In August my life changed dramatically. I’d been working for almost a year at a place called Monahan Screen Works, printing t-shirts, satin jackets, baseball hats, beer coolers and the like. Working as a professional screen printer is like rowing a boat all day, but you get used to it after a while. For all the skill and attention required to do it right there’s a mindless quality to this kind of work once you get past a certain level of ability.
The other printers at MSW were cool, but some of them spoke very little english. Whether they were from south of the border or eastern Europe, they worked their asses off. The shop boss was an aging hippy named Peter Thomas. He never told us his last name, and I used to tease him about it.
“Why do you think they call it dope?” I’d shout above the hum of the dryer.
“How’s life in the witness protection program?” I’d holler above the pneumatic rhythm of the automatic press. The other printers would laugh, even though they understood only every other word.
So everyone called him Peter Thomas, as if it were one word, and he was a good guy. During lunch we’d talk about the hipsters form the 60’s and early 70’s, and some of the little-known bands from that era.
“Hey Peter Thomas,” I’d ask slyly, “did you ever see The Flaming Groovies?”
“Oh, man.” He’d roll his eyes. “I think so.”
You could never be entirely sure with Peter Thomas whether or not he was stretching the truth, and I’m not sure he was quite certain himself. We got along really well, and he’d always file the more difficult and interesting jobs on my clip board.
“This one’s a 4 color front and back on a satin jacket, m’man. You’ll need to lay down an underprint of white and flash it. The jackets are $80 each, and we don’t have any extras.”
A tough job, but nothing new. Screen printing ink is basically liquid plastic that cures when exposed to heat. The plastisol used to imprint satin jackets gets a little epoxy goo mixed in for added durability. The challenge with these jackets is that the satin shell can move around under the silk screen. You can restrict the movement with a framing clamp which holds it down, but you’ve still got the fiber lining under the satin and over the platen.
After a while you get the feel for it. You practice on heavy sweatshirts, which can move a bit, too. Eventually you move up to satin and nylon. Because plastisol is relatively thick you can print colors on top of and next to each other with very little bleeding, but printing light colors on dark backgrounds can be tricky. The cure is to double print, or under print, the art work. The underprint needs to be dry before you can print on it again, and you can’t remove the jacket from the platen and run it through the dryer, so you use a small swivelling thing called a flash dryer to take care of it on the press. Too much heat and the satin shrinks, rendering the jacket worthless - you’ll never get the other colors to print in register.
All of these jobs were printed on my press, and I took more than a little pride in that. Peter Thomas had put in a good word with the Monahans for me, and they gave me a raise. A week later I got another, much larger raise when Peter Thomas fell down dead on the factory floor. Heart attack was the named cause, but I think it was too many years of hard living. He left a wife and two small kids.
The Monahans called me into the big office the day after the funeral. The shop had been closed for the service, and it was odd to walk amongst the idle presses and dryers.
“Look,” said Bruce Monahan, “you’re the man for the job. Can you handle it son?”
“Yes,” I replied, “I think so.”
“Think so don’t cut mustard, son. We need a confident man.”
“I’m confident...”
“Alright, then. Let’s see how you do. Your first job is to find your replacement on the floor. Your hours will get a little longer now, but you’re gonna make a lot more money. Are you ready for that?” He grinned.
As my financial reality swelled, Roger’s dwindled. He quit his real estate job and took a bartending gig. This allowed him more time in the studio. I bought his Cherokee, and he bought an ‘81 Chevy Custom Deluxe pick up for $600. It wasn’t rare to find him under the thing out in front of the Belly, wrenching on something or other. His confidence seemed to outmeasure his knowledge.
My eight hour work day expanded to ten, but I still managed to get a lot of sculpture made. It was increasingly difficult to leave work at work, but I helped the process along with loud music and heavy drinking. I took to drinking coffee, something I’d never done before, and I returned to my cigarette habit. This allowed me the opportunity to hang out with the other guys in the shop during their breaks in the alley.
As summer slid in to fall I began to dread the impending gloom and chill of winter. I had gas service brought to the studio, and Roger promised to cover half the bill. He was polite, but it became clear that he had developed a healthy disregard for his financial responsibilities. I’d try to confront him, and he’d weasel out of it somehow. I had disliked him almost from the beginning. Now I was starting to experience something stronger. Around Halloween I started to sense a loudening voice in the back of my mind. The voice told me that I needed to level the scales of justice.
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Next week: Act 7: Rock Yer Block Off!
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