They took the sign down. I’ve been driving past this place on my way to work for about eight months now. It is the factory where I worked for eight years, earning a comfortable middle-class living for myself and my family, before they decided to shut it down and send us all away.

The factory had actually been there since about 1969, some 37 years. My uncle put in over thirty years at the place and retired from it, comfortably, as near as I can tell. I had hoped to do the same, although in the back of my mind I always knew that society has changed, there just aren’t many such jobs left for blue-collar, “working-class” types like myself.

They didn’t have to close it, of course. They didn’t have to wreck the lives of some 1500 families. The company didn’t go out of business; they still make and sell their product. When the higher-ups announced the shut-down, they claimed all sorts of various economic reasons. It was all bullshit. The truth of the matter is that they had just spent $240 million to build and open a factory in Mexico. They swore that the two issues were unrelated…an insult to the intelligence of every person who ever worked in the factory that they closed down.

Ours was a union factory, where the company had to follow rules, treat people fairly, and pay them a fair wage for their labor. The company didn’t like that. I’m not a big union supporter either, never have been, but in an environment such as this it is truly the only way to keep the company fair and honest in its dealings with its employees. More to the point, they company can make tons of money buy moving their factory into a place like Mexico, where they will pay sub-standard wages (but still better than what that local economy had before) and then turn around and try to sell their product in this country.

They claimed that it would cost too much to retool the factory that was closed down, so that it could produce a more competitive product. More bullshit. They spent $240 mill to build an entirely new plant down in Mexico. Sorry, it doesn’t add up. The fact is, they WANTED to close the American plant, and kick the American workers to the curb. Why pay me $20 an hour plus benefits to make their product when they can get some guy down in Mexico to do it for $2 an hour, no benefits?

Greed. I’ve always been a pro business sort of person…my reasoning being that it is big business that provides the jobs upon which we base our lives. Not so much, any more. In their greed, they are moving their jobs out of the country, all with the same bullshit mantra about how I am going to be retrained for equally lucrative jobs in some growing field.

I think most of us already know how to push a broom and swing a mop, thank you.

Greed. Not that they weren’t making money, but that they weren’t making enough money. Weren’t getting rich enough fast enough. I’m all for making as much money and being as rich as you can be. But they are doing it at the expense of others.

1500 families. Lives shattered. Thank you Bridgestone/Firestone, for taking that fucking eyesore of a sign down. I bet it will look much better in its new home, beneath the pale blue Mexican sky.

There have been a couple of times over the last week that I seriously considered deleting this blog, and quitting writing. It was that kind of week.

I’m not going to go into all the gory details…suffice it to say that all of the problems and issues that I have been avoiding and putting off for so long all came due at the same time, and all under the umbrella of an accident that–thankfully–left my family with only minor injuries, but totaled the only vehicle that we had that was running at the time.

Money problems, in the main, all borne of poor financial management and your’s truly’s propensity for avoiding dealing with problems, putting things off, procrastinating, and being a general fuck-up.

Know this…no matter how difficult it is to face a problem at the time it occurs, it is infinitely worse to try and avoid it, to let all these relatively minor problems pile up. You put yourself at a horrible risk that, when something truly devastating occurs, all those other problems will come swarming over you like sharks on a bloody chum-bucket.

I suppose there will be the dreaded “second job” in my very near future, which takes away from my precious drinking beer and playing video games writing time. It’s all about sacrifice, right? My “goofing around” time is my most prized possession, as it turns out. And by golly that’s precisely what it is going to cost to dig myself and my family out of the hole that we’ve buried ourselves in.

But I’ve decided not to dump this blog, or quit writing. That would be too much like giving up. I only update this stupid blog once a week anyway, and it’s not like I’m tearing it up on the writing front, either. Maybe I can do one typewritten page a day…maybe it will only be one page a week. Whatever it is, I will continue to do it.

With concentrated and organized effort, I know we can get our lives back on track…and as cliche as it sounds, things will probably be better for having gone through this experience. Ultimately it is a matter of priorities. I guess it just took a good slap upside the head to make me realize that my priorities were all screwed up. I’m not going to get down in the weeping-and-wailing corner and take all the blame on myself…there are large chunks of this situation that were utterly beyond my control. But there are a lot of things that I could have done…should have done…that would have mitigated the devastation.

The bottom line is that, as important as my writing and my “me” time is to me, taking care of and protecting my family (to the extent that I am able) from these hardships is more important.

BUT, I was able to put off growing up and becoming a responsible adult for 43 years…so hahaha all over you motherfuckers it wasn’t a complete loss.