I came to understand the world of work on third shift in Winchester, Kentucky temp to permanent (this was the 90s) and with the shift differential I made $5.10 an hour. But gas was still under a dollar a gallon and you could still get six boxes of generic macaroni and cheese, the kind with the packet of powdered cheese food you mixed with butter or milk or, if it was a lean month, warm tap water, and four cans of tuna for $2. I spent the summer before my daughter was born manufacturing 3D Styrofoam deer targets. The entire summer was hot and humid and the air in the rented warehouse space was stifling and always had a slight burnt note.
I worked at the trimming station. The floor supervisor gave me a cheap fish boning knife to cut the unnecessary edges off the pieces after they cooled enough to be removed from the molds. Funny thing: liquid Styrofoam is hot and when poured into a metal mold under compression builds pressure that is only alleviated after the liquid cools.
One of the other temps, a giant, loudmouthed cracker, got his arm broken when he popped the mold too soon. The crowbar he used snapped back, popped so hard the bone at his right elbow was exposed. He came back three nights later, arm in a cast, popping molds and testing physics at the exact same volume, nothing learned.
I drove home exhausted each morning, crawled into bed, and listened to my daughter grow in her mother’s belly. Sometimes I read to her until I fell asleep.
[Day book 2026 // Winter 3.12.26]
Sirens and Other Alarm Systems
I managed to get about 30 minutes of good sleep before the storm rolled in right and proper. Prepare and don’t worry. Of the list of things I can control when the wind rolls through at 80 miles per hour, the wind is not one. I had my clothes for Monday and my boots nearby. There was a flashlight close by. My side of the bed put me between Amanda and the windows. The basement had a little shelf stable food and water, and a working bathroom. There’s lamp oil and wick in the basement for the lamp, plenty of batteries, and a battery-powered radio. So I listened. I listen for leaks and for loud bumps. I listen for the sound an approaching tornado makes. That time in Farmers, Kentucky when the tornado came through and me and the trailer where I was living were left intact, the sound of it lives in a pocket in my ear. Forever.
“I’m glad we have the alert system and sirens,” I told her.
“But?”
“But it makes it hard to hear the weather.”
[Day book 2026: Winter 3.16.26]
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Poet. Essayist. Fictioner. Steamboat fireman. Bit of a grackle.
