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Don't.
Yeah, it's hot. If you're like me, when it gets hot you take off
your clothes. Mebbe not all of them but some. Okay, that's better.
Couple of fans, canvas water bag hanging there in the breeze. I am
chug-gluging about a quart an hour and have not taken a piss since
last Tuesday.
Temperature in the shop pushes past the century mark and even a cotton
apron and pair of shorts is too much. The humidity is about 80% and
despite the fans going full blast everything I am wearing is soaked
with sweat, my feet squishing in my boots. Heat prostration is a
definite possibility and my wife is visiting the grandkids. If I go
down, I am gonna die. Time for a break.
Cool shower helps. Refill the water bag, find a dry apron, transfer my
tools and stand there looking at those boots. A habit of safety
rewarded by fifty years practice with a full set of fingers & toes.
Steel toed boots barely twenty years old and just getting broke in
good. Standard uniform for anyone playing with sheet-metal. Which
I am not, today. Today I am riveting. Hand-setting AD3's to secure
two little pieces of metal together, ten lefties and ten righties.
Then flip them over and install a third piece so as to form a
double-wide flange. I have made a pair of jigs to hold the parts for
drilling. Drill, cleco, take them apart, deburr, move over to the vise
supporting a hand-set. Form the shop-heads with a few well-placed
blows from a skinny riveting hammer. Bench-work; no need for steel
toes. I find a pair of flip-flops and shuffle out to the shop, just
me, the water-bag and a shop apron. Cool.
I finish the lefties, having to re-do only one rivet, and start on the
righties. It's about 2 in the afternoon. I am wearing a headband
that's already soaked through, wrist bands to keep the sweat from
running down my arms, I have soaked my hands in Machinist's soap and
I am still sweating like a bitch. About then the UPS truck comes
roaring up the front drive.
We live on a hill with a nice view of Catalina Island, when the weather
is clear. Bought the place in '65, back when poor people could
afford to buy a home. Our front drive is something of an obstacle
course, narrow, steep and twisty; more than three hundred feet from
the mailbox to our gate, guarded by a discrete sign: 'Private Drive.
Trespassers will be physically abused by the gardener.' (Doesn't
do much good.) We also have a straight, gently sloping back drive,
suitable for everything from a transit-mix to a baby stroller. Or a
UPS truck, since it can roll right up to the back door of the shop.
The fact this one was roaring up the front drive said it was a new
driver, so I went out to show him how to find the back drive which will
save him a quarter mile and having to turn around.
I didn't know UPS had girl-drivers. Pretty young thing in shorts.
Muscular legs. Surfer shoulders. Blonde hair in a pony-tail. Just
filling in, she explains. Regular driver will be on tomorrow and
thanks me for telling her about the short-cut out the back drive.
Couple of little packages and one big one. She wants to help me carry
it but I'm craftily keeping my best apron forward, shuffling sideways
to lean the big package against the open gate, telling her it will be
fine right there as I back away, Buns of Steel artfully concealed.
She climbs back in the truck, does her paperwork, gives me a smile and
a little wave. "I like your outfit," she sez as she fires up the
engine and roars off up the back drive. My artful dodging has put me
in front of the big plate glass window that gives us such a nice view
of Catalina. It also makes a pretty good mirror for someone sitting
high up in a UPS truck.
Going back to the shop, it was 95 in the shade. I am almost afraid to
look at the thermometer over behind the milling machine but finally do:
108. I finished the ten righties about the same time I emptied the
waterbag. I have guzzled two gallons of water and have not pee'd
since Jonah was a Seaman Deuce. It was about three-thirty and the
thermometer in the breezeway had inched up to 97, a nice warm day for
coastal California. I decided I would done enough work and took another
shower. Fixed myself a drink, smoked a pipe and sat down to write
this, after putting on a pair of powder blue boxers. Nude riveting is
bad enough; heaven only knows what naked typing might lead to.
-R.S.Hoover
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Nude Riveting
