Mason Benjamin Wham, here at age 27 hours

Ladies and gentlemen, may I be permitted to introduce the first new addition to the Frank B. Wham, Sr. branch of Whams in about 22 years! Meet Mason Benjamin Wham, the absolutely beautiful fruit of my younger brother, Nick’s loins and the result of the hard work of Kerry, my sister-in-law.

He is, of course, flawless in every way and has already scored perfect marks on all his newborn tests. Depending on who one asks, he arrived a week early (by Sissy’s account) or two weeks early (by Dr. Keller’s account). It’s actually a good thing he decided to come on and make his debut because as it was, he was 8 lbs. 7 oz and 20 inches long. A week or two more of floating around and growing and he would have been a hoss sure enough. As it is, he fits perfectly into the crook of an arm and weighs about the same as a large bag of sugar and is just as sweet.

Nick and Sissy brought him home today and I’ll need to be going over there before long to help get him settled in. In all likelihood, he’ll never see the inside of a day care since Nick’s mother, Teresa, is “conveniently” unemployed due to cutbacks at her former office. Daddy is absolutely about to explode with pride over his first (and if Sissy is to be believed, his last) grandchild. I think Teresa may have to sew new buttons on all of his shirts to replace the ones he burst upon Mason’s arrival.

One funny story about his birth. No one told my brother that babies don’t automatically start breathing as soon as they clear the birth canal; so, there he was coaching and waiting like a good new father when Mason pretty much popped into the doctor’s hands. According to Nick, “He was as blue as my blue jeans and he wasn’t breathing. I sank to my knees certain that my son was still born.” Luckily for all of us, a little suction at the nose and mouth and Mason announced his arrival into the world with a set of lungs that would have made his Granny Wham very proud. He also has no problems nursing and has shown a definite appreciation for George Jones songs.

I think he’s perfect.

We fell back last night and took back our hour of sleep that was so rudely stolen from us back in the late spring. Now, for a large majority of the people in the places where this biannual clock changing is enforced, the event passed largely unnoticed. For a select few, however, last night was a PITAS of the highest degree. Anyone working in a manufacturing plant last night had a bad time.

See at one time, we had more textile plants (factories, if you must) here in the South than a feral dog has fleas and ticks. For over a hundred years, textiles fueled this region and new cotton mills seemed to pop up like so many toadstools after a hard rain. All that wouldn’t matter as much to me except that much of my family went through a spell at one or the other local mills. In my own time, I spent a few dreary summers in one of the many textile plants owned by the richest man in South Carolina. He has always been known as a bit of a miser, so everyone in his plants worked “swing shifts”.

To the uninitiated, most factories run on three eight hour shifts: First is 8 AM to 4 PM, Second is 4 PM to 12 Midnight, and Third (or Graveyard) lasts from 12 Midnight to 8 AM. If you worked a swing shift, you would spend a week on First, then a week on Second, then a week on Third and the next week back to First. It was brutal to say the least, but in a factory running swing shifts, the owners don’t have to pay a shift premium because everyone works all the shifts. Again, for those not accustomed to the lint-head lifestyle, a shift premium is the extra pay you draw for working an “off” shift — Second or Third. Most of the time, you’d get so much more for Second and then double that for working Third. It was a way of rewarding bleary-eyed drives home in early morning and basically shooting any of one’s body’s natural circadian rhythms in the head.

Now, I gave y’all that  quasi-history lesson to tell you this — under no circumstances did you want to be working Third when the time “fell back”. See, if you don’t know, the time actually changes at 2:00 AM. Most people just set the clocks back and go to bed. Not in a cotton mill. Oh no. The one time I was unfortunate enough to get caught on fall back night, I joined a group at the time clock and watched at 2:00 as the clock wound back to 1:00 AM. A whole miserable hour of hot, lint-filled, and sweaty work was just erased like so much chaff on the wind. It was heart breaking and the worst thing was, you didn’t get paid extra even though you worked 9 hours instead of 8 because your time card would show 8 hours and not 9. The Man got an extra pound of flesh for nothing.

It’s been many a year since I walked the machine aisles picking up lint waste, but I haven’t forgotten that cruel irony. Sadly, what few manufacturing plants that still run today around here have continued that barbaric practice. Unfortunately, most of them run 12 hour shifts so the late shift works 13 hours!

Of course, “jump forward” night in the spring was different, but who wants to talk about that 🙂 !

Sleep good and enjoy waking to daylight and not dark, y’all, and as always, don’t forget to scrub your necks and wash your feet. Love y’all!