Anglish

Initial impressions play a huge part in relationships.  The first time Ed Win met him, Herman had just driven a bobtail truck into the yard of the jobsite Ed had earlier that week become reindentured to.  Herman parked and strode into the shop.  Ed had just finished a weldment.  When he raised his hood, Herman said, “I’m tellin’ you the troofe’...  I ain’t doin’ another dod’dam’ thang’ t’day!"

Herman was an older black fellow.  Nobody was quite sure how old, but he was retired.  He drew pensions from a couple places, plus Social Security.  It was the first year of the era when government kept their hands off what senior citizens accrued monthly.  It used to be, if a person drew anything else and Social Security, the federals would get some of it rebated to them.  His diatribe continued, “I went ouch’air to that dod’dam supply house three times today...”  He droned on.

Ed had recently returned to work for the establishment.  It was his first week back since he’d been fired by the incumbent boss 7 years ago.  He and Ed had worked together 23 years earlier.

Then, Ed welded fire protection water mains, and his future employer was a pipe-fitter who installed the systems.  He left and started a fledgling automatic sprinkler company a few years before the mutual boss went under.  At that time, a half dozen workers who’d been in the latter’s vassalage became employees of the former.

A Frenchman who sold pianos in the 19^th century invented fire protection.  He realized if flame erupted in his warehouse and burned up a consignment of unsold “pie an knees”, he’d be ruined.  He developed primitive sprinkler “heads” (simply brass or copper “teed” fittings with a plug on the middle outlet held in place by bronze strips soldered together, designed to pop open in the hot temperatures a blaze generates).  Piping under municipal pressure carried water to the heads.  City water pressures vary from town to town, but average about seventy PSI (pounds per square inch).

The ex fitter was doing well fiscally.  He bought a sprawling estate in Parthenium, a village down the road East of Dalice, in Helena Troy County, near a manmade estuary called Lake Corinthia.  Herman ram-rodded the place, and when things were slow at work, Ed found himself making farm paraphernalia, such as gates and cattle feeders.  Later in the year, the boss acquired a portable “Crackerjack” welding machine, and Ed drove a work truck with it, to Parthenium pretty regular.

Mexican Nationals had filled the Dalice metroplex.  They seemed better behaved and more well-mannered than Americans.  The Jefe [(pronounced: heh' feh') means “boss man”] had gotten two Spaniards in the defection from the reciprocal ex employer.  The duo recruited three of their friends who’d not yet learned to speak English.

One of the original pair of Hispanics was bilingual and would translate instructions from English to Spanish, deliver them and transliterate any feedback.  Ed learned the numbers 1 to a 100 in Espanol, so he could tell them how many pieces of what size pipe he needed.  In time, when a massive project was underway at the rancho, such as a fence, the non bilingual Latin Ed had known and worked with previously was enlisted as a helper.  Between the man’s broken Anglish, and Ed’s pidgen Texican, they could communicate, albeit in a dialect hitherto unheard by humankind.

People who ran cattle professionally said, if a steer laid down, and stayed down for a few days, it wouldn’t get back up.  It’s legs would go to sleep, and the muscles somehow atrophied.  One Monday, Ed was told to bring all the Tulumians to Parthenium.  Herman met them there.  A cow had gone down, and the jefe resolved to get her up.  Herman had a manually operated chain hoist.  The latino boys got it up into the tree and secured it to a stout limb that overhung the fallen bovine.  The cow had recently given birth and was in lactation.  The calf had been adopted by another beeve who’s progeny was stillborn and suckled off her.

One of the Ixtapans told Ed, quite innocently, when a rivulet of pale fluid ran from a swollen udder, “Es no leche, es poos.” (“It’s not milk, it’s pus.”).  Ed got so nauseated, his guts began to buck, he got green around the grille, and for an awful moment, he thought he was going to call the dinosaurs.

The group got as many lines as they could under the animal, then lifted her with the block and tackle.  The effort was doomed to failure from the outset.  The men picked her up, but couldn’t get the girl to stand.

After hours of futile attempts, el jefe drove in.  Him and Herman walked a ways off, conferred, and the honcho called the endeavor off.

Ed heard Herman say, “I thot’choo’ said dem’ boys’d unnerstan’ me.  Hell, dem’ sunza’ beeches’ cain’t aspeakee’ no Anglish!”

Herman felt if the lads were living in The USA, it was their duty to learn the local hark.

The reaction Americans typically had when they heard any language other than their own spoken was remarkable.  The majority of the Yanks were sure they were being talked about.  Herman said the Mexican’s conversation sounded like “blackbirds in a Chinaberry Tree.”

It was a strange thing to watch Englishmen try and tell the Latins anything.  When their instructions drew a blank, brown eyed stare; the gringos’d repeat themselves, slower and louder.  If, after multiple repetitions, they still didn’t make themselves understood, they exasperatedly gave up.  If any other Yankees were within earshot, they told them The Tampicans could really understand but were just pretending they couldn’t to get out of work, be surly, or both.  The boss sold the fallen beeve to the meat packers in a common procedure known as “selling on the rail.”  Every part was used.

She’d be slaughtered, then all non muscled portions rendered into lard or glue.  Normally, when hundreds of head were prepared at once, hooves made jello, hides made boots and belts, viscera became pet food, steaks and roasts would be cut and packaged, then bone would be pulverized into fertilizer.  Anything remaining became ground beef.

When “buying on the rail,” the packers sent out a trailer with a winch on its front and a ramp on its rear, pulled the critter inside it, then cut the owner a check on the spot.  Any stock sold “on the rail” was apt to be in poor condition.  The rancher made no profit, but he broke even.  Everything but the hide, hooves, and bone was ground into burger.  Armed with that information, Ed and Herman swore off hamburgers for an indefinite period.  The Taxcoans were unaffected.  They ate menudo anyhow, which Ed understood was the Mexican equivalent of chitterlings.

For a long time, each time he saw, smelled, or even heard of hamburger, a picture of an infected teat on a bun popped into his mind, and he heard a faint, “It’s not milk...”

The hamburger ban was tested at once.  Ed, Herman, and the Acapulcans went into Parthenium for lunch.  They went in two pickups; Herman took his, with half of the Chihuauans, and Ed drove a battered work truck with the other half of the Puerta Vallartans.  They went to a “fast food” restaurant.

Ed had a weak stomach.  He ordered only a vanilla shake after returning from the bathroom where he’d crammed toilet tissue up his nostrils to try and block his sense of smell.  He went and sat in a booth with Herman.  The Matamorans got together in the one behind and were soon involved in a heated debate.

Herman had some terms and phrases in his vocabulary Ed had never heard.  One was “whassinever.”  It meant “whatever.”  Three more were “dod dam” (“got dam”), “ouch ‘ear” (“out here”), and “ouch ‘air” (“out there”). Once, as they drove along a highway infested with cops, Herman told him, “They guards this road real good.”  Ed could sense Herman was pensive.  He got him in a conversation to see if “whassenever” was on his mind would come out.  Herman had also forgone a burger in favor of an order of onion rings.

Ed nodded at the Aztecs, who were involved in a lively discussion, and told Herman, “Them guys are having a time, ain’t they?”  He saw one of them chomp a vengeful bite out of a sandwich, squeezing a glob of mayo out onto the table, and imagined the words, “Es no leche...”

“Soun’ like a mobba’ starlings in a live oak tree.  I know you savvy’ their talk.  One of them was askin’ me sump’n on the way up here I never did unnerstan’.  What is ‘pear oh pinnochio’?  They was askin’ me if I liked it.”

“Well ‘perro’ is dog.  I don’t know about ‘pinnochio’.”  He could almost guess.  The Barcelonans seemed to share a fetish for female genitalia.  It was a wonder the Conquistadores hadn’t overtaken the world.

“It’s the clam, ain’t it?  They was askin’ me if I liked dawg’ snatch.”

Ed thought, “You got it,” but said, “Prob’ly.”

After the meal, all hands went out to the vehicles.  Before they left, Ed decided to go back and get a soda pop to take with him.  When the pop was gone, he could refill it with water, and have a cool drink.  All the Baja Californians rode with Herman, some in the back.  He went back in and got in line.  He could hear the drive through speaker, and after a girl asked, “May I have your order?”, Ed realized it was Herman's voice.  “Yeah, uh gimme’ three jiffy jumbo dinnuhs’ wif’ fries an’ colas, and five fried pies.”

The girl read it back, and asked, “Will that be all?”

Ed heard, “Yeah,” then, “What do you mean you ain’t got no money?  How in the hell we gone’ pay fer’ it?  Dod dam!  I’m gonna’ kickee’ yo’ ass!”

Faintly he heard, “No, I kickee you ass!”

Herman reiterated, “Naw, dod dam, I kickee yer’ ass,” and then Ed heard the unmistakable roar of Herman’s jalopy speeding off.  The drive off order screwed the staff up for the entire time Ed stood there.  Every customer that drove up to the window was asked, “Did you have the three jiffy jumbo dinners with fries’n cokes and five hot apple pies?  No?  I’m sorry.  What did you have?”

On the way out of the bistro, Ed walked past a freshly emptied dumpster.  He collected the trash in the cab of the truck for disposal.  Amongst the garbage was a heavy glass bottle.  When he drove by the bin, he tossed the refuse in, then hurled the bottle in last.  A cat inside, startled by the noise sprang out into the cab.  The passenger window was open, and it leaped straight across the seat and out.  “Dam near gimme’ a heart attack,” he muttered.  He felt like a thousand pins were sticking in his scalp.

Ed watched a lot of TV, the most destructive human invention since endoplasmic weaponry.  The cathode ray tube, whether used as a computer monitor, or a television screen, was the AntiChrist.

ICBMs the world over used CRTs in their guidance systems.  The two most deadly synthetic contrivances since gunpowder were melded together briefly.  He’d once heard a theory that purported everybody indoctrinated by TV was addicted to cathode rays and needed some daily lest they go into withdrawals.

Herman was a devout White Christian.  He had some strange ideas about theology and race.  He once told Ed a story to illustrate the power of The Almighty.  He said some children came upon Elijah (or Elishah) in the wilderness.  They taunted and threw stones at him.  God saw this and called up two female bears.  The she bears mauled 42 kids.

One of his more outrageous claims was that Gee-Hove-Ah was a racist, because he or she (Herman allowed for the possibility that god was feminine.  The Chinese called it Yin and Yang.  One of them was female.) chose to prefer one race of people over all others.  A lot of world religions have female deities.  For example, some Hindu gods are married.  Papism has always revered the Madonna.

The Judeo Christain codex said the first woman on earth was named “Liluth”, but she was phased out in the years before The Gutenberg Press was developed.

In the first centuries of the common era, Old World Monks copied the scriptures by hand, and each one did minor editing on them.  There have been many evangelists who spent their lives trying to tell mankind that everyone was siblings and all the world's faiths worship the same deity.  That simply could not be per The Hermanic Gospel.  If everyone descended from Adam and Eve, then humanity came from an incestuous relationship.  In that case all mankind would be sanguinally related.  But, in order for it to be true that every faith pays homage to a generic deity, god would have to allow murder and war in his or her name for some, but prohibit other followers from it.

Herman claimed there were two men in the beginning:  Ad Am and Aa Dam.  Ad Am and Eave had Able.  One of their distant descendents would be George Washington.  Aa Dam and Liluth had Cane.  One ancestor would be Hitler.

Herman thought he was negro because of some evil his father had committed and being black was a divine curse.  He claimed Noah had made his son Ham turn black after the kid looked upon nudity.  Herman said that some naughty angels slipped out of heaven in the Pre Christian Era and had affairs with ephemeral mortals.

Their offspring were the Greco Roman Gods.

Herman was of the opinion that although the Holy Roman Empire collapsed in the year 900 anno domini, no one knew what year it was because of the Gregorian Calender Adjustment made later, and it took 14 years for the word to get to heaven.  So, in the year 914 CE, there was a revolt there amongst the fornicating angels.  God, with his (or her) loyalist seraphs, squared off against Lucy Fur, and her dark angel letharios.  Lucy (who mothered Mars and Pluto), and her hencherubs, fell from heaven, beginning a 1000 years of chaos.  They possessed the Central Powers (the Rush Ans, Germ Ans, and the Otto Men).  That started the First World War.  After a 1000 years, Lucy and her dark accessories would be dormant for a little season, having retreated into Purgatory for a century to watch the seeds they’d sown come to fruition.

Ed had been going to night school long enough to attain an AAS degree and signed up to take an Inspector’s examination.  He missed it by three questions and was awarded an Associate Inspectorship.  As he looked for another job, he came to the realization that associate’s degrees were not good for anything except starting campfires.

He finally landed a quality control position and gave his 2 weeks notice.  In his last talk with him, Herman told him to “Take care, and keep the cheeksa’ your rump squeezed together so no one can rapes yä’, an’ don’t take no wooden nickels, or whassenever’.  Beez’ likes a kotex:  absorbs as much bullcrap as ye can before gnashin’ yer’ teef’.  That ain’t the best advice, but it’s what I done, an’ I'm still here.”

© Sam E Hime 2001