Youre Gonna Have Trouble

Youre Gonna Have Trouble -- Volume #6 -- in the Chance "Cash" Register Working Stiff Series . . .

I fixed it so Id get fired. Dont mean it didnt hurt any less. The crazy schedule they had me on driving the hotel van (picking up flight crews 6-days a week), left no time for the one thing that mattered: the writing. So I got pink-slipped; kicked to the curb, as thy say. One problem solved--that created another: how to earn money to buy groceries, put gas in the used bucket, pay bills.

So it starts: another series of blue-collar, back-breaking/soul-crushing gigs: at a plant nursery, meat-packing facility, warehouse, striping company as jackhammer operator and ditch-digger. We do what we gotta. Its like this for the average person. No biggie. Nothing to it but to do it. Folks in other countries might think were all a bunch of millionaires here in the grand and prosperous US of A. Guess what, peeps? Heres the truth. Were toilers. Most of us.

Some of us working stiffs might even be into the arts: appreciate the great painters, awesome writers and jazz & blues artists. What keeps us going. But yes, were 9-to-5-ers. Do it to get by. My favorite books have always been Tom Kromers Waiting for Nothing, Jack Blacks Nobody Wins, Bukowskis Post Office, George Orwells Down and Out in Paris and London, Jack Londons Martin Eden; and of course Knut Hamsuns unforgettable Hunger. This is my way of honoring those great scribes who wrote tomes about stuff that actually matters. K.A.