Remember the Alamo

One summer, sandwiched between my years at the State college, I worked a variety of temp jobs for around $6 an hour. One memorable stint was at Alamo-Rent-A-Car at Logan Airport. Like a freshman member of a football team I was hazed by the "perm" car vacume operators and interior windshield cleaning technicians. And I lived to tell about it.

This all went down at the Alamo satellite parking lot on the perimeter of Logan. I knew things were going to get off to a bad start when i went into the garage adjacent to the car wash and tried to purchase one of the store bought sodas to quench my thirst on a 90+ day.

"Yo, my man - those are only for people who work here regualarly, not temps. We pitch in and buy them at the store."

There was a basket where you paid your quarter for a 12 oz generic brand soda instead of teh .75 for the Coke machine. I didn't understand why they didn't just take my money and put it towards a new case of them, but I went with the flow.

Later, as I was operating he big vacume tubes and sucking up dirt from the upholstery of the rental fleet, a foreman came over with a razor-blade in his hand.

"See that car with the new tires over there, I want you to take this and scrape off the whitewall on the tires so we can rent it to someone."

Not being a big car enthusiast, I thought this was normal so I headed over to the car and dutifully scraped the whitewall off for 45 minutes.

Later I realized of course that whitewall comes off naturally and that I had been the butt of their joke.

I had the last laugh though.

One day it was well over 95+ and my job was to go into the inside of all teh cars on the lots and with the windows up spray them down and wipe them clean. My morning quickly turned into a smothering cloud of glass cleaner and I was becoming faint lugging around a trashbag filled with glass rags.

"Yo Bret, fill up these mini-vans so we can ship them down to terminal E"

At this point I was really becoming delerious and wishing for the Fall and starchy cafeteria food, the warm wax of the college newspaper layout rollers and the musky smell of teh bound periodicals.

I had finished filling up a mini-van and I drove forward. Looking into the rear view mirror I saw the black rubber gas tube waving behind the mini-van like a rat's tail.

Oops.

"Uhm, Bret - we just can't have damage like this - we're going to have to let you go."

Waiting for the shuttle bus back to the blue-line T station I was unusually happy, filled with expectation about the coming year, 1994. I had no computer at home then, no internet or cell phone. Just the exhiliration and confidence of youth and the cool breeze of the August nights after the sun set - looping around the black asphalt of 495 like a big pinball machine to bring me to my friend's exotic converted schoolhouse house, the newly discovered Phillip Roth canon to inspire me ... to help me transcend.