My Summer

The Bowels of Vandenberg
I am nothing of the confident sort when addressing skillful matters such as taking words and putting them onto a page in exactly the right order to make any situation a pleasantly amusing form of entertainment. In fact, I believe that if I were to read the following events in a book I would be fully entertained, granted that those events were written and experienced by a third party to which I had no relation. What is the difference, then, between reading these tales of trouble and experiencing those same displeasures first hand? In retrospect, I cannot deem pleasurable in any way my first day working for the Oakland University summer bed crew.
It was indeed another day in Michigan, April twenty-eighth if one wishes to be so precise, and the sun was rising: a glowing orb behind threatening clouds. I woke unaware of the status of the weather however, my ears aching in remorse to the familiar yet aggravating beep of my old watch’s alarm. I slapped my wrist in attempt shut off the piercing sound. No timepiece was needed to tell me it was early in the morning: I felt it in head, my eyes, and my very bones. The time was six twenty-five a.m., if I recall correctly, an hour that had not found me conscious for many months. My head ached in want of sleep and my feet felt heavy, all the more so considering, sadly, that it was the first day of a summer vacation from college.
Summer days, in my opinion, should begin somewhere around three-thirty in the afternoon and last until six in the morning, not vice versa. My summer life was to be wretched; there was no question about it. All of my friends back in Birmingham were undoubtedly enjoying a peaceful slumber at this point in time, only to wake to an afternoon at the lake….but here I was in my dimly lit dorm room atop the one and only East tower of Vandenberg Hall. What is it about there being only one of something that makes it sound so admirable? Nothing, apparently, considering that at Oakland University there is only one bed crew which is something short of admirable and somehow and among the time cards for housing maintenance my name stood as plain as black and white. I stood there too, and though I was a little lighter in color than the ink on my time card, my presence was no less plain…yes, I was part of the four person summer crew of 2004. Me, in my stolen timberland sweatshirt and my blue adidas pants, and on that very morning of the twenty-eight I infiltrated the bowels of Vandenberg.
Now, I suppose, when one begins relating a tale of any sort, they must first introduce the characters; or for those whose presence is less constricting, let the characters introduce themselves. Indeed there were six other student time cards in the rack that morning with black and white names stuck to the front of them, and four of them belonged to the one and only Oakland summer bed and trash crew. Four people among whom there were four distinct personalities that would inevitably clash, collaborate, gossip, all the while learning the tricks and turns of life as it serves them. The months to follow opened new doors to dark and happy places into which one comes to know the other on a level they never thought they would, whether or not it be desired. The fourth member of our crew was one of those who needs rather an introduction, for he consisted of the ‘not’ in the above case: no one had the faintest desire to come to know him beyond three thirty at punch out. He was to retreat to and remain on planet Joe as soon as we were off the clock despite his desperate attempts. He appeared, red eyed and irritable on that dreary Wednesday morning, in his gray sweatpants and Oakland Women’s basketball sweatshirt. He walked with a stiffly erect posture which seemed to hold his chin up in the air and his shoulders back, as if he were walking into the front lines of battle, with the most concentrated and stern look on his face. He swung into the office with his cocky strut and snatched the master keys to the residence halls off and the keys to the truck off the wall, without as much as acknowledging our presence. No, he was far too above us, the lowly trash diggers, he was John Elson, maintenance assistant extraordinaire, and he was not to be crossed. He creased his eyebrows and contorted his sharp face into a grimace. He was a simple creature: he was boy. He had truck. Boy. Truck. End of story.
He emerged from the office some minutes later nodding us in his direction leading us through the depths of the bowels. The further we went, the hall grew darker and I was becoming more aware of a putrid stench that reminded me something of a mix between rancid fat, rotten eggs and the sheer decay of metal and flesh. We entered a wooden door that opened to a rank stairwell on our right which we ascended only to land at the top directly in from of a trash compactor and around the awful machine were piles of trash, in black plastic bags that were filled to near bursting point. John strutted out, forward, shoulders back onto the front lines of trash onto the loading dock…and there he beheld the truck. With a jingle if his many keys he turned to us and tilted his head as if to bark out an order…but the he stopped and scratched the back of his neck and looked around at the trash like he had never seen it before.
“Get in the truck.” He muttered impatiently as he sprung down off the loading dock with a cocky toss of his keys so that they made that jingling sound that was to become too familiar by the end of the summer. Funny I should even refer to the end of anything at this moment in my tale for there seemed to be no end in sight; my then tired eyes could not see beyond that morning of the 28th.
Nate shrugged and we all piled into the cab of a F130 flatbed. The light that we saw by that morning could only be described of as being a dismal gray and moisture leaked sparingly from the heavy sky. A chilling with blew through the trucks window since John insisted on hanging his arm (in an oh-so-manly fashion) out the drivers side. Though it was late April the wind was still biting and it found its way between the buttons of my adidas warm-ups and up my arms arms legs…and my hands felt numb. Not for one moment did John take his eyes off the road nor did he relax the intense grimace that contorted his face. One may have discerned from his concentrated scowled that he had mildly serious aspirations to take over the world. Not John though. His thought process never made it beyond the whole “Boy/Truck” correlation.
“So think maybe one of these days I could drive this truck?” Nate asked, half in attempt to strike up a conversation, half in genuine wonder.
“No.” John shook his head while keeping his eyes fixed on the road. “Never.”
“Why not?” Cindy asked.
“Because you can’t.” John shot a glare to his right. “It’s just—just that---you can’t okay?”
“Well how come YOU can John?” Nate asked, leaning forward to break the line of communication between the boy in his truck.
“I signed an affidavit.” He said loudly as if to make sure it was well understood that he was our superior.
“So could I sign one?” Cindy spoke up.
“No.” John snapped. “Never.” And with that he pulled the truck in front of a large dumpster and opened his door (though the window with the handle on the outside because the inside handle was broken) and hopped out without another word. Not knowing what else to do, and finding it the only thing fitting, we followed his lead as he hopped onto the flatbed and began hurling the trash bags into the dumpster as if he had some personal vendetta against them: three, four at a time.
It is only to be assumed since I lived with Gretchen for eight months straight that I would know her quite well, but assumptions are never very accurate or at least in this case they would not be, since I knew little of my roommate though I had nothing against her, she did not seem to fit my social standard if you will. The girls I called friends were mostly the ones atop the social ladder who had no place to look but down at the rest from their self-made imaginary thrones. And it is also to be assumed, I suppose, that if you live with that same person over a summer you may come to know them even better, which, in this case, the all assumptions may be held true. But my roommate was not on the bed crew, she was stuck with the cleaning crew due to her late application. And there were more of us students, that is, for Atavia and Tia were the names on the remaining time cards both of whom were cleaning ladies as well. The bed crew was an interesting combination of bodies, however the population of the cleaning crew may have proved to be more interesting, alas, this tale is primarily about the workings (and malfunctions) of the summer bed crew of 2004 and our endless search for sleeping places and trash cans, both of which we found quite frequently at times, then very rarely on others. And the first days of work were some of those lean days, when there were no sleeping places to be made use of and no trash cans to interact with…just hard core trash; trash to the likes of which you may never see (this is something to be joyful for my friends). The first work week started on a Wednesday and ended two weeks later, for the trash left by the lovely departing Oakland residence hall students seemed to have serious aspirations of taking over the campus if not the world (unlike our friend John) therefore no weekend break was permitted to us by the mandatory overtime. As the second day wore on we became aware of just how much John loved his truck, in fact it seemed that he never wanted to get out of the divers seat…not even to handle trash. Sometimes he even ventured to play with the breaks while the three of us worker ants piled the wet, bleach soaked trash onto the back in heaps, just so we would miss the truck bed and land our bags on the concrete sidewalk thus bursting them open. Then would have to hand pick the trash and place it onto the truck…and all the while ignoring an amused laugh from the cab. I suppose he thought himself terribly clever.

Atavia’s Loft
“You guys just had to go about it the hard way.” John smiled crookedly at me and Nate as we attempted to lift a heavy metal bed spring and fit it onto the brackets of the disattached headboards.
“Well John, is there another way?” Nate asked irritably. There was something lacking in John's leadership skills, something huge and crucial.
“There’s only one way.” John approached the spring. “Here, lemme do it. Put it down.” He ordered impatiently. He then proceeded to turn the spring on its side and quickly wedging the brackets on the headboards onto the spring. Then he flipped the bed upright to make his masterpiece complete. “Like that.” He said, puffing out his chest. “A lot easier huh?”
“It would’ve been a lot easier if you showed us that sooner.” Nate observed.
“Yeah, well I’ve been around a while.” John sighed importantly. “I just start assuming everyone knows to do this stuff, ya know?” When there was no reply he echoed. “Ya know?”
“I guess.”
John kicked an empty box across the floor. “We need beds in 726 A and B.”
The day seemed to move so slowly. Time between breaks seemed to stretch like an everlasting rubber band and with each turn of the wrench I felt no closer to the end of the summer. The smell of cleaning fluids hung thick in the hallways and rooms since the cleaning crew and bed crew were on the same floor that day. The dull scent of diluted hygienic 900 formula came like a stab with a dull blade to the nose. And if, for some ungodly reason, the smell of cleaning formulas was not enough, there was also a large number of beds missing on that same floor all of which we had to replace.
The anatomy of a college dorm bed, or, more specifically, an Oakland University Residence hall bed, is fundamentally simple: there is a set headboards (some with brackets, some without) a metal spring (the dark brown ones don’t need headboards with brackets) and, of course, a mattress (some are heavier than others, and some need new covers due to urine stains). However, whether one would believe it or not the bed’s anatomy goes far deeper that the obvious, this business of bed building. It goes beyond the spring and headboards and mattress. There are wrenches, nuts, and bolts involved, not to mention the bad bolts, the bent brackets, and the broken headboards. Indeed it goes even deeper than that for everyone is responsible for their own half inch wrench which often seemed to grow legs and run for the hills (not that I blame the poor things) which would force its owner to buy a new one. And there were the other things like turnovers, which occurred when some demented student thought it was a good idea to flip their bed around so the headboards stood on the wrong end elevating the bed just a couple feet higher from the floor. Those same demented students, unfortunately, never think to return the beds to their rightful build, and that’s where the bed crew comes in with their handy half-inch wrenches. Then there are TNBs which, in an ideal world, would mean what it stood for: “tighten nuts and bolts.” It is also unfortunate that this world is far from ideal, and correspondingly, the TNBs were usually far from what their initials represented. TNBs ranged from the occasional “tighten nuts and bolts” (which always gave one rather a flicker of happiness in the heart, however brief) to beds that were so fatally constructed that it involved an operation far more strenuous and tools far more powerful than that of a half inch wrench.
I completed a turnover with a brown spring only to realize after I tightened the nuts down to the last turn that I had the spring upside down, with the metal bars facing upwards. Aggravated by heat and foul smells, I sat upon the floor to undo my work when Victoria, the relatively young Mexican cleaning lady entered and asked if I knew any Spanish. I told her I did and we began speaking to each other in the language previously mentioned. Cindy joined me in the room shortly and began helping me disassemble my mindless construction of bed parts.
It was nearing one-thirty, the time for everyone’s third and final break, when there seemed to be somewhat of an uproar amongst the cleaning ladies; a harsh murmur that seemed to sprint along the corridors. From the wisps of what I’d heard and the tension in the air, I gathered briefly that someone had moved out of the dorms and (tragically) had also neglected to disassembled their loft and remove it from the room. An apologetic note was left stuck to the by the former owner saying something to the effect of “sorry, I live out of state” or some nonsense of the like. Either way it had to be moved, and eventually it was moved but (apparently) not fast enough.
“Vivia en Belice.” I was telling Victoria that I used to in Belize in Spanish when our boss, the one above our beloved John, entered and commented on the slow progression of our work. His name was Fred Mason and he resembled something of a disgruntled turtle. In his right hand he always carried a coffee mug, the kind that are usually silver and have lids. “Where’s John.” He asked in his monotone voice with a look suspecting glance around the room and a tight blink of the eyes.
“He’s in storage.” Cindy spoke up. The thought crossed my mind and a picture developed in my head of a John that could be placed and removed from storage as if he were an old mattress or a desktop. I smiled at the thought. Such a dull job calls for simple amusement.
“The one on this floor?” Fred seemed somewhat displeased.
“I think.”
I finished the bed I had been working on and went to find John myself; for he held the grand list of room assignments which none of us lowly workers were ever allowed to thouch. To my surprise, or should I say to my dismay, there seemed to be a congregation assembled, or rather a committee of irritated cleaning ladies all of a second, third and fourth language, who, despite the language barriers, could communicate clearly that here was a loft obstructing the cleaning process.
After some inspection, I found the loft in question was structurally in tact and quite sturdy not to mention that it was put together by means foreign to those of a half-inch wrench.
“Atavia had mentioned that she wanted a loft.” Cindy was saying to John, who stood against the opposite wall in an angry silence.
“Well where is she?” He spat back quickly. “She needs to get in here and take it if she wants it. I’m not gonna do—.”
“Chill out John we’ll take it down.” Cindy said, referring to the three of us I suppose. “We’ll take it down over the break.”
“Well break’s now.” John looked at the time on his Nextel. “So you better get to work.” With that he disappeared leaving us with half and hour to locate a suitable wrench, and to dismantle a full size sturdy loft.
“First we need a 7/16in wrench.” Cindy examined the loft. “We don’t have one in the tool box?”
“No. I already looked.” Nate shook his head. “I think we might just have to tear it down. Atavia will just have to do without the loft.”
“But she really wanted one.” Cindy argued. “And she doesn’t know how to use a wrench.”
“We don’t even HAVE a wrench.”
“Don’t YELL at me!”
“I wasn’t yelling I—.”
“I know where we can get one.” Cindy motioned impatiently for us to follow her. “At the pool Matt has all kinds of wrenches. I’m sure he’ll let us borrow some if we return them.”
During the school year Cindy had been a head guard at the campus pool. And I was a newly certified lifeguard, and knew little of the dynamics of the pool.
We trekked across campus to the recreation center at a fast clip considering the extent of our exhaustion. Nate and Cindy argued fervently all the way there and back, and I sort of stood on the sidelines and was quietly telling myself that every other summer of my life had gone by fast, so why shouldn’t this one?
The dismantling of the loft was a tense process and tiring, but we finished just in time for break to be over and back to work we went. There seemed to be no end to the struggle. John sat and talked to Fred for some time before joining us at work and sitting down to watch. “God it’s been a long day.” He looked at his phone. “I’m about ready to go back to the room!”
“You just had a break John.” Nate said irritably.
“I know, but it still seems like a long day, ya know?”
“Yeah, I guess.”
At twenty after three, Nate, Cindy, and I hauled the parts of the loft out to the front of Hamlin Hall, because for some reason John didn’t want to go straight to Atavia’s room, because soon we’d all be moving anyway.
“We’ll get it later.” John said. “It’s time to clock out now.”
At around that time every afternoon, the whole maintenance team of Oakland Residence Halls congregated in that small smelly room around the corner from the air-conditioned office. Though that day the sun had appeared for some time, the weather remained chilly and out of my dorm window six stories high I could see the clouds gathering on the northern horizon. Everything seemed dead. The parking lot that had been packed all year was empty, and the sound voices that once babbled below my window had been somehow extinguished: only the soft humming of cars on Walton Blvd. reminded me that other people existed than the Oakland maintenance team. The world was a very lonely place.

The Hamlin Basement
A week had passed since the first day of work and Fred had not told us to move. We had been living out of boxes since the first day, because Fred had told us we would move on his word. His word had a 12 hour deadline, meaning we would have twelve hours to hand over the old key upon receiving the new one. We had to move because summer student at Oakland all live in Hamlin hall so they can be watched over and though not all of us were taking classes over the spring and summer, we had to go regardless.
Meals were interesting for that first week since the cafeteria closed the last day of finals and we had no meal plan (or money for that matter). The maintenance job paid minimum wage, along with a free (double) dorm room. Living lavishly we were not.
But to get back to the topic of meals, I will go as far as to say that they were small and out of the microwave. We all shared food we had and on our lunch breaks we would all eat together in our barren dorm rooms. All but the necessities were packed. Easy-mac and ramin noodles were a delicacy and the only pleasure and entertainment we found was in simple things,that, in an ordinary situation would not be appreciated. And so the first week of meals went by.
“Just drop it there.” John shouted from the cab. “We just got beeped. Gotta run over to Fred’s office.”
It was nearing lunchtime anyway. 11:30 was a glorious time of day. I shot forward to the truck’s cab, examining the calluses that were sprouting across my hands. It reminded me of Belize, when I used to swing on the butterfly tree and thus wreck my hands in a much more pleasurable fashion.
“You know, if we can get this trash in the compactor and see what Fred wants before lunch then maybe we can take a quick nap.” John suggested. “You know, we’ll tell Fred we didn’t get it done yet, so he’ll give us more time…then we can get some sleep.”
“Well thought out John.” Nate muttered, with sarcasm.
“Thank you.” John muttered, with none.
The days seemed to melt together. I no longer spent time worrying about the date or how much money I was accumulating by the hour ($5:15)…I got up when the alarm went off in the morning and went to bed at one in the morning…doing absolutely nothing but reading, writing, be troubling my mind with abstract thoughts on humanity. And the times in between work and intellectual exercises I spent joking around with Cindy, Nate, Atavia and my roommate, Gretchen.
We cooked sometimes elaborate meals up in the kitchen on 5 south, other times we settled for easy-mac and the occasional sunny delight. We made a hobby of avoiding John like the plague after work hours, and the five of us lived for close to two weeks in the
Then almost overnight, there was trouble in Utopia.
To be continued….

My Summer

Tuesday, January 11, 2005

Blind Date

Monday, January 10, 2005

The Bowels of Vandenberg

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