The Scab.....

by RayLee, Tuesday, April 21, 2026, 22:36 (9 hours, 56 minutes ago)

The Scab.....

I've got nothing against anyone.....remembering that I was taught in both sunday & vacation bible schools to love everyone except the devil. Except......way back in the day, there once was an ohioan of apostate old-order turned englisher stock surnamed in unpronouncable deutsche who we called "bloaterpaste" .....him I still owe a well-deserved punch in the snoot. So if you are a buckeye, please pardon the following.

Euell _____, nominally known as Pill was a great american. Is that "nominally" correct ? Perhaps "normally" is what I really mean. I am told that i have some good qualities but since i spent twelve years staring out of school room windows, obviously englisher conjugation is not one of them. Anywho, most folks called him Pill. There are quite a few people theories as to the origin of that handle but no one living knows for sure. Anyway, just about everybody called him that but the problem was not what they called him but how they said it....more often than not with a sneer or otherwise mocking,
condescending tone.

Chaffing Pill, that is to say "busting his balls", figuratively, not literally was a popular sport in our neck of the woods and that tendency amongst my townsmen was one of the many reason that I ultimately emigrated to kinder latitudes.

You see patona city folk had a tendency to think quite highly of themselves. Genealogy was almost as popular there as in provo or salt lake. The learned civil servant spinster wench at the town lending library with the horned glasses on a lanyard and the awkward over-bite and the cone-shaped brassieres could search the archives for your antecedents. Then you could slip her a green sawbuck and she would amend and edit the results so as to give your peeps blue blood and place them at new-plymouth or jamestown at the correct time.

Never mind that these townmen of mine were actually descended from that ubiquitous tri-racial blend of syphallitic scottish horse thieves and cross-eyed muskogee maidens with an occasional quadroon or octaroon plantation child thrown-in. No, they adamantly thought themselves of a superior order hence the need for social inferiors to castigate thus the nigh-on constant barrage of insults and slurs aimed at poor old Pill.

But like I said, Pill was a great american. He had many attributes. There wasn't anything busted or broken that he could not fix and he actually held several useful patents but only the greedy and unscrupulous carpetbaggers profited. He was a third generation tire and rubber union man but during the economic recessions, when those billets went to north to akron, Pill stayed close to home. In fullness of time he became a municipal civil servant, crewing one of our three sewer trucks.

Pill was also a great outdoorsman. Snag-fishing and trot-lining and jug-fishing the coosa for the rougher species and seining and limb-hooking on its influencing, feeding streams was his specialty. Ever seen a buffalo sucker or a blue catfish as big as a wash tub ? I'd bet you can guess who caught it ! Being a successful fishermen necessarily comes with another skill. Ever met a fisherman who could not spin a tall-tale ? Thus it follows that Pill evolved into quite a raconteur.

He loved to tell jokes but they invariably flopped. He lacked the pacing and timing and just never seemed to get the punchline right. But when he commenced that nervous gesture of his of patting the pockets of his garments in search of his pack of cigarettes you began to pay attention. Then he would gently tamp and compress the vile coffin nail before igniting it with an elaborate flourish. His first pull on the thing was so hard you could hear it foreshorten by half with a crinkle while the ash instantly grew an inch or more. A stream of blue smoke would follow and sometimes a wispy, inconcentric ring or two. He would clear his throat and stare far out into space with an unfocused squint and you knew a tale was about to begin.

"When they closed the last tire manufactory down here I first found work as a shipfitter in the mississippi yards. I don't mean to boast but if you can find a cutting-torcher with a steadier hand than mine then I might call you a liar. My starting holes were scarcely wider that the subsequent cut and the kerfs were as even and as perfectly vertical as humanly possible. My cuts ran as straight as a 'gyptian surveyer's string and the grinders that followed me complained that the slag was so light that it made them look lazy and unnecessary. There was a rumour that there was a pollack up to the portsmouth yards who was at least my equal if not superior but I never believed it. They said he once torched a bald eagle out of a two ton block of steel for lyndon johnston but tell me what good is that ? You can't build ships if you're foolishing around like that.....

" Like I've said before, there were jobs in akron if you cared to move. Cousin Cecil chose to head north. He worked for the company but not at the main plant. Those were the days before steel belts and every plant had its own cord mill.The main plant was a closed shop. You had to join the union within ninety days but the cord mills were open shops. Sure there was much peer pressure to join and even occasional violence but there were as many scabs as there were members......

"So Cecil reports to work in akron and nobody bothers to warn him that this was a closed shop and that buckeyes are quite a bit more zealous of their local and would not abide a scab. He had several warnings.....some friendly, others not so. Then one day a mob cornered him and gave him one last chance. Join-up or get a greased air-hose inserted the backway then valved-on. It was explained that most survived the procedure but the pain was intense and emergency surgery was always necessary and the convalescence lengthy.

Now cousin Cecil never was much for horseplay and he never liked to be touched much less jostled or assaulted. Ever since he was old enough to work he had been a doffer in the cord mill and had always toted the required razor-edged hawk-bill knife. Now hawk-bills are, more often than not outlawed in most locales due to just how easy they can eviscerate a fellow. But if you were a doffer and in work livery and had one in a frog on your belt then you usually got a pass from the law.....

" So there's this mob threatening to air-hose Cecil and there is Cecil with a keen, wicked blade and an aversion to being inflated. He warns that he'll surgically operate on the first essobee who lays as much as a finger on him. Now it is obvious that buckeyes are faithful to their local but otherwise not too bright. It must be remembered that the practice of medicos successfully sewing useful things back-on was in its infancy. Long story short, nobody died but three or four never were ever able to work again. Of course nobody tried to stop him but the black and whites with red lights were waiting for Cecil at the boarding house.....

"You can safely assume that Cecil was looking at spending the rest of his life behind bars due to the both the numbers of the charges against him and their severity. During a court hearing someone from the company front office whispered that he should plead and throw himself on the mercy of the court. His Honor proved to be both pro-management and golf buddies with company big wigs. Misdemeanors and not felonies. Thirty days in quod and a $20 forfeiture per paycheck garnishment henceforth and forever......

" After his parole Cecil stopped by one pharmacy after another in turn. At the boarding house he payed his rent and handed the landlady a sack and asked her to bake him some chocolate cupcakes. That done he packed his chattels and topped-off the petrol in his jalopy and headed in to work second shift. He was all smiles and kept saying 'no hard feelings' to his former persecutors/victims. Say what you may about buckeyes, they were good sports......

"Then when the whistle blew and the freight lift was full and descending from the fourth floor, Cecil began to cheerfully and generously hand out cupcakes......Scores of them. He worked his way through the crowd over to the lift's panel and stopped it on the second floor, quickly raising the gate and exited, jamming them all in. Someone onboard had just restarted the lift's descent as Cecil put a fireaxe through the power supply to the lift, trapping it between floors......

" Cecil sauntered over to the shaft and informed them that the chocolate in those cupcakes was indeed quick acting laxatives. Twelve hours later he was in bartow county enjoying a strong cup of joe and the sole vanilla cupcake that his former landlady had baked......"