11 Miles to Glory--- Rolling with the Night Shift

January 6, 2006

Got my laptop battery charger back working. Once Circuit City said they’d be sending me a new one free of charge it gave me free reign to do what I wanted to this one. It’s amazing how if you beat on something long enough you can get it to do what you want. This also proves true for cell phones, kids, video game systems, boyfriends / girlfriends and old televisions.
Every city has a way of letting you know when you’re getting close. Every town has it’s own unique characteristics. When you get about 15-20 miles outside of New Orleans the freeway is chocked full of potholes.

When you get just outside of Jacksonville, FL you can smell the city through your air vents. The stench alone is enough to make you want to U-turn and go back to Tallahassee.

My friends who live there say that the smell is from some water treatment facility and “Depending on the temperature and the direction of the wind” you’ll smell it sometimes.

 As you get closer to Memphis, TN you start to notice that everyone in cars passing you has gold teeth, even the white truck drivers.  Well as you approach Los Angeles one thing changes…The traffic. I can drive 15 hours straight no problems, but sitting in traffic for 3 hours will drive me crazy.

And if that’s not bad enough, the city of L.A. has posted signs to let you know just how much longer you have to wait. These signs should be used only to notify you of approaching lane closures. I don’t need a sign that TOTALLY demoralizes me every day on my morning commute.
”DOWNTOWN L.A. 55 Minutes”  one sign read.

Why would you do that to someone’s psyche. If they aren’t under 30 minutes from arriving then don’t tell them.  PERIOD.

I don’t think my landlord’s assistant likes me anymore.

I get to the rental office at 5:15.  They close at 5:30. They were expecting me at 2  so when I arrived the lady was starting to shut down the office. I explained to her the two hour delay I had in New Mexico trying to re-strap my car to the trailer along with L.A. traffic compounding my time table.

“YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO BE HERE AT 2!!  I’VE ALREADY SHUT DOWN THE COMPUTERS. YOU’LL HAVE TO COME BACK IN THE MORNING”

 Translation…

 ‘I’M A LAZY ASS EMPLOYEE THAT’S READY TO GO HOME SO I’LL MAKE UP ANY REASON TO NOT GIVE YOU THE KEYS TO YOUR APARTMENT”

National Lampoon’s Vacation w/ Chevy Chase is one of the funniest movies I’ve ever seen. The  gist of the movie. A man and his family travel 3 days across country to go to an amusement park.

When they arrive, the park is closed for the season. Chevy Chase is so pissed at driving all that way for nothing that he pulls a gun on a park employee and demands that he open the park for just him and his family.

Today I can finally relate to that level of frustration.

I don’t have a gun.  But I do have a 24-Foot truck that has the lady blocked in. She eventually calls her boss to get it “ok’d” but by now it’s late and I don’t know if illegal workers do night shift.

Migrant workers in Los Angeles are much more “motivated” than the ones in Birmingham. Here in Los Angeles they chill at the U-Haul facility and wait for you to pull up. They then run up to your car like a prostitute.

 It’s much more convenient than hiding behind a gas station.

Also I didn’t have to think of a clever non-racial way of asking for their help. They offered it to me. So off I ride  with 4 workers.

 

Now in this picture you’ll only see two… the other two are riding in the back with my stuff. I’m pretty sure on some level that’s not safe, and probably illegal or something but hey, I’m a desperate man.  Didn't want to spook them out by using the flash so the pic is a little crappy.

What was odd was that they spoke MINIMAL English yet the knew the words to ‘Grillz’ by Nelly and ‘Irreplacable’ by Beyonce when they came on the radio. The night shift workers wanted $15 an hour but I got them to agree to $20 flat rate.

I knew it would take an hour but not two hours so I figured I saved myself $10 per worker.

With it being night time I was a little more leery about my own security. So before showing them where I lived I opted to take them to get something to eat. I was going to use this time to feel them out.

 

They asked me to take them to some spot that served pork tacos (* which just sounds nasty to me *) Personally I don’t think pork is supposed to go on a taco. If it was, black people would’ve already thought of it. 

They loved it and gobbled them down like it was Red Lobster.

 I opted for the fish taco which was just as disgusting (* It's right up there with Meatloaf from the Cheesecake Factory*)  but over the meal I was able to see that these guys were pretty average, just trying to make some money.

One of them saw my Cubs hat and said... 

"Los Cubbies es muy mal.  Yankees man!"

 He went on to say in some Spanish garble talking about the players the Cubs acquired in the off season. The fact that he keeps up with baseball enough to know that the Cubs suck was good enough for me. Plus one of them told me that with his money he was going to get himself a prostitute.

“Yo tengo denero. Yo me gusta mucho poooouuuuussssiiiiiiiiiiiii”

 crude translation...

"I have money. Now I want me a lot of coochie"

I have to type it like that because that’s how he said it. He didn’t say p----y  he said  POOOOOUUUUUUSSSSSSIIIIIIIIIIII. Apparently when you drag out the word it means that it’s extra good coochie. I don’t know. But that’s all he talked about the whole night. Any man with sex on his mind isn’t interested in stealing my DVDs.

I'm not quite sure how much "pooooouuuuuuuussssssiiiiiiii" he thinks $20 is going to get him but hey, this is L.A. maybe he knows something I don't know about the "poooooouuusssssiiiiiiiii" market.

Uh oh, Laptop charger quit working again.. let me go beat on it.

Seacrest Out.

Wood, Jr.