sent me to the ICU of UMass Memorial in Worcester. They got my lung reinflated and liver function numbers to the right place. I went home on Tuesday.

    Please pray for my surgery on Mon.; putting pins into the finger bones that don’t want to stay in place (2nd and 3rd fingers in the palm area).

    No biking or other vigorous exercise allowed for awhile, just walking. Not even swimming, and it’s summer! But hey, considering the various severe lifelong consequences I could have been stuck with, I’d say my guardian angel did well. I should recover completely with time. And each day my face looks more familiar and less like a science experiment. 🙂

    • Daylily says:

      Thanks for prayers! Hand surgery today was uneventful. I got to have the less invasive surgery. Pins are inserted thru skin into joints of second and third fingers, in the palm area. No incision. Will have pins removed in four to six weeks. Please pray for patience and good healing.

      The plot thickens. Sister-in-law (cycling enthusiast) pointed out that a pothole usually means a bent wheel or worse to the bicycle. The bike is just fine. It may be that the original story, that someone pulled out in front of me and I slammed on the brakes, is the true story. I still don’t remember and may never do so.

  10. fsdthreshold says:

    Glad you got the cards okay, Daylily! Continued prayers for your healing! I hope things are getting easier and that everything is hurting less.

    It’s been a smooth week at work. I had to get a new safety vest, because my old one wasn’t fully in compliance with the safety codes. The new one is “tear-away” — that is, it fastens at the shoulders and in the front with Velcro, so if any part of the vest is pulled hard enough, it will tear off me.

    That’s about all the news so far.

    • Daylily says:

      Sounds like the tear-away clothes that rock stars wear. When you become a famous author, perhaps you will need more stylish versions of these safety vests to wear in the presence of the screaming throngs of fans! I can see it now, the mobs at B & N, Fred wearing three extra tweed tear-away vests . . .

      • Buurenaar says:

        What are you saying, Daylily? Our Mr. Durbin already is a right famous author in his own right. At least, I think it feels that way to us. Also, I am glad you’re doing so much better. I wish I hadn’t been moving and could have kept up with you guys more. If any of you are down in South Carolina some time, I’ve got a rocking lembas bread recipe…and a new duplex to cook it in.

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