BY THE WAY: LONG NIGHT'S JOURNEY INTO DAY SHIFT

Finally working a normal day shift after so many years on nights makes me think of someone who would have appreciated the transition.

Fireball was a self-proclaimed lifer at Hussman Refrigeration in St. Louis and proud of it. He also was one of the more interesting characters I met while working to help pay for my college tuition many summers ago.

A lifer, for those who have never worked in a factory, is someone who expects to spend the rest of his or her working days with the same company doing the same task. Retirement and sneaking off to have a break at the company's expense are necessary morsels of sustenance for lifers. But somehow Fireball was above all that.

Most people I met at Hussman were friendly enough until they learned that I would be going back to school in the fall. Once they realized that I wasn't lifer material, however, they sent a chill in my direction that made me feel like I was working in an appropriate place.

Fireball was different in this regard as well. He didn't seem to care if I was going back to school or running for President of the United States. As long as we were assigned the task of shoving coils into tubes at a reasonable pace, I was deemed no different than the rest. I was an OK guy.

I appreciated this. But I didn't tell Fireball in so many words what it meant to me. I just worked as hard as he did and that seemed to be enough.

What fascinated me the most about Fireball is that he was easy to understand until he started talking to the lead man, Jim. When these two started a conversation nobody could tell what they were talking about.

It sounded like a bunch of words that just ran together like symbols of the English language on a drunken leave of absence. Oddly enough, judging from their animated gestures, Fireball and Jim seemed to be communicating just fine.

When Fireball went back to working with me, he would return to the human race and speak my brand of English once again. Fireball took me aside one evening and told me that Jim just learned he wouldn't be with us anymore.

This deeply saddened Fireball because he and Jim rode together the entire time they worked at Hussman. They clung to this ritual as if it were the very essence of life.

I couldn't help think that losing Jim as a riding companion would just devastate Fireball. The next summer I was able to get hired by Hussman and sure enough Fireball was working on the night shift as he had for three decades. But there was a new lead man in charge of Fireball.

They only seemed to communicate when they had to. There was no anger or hatred in their voices, but I could tell the working relationship was somewhat strained.

The usual jokes that Fireball told me were no longer part of his routine. He worked just as hard as before, but there didn't seem to be any bounce in his step.

I finally decided to ask Fireball what was bothering him. He told me it just wasn't the same anymore. He had to drive to work by himself and go home alone and it made him feel hollow inside.

It bothered me each day that I worked with him that I couldn't do anything about his condition. Then one day Fireball told me he had the strangest dream. He said he dreamed he was reincarnated. I thought this was a beautiful way of dealing with a difficult dilemma.

And what did you return as, I queried with an alternate feeling of hope and relief. An astronaut? A professional athlete?

"I came back on the day shift," he beamed. "But Fireball, why would you think that was such a big deal?" I asked with a noticeable trace of disappointment. "Because that's the shift Jim transferred to," he said.

~Bill Heitland is a staff writer at the Southeast Missourian.