Requests - Number Eight With Cheese Grits - Part 1

The house was not on my hot list for the day. My targets were at least <<3>>s and this guy was no "fence rider." He and his brother had sat on the "Vote No" committee the last time there was an election, and voting no was usually the last thing on their agenda of ideas to implant in the heads of their fellow workers.

His house visit started with him telling me to get the hell off his lawn. He wasn't mad, he was just sure there wasn't anything that could change his mind. So we just started talking about his job now and how it was different from any other job he'd ever had. How it wasn't worth losing over nothing and how shitty his other jobs were. One job he had was for a shoe factory that was union. The plant closed after a month of fairly bitter infighting. The international signed a sweetheart deal, closed the plant, and raided the pensions. This was before the first real rounds of consolidation, so naturally the union he used to work for no longer exists.

I immediately smelled a rat. We're working too hard on this anti-union angle, and none of it is coming out of the woods clean. I move the conversation in a positive direction, and he brings up his wife. I try to ask him to repeat himself, he talks about his wife. So then I ask about his wife, and he doesn't want to talk about her. "She's not here to say anything, so why should I?" I'm starting to see why this guy was a <<4>>. It was like talking to the birds from Labyrinth...

The door on his porch swings open and out walks his wife, almost on cue. He turns green as a can of Mountain Dew and profusely apologizes. Obscenities fly from her mouth, and then the raving really starts. "All you people want to do is strike! Union sonsabitches! I know what you're trying to do! I've heard all about your nonsense! We're not getting firebombed."

Don (that was his name) was horrified. "I'm sorry, son."

Me: What? Firebomb?

Pissed Lady: Don't try to deny it! You all don't care about us! You're here for the money!

Me: What money?

Pissed Lady: And if you don't get it, you'll burn us out or worse!

Me: Maam, firebombings haven't occured in relation to a union action in 80 years.

Pissed Lady: You're gonna lie, regardless!

[slams the door and goes back into the house]

He tells me I should probably leave before she comes back. I tell him that although she's truly a bear, I'm not exactly talking about Amway here. He understands, but his marriage is more important to him than his job. I acknowledge this and return to my car. She apparently wasn't satisfied with my departure time and decided to expedite it with weapons and words... in short, a butcher knife in one hand and a baby in the other, she came out screaming.

I slide over the hood of my car like Bo Duke, starting the car before I close my door. Her other children apologize profusely using only lips, trying to restrain the mother before she slices my right front tire. I leave pretty fast, trying not to scream as Mom rushes my car, breaking free of her children's grip. The last I see of her is a shoe unsuccessfully tossed at my back window that lands in the middle of the gravel road.

My sweat stains the seat of the car, making my ride to the highway uncomfortable... but not as uncomfortable as I will be in the next five minutes as the sirens wail behind me. She didn't just call the police, but she called the sheriff. The deputy was right on time, catching me in front of an abandoned gas station.

The exciting conclusion in Part 2.