Mar-Apr 2006

Workers' Words showcases the creativity of UAW members, active and retired.

Whether writing about their jobs, families, friends or a political issue, our union's brothers and sisters reflect a pride in working people often missing from the regular media.

We hope you enjoy their creativity.

If you'd like to submit a story, article or poem, e-mail it to uawsolidarity@uaw.net;mail to Solidarity magazine, 8000 E. Jefferson Ave., Detroit, MI 48214 ATTN: WORKERS' WORDS;or fax to (313) 926-5120.

‘Turn me ’round’

Lolita Hernandez, UAW Local 160

Excerpt from “Autopsy of an Engine”

An engine block fell off the line one hour before lunch. It jumped off the light blue oil-stained stand on the conveyor; it thumpa, thumpa, thumpa’d itself away from the exact spot programmed for it by the broadcast system; it bugalooed its way from its spot between the block in front of it that was scheduled for a green Brougham and the other one behind it, slated for a brown Sedan de Ville. It tumbled onto the wooden floorboard of the even side of the piston section as if refusing that sweet yellow Eldorado waiting for it across the street in final assembly.

The instant before it began its fall from the line, all eight of the men who installed pistons converged on the block: the installers of even pistons buzzed on one side, the odds on the other. …

It was when the engine was in its final stage of falling that the woman who installed the timing chain at a station almost exactly in the center of the line, also heard the strains of melodic resistance. In her left ear there was music, in her right the cacophony from the piston area. Through her body the two unrelated phenomena became one.

So just at the moment that the engine flipped another 180 degrees, bumped against the edge of the tray that had briefly supported it and landed on the floorboard, the timing chain lady heard, “Turn me ’round, turn me ’round, turn me ’round.”

Then the engine crashed, BOODOOM, creating a hole in the floorboard where No. 6 piston installer normally stood. Two men picked up the engine with their hands and reloaded it, singing heave ho.

The timing chain lady looked straight ahead at a tray of pistons coming from the second floor on the overhead conveyor and wondered if they would see the inside of an engine that day. To her left the singing lady argued with the foreman, who was completely unaware of the fallen engine. To her right, No. 6 installer was dancing around the hole in the floorboard in an effort to load his piston into the engine designated for the brown Sedan de Ville.