catfish 21

 I was indeed holding back not so much for feedback on Catfish but for feedback on anything.  Like I've said before, it's not much fun writing if you don't know if anybody is reading, and I feel like if I do all the writing then I am doing all the digging and the dawgs are just standing around leaning on their shovels. 

I wrote Catfish around 1995 about things that took place in 1975.  What I wrote about the union hall is what I remember being told by the guys who went out to the big job.  What they actually did there, I don't remember my asking or their telling.  I don't know if they dug ditches or not, but as Beagles points out it is sort of a metaphor for hard physical labor.  I remember the trope about if you don't study hard you will end up digging ditches, and I remember Mom telling about how when Dad first got out of school it was the depression and the only work he could get was digging ditches.

I will watch movies that maybe aren't all that good if they are set in Chicago, just to see the Chicago scenes.  Stuff I pass by everyday and pay no mind to suddenly becomes exciting when I am seeing it on the silver screen.  (Another odd thing is actors you see all the time on tv or in movies, when you see them in person, it is a big deal.)  When I was watching The Fugitive I spent so much time figuring out where they were shooting that I lost track of the plot.

Another thing they do in movies is mix up all the places to suit the plot.  You often see things like cops driving east on State Street to where it intersects with Western, and you snort derisively because you know better, but if it's a good enough movie you don't tear up your ticket and stomp out.  I ask equal forbearance for Catfish.

That twig looks interesting enough to get up in the morning and see how it is doing.  Can a twig replicate a tree?  There is that grafting thing and different plants reproduce in different ways?  Should you add a little syrup to replicate sap?  I certainly don't know.  This is something for the gentleman scientist.  If Old Dog hadn't noticed where it came from we don't even know what kind of tree it might become.  Another interesting revelation for the gentleman.  I am hoping also that the pasta project will continue.

Nothing on Guiliani?  Well I know you guys don't follow politics like others follow sports.  But of course that is last week's news, eclipsed by Joan of Arc (Liz) on the edge of defeat by the mobsters who currently call themselves republicans.

And now some Catfish,

 

 

Riding out to the big job in the second week, I guess I was looking particularly glum which Ted noticed.  “Having a tough time out there?” he asked. 

“Shit yeah,” I said, “I’ve been digging at the same trench all week, all fucking week.” 

Ted kind of laughed, made me want to smack him if my arm wasn’t so sore. 

“It’ll get better,” he said, “Everybody starts out digging holes, I told you that.  This week they will have picked up a new crew, and they will be digging and not you.” 

“What will I be doing then?” I asked. 

“Not digging,” he said, and that was good enough for me. 

But about six-thirty that morning, just as it was beginning to heat up I was standing in front of that same damned trench.  The good news was that there only like fifty more feet of it to go, the bad news was that there was another future trench twenty feet in front of it and just exactly the same size, and hadn’t yet seen a shovel.  And bad news too was the way Budweiser had pointed it out, “When you get done here” he had said, “you can start over there.” 

Didn’t like the sound of that, not at all. But then I remembered what Ted had said earlier and I remembered how on that first day after getting picked and sorted and all I hadn’t gotten to the trench until eight so that’s probably what was going on, they were waiting for the new guys to show up and then somebody else would be digging my ditch.  So I started in with pretty good spirits, and with having that weekend rest, and knowing that this would probably be my last couple hours on the job, I was going at a pretty good clip.  Even made a race out of it, see if I could get to the end of the ditch before Budwieser brought the new guy over. 

Well I won that race, won it damn easily.  Didn’t have a watch or anything like that, but it seemed like I was done just before the new guy would be brought over.  So I took a rest.  First rest I ever took on the Big Job.  Oh early the week before I had spent some time leaning on my shovel, but that was because I just plain couldn’t move until I rested a bit.  Once I got some strength in my arms I shoved that shovel back into the dirt.  

Felt like I’d earned it.  Hadn’t I dug this whole damn thing?  I walked the whole length of it, from where I’d started so long ago to the end.  It was a thing of beauty. 

No it wasn’t it was a hole in the fucking ground for Chrissake, what was I thinking?  Still I walked up and down it a couple times more, and still no Budweiser and no new guy.    

Damn I really didn’t want to start on that second trench, but finally I did.  Budwieser came around about noon.  “One down and one to go huh, Island Girl?”  I knew I was going to be Island Girl as long as I was on the Big Job, half suspected that the main reason Budweiser kept picking me. 

“Another one to go?” I asked, but it came out like kind of a whine.  “Shouldn’t a new guy be doing this?” 

“What new guy?” Budweiser wanted to know. 

 “Well from the new bunch, you know, I just heard that…” and I kind of trailed off, this wasn’t going well.

 “You heard what?”

 “Look, I’m sorry.  It’s just that I was riding out here this morning and Ted said-“

 “Who the fuck is Ted?”

 “Just a friend of mine.”

 “Oh a friend?  You have a friend out here, a hula buddy maybe, and I guess he runs this job, some kind of big shot I guess.  I guess that makes you some kind of big shot yourself, is that right?”

 “No, no, not at all.”

 “So you’re not a big shot?” 

 “No.”

 “You sure?”

 “Yes.”

 “See I kind of thought you were, the way you standing around there leaning on your shovel when I came by a couple hours ago and saw you leaning on your shovel at the end of that first trench.  Didn’t want to come and disturb your daydreaming, afraid you’d have my job for that, but I guess I don’t have to worry about that now, do I?”

 I didn’t say anything.

 “Tell you what Hula Girl, I think these trenches need to be a foot deeper, so why don’t you get started on that right now.” 

Riding back I told the story.  Budwieser didn’t mean anything to Ted or the guys in the backseat, “What does he look like?” Ted wanted to know.

 “Big guy, pretty bald.”

 “Shit that could be anybody.”

 “Red hair, what’s left of it, around the edges.”

 “Big mole right by his nose?”

 “Yeah.”

 “Shit,” Ted said, “That’s Big Red.”

 “He’s crazy,” someone in the backseat said.

 “You’re fucked,” said someone else in the backseat. 

And I was.  He came by like every half hour and there was always something wrong, the trench , not deep enough, not straight enough, the dirt piled up on either side was not neat enough.  I’d flop into whatever couch was closest and my dreams were always about Big Red.