James and da Boys

Besides being paid to drive brand new, decked-out vehicles around all day, the people I get to work with are wonderful. I think my favorite guy that I have met so far is this guy named James. He is freaking crazy. He wrestles alligators!!

He's probably in his mid-50s, and I don't think he has ever set foot outside of the state borders of Mississippi. I mean, he is so straight-up homegrown backwoods country boy that lives in the swamps and has a very, VERY thick southern drawl. He has thick curly gray hair, and it's an afro! (He's Caucasian, by the way -- so just try to picture that!) He is fascinated by hearing my stories about Wisconsin, and he LOVES to talk about hunting up north, since he is a real big hunter down here in the south. You should have seen his eyes light up when I explained to him what ice fishing was. That, or when I told him Milwaukee had 96 inches of snow from Thanksgiving to April 1st this past season. What a little kid at Christmas - he damn near fell over!!!!

I must now explain the whole thing about wrestling alligators. James lives wayyy out in the country, in the swamps. At sunset, he illegally hunts alligators....I was just taught today that in Mississippi you can hunt alligators in the water ONLY, and you have to bring them up onto your boat while they're still alive -- once they're squirming in your boat, you can either shoot them or harpoon them to kill them. This is the legal hunting procedure. They are then consumed as food -- alligator tails are a favorite main course down here.

Well with James, he goes after these gators on dry land....traps them, grabs them by their tail, and swings them around into either a tree or the rear wheels of his pickup truck to knock them out dead in the head. Then, he hurls them up into the back of his pickup truck and drives up to his yard to complete the food preparation process. Apparently he goes out and does this as much as he can, and his tan and sun-wrinkled face are excellent pieces of evidence towards this. That, and the fact that everyone has been telling James how the Wisconsin Girl ain't never seen an alligator outside of a zoo, so he better get fixin' to takin' Wisconsin Girl to see a real live gator. Hmmmm....

Anyway, James is the total Car Whisperer, he can fix anything he puts his greasy fingers on, and I am just fascinated by watching him work and talking with him. He really looks out for me, he's a nice guy and is always asking what I like to do, to make sure I get the most out of learning car stuff this summer. His current project is finding a stick-shift Altima to teach me how to drive a manual transmission. :)

The other boys are pretty homegrown, too. Cooper, Chad, Bonner, Bobby, etc -- total country fellas. They are all very cool with a woman being there all of a sudden. They'll teach me anything I want, answer any of my questions, and even make sure I stop work to take a break for lunch. They'll eat lunch with me, take me out on the 'town' to try some genuine southern cooking for lunch, and give me advice as to which places to avoid as a young girl down here alone. (Warning: there are a lot of these places............)

That is all pretty welcoming of them, and again, I chalk it up to the southern hospitality shindig.

I guess the only other guy that I have encountered and talked to for a length of time longer than 5 minutes is this dude named Benjamin. I don't think I'll ever see him again, but he's a second-shifter at Nissan that picked me out while I was climbing around on a conveyor belt among Titan engine blocks, taking some measurements yesterday.

I remember climbing down from the conveyor line to stand on the concrete floor alongside the line, and he walked up to me to ask me 'what in the Sam Hill' I was measuring. I explained it to him, and we just kept talking. He was young; tall; very engaging. He reminded me of Greg back home in Suamico, because of how easy he was to talk to, being laid back and kind of countryish; you feel like you learn a lot from them.

We probably talked for 45 minutes with no hesitation, about me being from Wisconsin, the cold weather, drinking coffee, kidney stones, the UAW union and how it SUCKS, and new manufacturing factories. He even brought up Volkswagen before finding out I am a Volksfreak!! Anyway, then he started in with asking how old I was, if I was down here alone, and remarked how cool of a personality I have because I seem outgoing and a bit of a fireball. (I'm thinkin he pegged that one correctly, muahahaha................)

It was at this point I braced myself with the women's intuition of what would be coming next. After another instance of me climbing up on the conveyor belt and noticing out of the corner of my eye that he was casually taking side steps on the stationary ground next to me to keep up with me and the moving belt, I calmly finished my work and climbed down onto the ground. He blurted out, "So are ya single??"

BINGO. That's what I was bracing for. Soooo busted, dude. I can pick up on these things. (And by the way, HOW could I have been good-looking at this point? I had my frizzy hair pulled back into a bun, I was likely sweating and smelling worse that my brother's feet, and my safety glasses covered up 5/8ths of my face...???)

I pursed my lips and said no, I was seeing someone from back home (Joe). He then asked how long we were seeing each other. I told him just over a year (true).

His bold response? "Ah...well I don't see that ending well!!"

I flipped my head and looked right at him and asked, "Why?!?!"

He explained, "Because you northern girls like us southern boys. We're bad, we're dangerous. And now that you're down here by us, the little thing that you are, we'll be all around ya."

I kind of blinked, a bit confused, and said, "You're bad?? How? What about the whole 'southern boy charm'?"

He shot back with, "That's what I'm talkin about. We're bad with how sweet we can be, you're gonna appreciate it before you even know it."

I just nervously laughed it off and kept looking at the conveyor belt to see if it was time for me to climb back into it.

Then, he got paged to go take care of a cleanup at another part of the plant. I made sure to leave before he came back, because I knew he would.

He seemed pretty harmless, and actually quite genuine. I still stand by the opinion that he is a fun guy to talk to. However, I got the impression that outside of work, he's a little hellian....not someone who'd want anything to have to do with a mousy northern girl.

Sorry Benjamin -- I'll go wrestle gators with James instead. Geez!