Blood letting and boiler vats
So I wanted to take a trip and decided I'd need around $300 to go in style. This was a number of years ago, back when I had maybe five bucks to my name. I wanted to take the trip, had no money, and figured I'd go down to Lexington, Kentucky, and work day labor for a week. My brother Josh was there, staying in an apartment with some college buddies of his, and I got squatter's rights. I hopped in my '86 Ford Escort, broken windshield, battery died long ago and replaced by a truck battery that was way too big and had to be covered with cardboard so it wouldn't spark off the hood - the hood tied down with bungy cords. Already I was going in-style.
The first night there we all gathered in the living room with the idea of getting completely wasted, a small handful of college drop-outs, kicked-out, just-out - all equally broke. Someone had the idea that if we mixed NyQuil with the little Kahlua we had, there'd be enough to go around. There was, but the one bathroom wasn't enough to hold this handful of deathly-ill morons. If any of us made it out of there with last week's lunch still in our system, I have no idea how.
So I was already not-in-the-best-of-conditions when I showed up at 3 AM at the day labor office looking for a job. I heard somewhere that you had to show up this early if you wanted a job because they went quick. This is true. I don't know if it's for the work, but a lot of homeless people hang out there just hoping for something. I had something the other desperates didn't have. I was riding in style. I had a car. Car = transport to job site. They give the car people the best jobs because they can take the truly down-and-out along with them.
I landed a recurring job working 12-hour shifts building scaffolding inside a boiler vat at the Kentucky Power plant.
For two days I worked those shifts. It was at least 10-stories of scaffolding fed through a tiny access panel at the base of the boiler vat. Every pole, plank, hinge, and bolt that made up that 10-story structure passed through that panel, and passed through my own hands as I was stationed on the very outside. I actually liked the work. I felt like I was doing something constructive, building the pyramids or something, though they were just trying to clean the thing. I was on target for my travel funds goal.
Moral of the story: Perseverance pays.
I was supposed to show up on the third day, but by the third day I was beat. On the night of the second day I took a little of my hard earned cash and bought Taco Bell for Josh and myself. One of us came up with the idea of just blowing all the money I had already made on the lottery. It was at least a hundred bucks. We figured, that must bring in something - you know, laws of statistics aside. I had my feel of scaffolds, so yeah, screw it.
Over one-hundred scratch-offs netted like $50 bucks. Twenty-four hours of hard labor and I'm down at least fifty.
College drop-outs, kicked-out, or just-out are a resourceful group of people. If you ever want to know how to turn a buck, give a buck to a college kid and ask them how. Again, while toxicating my body with what might as well have been crude oil, someone suggested I go down to the plasma center and see what I could get for my blood. Well, I'll try anything once, so that I did.
Turns out, for my height and body-type, they pay $70 a pop for blood letting. They strap you to a chair and let you read books or watch movies while that little stream of life-giving red stuff is slowly replaced by saline over the length of an hour or so. I told myself I'm doing good, helping give plasma to some poor guy in a traffic accident. Really, I just wanted to see what happened in the next chapter of the book I was reading and never wanted to see a scaffold again. I left Lexington with well over two-hundred bucks and nine chapters down.
Moral of the story: The man wants your blood before he comes off the cash. There's nothing you can do about that. Cut out the middlemen and just let the blood flow.
The first night there we all gathered in the living room with the idea of getting completely wasted, a small handful of college drop-outs, kicked-out, just-out - all equally broke. Someone had the idea that if we mixed NyQuil with the little Kahlua we had, there'd be enough to go around. There was, but the one bathroom wasn't enough to hold this handful of deathly-ill morons. If any of us made it out of there with last week's lunch still in our system, I have no idea how.
So I was already not-in-the-best-of-conditions when I showed up at 3 AM at the day labor office looking for a job. I heard somewhere that you had to show up this early if you wanted a job because they went quick. This is true. I don't know if it's for the work, but a lot of homeless people hang out there just hoping for something. I had something the other desperates didn't have. I was riding in style. I had a car. Car = transport to job site. They give the car people the best jobs because they can take the truly down-and-out along with them.
I landed a recurring job working 12-hour shifts building scaffolding inside a boiler vat at the Kentucky Power plant.
For two days I worked those shifts. It was at least 10-stories of scaffolding fed through a tiny access panel at the base of the boiler vat. Every pole, plank, hinge, and bolt that made up that 10-story structure passed through that panel, and passed through my own hands as I was stationed on the very outside. I actually liked the work. I felt like I was doing something constructive, building the pyramids or something, though they were just trying to clean the thing. I was on target for my travel funds goal.
Moral of the story: Perseverance pays.
I was supposed to show up on the third day, but by the third day I was beat. On the night of the second day I took a little of my hard earned cash and bought Taco Bell for Josh and myself. One of us came up with the idea of just blowing all the money I had already made on the lottery. It was at least a hundred bucks. We figured, that must bring in something - you know, laws of statistics aside. I had my feel of scaffolds, so yeah, screw it.
Over one-hundred scratch-offs netted like $50 bucks. Twenty-four hours of hard labor and I'm down at least fifty.
College drop-outs, kicked-out, or just-out are a resourceful group of people. If you ever want to know how to turn a buck, give a buck to a college kid and ask them how. Again, while toxicating my body with what might as well have been crude oil, someone suggested I go down to the plasma center and see what I could get for my blood. Well, I'll try anything once, so that I did.
Turns out, for my height and body-type, they pay $70 a pop for blood letting. They strap you to a chair and let you read books or watch movies while that little stream of life-giving red stuff is slowly replaced by saline over the length of an hour or so. I told myself I'm doing good, helping give plasma to some poor guy in a traffic accident. Really, I just wanted to see what happened in the next chapter of the book I was reading and never wanted to see a scaffold again. I left Lexington with well over two-hundred bucks and nine chapters down.
Moral of the story: The man wants your blood before he comes off the cash. There's nothing you can do about that. Cut out the middlemen and just let the blood flow.
posted by Jeremy at
2:32 PM
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