I’ve been to some pretty hot places. I was born in Los Angeles. I was raised east, in the Southern California desert. I have visited Hot Places, like Phoenix in August, Florida in October and Chicago in July. It takes a lot to top an August in Phoenix, but I have been to one place that tops them all. The top of a volcano. Not just any volcano, but an active volcano: Volcan Pacaya in Guatemala.
Previously, the hottest place I’ve ever been was working on a road crew as an asphalt shoveler in Orange County, CA. The details themselves are pretty mundane and the majority of it isn’t even worth remembering. Similar to the life of a Marine: he has great stories of battles, Thai prostitutes and all night drinking binges, but what he doesn’t tell you is that in order to get to those great places, he spends two months in the hull of a US Navy ship bored out of his skull. Nonetheless, the fact remains. Asphalt shoveling is one of the most unglamorous jobs in America, topped only by port-a-john cleaners and glory hole drillers.
(Note to Miller Brewing Company: there’s an idea for your “Real American Hero” ad campaign. We salute you, Glory Hole Drillers.)
It’s hot already outside, reaching 90 degrees around eight o’clock and capping off at 109 at 1:45. It’s hard, ass breaking work of scooping up 500 degree asphalt from a pile and throwing it into the section of the road that is being repaved. If one piece of asphalt or tar touches your skin, it’s likely to flash up and burrow itself pretty far down into your skin. It’s a wise choice to wear a long sleeve shirt and a bandanna around your neck, regardless of the temperature outside. At the time, it seemed like a page ripped right out of Paradise Lost or Dante’s Inferno: dressed like it was December in San Francisco with that unforgiving La Mirada sun beating down on the back of your neck while the asphalt machine inches forward slowly but firmly, spewing out its steamy carcinogenic freight onto the road. What usually gets a man through such a dire state of affairs is the camaraderie of your fellow man. No such luck for me. These guys were a) tough as fuck Mexicans and b) Spanish-speaking ONLY. I knew enough Spanish to order a beer in Tijuana and know what to do when someone said chupa mi verga, pinche cabron but that’s about it.
The porta-johns were a brief respite from the steam of the tar machine and the foreman that reminded me of Boss from Cool Hand Luke with his CHP patrolman sunglasses and the way he held an asphalt shovel like a Mossberg. These outhouses were the apex of human filth that, in a single moment, erased a millennium of human achievement in the fields of waste management, sewage engineering and odor control. At least in my mind, it did.
I realize this is a delicate subject -- port-a-johns and all the business we do in them behind closed doors. I will tread carefully with this one, but I firmly believe that one of life’s little pleasures in walking into a bathroom stall, pulling your drawers down and seeing a rolled up newspaper for you to read that the kind soul who was before you left behind. A little gift from God! What made this particular outhouse so terrible was that a shit soiled copy of the Spanish language newspaper La Opinion always seemed to wait for me on the floor when I pulled my pants down and gingerly lowered my buttocks over, and eventually on the fiberglass housing the contained the soupy stew of a weeks worth of shit, diarrhea, toilet paper, vomit from bad enchiladas off the Roach Coach and gallons and gallons or MGD-fueled urine, cooked daily in this depraved crock-pot of filth. Yes, this was a welcome lull from shoveling asphalt! This hot and steamy hell.
Having said all that, Pacaya in Guatemala was hotter.
(coming soon, part II: Pacaya)
Previously, the hottest place I’ve ever been was working on a road crew as an asphalt shoveler in Orange County, CA. The details themselves are pretty mundane and the majority of it isn’t even worth remembering. Similar to the life of a Marine: he has great stories of battles, Thai prostitutes and all night drinking binges, but what he doesn’t tell you is that in order to get to those great places, he spends two months in the hull of a US Navy ship bored out of his skull. Nonetheless, the fact remains. Asphalt shoveling is one of the most unglamorous jobs in America, topped only by port-a-john cleaners and glory hole drillers.
(Note to Miller Brewing Company: there’s an idea for your “Real American Hero” ad campaign. We salute you, Glory Hole Drillers.)
It’s hot already outside, reaching 90 degrees around eight o’clock and capping off at 109 at 1:45. It’s hard, ass breaking work of scooping up 500 degree asphalt from a pile and throwing it into the section of the road that is being repaved. If one piece of asphalt or tar touches your skin, it’s likely to flash up and burrow itself pretty far down into your skin. It’s a wise choice to wear a long sleeve shirt and a bandanna around your neck, regardless of the temperature outside. At the time, it seemed like a page ripped right out of Paradise Lost or Dante’s Inferno: dressed like it was December in San Francisco with that unforgiving La Mirada sun beating down on the back of your neck while the asphalt machine inches forward slowly but firmly, spewing out its steamy carcinogenic freight onto the road. What usually gets a man through such a dire state of affairs is the camaraderie of your fellow man. No such luck for me. These guys were a) tough as fuck Mexicans and b) Spanish-speaking ONLY. I knew enough Spanish to order a beer in Tijuana and know what to do when someone said chupa mi verga, pinche cabron but that’s about it.
The porta-johns were a brief respite from the steam of the tar machine and the foreman that reminded me of Boss from Cool Hand Luke with his CHP patrolman sunglasses and the way he held an asphalt shovel like a Mossberg. These outhouses were the apex of human filth that, in a single moment, erased a millennium of human achievement in the fields of waste management, sewage engineering and odor control. At least in my mind, it did.
I realize this is a delicate subject -- port-a-johns and all the business we do in them behind closed doors. I will tread carefully with this one, but I firmly believe that one of life’s little pleasures in walking into a bathroom stall, pulling your drawers down and seeing a rolled up newspaper for you to read that the kind soul who was before you left behind. A little gift from God! What made this particular outhouse so terrible was that a shit soiled copy of the Spanish language newspaper La Opinion always seemed to wait for me on the floor when I pulled my pants down and gingerly lowered my buttocks over, and eventually on the fiberglass housing the contained the soupy stew of a weeks worth of shit, diarrhea, toilet paper, vomit from bad enchiladas off the Roach Coach and gallons and gallons or MGD-fueled urine, cooked daily in this depraved crock-pot of filth. Yes, this was a welcome lull from shoveling asphalt! This hot and steamy hell.
Having said all that, Pacaya in Guatemala was hotter.
(coming soon, part II: Pacaya)
