A Secret of Cheviot Machine and Screw

NOTE - This section of American Project contains adult language and content and is therefore not suitable for minors.

Episode 12

In his refrigerator, at Cheviot Machine and Screw, Len Wiedeshofer kept, at all times, at least one case of O’Doul’s, and a six pack of Coke.

The O’Doul’s, Len told his crew, was to be opened, poured out, refilled with Miller High Life, and recapped. Len had a bottle capping machine next to the Bridgeport horizontal milling machine, under a suspended fluorescent light.

Sax Taxson loved to pour the non-alcoholic O’Doul’s down the utility tub drain. He would painstakingly watch the foam from the fake beer volcano out of the drain, and mingle with the soap powder he and big Ernie used to clean their hands after the day was out.

Len was in recovery. Len’s wife Mabel thought he was going to AA meetings after work, coming home, smelling like smoke. Breath reeking of coffee and orange peels.

“So I says to Mabel,” Len said to Sax and big Ernie, “I says, Mabel, I told you I quit drinking, I got a sponsor Mabel, I said.”

Sax laughed, and big Ernie shook his head, and Sax took a doctored O’Doul’s bottle out of the refrigerator. The big grey garbage can by the door outside the office had thirteen empty green O’Doul’s bottles on top of twenty four empty cans of Miller High Life.

***

Sax loved the feel of the bottle cap press. The rusty smooth handle, cast out of high grade iron, from an era gone by. The press reeked of nostalgia, a sort of home sickness, and as Sax recapped each of the innocuous, inconspicuous O’Doul’s bottles, with vile Miller High Life from twelve ounce cans, he felt powerful.

Pressing down with a heave of his small wiry frame, the cap would knurl over the lip of the green bottle with a satisfying mash. Sax loved to make his small arm swell with the lever, as he filled the bottles, and slowly changed the world for the worse.

This happened every other day, as Len’s drinking picked up, and Len’s wife Mabel would visit the shop more regularly. And all hell would break loose. ***

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Photograph by Nythan James.