Southern Georgia

I'm writing this post primarily for Eric.  I used to work with Eric and he misses stories about being in the papermill, especially ones from me.  That's because there aren't a lot of females that work in papermills.  There are some, but not many.  And because of that, I tend to make friends very easily with the operators in the papermill and it's probably also because I'm so nice. :)

I was in southern Georgia last week, helping out with a start-up of some of our equipment.  There was only one operator for this area and they work an 8-hr shift.  A few of the nights, I was on the swing shift and one night, I was on the graveyard shift.  The first operator I worked with was really nice, he told me about how much he loves fishin' and huntin'.  Each day I saw him, he had fished in the morning before he came to work.  He also has two little boys and he told me all about how they were named, I remember one of them was Max, but I can't remember the other.  They were both named after different men on his side of the family, both first and middle names.  I asked him why they didn't name them after anyone in his wife's family, he said she had agreed with the names, too.  But, I could tell that it wasn't even something they thought of doing.  He had nicknames for a lot of people at the mill.  He gave one of the guys I work with the nickname, "humperdink" (his last name is Hungerpiller).  There was someone else nicknamed "sniffy" (because he was always sniffing) another operator was nicknamed "Ronald McDonald" for the week because he had dyed his hair bright red.  That nickname was very fitting.  The operator that was working graveyard was nicknamed "granny" because he was always getting after the other operators about their work and keeping things cleaned up in the control room.  It was fun talking to him and hearing all the gossip about the other people working there.  

I worked with "granny" (his real name is Joe) one night.  I met him the night before, as I was leaving, and he said, "oh, so we get to sleep together tomorrow night?"  Ha, ha, it was funny.  When I came in the next night, he apologized, since he wasn't sure how I took what he said.  I told him that I got it and there weren't any worries.  But he did say something else later that night about how he got to spend the night with me.  He is 62 and divorced and I heard all about his ex-wife.  We exchanged some stories.  He was into Harleys and dirt bikes.  He built a dirt bike track for his son and grandkids and races around with them all the time.  He seems to be an awesome grandpa.  He also is in the process of building them a zip-line.  I think my dad should build me a zip-line in my back yard.  

When Joe was telling me about riding Harleys, he told me how much he loves riding winding roads and that there was one road in North Carolina that has over 300 turns in 11 miles.  I told him that would make me so sick, since I get motion sickness.  But, that it seemed really fun.  Later that night, he told me it was just too bad that I got motion sickness and he was sort of implying that he would have liked to take me on a ride on his Harley.  Ha, ha....so awesome!  Another thing he told me was that he was not looking forward to going to the dentist the next day.  He just got so nervous about it.  He said, "I get more nervous than a prostitute at church".  That made me laugh really hard. 

He also told me about how he is only interested in dating women and not being re-married.  He just didn't want to deal with someone being like his ex again.  I thought that was a little sad, but it sounds like he keeps dating women that don't seem to be the best girlfriends.  He told me about his most recent girlfriend and she had thought she saw Joe drive by her place a few times during the day, but he had actually been working that day.  She was really mad when he saw her that night because he hadn't stopped by.  He just got up and said it's over.  He knew she was a crazy if she was that upset with him, when she didn't remember that he was working.  She came by his house that night and threw a bag full of all the Harley gear he had bought for her on his front porch and then peeled out.  And Joe was completely fine with it all. 

These are the kinds of things I get to hear when I'm working at the papermill late at night.  I doubt that my male counterparts from the office get to hear as many good stories as I do.  They also don't have the chance to be hit on by the operators, either.  The pros and cons....