#3- The Fecal Finger of Fate

”The Fecal Finger of Fate- or Death and Dying and Diaper Delivery”
It was the Summer of 1971,just a few months after our incredible VW bus misadventure/Spring Break visit to Bev Roper in Orlando(and that’s definitely another story to be archived). Cyndy, almost one-year-old Joe, and I had our third apartment on Melville Ave. in Dorchester-some wonderful old urban mansions
and gaslit Wellesley Park in that neighborhood, but we had the opportunity to buy my Grandmother’s home on Kilby St, UPS was on strike and we needed to come up with a $1000 down payment and the best and nearest available job turned out to be at National Laundry /diaper division on Dorchester Ave.
I was to be a route driver, delivering the pristinely clean cloth diapers in exchange for the “poo-poo” ones-hey ,we really needed the money ,this was close by and the lucre clean, even if the diapers weren’t.
The route was “Greater Boston” a rather large territory and a rather large bellied foreman named Charlie
who had been with the laundry for ten-plus years was to show me the ropes (or as it turned out the “nets” for diaper dispatch.) He gave me a building tour to start including the garage of 40 or so delivery trucks ,similar to ,but smaller than the UPS route trucks, but the “brown” would be inside the diaper trucks and they were much the worse for wear. Two old-timers were the mechanic department and responsible for keeping the vehicles rolling . I remember that they were disgruntled, having toiled for 25 years for this place and the “cheap bastard” owner would not give them an overdue raise that seemed pretty reasonable to me considering the hard and very important work they were expected to do. They might even just leave the dump and “let him see what happens then!”...

Each day for the first week I’d report at 7:30 and Charlie would orient me to a different route. He would drive and I would write down directions to each residence, some in the tonier neighborhoods, some in the less affluent. Routinely we’d ring the customer’s bell, he’d introduce the “new guy “ to the variously beleaguered /relieved new mom, we would proceed to the room “de diaper pail”

whether bed or bath, I’d empty out the dirties into a net bag careful lest there be any leakage, drippage or smearage on person or property ;he’d deposit the cleans with a bill to be paid forthwith -cash, or on account and we’d be off with a “see you next week” (unless a dire diarrhea developed and necessitated an emergency return earlier).

We repeated the same process over and over responding to the fundamental physics of what goes in must come out somehow in the end, a universal “urine-alysis” of the human condition- and seeing some very cute little human “food and fluid processors”. Half way through the day we’d pull the truck into a McDonald’s for a lunch break and the looks from vehicles parked a bit too near reminded us that on a hot summer day a diaper truck is not a welcome neighbor - a “Phew” vehicles even elected for the drive-through. By the end of the day I was really pooped and I returned home to our apartment, and our own toilet-training saga ...well that’s definitely another story ...

The second week out with Charlie I was driving and he was fine-tuning the directions . I headed up St.Margaret’s Hospital (where our dear Joe was born the previous July 27th) hill, applied the brake at the stop sign and ...NOTHING ! ...the pedal went thumping to the floor and the truck began to roll backwards down the hill; I shifted into first ,let it stall and it stopped to my great relief (must have been a primitive survival strategy imbedded in my cerebral cortex from those standard transmission driving lessons Grandpa gave me on Great Hill, rolling back toward the cliff over Quincy Bay...)

So I turned to Charlie and declared,”That’s it, we can’t drive this truck, no brakes!” I was already remembering the unhappy mechanics who had in fact quit in the meantime. “Just pump them; they’ll
come back”, Charlie said. “We can’t just do that”, I shot back ”besides were up on the top of a (BIG!)hill!”
“Let me show you “,he said as I relinquished the driver’s seat and took his position standing up on the passenger side holding on to the door frame. He restarted the truck and we crept over the top of the hill and the brakes seemed to respond to his repeated pumping-but just over the crest he turned onto a side street ,the truck started down the decline and “thump...thump” to the floor ,NOTHING! again and we were heading downward! I remember those next Dali-esque /slow-motion moments as Charlie turned to me with a horrified
look and a trembling panic in his voice shouted to me-”Jump,Kid !!!!!!” There were cars parked along most of the street on both sides ,we were picking up momentum=speed very fast, but I caught sight of the bottom of the street and my decision came in a flash- at the bottom was a busy intersection with rush hour traffic and dead ahead a variety store with a plate glass window and I new in an instant that if I stayed with the truck I would either be killed ,crushed in a collision with a car or truck in the intersection or have my head cut off by the plate glass window beyond.....”Jump!!!!” Charlie yelled again and as much as I hated to abandon him at the wheel, I could not stand the thought of reading over someone’s shoulder from the afterlife in the next morning’s Herald headline “Diapers and Death in Dorchester!” So I launched myself out that side door, there was a fortunate gap in the parked cars, and for a second or two I was running backwards at thirty mph while the truck sped on .By second number three I was rolling heels over head and I remember beholding the miracle over my shoulder - for an incredible instant, no vehicles
crashing into poor Charlie at the bottom (and shades of do or die/adrenaline stunt driving )as I got to my feet and kept running ,instead of the expected collision with the store window and Charlie’s head airborne, he yanked the wheel all the way over, the truck careened onto the street beside the store and the hit several cars parked along the curb sending pieces of their fenders flying, and the diaper truck rolled to a stop. By this time I had run across the intersection and up to the truck as Charlie stumbled out on to the side-walk, a much lighter shade of Caucasian and his belly was going up and down like a dribbled basketball propelled by his labored breathing . “Kid”, he gasped ,”that was friggin close!” “No shit”, I said completely amazed that I had escaped with only minor clothing and skin scrapes and he with a case of the cosmic shakes. We had not been killed or killed anybody else. After the necessaries with police, tow truck and laundry company ,Charlie repaired to a neighborhood oasis for a tonic to soothe his jangled nerves and I went home sweet home to Cyndy and Joe ,with scrapes that would heal ,a new lease on life, and after 2 months of no more accidents and paying my diaper dues ,a down payment on our first home of our own. The Moral- some experiences are shitty, but life on the whole is sweet indeed...