The nightmare on Oliver Street (San Antonio)

It all began with an innocuous-looking ad on Craigslist. This is what it read:

MANUFACTURED HOME INDTALL HELP WANT TO WORK (EMAIL OR TEXT ONLY PLEASE)

**TEXT OR EMAIL ONLY PLEASE We are looking for 2 people to work with one of our mobile home set up / tare down crews. Valid regular drivers license required for 1 position not for the second. Experience necessary. Looking for someone hard working and dependable. txt anytime 210,,,,463....5555 or email me for more info call today start tomorrow if your not a slacker slackers will be sent home on the spot

Yes, it was full of typos and other horrendous grammatical mistakes but whatever, it's Craigslist, right? I texted the number and was told that the hiring manager would contact me. I got a call a while later from a guy named Ezekiel. This guy sounded like he was either drunk or stoned, or maybe both. He had a heavy drawl and I wasn't sure if he was white or black, not that it matters. He told me the job involved moving mobile homes and that no experience was required. The pay was $75/day but it could be higher depending on how well I performed. I mentioned that I was Canadian and had no Social Security and he told me that would be no problem, I could just use a friend's SSN. I thought this was a great plan, though in hindsight I suppose this should have been my first (or tenth?) red flag.

I said ok, let's do it.

He told me I could start that day, whenever I was ready. All I had to do was to go pick him up so we could get a work truck and load up some cinderblocks. I drove about half an hour south of San Antonio to the town of Elmendorf to pick Zeke up. When I saw him, my suspicions of his redneck background were confirmed. He had several neck (read: prison) tattoos and a multitude on his arms. He was dressed in construction garb, looked like a roughneck, but overall seemed like a nice, quiet guy. 

Here's where my trouble began. As we were driving down the highway to pick up the work truck, what felt like a large rock or piece of metal smashed into the front (or underside) of my van, I rolled over it, and the whole van began to vibrate as I drove. I pulled over and looked under the vehicle, but nothing seemed wrong with it. There had been nothing on the road for me to hit, so I was puzzled, and very worried. I continued driving, though much slower, not knowing what was wrong or what I was in for.

When we arrived at the "shop", it turned out to be a residence, what we would call an acreage in Canadian English. There were a couple of trailer homes (aka mobile homes) on it, and a bunch of different vehicles in various states of disrepair. The whole place looked rather run down and was somewhat reminiscent of your typical slasher flick à la Texas Chainsaw Massacre, or perhaps what you might expect the Pickton farm to look like, minus the livestock (was there livestock on the Pickton farm)?

We hooked up a trailer to one of the pickup trucks (I did the driving as Zeke, E, or Evil, as he liked to be called, had a suspended license) and drove out to the job site. The rest of that day (this was Monday) played out fairly smoothly, Zeke and I got along fine, we picked up the materials from a site where a mobile home had sat, and drove back to the shop. I didn't want to drive the van in its condition so I asked to spend the night on the property. I met the company owner, Michael, that evening, and he agreed to it, promising to help me fix the problem the next day. For that day's work, which had only been four hours, I was told by Zeke (the hiring manager) that I would get a half day's pay, though it seems they didn't normally do that. Alarm bells started going off in my head, but I silenced them.

Work was to start at 7am the next day, so I was up by 5. We loaded materials on the truck and trailer, joined by another worker named JR. Yes, like JR on Dallas, except in San Antonio. As we were heading out of the yard, the next-door neighbour stopped by and exchanged hugs with Zeke. Not the kind of hugs that I give, of course. Man hugs. Bro hugs. Congratulations for getting out of jail hugs. Something passed between their hands as they threw furtive glances in my direction. I could only guess that it wasn't cannabis. 

The job we worked on that day was a double-wide trailer that they had pulled onto a new property. The two halves still sat on their wheels so we had to jack them up, remove the axles, and put blocks underneath them. This took us the entire morning and part of the afternoon but we were still far from done. At some point Michael told me to come with him to another job.

Michael is a young man, I'm guessing in his mid-twenties, with lazy, unfocused eyes and latent anger and violence coursing through his body. He looks like someone who wouldn't hesitate to put a bullet in your head while sipping a beer or three. He drank one of these as he drove, and his driving started to deteriorate. I finally convinced him to pull over as I was terrified of an impending disaster, and I took over the wheel. He didn't quite know where we were going and promptly fell asleep in the passenger seat. I was forced to call his father and obtain the address of the job, where Michael was supposed to weld the tongue (hitch) onto a mobile home trailer.

I eventually found the trailer and roused Michael. To my surprise, he was able to get his act together and start welding. We were there until dark and the home owner brought us beers (because we needed more booze in us, you see). The ride back was uneventful. At this point I was feeling like I had established a feeling of camaraderie with Michael, until he told me to go pick up Zeke and JR, who were still working on the original job site. I told him I'd prefer if he went as I wouldn't know how to find the property. He indirectly suggested that I could go find a different job if I didn't comply. His wife, Samantha, wrote down some instructions, and off I went. When I got there, the two men were more or less shit-faced, the site was a mess, and the temperature was uncomfortably cold. We packed up the tools and headed back to the shop. Zeke and JR smoked crystal meth in the truck.

The next day we began at 7 again. Together with Wade, another company employee who drove the big truck and also lived on the property, I went back to the job site from the previous day, with no sign of Zeke or JR. We had to pull the utility van out of the sand behind the house, where it had got stuck after we parked it the night before. Unfortunately in order to do this, Wade had to drive back to the shop to get a machine called a Trans Lift, which is used to raise mobile homes. I waited at the site on my own for an hour for him to come back. We pulled the trailer to the front, then Wade drove the Trans Lift back to the shop. Another hour of waiting for me before he got back, hooked up the utility trailer, then we went to the shop once more. We got pizza on the way. By this point I had $7 dollars to my name so Wade paid for my food.  As you may also suspect, at this point in time I was not at all impressed with Southern Mobile Home Transport. This was a disorganized, unprofessional, and mismanaged company which appeared on the verge of falling apart.

After we got back, I was told to hop in the truck with Michael again. We were on another mission, it seemed. We drove to a mobile home distributor and picked up two hitches. The plan was to go weld them onto trailers, but when we arrived on the site, they were transferred to another truck and Michael and I went to Home Depot instead. A shopping spree was in order, using someone else's money. We spent the next two hours browsing the shelves of Home Depot and picking up random things that Michael thought we needed. We also bought four pallets stacked with cinder blocks.

We got back after dark, of course, and thus ended my second (or third?) day of being stranded. By this point I had been offered help with the van by two people, Michael and Wade, but I still wasn't rolling. 

On day three I was sent to pick up JR in the morning and he and I went back to work on the original mobile home. Zeke had had a court date the day before but it seems he didn't go so he was either in prison or on the lam. Nobody seemed to care much. He showed up on the site after about two hours and we finished raising, or "blocking" the house. Then we did some minor work inside and headed back. The promise of getting paid that day hung in the air, and we were all expectant, not least myself. By that point I had been told I was getting $75 per day, per setup, and since we had done a double-wide, I was thinking it would be...well $150 for each of the three days, plus $40 for my first half day, and something for the welding work. Boy was I wrong. We didn't get paid that day, but the money was in the account...

Friday morning rolled around and I was told that I couldn't go on the next job with the rest of the crew but I could clean up the yard instead. I didn't have much of a choice in the matter. I spent close to eight hours that day cleaning the property up until it was unrecognizable. During this time I was approached by the dodgy neighbour, Steve (think Bubbles from Trailer Park Boys, minus the crossed eyes and underbite), who not only told me I was doing an excellent job, but also offered to help me with the van. Number three. He later also invited me to eat with his family, which I declined, mainly because I had just finished eating but also because I didn't think barbecued rat was optional for a vegetarian. Ok, I exaggerate there, but I think you know where I'm coming from.

Friday evening I went to sleep without having gotten paid and with a damaged vehicle.

Saturday was similar to Friday. I was told I could clean up the shop at the back of the property and that I would be paid in the evening. I spent half the day doing this, then lost my motivation and quit. Michael told me he would pay me once he got back in the evening, but as it turned out, he and his wife were planning to drive to Corpus Christi that night for their anniversary and they would be gone all of Sunday. Fooled again.

Sunday I approached Steve for help, but he deferred me to his son, also Steve. Steve and Michael were not on friendly terms so he was not eager to cross the fence, but he did drive me to a parts place in the city (while chugging two full cans of beer) where I picked up a fan clutch for my van. Oh yes, I forgot to mention that Wade had diagnosed the problem, figured out that my fan was broken, and that I needed a new one. He also lent me $100. I liked Wade. He made me coffee and bought me food. 

I had a fan clutch, but I still needed a fan and a shroud. Steve Jr. promised to help me that evening after he picked up his wife from work, but I didn't see him again that day. 

Monday morning I knocked on Michael's door and demanded to get paid. Zeke gave me the money, $100. I was still owed $70 according to their calculations, and I wasn't going to argue it. $270 was better than getting gang-raped by a bunch of former convicts who might as well have been plucked up from the set of Deliverance. The rest of my day was spent trying to find a fan from various junkyards and parts stores (over the phone), and relaxing. I had been told that I had to be out of the yard that night, but it didn't happen. I found a parts place on the south side of San Antonio that had a fan for me, I just didn't have any means of picking it up.

Tuesday morning Wade told me he thought my van was safe to drive so I took my chance. I topped the radiator up with coolant and added some Stop Leak into it. Then I got the hell out of there. After eight days, I was free again. The nightmare was over.