Waiting for Huck Finn's Raft

by Fred Voss

I remember the old longhaired turret lathe operator
standing
on the sidewalk outside the big 100-year-old wooden door
of the old downtown LA factory
as I drove past him toward the factory parking lot to clock in to work
and the sun rose
his leg
propped on a red fire hydrant
his pipe
lit
he puffed
like some machine oil elder sage deep in contemplation staring out
at the downtown bank skyscrapers reflecting orange sunbeams
off their towering glass sides
in 10 minutes
the factory would explode
with the fury of 50 automatic screw machines and mills and lathes roaring
to meet deadlines
set by the factory owner
who had just raised our production quota
and said we’d either have to raise the number of parts we made per day 20%
or have our pay cut
and the smoke rose out of that turret lathe operator’s pipe
and he kept his foot up on that red fire hydrant
and looked out at the dawn sky
like he wished the world could be as beautiful
as the song of the bluebird
on the telephone wire down the street
and the days when machinists like us
had good union jobs
and the smoke rose up out of his pipe toward the sky
like the smoke rising up out of the pipe of Huck Finn
as Huck guided that raft down the Mississippi River
taking escaped slave Jim
toward freedom
in the dawn’s light
once the Summer of Love and the Age of Aquarius
were supposed to bring us machinists peace and music and love and happiness
now
I pulled my old Toyota into the parking lot and got out
and took one last look
over at the turret lathe operator’s smoke
billowing higher and higher into the scarlet sky
waiting
like all of us machinists
for Huck Finn’s raft
to save us.