title: Rivethead: Tales from the Assembly Line
author:  Ben Hamper 
description: In a voice often as powerful as the riveting gun he wielded in the 1970s and '80s in a Flint, Mich., General Motors assembly plant, Hamper nails down the excruciating boredom of a shoprat's life on the line. These roughly chronological essays, many published in the local press, bare the rage and humor that, with booze and drugs, friendships and enmities, served to speed along the timeclock's "suffocating minute hand." A fourth-generation factory worker, raised on hard music, hard liquor and soft drugs, given a parochial school education, Hamper was the eldest of eight children deserted by their father, supported by their mother. He was determined not to be an auto worker but soon after high school, married and a father, he needed the steady work GM offered. With free-ranging intelligence and a sharply anarchic sensibility, he tries to figure out and establish some control over his place in GM's massive corporate system. While these essays might best satisfy in small doses, Hamper, no longer a GM employee, writes with unrelenting energy. BOMC and QPB selections; film rights to Warner Bros. <br />Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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  ![H&B2cover.jpg](images/00001.jpg)
  
  
  
  
  
  ### Table of Contents
  
  
  > [Cover](Hammer_and_Bolter_-_Issue_2_split_000.html#filepos109)
  
  
  > [The Dark Path - Gav Thorpe](Hammer_and_Bolter_-
  > _Issue_2_split_002.html#filepos1052)
  
  
  > [Exhumed - Steve Park](Hammer_and_Bolter_-
  > _Issue_2_split_003.html#filepos57913)
  
  
  > [The Inquisition - an interview with James Swallow](Hammer_and_Bolter_-
  > _Issue_2_split_004.html#filepos165584)
  
  
  > [Phalanx: Chapter Three - Ben Counter](Hammer_and_Bolter_-
  > _Issue_2_split_005.html#filepos171025)
  
  
  > [The Rat Catcher's Tale - Richard Ford](Hammer_and_Bolter_-
  > _Issue_2_split_006.html#filepos231148)
  
  
  > [Legal](Hammer_and_Bolter_-_Issue_2_split_007.html#filepos306903)
  
  
  > [eBook License](Hammer_and_Bolter_-_Issue_2_split_008.html#filepos310800)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # ![ToLlogo.jpg](images/00002.jpg)  
  The Dark Path
  
  
  Gav Thorpe
  
  
  Fields of golden crop bent gently in a magical breeze as the palace of Prince
  Thyriol floated across Saphery. A shimmering vision of w