Faye
“Sorry to hear about your dad.”
“Thanks, Oscar. Thanks.”
“Yeah, he was a tough SOB. Gotta love that old school about him.”
She nodded. Oscar was right. Her dad was a tough SOB, she thought as she walked out of the plant after her shift.
Faye had made this walk every working day for the last twenty-nine years at Jeep.
It was so different from the now-demolished Parkway plant. That place had started as a bicycle factory. That plant was where Bruce had worked and Bruce’s dad Chet, before that.
Boy were they chuffed when Faye had announced she was going to follow in their footsteps.
But she’d done it. And almost thirty years later, she was a valuable member of the team that assembled Jeep Wranglers.
These days, she didn’t have to operate a machine or work a spot on the line anymore.
She also didn’t have to rely on her skills as a tool and die maker. Ha, she hadn’t used that hard-won skill in years. However, she was proud of it. She was a groundbreaker. And she knew it.
These days, Faye was valuable for what she knew, who she knew, and her knowledge of whether a problem was manageable without management.
And she knew how to talk to the guys.
That was her value. Institutional knowledge, they called it.
In the early days, Bruce Kelly’s “getting her in” at the plant was a strike against her. It was a hurdle. Maybe, thanks to being his daughter, she had fewer gross comments from the guys, but then again, they just said stuff quieter, so Bruce didn’t hear.
He was almost embarrassed that she’d gone into the trades. Old school that he was. But in the end, to his last breath, he’d said he was proud. That was something.
She’d started at the plant in 1996, but it may as well have been 1956. Her grandmother had worked on the line in the war, but somehow, that didn’t translate to her generation. By high school, her dad was expecting her to do something more “girly.”
But she hadn’t. Bruce hadn’t talked about his deceased wife, the girls’ mother, but there was an undercurrent that not having a mom meant Faye didn’t know what “girls” were supposed to do.
She hadn’t worried about all that. She’d learned how to talk to the guys by knowing how to talk to Bruce Kelly. He was tough. But also not without charm. He could have been a bigger boss at Local 12, but he always said he didn’t want to deal with all the drama. He was content to be a shop steward at different points.
Because itwasdrama. The inside of an auto plant was no different from any other workplace in that way.
Plus, there were plenty of other women here now. Though most of the ones she’d come up with were getting ready for retirement. Thirty and out. That was the goal.
Faye didn’t know if it washergoal, but it was a mantra for a lot of them.
She’d met her husband here, worked until she was eight months pregnant here, and divorced her husband here.
The Jeep Plant had changed hands over the years; she started out on Parkway, and that place was gone. These days, she worked at the Toledo North Assembly Plant, where Jeep Wranglers rolled off the line. It was a massive complex, humming with activity and constantly in motion with production and deliveries. But it was also exclusive. While this was a huge employer in their region, you couldn’t get inside unless you were supposed to be inside.
She was proud every time she saw a Wrangler on the road or in a movie. Or anywhere.
Faye didn’t know if thirty and out was her plan. She did know it was a different kind of plant that had become her obsession.
Faye loved to garden. She loved it more than just about anything except her family.
She didn’t mind working the second shift for that very reason. The daylight hours were hers to garden, weed, replant, rake, or do anything else her little patch of backyard seemed to need.
Faye had gone into this work, in part, to get Bruce Kelly’s attention. It was a middle-child move. And now that he was gone, she wondered, what was worth her attention? What did she want to do?
She had the little inheritance from that tough SOB, her dad, and she had a good income here, and a paid-off ranch house in a cute neighborhood. She was going to use some of thatinheritance to get a little backyard greenhouse. That could take her seed starting to a whole new level.
