June 6
I was both Charlie 11 and Mary 2 tonight, starting in the casino and ending up a hero to a very pretty lady in the employee parking lot.
It is best to take matters chronologically.
I am walking from the employee parking lot to the employee entrance when I run into Judy and Guy, who are just starting their nights as Mary 1 and Baker 1. They inform me I am down for Mary 2, which is news to me because I was scheduled to be Charlie 11 tonight.
I am not prepared to be outside. My outside uniform is at home, which isn’t all that big a deal because I can get a loaner from wardrobe. The complete catastrophe is my outside shoes are at home. All I have at work are the Comfort Flex Stingrays which are boots and would make me look like a geek with shorts, obliging me to wear long pants, which I am also going to whine about because who the hell wants to wear long pants in June?
I get dressed to be outside so, of course, I start the night off in the casino. There is a large-scale, special validator drop going on and I am sentenced to that, a sentence which lasts till just after one. After I announce the very special edition of validators is complete, Junior sends me on 482 before I go outside.
After 482 I’m at the bike cage with Judy and Guy picking up my Mary unit and we spend a half-hour BSing, which culminates in Guy jerry-rigging an antenna for the Mary 3 vehicle, using a wayward hangar he found nearby. Remember the hanger, it’s key, so to speak.
This round table breaks up and I announce I am heading to the garage and Judy says be careful because Schempp is patrolling up there and he is not pleased tonight, for some reason.
Schempp finds me in short order and corners me on the southeast corner of level five. I try to get away with a greeting and wave but nothing doing, Schempp maneuvers his bike so my only options are running over Schempp or stopping and listening to Schempp.
Judy would later say I should have run him over for the good of the crew.
Schempp’s talking points were wardrobe not getting his uniforms springtime fresh and some whining about the supervisors. Usually, Schempp is good for a few funny lines, but not tonight. He was not pleased and I got a full ten minutes worth.
At 0630 I’m at Eddie – 1 chatting with my old friend Chet from swing shift when one of the prettiest ladies at Monte Carlo, Deyanira from wardrobe, stops by the shack. It seems she has locked her keys in her car. She announces triumphantly, however, that a back window is cracked, so it should be a simple matter for a couple of studs like us to open her door.
I, of course, am completely useless in these situations, and, it turns out, Chet is, too, and Deyanira will never know what she owes Guy for jerry-rigging the antenna. After a couple of seconds of panic, it hits me to go get the hanger, and, using that and nothing else but the street smarts I picked up growing up in the suburbs of Los Angeles, I was able to open her door in fairly short order by hooking the lock and pulling it up. I was rewarded with a yelp, a hug, a kiss and a pronouncement to the world that I was a hero.
Here is your Henry lineup for tonight:
Henry 1 – moi
Henry 2 – X-Ray
Henry 3 – White Sox Metzger