Speaking of mosquitos, in the early 70's I worked for a bunch of high-tech machinists building exotic lumber mill machinery up in Portland. (Harry, one of the owners: "You know why you wanna be a machinist? Because they swear the best ~ they have the dirtiest mouths of any trade.") They were inspirational ~ the energy and professional skill and can-do tough-guy rowdy mix, in the highest contrast I've ever seen it. Laser alignments, micrometers, fifty-ton overhead cranes and empties filling up the trunk. Lots of WW II vets, car restorers, "historians", virile engineers and kookle-burry characters. We were a bunch of young smarty-pants at our end of the timeline. Very heads-up, dangerous, intelligence-required environment. Jack, the other owner, had me in his office for a minute of sit and told me he'd been "doing this for fifty years, Paul, because it's a shit-or-get-off-the-pot kinda job." Most of them were Navy people in combat in the South Pacific; talk of running aft through explosions and finding out the back half of the destroyer "gone".
Monday morning Marvin comes up to us, hungover and bitchy, and starts telling us about his weekend out working on drag racing machines. Marvin's a big fat gross mechanical assembly genius and truly bawdy raconteur with no front teeth. Proud of it. He bends his head a lot; for which to bare his gums at you and make gnawing noises. His way of commenting. "We were out by the Meadowlands....." [the Columbia and it's sloughs].
"Hot, and they won't let us goddam drink. And mosquitoes! Mosquitos out there big enough to stand flat-footed and **** a turkey."
Arr Rar rar Gnaw gnaw gnaw. |
