Whan That Aprille

Spring is here now! I declare it! The winter that would not let go has at last slid howling and clawing into the frigid abyss, and warmer air is astir. The crocus shoots in my backyard have a chance. The cherry blossoms will open. And folk will “longen to go on pilgrimages.” Writing is in the air. I’ve been making some progress again on my book. And when one isn’t frozen and miserable, the recycling plant becomes weirdly fun again. (My days there, though, are drawing swiftly to a close. I’m ready to move on — but I’d be lying if I said that I won’t miss it.)

We really made the most of Holy Week. Highlights were:

* special choir ensembles (ad hoc choirs) on Palm Sunday and Easter — I got to sing tenor, and Julie accompanies such choirs on the piano — newly tuned for Easter!

* Maundy Thursday worship

* attending the three-hour Good Friday service at Grace Anglican Church on Mt. Washington — my second year, but done this year at Julie’s suggestion. She got to meet my Anglican brethren there, and vice-versa. (That was my regular church for a good while after moving to Pittsburgh.) In my experience, no one does Good Friday like the Anglicans!

* driving around late on Saturday night looking for a church doing an Easter vigil, and failing to find one — but admiring an empty-but-beautiful Greek Catholic church in the moonlight.

* playing trombone on a couple Easter hymns.

But anyway, now we’re in the season of Easter, aglow with Resurrection light, and I have to tell you about this remarkable day.

I left the house as usual in the pre-dawn darkness, swung by the post office to mail a birthday card (you know who you are, o friend of this blog!), and headed for Neville Island. But even as I started out from the post office, I wondered, “Were my headlights always this dim?” As I entered the Stowe Tunnel, I noticed a red “Service” light on my dashboard, which shouldn’t have been on. Uh-oh.

About the time I came out of the tunnel, all heck was breaking loose. Every light on the dashboard was winking on and off at random. I’d just had a turn signal flasher replaced, so at this point I was thinking, “Okay, the wiring is messed up. The engine seems fine, so I’ll have to take the car in again right away and get to the bottom of this.”

But things got worse and worse as I crossed the bridge onto the island. The headlights cut out. The turn signals wouldn’t work. The speedometer showed I was going zero miles per hour, though I was doing about 35. The gas gauge showed empty, though I knew the tank was half full. In short, no electricity at all was now getting to the dashboard. Then the car started losing power. I was halfway between home and work — too far to walk in either direction.

As the engine quit altogether, I was just able to turn into a parking lot (no power steering) and glide to a neat stop where I was out of the way of the parking spaces and quite visible to tow truck drivers — and off the road. By God’s grace, that was the perfect place for the car to have died. The parking lot belonged to a business where lights were on; through a large front window, I could see a girl in an office starting her day.

Now, here’s the thing: because the plant is a dusty environment that requires maximum freedom of movement, I hardly ever take my wallet or phone out there. Every morning, I stick my driver’s license and my car keys into my pockets, and that’s it. On days when I’m meeting someone (that is, Julie) right after work, yes, I’ll take along my phone and some bus fare, just in case the car won’t start — I do think of these things. But this wasn’t such a day.

So you see what a blessing it was that my car shut down at a place where there was a human presence and a phone! There are long stretches of the drive that have neither. If it hadn’t been perfectly timed — if I hadn’t gone by the post office — things might have been much more inconvenient. So thank you, friend with the birthday! And thanks, God!

I tapped on the window glass, and though the office girl looked uncomfortable at having to deal with this scruffy guy in filthy clothes and a bandana, she allowed me into the vestibule, let me use the phone through a sliding window, and was very helpful in providing her company’s name, address, and phone number for me, so I could call Triple A. Again, I was thankful that I’d stalled out at a business with an actual address — much easier than describing to Triple A the approximate location on some road. She even found the number of my staffing agency so that I could call Frank, my boss. He was very kind and understanding.

So Triple A came, ran a test, and determined that I just needed a new battery (exactly as Frank predicted!). They had one on the truck. It was installed in five minutes. The driver followed me back to my place so I could pay him. That’ll teach me to have my wallet with me! Called Frank again to consult, and he said the bosses out at the plant would very likely let me work today if I just went there and explained — so I did, and all was cool. I started my work day at 8:30 instead of 7:00.

One other nice thing — because I’d come in late, another, new temp was manning my usual place. Daniel, the acting line leader today, had me come over and take the counterpart spot on Belt 21, which I’d never worked before. We worked about an hour until the morning’s first break. At that break, the awesome line boss Dan motioned me into the office and asked me why I wasn’t at my usual spot. I filled him in. He immediately got Spider’s okay for me to get back to Belt 19 where I belonged. He said too much junk was getting through without me there. Well, he didn’t say “junk.” He said “blue sh**,” which refers to the predominant color of the plastic bags in the comingle. So that was encouraging. My absence on Belt 19 makes a difference!

I really like the guy working across from me now. There’ll never be another Ralph, but this guy is funny and has great common sense, and we work well together. We’re each grabbing a lot, but we both know how to check ourselves. (You’d be amazed at how many guys just don’t get this principle!) What’s important is that one guy or the other should apprehend a given piece of non-paper. If one guy has it or is going to get it, the other guy should go for something else. There’s more than enough for both. Ralph and I did this well. And this new guy is the first one since Ralph who is also doing it. Yay!

He cracked me up today when, during a rare, slower moment, when we were exhausted from the company’s corporate greed, he exclaimed, “Aw, f*** it!” and “threw” himself onto the belt as if driven over the edge and deciding to end it all. I rescued his hard hat, which was on its way toward the falls. He actually rode the belt for a few feet. I’m sure he broke quite a few safety regulations, but he was in no danger, and it was funny.

And finally, I had another brush with dramatic danger. In the late afternoon, there came a slammity-bangity-bang-clanggg, and a giant, shiny metal blade whirled toward me and ended up just in front of me, as if presenting itself and wanting to be thanked for sparing my life. I lifted the thing off the belt and measured its size. With one end on the floor, it came up to my waist — that was the length. The width was the same as from the heel of my hand to my fingertips. One of my co-workers asked, “What’s that?!” and another said, “That could take someone’s head off!” One edge was sharpened. The whole thing was shiny, and someone had written “Giant Eagle” on it, which is the name of a major supermarket chain out here. So I was narrowly spared today from the sword of Giant Eagle.

I was narrowly spared from many things. As we all are, every day.

Thanks be to our risen Lord! Thanks, Lord, for spring!

 

7 Responses to Whan That Aprille

  1. Jedibabe says:

    Sounds like your Easter week was much more memorable than mine! Glad everything worked out well. I’m sure I can speak for most of us here when I tell you how happy we all are for the update.

  2. jhagman says:

    Sounds to me like it was a voltage regulator problem, or maybe a short in your electrical system, or,,,it is time for a new alternator,,a new battery? That does not sound right. There must be some gear heads on this blog that know more about cars.

    • spamman says:

      I know a little about cars but am not an expert either, but I agree with jhagman. I think it might be the alternator. You might want to get it checked.

      • fsdthreshold says:

        The new battery seems to have solved the problem. The car has been behaving just fine since installing it. The AAA guy explained that a bad battery can confuse the alternator. But thanks, jhagman and spamman, for thinking about the problem!

        • jhagman says:

          Confuse an alternator? My battery started to go bad on my Scion XB, it caused my starter to drag- went to Pep Boys , no problem, but all those electrical failures on your car are an absolute trip.

  3. Morwenna says:

    That sounds like a lovely Holy Week!

    As for the adventures with the car and the metal blade, thank heavens your guardian angel was close by. To continue the theme of your post’s title, we’ll call those stories “The Line Worker’s Tale.”

    • fsdthreshold says:

      “The Line Worker’s Tale” — I like that! 🙂 “A lyne-worker there was in our companye, and he a goode and hardye fellowe was, bedeckt in a hardde hatte . . .”

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