Chapter 13: Broken Bones
and Dreams
Jobs 18, 19, 20, 21 &
22
Well, there have been some changes here
at the blog. For one thing, just this morning I suddenly remembered
yet another job. It was only a one-night affair (I broke it off –
it just wasn't working out), so it's not surprising that I had
forgotten about it. However, I cannot ignore it, so I've had to add
it to the list, which means I've also had to change the name of the
blog.
Now you've probably noticed that the
name has been changed to “82 Jobs in 35 Years”,
and you must be thinking, “But Rimpy, shouldn't it be 81
jobs?” Well, that would be true, but since I've had to let go of
the nice, round “80”, I've decided to go ahead and count the
substitute paper boy gig as a whole number, instead of a cheaty
decimal.
Fortunately, Blogger allows you to
change the URL of the blog, so it can remain consistent with the list
of jobs. This will no doubt cause problems if people click on older
links in Facebook, but hopefully I can fix that later.
Now! Back to those jobs! We've barely
scratched the surface. At some point, I ended up living in College
Town. Despite my already spotty employment history, somehow I had
managed to save enough money to get a room in a house with three
other young men. It was my first multiple roommate living
arrangement. I got along quite well with my roomies, and it was
mostly a lot of fun, having other young people to hang out with, and
a room to go to when I wanted to be alone. After all, some hobbies
aren't for public viewing.
I can't recall the exact order of the
next three jobs, but let's just go for it.
Job #18: Dishwasher
I got job #18 as a
dishwasher at a place called Joe's Barbecue (no longer extant). It
wasn't a bad job, especially since I wasn't above eating some of the
untouched food which came back from the tables. Unfortunately I
developed an allergic reaction to the combination of steam and dish
cleaning liquids I was using, and I got a terrible rash on my arms.
It was probably for this reason that I left that job.
Job #19: Car Wash
Job #19 was at a car wash
and gas station which no longer exists. Usually I worked where car
owners would pull in, then we would fuel the cars, and drive them
around to the entrance of the cable-driven car wash. I seemed to have
a problem not running the left front wheels up unto the side rail of
the mechanism that pulled the cars. Finally my boss said that if I
didn't stop doing that, I would be fired. I didn't do it again. I
guess I just needed the proper motivation.
One time, a man came in with
a very expensive looking Jaguar. After I drove it to the car wash, I
was having trouble finding the door handle so I could get out. It was
very dark inside that car, and I had never been in a Jaguar before.
Everything was dark leather with polished wooden accessories. Finally
I found a pretty wooden handle on the door and pulled up it. To my
surprise, it came out in my hand, because it was actually a .357
Magnum revolver that had been tucked into the map pocket. I quickly
jammed it back where I'd found it and managed to find the real
handle. After that I was more careful about what I grabbed in
unfamiliar cars.
One day it was one of the
summer holidays like Memorial Day or Labor Day. Rather than asking, I
just assumed the car wash would be closed that day. I should have
known better, but I was probably already cruisin' to be losin' that
job. I was sleeping when my boss called to find out why I wasn't at
work and I told him why I. When he straightened me out on that point
and told me to get in there, I said, “Well, I guess I quit, then.”
I've never been at my best when awakened before I was ready.
I didn't really have a good
reason to leave that job. I was just well on my way to being a total
wanker when it came to work. I knew people had to do something to
make money in order to survive, but sometimes in my darker moments I
wondered what the point of it all was. I had already given up on my
young dreams of doing anything creative, and just slaving away at
some dead-end job in order to eke out an existence until you became
too old to work seemed like a life sentence. Besides, constantly
quitting jobs was a subconscious way to get back at my dad for those
interminable lectures about the necessity of work, work, work.
Job #20: Rice Cake Factory
Job #20 is the one which I
had forgotten about until this morning. I don't know what made me
remember it, but I think the reason I hadn't is because it wasn't
even a job I had tried to get. It just happened to me, so I had even
less invested in it than in many of the jobs before or after.
One of my roommates worked a
night shift at a place which made rice cakes, which many believe was
the first of its kind in the country. He would come home from work
smelling like popcorn, which embarrassed him a bit when people would
notice it. One night he was either sick or just didn't feel like
going in. He knew I was between jobs at the moment, so with my
acquiescence, he called his bosses and told them he couldn't come in,
but his roommate needed work. They must have been desperate, because
they agreed to take me sight unseen, so I filled in for him. My roomy
said if I liked it and they liked me, I might be able to find regular
employment there. I was happy about that prospect, at least until I
got there.
It was actually pretty awful
– packing boxes and stacking pallets at a high rate of speed in a
hot, noisy, dusty environment. I only worked there that one night,
and didn't feel bad about not trying to pursue it.
Now, somehow I ended up back
in O-Town. I'm really not sure what prompted this move. I do know
that my parents' relationship was going through some turmoil. My dad
had retired from the trucking company in West Sacramento with a
decent union pension. Now he was around the house all the time, bored
and driving my mom crazy. I was living away from home, so she only
had her husband's dubious company.
Finally she couldn't take it
any more, and ran away from home at the tender age of 60. She didn't
tell my dad she was leaving, let alone where she had gone. Eventually
she contacted him. She had lit out to San Francisco, and was living
in a dumpy residential hotel where the communal bathrooms were at the
end of the floor halls. She was looking for work, which must not have
been easy for a woman on the back side of middle-age who hadn't
worked for some years, but it's not like she wasn't without skills or
a work history. My mom had often worked while I was growing up, but
always while I was at school so that she was home when I was. Being a
kid, I didn't think about it at the time, but now I am eternally
grateful to her for that.
My mom always put her all
into everything she undertook, and she had great organizational and
leadership skills. She had spearheaded many public art projects
through the O-Town Art League which helped to dress up our drab
little town. She would have been a plum employee for any boss. I
think she did get some kind of clerking job in an office during her
escape to San Francisco.
I was a little flabbergasted
by this unexpected turn of events in my parents' lives. Mostly I was
full of respect for her for summoning up the courage to leave my dad.
I also respected the fact that she was brave enough to tackle a big,
strange city like SF. I've always been fascinated by that city, but
never had the courage to try to live there.
There was, however, a small
part of me that wished she had left my dad sooner, and taken me with
her. I recalled a horrible Christmas (one of many), when my mom had
partaken of a little too much holiday spirit and told my dad some of
things she really thought about him. A huge row had ensued, which
ended with my dad slapping my mom.
Afterwards, pubescent me was
trying to comfort my distraught mother. She was talking about how she
wished she could have left her husband much earlier, but she felt
like it wouldn't have been a good life for me. She painted a rather
bleak picture of the prospects for a woman her age trying to raise a
boy alone, because she was sure my dad wouldn't have contributed any
support. At the time I couldn't help but agree that this scenario
sounded pretty grim. But still, maybe we would have both been better
off, despite privations.
After I left home, my mom
must have felt that she had nothing to lose, so she just went for it.
My dad was pretty shaken up, and I'll admit to a certain cruel
satisfaction at seeing him so upset. In the end, he managed to talked
her into returning home, with promises to seek marriage counseling. I
don't know if they ever followed through with that or not. Probably
not.
I don't know if it was part
of the agreement for reunification, but my parents also decided to
sell their home in O-Town and move back to the central coast region
of California. They first settled in Grover Beach, where they opened
a strange hybrid business in their home called Solar Arts Studio.
This “home” was actually a rented commercial property, but my
parents managed to live there as well with the help of the good old
motor home parked in the back. My mom tried to sell her artwork, and
my dad tried to sell solar energy equipment. It's hard to imagine my
dad as a salesperson. His bombastic, opinionated, and judgmental
personality probably rubbed potential customers the wrong way.
Not surprisingly, this
business venture didn't last long, so they bought a small house in
Cambria, a trendy sea-side artists' community featuring small lots at
high prices. Some of you have probably seen Cambria without realizing
it: it starred as the fictitious town “Canaima” in the 1990
Steven Spielberg-produced film “Arachnophobia”.
Despite my mixed feelings
about the last house I had shared with my parents, it was a strange
feeling to have that removed from me. Now my parents were off on
adventures and a future of uncertainties (but considerably better
resources), and I was alone in a familiar town. No back up, no safety
net, no more second chances. My dad still continued to offer to let
me leave with them rent-free if I went to college and brought home
good grades. I continued to decline.
Job #21: Mucking Out the Underside of a House
I lived for awhile with my
old high school friend Lurleen and her boyfriend (later husband)
Scoop (not their real names). While there I got temporary job #21,
which was cleaning out the crawlspace under a house. Basically I had
to make sure that there were no large pieces of wood or other trash
under the house, making especially sure that there was no organic
material connecting the frame of the house to the earth. The house
was being put up for sale, and this was apparently one of the many
strange things one must do before a house can be sold.
I had actually done this
chore once before, when Sandy sold her house in O-Town before moving
to Berkeley, so I was familiar with the process. But that had been
summer, and the worst thing I encountered was a desiccated cat
corpse. This time it was a rainy fall day, and I was slogging through
cold mud and standing water. My clothes were absolutely sodden and
heavy with brown muck. Not a job I would have wanted to do on a
regular basis.
Job #22: Church Janitor
My 22nd job was
as a part-time janitor at Liz and Sandy's church, the First
Congregational, which was a beautiful old building built in 1913 (and
which tragically burned to the ground in an arson fire in 1982). I
really liked that job, despite my suspicions that the place was
haunted, though I never saw anything definite.
A part-time job was
sufficient for my means at the time, because when my parents left
O-Town, they had lent me the use of the old travel trailer (you know,
the one that produced all those tubs of shit). I rented a space in a
residential trailer park on the south side of O-Town. My dad moved
the trailer in there, and I had cheap digs.
It was certainly an
eye-opening experience living in “South Side”. During the whole
of my comfortable middle-class upbringing, I had never ventured south
of O-Town's main drag. I had once driven Al in there to see an old
friend of his, but that had been at night, and I didn't see much.
What a different world it was on the wrong side of O-Town Dam
Boulevard. It had a well-deserved reputation for poverty and
roughness. It hadn't always been that way. When the railroad yard and
its roundhouse (which also burned down mysteriously) had been a major
enterprise, many of the people who worked there lived nearby. There
were many successful black-owned businesses, including grocery
stores, bars and a taxi company, and lots and lots of churches.
With the diminishing of the
railroad, poverty and decay began to creep into the neighborhood,
even before methamphetamine and crack became such scourges. My
trailer home was right next to the sidewalk, so I had a front row
seat for some of the goings on in the ghetto. One night I was trying
to get to sleep, but I was prevented from doing so by a man with a
loud, gruff voice who kept badgering someone he called “fat boy”.
He kept yelling, “Get over here, fat boy! I'm going to kick your
ass, fat boy!”
I was concerned for this
poor, unknown corpulent man who was on the verge of a savage beating,
but I didn't know what I could do. Eventually the bellowing man's
voice faded into the distance, presumably in pursuit of his silent,
tubby intended victim, and I drifted off to sleep. Then next day, I
was outside my trailer when I saw a big, burly biker type walking his
pit bull (no leash, of course). In the same voice I'd heard the
previous night, the biker kept trying to get the dog to mind by
yelling, “Get over here, Fat Boy! I'm going to kick your ass, Fat
Boy!” Fat Boy paid his bellicose owner no mind.
I borrowed some money from
my brother Dick to buy a moped, because I was still seeking more
gainful employment, and doing so on a bicycle wasn't efficient. One
day I was exploring South Side on my new ride. Ahead I saw a crowd of
people in the parking lot of a defunct drive-in eatery. They were
standing around a man lying on the ground. I figured there must have
been some kind of accident. As I got nearer, a man was running across
a field across the street with something in his hands, followed by a
woman. I thought that he was bringing some object to help the fallen
man. I crossed in front of the running man just as he got to the
street. He paused, probably not for me, but because of the crowd of
people. As I passed him, I saw that the object in his hands was a
sawed-off shotgun! Meahwhile, the woman had caught up with him. She
was screaming, “NO! Don't do it!”. The maniac, who was huge, was
breathing heavily, with this wild look in his eyes. The best I can
figure is that he had injured the man on the ground, and had run back
to his hovel to fetch the weapon to finish the job, but was stymied
by the people who had gathered. I just kept going and didn't look
back. I never did hear what became of that incident.
Other than these brushes
with the seamier side of society, though, my life on South Side was a
mellow time for me. I had cheap accommodations and transportation,
and a pleasant job which provided for both. I could probably have
continued on like that for some time, but fate intervened.
It was two days before my
21st birthday, which I was looking forward to greatly. It
was also approaching the national election, which was to be my first
presidential election since becoming an adult, so I was looking
forward to that, as well.
That night of October 23rd,
I was riding my moped home after visiting my dear friend, J (the
future Mrs. Rimpington). A car suddenly turned left in front of me at
an intersection. I tried to brake, but struck its right fender and
flew over its hood. I remember watching in fascination as the nearby
Safeway sign described a lazy somersault in the dark sky. Then I
struck the pavement face-first, bounced into a half-flip and landed
on my back, with a badly broken left leg. Luckily I had been wearing
a helmet.
I was in hospital for a few
days, including my birthday - so no partying for me. My brother Dick
and sister Buff came to visit me, which was nice. I don't know if
this counts as irony, but the driver of the car was the organist for
the church where I worked. She was a very dear lady, and she felt
terrible for what had happened.
After being released from
the hospital, I convalesced for a bit at J's apartment. I struggled
out on my crutches on a very rainy election night, so determined was
I to vote against that bastard Reagan. I wish votes that are
difficult to cast counted for more, but the election was a fait
accompli anyway.
My brother came up again to
help me close down the trailer, which my dad ended up selling. I
spent the rest of my time in my cast at Dick's house in Sacramento.
At least it wasn't my fault that I lost the job at the church.
Eventually I healed, and was
ready to re-enter the workforce, but not before demonstrating just
what a nitwit I could be when handed a sum of money. But that's a
story for another chapter.
The End
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