Walker Evans, “Auto Parts Shop, Atlanta, Georgia.” 1936. Library of Congress, Farm Security Administration collection.
I’ve been thinking about initiation rituals. Specifically, because I write about ancestry so much, I was thinking, how did my ancestors know when they were adults, treated as fully responsible members of society, or at least the family? Especially when they were farmers in the mountains, if not outright pioneers in a log cabin.
It’s impossible to say the moment I transitioned into adulthood. For me, there was no ceremony, no celebration, no distinct moment of initiation. There were instances of important changes in my life: graduating high school, say, though at my graduation party, it didn’t feel like I’d been lifted to the level of my elders. If anything, what change came was from the fact that Pizza Hut called during the party to offer me the job of cook.
The older I’ve gotten, I’ve realized that if I was initiated at all, in many ways it must have been in the tire garage.
In the summer of 1987, I was sixteen years old, about to begin my junior year of high school. I was taking driving lessons at Southside High, navigating the course in the parking lot and watching videos in a classroom. For years, I’d been mowing lawns for money, through the summer months at least. I also raked leaves, weeded yards, and shoveled snow from walks and driveways.
But when I turned sixteen, my father was dead set on my getting a job. He was traditional, certainly, and he’d worked his whole life, and he wasn’t going to allow me, his oldest, to be lazy in any way. What he did, unbeknownst to me, was to go to my guidance counselor at the high school, Mr. Yaudes.
Mr. Yaudes in turn went to the superintendent, who as it turned out, had a son named Peter who was working at Twin Tier Tire on the east side of Elmira. If I recall, Peter was bound for college, and so was vacating his position as, basically, a kind of accountant. I don’t remember interviewing for the job at all—it was a long time ago, after all—but that summer, I went to work in the tire garage.
It would change my life, of course, but not without getting injured, physically and emotionally.
My boss was H. Carleton Eldrett, though everyone called him “Gyp.” He seemed old to me, though he was actually only sixty, not terribly older than I am now. He was instantly recognizable by the suspenders he frequently wore, the chained wallet at his belt, and that wing of white hair he flipped out of his eyes. His business acumen was intense. He was intimidating to me.
Gyp owned Twin Tier Tire, though from what I remember, the business came to him from his wife’s father, whom Gyp once worked for. Shirley Eldrett would come in once a week and head straight for the back office, where I worked, to go over the books. She was even more intimidating, her demeanor either sour or dour. Or both.
My job, as I was hired for it at least, was to keep track of accounts. The garage had personal computers, which were relatively new and pretty rudimentary at the time, IBM’s maybe, on which they kept the numbers for who owed what. Every time they made a sale—whether it was an individual farmer getting his tractor tire fixed or a trucking company needing tires for whole fleets, it all went into the computer. Then, at the end of the month, those invoices were printed on a dot matrix printer, which I then neatly folded and stuffed in envelopes and stamped.
It was easy, if dull. The tougher part was balancing everything in the computer against what was actually scribbled into a ledger. I literally “balanced the books,” and being deficient in math (I hated math, frankly), it made this part a bit of a challenge since the ledger and the computer rarely agreed.
That summer, I’d go to the high school in the morning, eat lunch in the car (my mother picked me up), and work until five at the garage. I was paid minimum wage, $3.35 an hour.
The older I’ve gotten, the more I’ve thought about this job. The main reason I give it such importance is this: I worked with men.
Aside from Shirley, of course, the garage was dominated by men, all of them older than me. And these were by and large working class men, and they worked.
Gyp was the face of the company, and that figure faced squarely from the wood-paneled office. He often would show one face to customers, I’d notice, but quite another with me, particularly when he got impatient with me. There were also a number of Dale’s, two of whom were salesmen who were often out on the road, getting accounts from police departments, trucking companies, and municipal fleets. And the other guy, who worked the front office with Gyp—was his name Dale too? I’m forgetting.
The main garage bay, where customers’ cars were serviced—new tires, flat fixes, alignments—was mostly run by Bud Bixby, who was in his fifties at the time. There was also a part-timer named Bob, and he must have been in his seventies.
In the back, Dean—we called him Deano the Dinosaur—did all the big rig work. Changing 18-wheel steel radial truck tires was no small job, and he did it all alone. He wore thick glasses, a greasy beard, and was missing quite a few teeth, and his paunch more often than not hung over his belt. I liked him.
On the other side of the garage, there was a retread shop. Pete was the most memorable, a jolly guy who was always laughing and just being all around pleasant. Norm was barely older than I was—he was nineteen and had gone to high school in Elmira Heights. There was another Dean back there, too, and I think he was kind of a supervisor. And then there was an older guy, who also must have been in his seventies—I cannot for the life of me remember his name. He was a quiet one. Oh, and there was Gary—he was tough, physically strong, and would always have a cigarette dangled from his mouth (a lot of the men did, in fact). You had to be tough to work back there in the retread shop; the heat was grueling in the summer, and the best you could hope for was fans, maybe an open bay door.
And into the midst of them came me, with my long hair, sixteen years old, completely unsure of myself. That’s where the initiation began.
Lee Russell, “Changing tire at a garage. Pie Town, New Mexico.” 1940. Library of Congress, Farm Security Administration collection.
The garage was open from 8:00 to 5:00, Monday through Friday. We had an hour lunch, though you could clock back in after 45 minutes. I rarely did. But if you did, that extra fifteen minutes counted as overtime. The boss expected me to work full-time hours once my driver’s ed was over, which was by late July, I think.
The garage was also open on Saturday mornings, from eight to noon. Gyp expected me to work then, too. I hated that. All my friends would be out Friday nights, and I had to be home early enough to ensure getting to work by eight. But I was making overtime, which was nice. I was saving for a set of guitar amps.
The thing about accounting work is that it can’t really stretch over forty-four hours. Gyp figured this out, and when he did, I remember how he came crashing into the back office one day and said, “We’re putting you to work in the garage. Bud will show you what to do.” Now, I was wearing school clothes at the time, good jeans, and Gyp told me to put on one of the blue collar shirts the guys all wore. The name on the patch: Bob. I never got my own shirt in all the time I worked there.
Bud was shorter than I was, but he was in no way small. He could boss me around like no one’s business. He was happy to laugh at me, but also to commend me. He’d joke around with me, for sure, but he’d chastise me if I did something careless. He taught me to change tires on the machine, use the lift to get the cars on the rack, and fix flats with patches. He showed me how to find leaks by dunking the wheels in a big tank of water on the side of the building and watching for the bubbles, marking the spot with chalk. He wouldn’t let me do alignments, though. And if a job was difficult, like fixing the tube in a motorcycle tire, he’d take care of it. He called me Eagle Beak on account of my nose. I respected him immensely.
Gyp, when he began to realize how much he was paying me in overtime, cut my hours back four hours—he sent me home one afternoon early, but made me come in on Saturdays to make my full forty. I griped to Bud. It did no good.
I learned a lot there. Bud taught me how to not work by “doing inventory” in the tire racks. He himself would sneak off and disappear. Even I wouldn’t know where he was when the boss asked. He’d take candy bars to Shirley—Snickers, her favorite. He knew what to do. Me he’d send in his little pickup to get McDonald’s Happy Meals for lunch—he’d keep the toys in the box for his grandson. I’d get myself a Happy Meal, and I’d give him the toy from my package, as well.
Guys like Gary would wag their heads when I asked for help—loading the big truck tires in a trailer for disposal, for one. They were probably as heavy as I was, if not more—I was only about 115 pounds. They had to be stacked over my head in piles around eight or nine feet high. But Gary always helped, but not without jibing me. But with an honest smile. He liked me, that was clear. Really, I understand now that they all did. All but one.
It must have made an impression that, without fail, I’d wander through the garage and visit all of the guys in their spots. I’d sit with them at lunch in the little break room over the office and watch soap operas on the little black-and-white TV—they knew the storylines in and out, and all the characters besides. They sincerely enjoyed them.
I continued working into the school year, and by then I’d usually get lucky and just be able to stay in the office and do the accounts from the day in my good school clothes. The first year, in 1987, I remember we worked a half-day on Christmas Eve, my birthday. I was irritated I had to work that day (and in fact, for many jobs after, I’d insist on getting that day off), but Gyp ordered pizza so I supposed it was all right. While we were standing in the garage, he handed out envelopes to everyone. Everyone, that is, but me.
I asked Bud what was in the envelope. “Our Christmas bonus,” he said.
I must have looked perplexed. “I didn’t get one,” I said.
“You didn’t get a bonus?”
When I told him no, he was quiet a moment. “Cheap bastard,” he said.
My father said about the same thing when I told him what happened.
This was, if not a moment of initiation, a learning experience. I didn’t get a bonus, therefore I figured I was treated differently. It was a learning moment when I realized one of the men was quietly fired for embezzling money. Or when another was caught drunk driving, and strings were pulled to help him out.
If there was an initiation moment, it was perhaps this:
I used to go on road calls. Sometimes I’d deliver tires, other times I’d help someone out with a flat on the road. Oftentimes, I’d load up the guard dog—his name was Diesel—who loved going for rides in the service truck. One day, I was sent to help someone with a flat downtown, near the library. In the end, I got a flat.
It was late in the afternoon in summer. I walked to the library and called the garage. The boss told me to fix it, and that Bud would drive out to drop off a wheel with a fresh tire.
I was driving a good sized service truck, and so the rims were big, heavy, mounted with lug nuts that probably hadn’t budged in a long time. The rig didn’t have an air compressor, so I had to remove the lugs with a four-star wrench. I had to put my entire body weight into it to get each of those nuts to budge—I’d guess there were ten lug nuts in all.
I distinctly remember Bud driving up, dropping the tire, and leaving. I don’t recall if I asked for help outright, but it was made clear I wasn’t going to get it. Getting that rim with a fully inflated tire back on the wheel mount, with the wheel crazily turning and me trying to match the bolts up like a puzzle at a carnival, put a massive strain on my low back. I crouched, the wheel to my chest, desperate. Once I got it on, I had to of course tighten all those nuts down. It was exhausting.
By the time I got back to the garage, it was after five. When I was finished unloading the truck, I hopped off the tailgate. When my feet hit the asphalt, I went straight to my knees. My back gave out entirely.
I spent days in bed, unable to walk or move. I noticed the injury for years afterward, really. It occurs to me now that I could have well made a claim for injury on the job.
And that wasn’t even the pinnacle.