Chapter 23: Student With Idiot For Trainer

Chapter 23: Student With Idiot for Trainer

Jobs 64 – 66

1997

Job 64: Long Haul Truck Driver

The next couple of years can be best described as “floundering”. I called the last chapter “Highs and Lows” (mostly because I couldn’t think of anything better), but this period of my life probably represented some of the lowest lows and highest highs I’ve experienced in my life. I especially don’t like looking back at my work record for these couple of years because I think it makes me look like an idjit. So let’s get to it, shall we?

At this time, Mrs. R and I developed what she called our “get middle-class quick scheme”. She enrolled in a vocational program to become a pharmacy technician. Sadly, she was never able to finish that course because her health took a downturn from which it has never recovered. I applied to a long-haul trucking company which provided their own training. I shouldn’t say their real name, but it’s a kind of bird which is named for its habit of flying swiftly. However, I shall call them “Turkey”.

Turkey provided the training, but it wasn’t free. Not by a long stretch. I never could have afforded it if I’d had to pay for it upfront. Instead, they financed your training, and then you paid it back out of your paycheck. This was actually a good deal if you stuck it out until the end of your obligation. Then you could go where you wanted if you didn’t like Turkey.

Of course, I was attracted to this deal mainly because I figured it was a good way to get trained for a profession which offered a decent income. However, there were also less altruistic motivations at work in the shallow end of my subconscious. I must admit that I had been having trouble completely adjusting to being a husband and father. I loved my wife and kids, but there was still a big part of me that wanted to be a loner. I confess that I had tried a few times to run away from my familial obligations, but Mrs. R was always able to talk some sense into me. I feel badly for putting her through such turmoil.

I think I saw being out on the road for weeks at a time as a sort of compromise; I would have a legitimate excuse to be by myself for long spells. I’m sure I was following my father’s fine modeling. I think he tended to take jobs that kept him away from home because he was never totally comfortable as a family man. There was a period after we moved to O-Town when he took some local jobs that allowed him to be home every day, but those never seemed to last long. Then he got that job in West Sacramento and chose to live in a trailer on the company property during the week. I guess I can’t blame anyone for not wanting a 90 minute each way daily commute, but I wonder how much of that was based on practicality and how much was him not wanting to be around his wife and son.

My training took place in a little town on Interstate 5 called Willows. It’s only about 45 miles from O-Town, but commuting was problematic. It would mean less sleep for me, and a lot of expense in gas and wear and tear on whatever usually already worn-out vehicle were driving at the time. Turkey could put me up at a motel in Willows for an additional charge on my debt to them, so I went for that. The motel was a little dodgy, but it had a pool and HBO, and my room had a kitchenette. The motel was close to the training yard, and I would ride with one of the other students who had a car but was staying at the motel because he lived in Nevada. Unfortunately, the motel was a long way from Willows proper. I had brought a bike, and one day I rode it to the local Walmart for supplies. It wasn’t a very good bike, however, and the narrow roads through the corn fields were terrible for bike riding, so I didn’t repeat the process.

The training was fairly perfunctory. The first week or two consisted of classroom lessons at Turkey’s terminal, then we shifted to the dusty training yard for the behind the wheel training. There were a couple of things about driving a big rig that were problematic for me. One of them was shifting. I already knew how to drive a stick, but I’ve never been terrible good at it, and trucks have something like 18 gears to clash through. I finally got it, but was never terribly smooth about it.

The other thing, which almost kept me from graduating, was backing and docking. Oh, I could back up in a straight line – no problem. But when it came to having to make the rear end of the trailer go in a direction other than straight, I was hopeless. There’s always been something a little funny about my brain when it comes to direction. I’m great at north, south, etc., but ask me on the spur of the moment to go left or right, and there’s a very good chance I will go the wrong way. I mean, I KNOW the difference, but sometimes I have to take a moment to remember which is which. It’s embarrassing at the least, but when it comes to working out which way to turn the wheel to make a tractor-trailer combo go backwards in a particular direction it’s downright detrimental.

Everyone else graduated from training right on schedule. I passed all the other requirements, but my backing still wasn’t up to snuff. Turkey sent me down to their main California terminal in beautiful Stockton for further training. The first day they sent me out with a local driver who delivered tires to various shops around the eastern San Francisco bay area. His truck didn’t have a sleeper cab because he was home every night, and his trailer was shorter than what I would be pulling in long-haul, so it wasn’t quite the same. The idea was that some of the amazingly tight places he had to back into would give me a good idea of how to do it, and it might have, if he had actually let me try it. His schedule was too busy to allow for my fumbling. Just watching from the passenger seat is no way to learn. After all his deliveries were done, he found an empty loading dock and let me practice, but I still wasn’t confident.

I spent the next couple of days practicing in Turkey’s Stockton terminal yard with various drivers, but I still sucked. The lady who had hired me told me that they would give me a couple of more days, and if I still couldn’t get it, they’d have to “cut their losses”, as she put it. I don’t know if I would still owe them for all the training and lodging I’d received, but I reckon I would have. I felt ridiculous and stupid. I didn’t know what I was going to do if I couldn’t master this seemingly simple skill. I’d have to go back home with my tail between my legs and admit to my family that their husband and father was an abject failure.

I tried over the next couple of days to get my shit together. Finally on Friday they decided (rather reluctantly, I thought) that I was ready. I think they realized it would be better to have a crappy driver than no driver at all after all that trouble. I certainly still didn’t feel confident, but if they were willing to take a chance, I was willing to do my best to live up to their meagre expectations. Of course, all of this was just the end of “behind the wheel” training. The next phase was to spend about six weeks OTR (“over the road”) with a driver-trainer – actually delivering loads to real customers under real world conditions.

I can’t remember my trainer’s name, which is just as well, so I’ll just call him Fred. Fred was in an elite cadre of Turkey drivers who delivered exclusively to Walmart stores. That may not sound like much, until you consider that Walmart has the largest privately-owned fleet of trucks in the country. Their drivers are the cream of the crop, and very well-compensated. Even with all those excellent drivers of their own, they still need to contract with other trucking companies to get all those goods to the stores. Of course, they hold their contractors to very high standards as well. In order for a Turkey driver to be a dedicated Walmart hauler, he or she has to have been driving for at least five years accident-free, amongst other things.

So Fred had a pretty good situation. He mainly drove the I-5 corridor from Walmart’s distribution center in Red Bluff to stores in Oregon and Washington, with occasional side trips to exotic places like Moscow, Idaho. He was usually home once a week. In fact, that was interesting. One night we had a layover in Redding, where he lived. I naturally figured that he would want to go to his home to spend the night, and I would at least have the truck to myself. I was surprised that he didn’t. He explained that if he went home, he would likely stay up too late visiting his wife (make of that what you will) and watching TV, and then be no good for driving the next day. I found his dedication to the job admirable, but I asked how his wife would feel if she knew he was in town but didn’t come home. He responded that his wife was so happy with the money he was making that she didn’t complain about the vagaries of the job.

Since Fred was home about once a week, so was I, which was nice, although it was a little less convenient for me because I didn’t live on I-5.  If Fred was returning home from the south, he could drop me at the Willows terminal. Otherwise, Mrs. R had to drive to Redding to pick me up. Fred’s travels often took us through Bend, Oregon. In Bend, there is a truck stop which has the same name as Rimpy Jr.’s real first name. Fred and I were on our way home once when we stopped in Bend. I wanted to get Rimpy Jr. an eponymous hat from the truck stop, because I thought he would enjoy having a hat with his name on it. I realized that I needed to get Rimpyette a gift as well so she wouldn’t feel left out. Like most truck stops, it had a selection of gift items for travelers, but none of them were really geared toward a three year old girl. The “cutest” thing I could find was a small, plush lobster toy.

No! Not like that! Jesus.

The lobster seemed rather lame to me, and I had the feeling that Rimpyette was not terribly impressed with my gift. Mrs. R assures me that Rimpyette loved that toy. The fact that she cut off its yarn “whiskers” meant nothing.

I have been racking my brain trying to remember exactly why I decided to quit Turkey – cold (see what I did, there?). Usually it seems like there is some decisive event or factor that pushes me over the edge into quit mode. Try as I might, I can’t recall if there was such a thing. I remember thinking that Fred seemed like a bit of an asshole. I think the main thing was that the reality of being out on the road, away from my family (but never alone because of my ever-present trainer) was starting to wear upon me. The thing with the lobster plushie bulks large in my mind as an example of the sort of life I could expect if I were to be a professional long-haul trucker, but it alone wasn’t enough to make me quit.

It seems to be the dream of many truckers to land a driving job that allows them to be home every night. You might have to pay your dues “over the road” until you’ve acquired enough years of experience to get one of those lauded local gigs. I apparently thought that I could somehow leap-frog over the “years of experience” part and parlay my commercial license and recent training into a local driving job. Even though I had signed a contract that I would work for Turkey until the money they had invested me was repaid, I went ahead and left abruptly. Little did I know just how good I’d had it.

Job 65: Milk Truck Driver

Somehow I got a job with a company that hauled milk. I can’t for the life of me remember their name, which is just as well, since I wouldn’t use it here. I seemed to have blocked out quite a few memories of this difficult time in my life. I have tried to find it out their name so I could give it an appropriate alias, but with no success. Perhaps they have gone out of business – which would be ironic, because then I could safely use their real name. They were also based in Willows, so now I had no choice but to commute there every day.

If I thought that backing was difficult before, I was really up shit creek now. Some of the dairy farms that the truckers had to back the tanker trailer into were incredibly cramped. Also, pulling a tanker full of liquid is very different from hauling a trailer full of dry goods. I had a tanker endorsement on my license, but that was only because I had correctly answered enough questions on a test. I had no real experience with it. The problem with liquids is they slosh from side to side and back and forth. You have to take extra care on curves and leave more room for smooth stops. The other milk drivers regaled me with horror stories of some of the terrible tanker wrecks they had witnessed or heard about.

The transmissions in the old beater trucks we were using were not as smooth as Turkey’s had been, and I was having a miserable time trying to get the hang of shifting while turning sharp corners on farm roads with enough RPMs to keep from stalling, but not so much speed as to tip the whole schmutz over into the corn fields.

Job 66: Long Haul Truck Driver (again)

One of the waggish acronyms that can be made out Turkey’s real name (here comes the law suit) is “Sure Wish I’d Finished Training”, and that described me perfectly. After a couple of weeks, I realized that I was in way over my empty head with the milk hauling job, and I called Turkey and begged them to take me back. Incredibly, they agreed. I guess they figured that was their best chance of getting their money back.

I was assigned a new trainer, whom I shall call Randy, which is dangerously close to his true name. If I thought Fred was an asshole, I hadn’t seen anything yet. As least Fred never yelled. Randy took a drill sergeant approach to his job as a driver-trainer. It was like being trapped in a truck cab with my father. Randy was an odd duck. He rented a dumpy house on a dead end street in an ugly industrial neighborhood in the eastern suburbs of Sacramento. He had an Asian wife who was a couple of decades his senior. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, it was just unusual. Despite the shabbiness of his life, he really thought his shit didn’t stink.

He had also just become an owner-operator through Turkey’s lease program. Turkey would finance the ownership of a truck for their drivers who had been with them for a certain length of time and were generally credit worthy. The truck essentially belonged to the driver, and Turkey would take its payments for the loan out of the driver’s earnings, and in turn the driver leased the truck back to Turkey. The owner could put whatever name he liked on the side of his truck, as long as it included the phrase “leased to Turkey Trucking, Inc.” The driver was expected to save enough money to cover a balloon payment at the end of each year. Saving that money shouldn’t be a problem, because owner-operators make an insane amount of money on each load. Of course, they are also responsible for any expenses like tires and repairs, but they still make a very handsome salary. By comparison, an average OTR driver made about 22 cents a mile at the time. That may not sound like much, but you could usually drive about 500 miles a day. If you do the math, that comes to about 2200 dollars a month. Not fantastic, but better than any wage I had previously had.

Randy had just taken possession of his new truck, which was a pretty, dark blue compared to the usual Turkey white, and he was very anal about it. Unlike Fred, Randy went all over the country. I got to see a lot of places I’d never been to before. However, I learned a dirty little secret about the trucking industry, at least as practiced by Turkey. Truckers based east of the Mississippi River made slightly more than the 22 cents a mile I mentioned earlier. So when they got a western driver out east, they loved to keep him running around in the east so they only had to pay him the lower rate for the same work.

Even though I had already spent a few weeks with Fred, I was expected to restart the whole six weeks with Randy. That was one of the worst six weeks of my life.  We did manage to get home at least once or twice during that time. Of course, “home” meant Randy’s horrible house, so Mrs. R had to drive to Sacramento to get me. On one of those occasions, after they picked me up, we went to eat at a nearby Round Table Pizza. I have always been a fast eater, but I was starving by the time the food arrived, and I was just shoveling it in. Rimpyette watched me in amazement, and then in a voice loud enough to be heard by the whole restaurant, declared “Daddy eats like a dog!” She’ll probably kill me for including that story, because she still cringes in embarrassment every time we tell it.

I almost quit Turkey again while I was still in training because I couldn’t take any more of Randy. We were somewhere near Chicago O’Hare International Airport early one morning after a long night of driving. I was dead tired, and Randy was screaming at me for some minor thing (probably my backing skills). I am not ashamed to admit that I started crying. I used a phone in the warehouse we were delivering to and called our manager back in Stockton to tell him of my desire to quit. He basically talked me out of it. He may have also made a secret call to Randy’s cell phone to tell him to lighten up on me. Whether he did or not, Randy did ratchet down the abuse. Besides, I didn’t have enough money to get on a bus back home, so it was easier to just stay.

Another time, in Little Rock, Arkansas, I was sitting sad and alone in the cab while Randy was in an electronics superstore shopping for a new stereo for his precious truck. Like the famous atheist in a fox hole, I turned to prayer. I looked to the heavens and asked what I should do. To my surprise, a voice with seemed different than my usual internal monologue said, “Everything’s going to be alright”. I wasn’t really expecting any answer, let alone a rather vague one. I thought about it for a moment, then I said, “Is there someone else up there I can talk to?” There was no further communication, so I decided to have some faith and just keep doing what I was doing.

Finally my apprenticeship to rancid Randy came to end, and I was now a solo driver. I was assigned my very own truck. It was nice being on my own, without some asshole looking over my shoulder. My backing skills had become…acceptable. Unfortunately, there was no one to bail me out of trouble. I got into one such situation on my first solo runs. I was delivering to a grocery store, and access to their loading dock was extremely difficult, involving a several-point turn. If you’ve ever looked at the rear of atypical truck trailer, you may have noticed that there is a bit of metal that projects out from the roof over each door hinge. I believe that is there to protect the hinge in case you bump the corner of the trailer against something…like, oh…the wall of a grocery store. I poked a hole about 12 feet up in their cinder block wall. Fortunately, nobody noticed, and I didn’t mention it.

Turkey had promised that I would be home no less than every two to three weeks. That was an outright lie. The had me bouncing all around the country for five weeks at a time. On one of my rare weekend furloughs, Mrs. R picked me up in Stockton and we went home to O-Town. As we were driving back to Stockton, our old Dodge Polara suddenly started making a very bad noise and lost power. We pulled over at an abandoned fruit stand about 20 miles south of O-Town. I couldn’t figure out what was wrong with the car (turns out it was a broken timing chain). We made a desperate call to Lurleen, who came down and rescued us. She dropped me in Stockton, and took the rest of the family back to O-Town. I think we spent the next several months car-less. When Mrs. R wanted to pick me up, she rented a car.

After a few months I’d had enough “me time”, and was lonesome for my family. Long-haul trucking wasn’t panning out the way I had hoped. On a weekend at home, I discussed it with Mrs. R, and we agreed that I should quit. Unfortunately, I had left my personal belongings in my Turkey truck, so I had to drive the rental car all the way to Stockton and back to retrieve them. Someone had moved my truck from where I had left it in the terminal yard, and it took me a while to find it. When I got inside, I found a note that said “This truck is a pig sty. Clean it up!” I was offended. For one thing, it wasn’t that messy; just a few papers left here or there. I admit that the contract that I had signed with Turkey actually had in it that I would keep my truck neat and clean, but this seemed like too much. If I hadn’t already decided to quit, that might have been enough make me do so. I wrote “Fuck you!” at the bottom of the note and put it back where I had found it. Then I drove home feeling like for at least once I had made the right decision to quit. That feeling of satisfaction didn’t last for long, however.

The end.

Chapter 22: Highs and Lows

Chapter 22:  Highs and Lows

Jobs 60 – 63

1993 -1995

Job # 60: Para-transit Driver/Dispatcher

Shortly after we moved back in with Jordana and Mildred, I started looking for work again because Mrs. R was sufficiently recovered from her near-death pregnancy. I opened the want ads to see that there was a need for paratransit drivers. I mentioned in Chapter 16 that before the Americans with Disabilities Act required that buses accommodate wheelchairs and other mobility devices, those passengers were all transported by a separate fleet of special vehicles. Even with ADA, these paratransit vans are still used for people who can’t access bus routes.

Back in the early 1990s, the O-Town and College Town transit systems, and the regional (inter-city) bus lines were separate entities. Mountain Town had no bus line of its own, but was served by the regional system. Each town also had its fleet of paratransit vehicles, including a few sedans for ambulatory passengers.

You may recall in a previous chapter that my former employer Eastwagon went bankrupt and abandoned their contract with public transit in Butt County. A company – whom I shall call Wankcom – took over the contract. In a strange sense, I still work for Wankcom. They are the ones who were bought out by a larger public transportation contractor, who is my current employer.

In 1993, Wankcom also won the contract to operate the O-Town Area Transit System (yes – “OATS”, and that’s no lie), and its ADA-required paratransit fleet. Prior to that, the paratransit operation had been handled by the very dodgy local cab company, and apparently it hadn’t gone well. The paratransit passengers paid the cab drivers with tickets they had purchased previously at the O-Town Senior Center. The cab company was simply using their cabs for both paratransit and regular taxi passengers. I don’t even think they had a wheelchair-ready van. Paratransit passengers often had to wait a long time until the cabs could get around to them.

When Wankcom won the O-Town contract, they brought in four wheelchair vans and two sedans. Apparently Wankcom wasn’t impressed by any of the cabbies, so they were hiring several new drivers. Unfortunately the day I saw the ad was also the closing day for applications. At the time, we had no car of our own, so we hastily borrowed a car from our friend Sue and rushed over to College Town. I got my application in just under the wire. The manager Dave was impressed by the fact that I had driven bus for Eastwagon, and essentially hired me on the spot before fully reviewing my application. I’ve always been pretty good at getting jobs – just not keeping them.

So now I was a paratransit driver, with a uniform and all the glamour that goes with that. I had lucked out and been assigned a sedan, so I didn’t have to deal with wheelchairs. Even though service under the cab company had been pretty terrible, some of the older passengers were a little resistant to the changes in the system. They were used to just calling up, giving their address, and then waiting for their ride. Wankcom, however, had to get to know a whole new set of customers, and they wanted to acquire the proper information in order to make the operation as efficient as possible. One of my first passengers was an old German woman, and when she got in my car she angrily asked, “Vere you ze von who asked me all ze qvestions on the ze telephone!?”

Pretty soon our passengers realized that the new service was much better, and our popularity exploded. After a while we were so overbooked that passengers were once again subjected to long waits, at least on busy days.

I was good at the job, and I actually enjoyed it, as well. Soon I was tapped to be the Saturday dispatcher. Our personal transportation situation was still touch and go. Sometimes we had a car, sometimes not. Mostly not having a car wasn’t a problem, because I was working in O-Town. Even when we had a car, I would usually walk the mile or so to the yard where we kept the paratransit vehicles, so as not to have to either disturb Mrs. R or deprive her of transportation for the day.

The Saturday dispatching, however, had to be done at the College Town office. At the time we had recently acquired a very crappy old Ford Fiesta. My first Saturday was also the first out of town trip for that car. I quickly discovered that it was going to have to be an “in-town only” car. I managed to make it to work, but the car shook and wobbled so badly as it went at highway speeds that I thought I was going to die for sure. I explained my dilemma to Dave, who generously arranged it so that I could use my paratransit sedan to commute to work on Saturdays, for which I was very grateful.

So I had a decent job, and our housing situation improved as well. We had previously applied for the federal Section 8 program, which provides rental subsidies for qualifying families. After almost two years on their waiting list, we were finally approved. We rented a nice three bedroom house with a big back yard a few blocks from Jordana and Mildred’s place. This neighborhood - known as “South Side” - is notorious for poverty and crime, but we were in a solidly working-class block. It felt so good to have a decent place of our own and not have to worry about how we were going to make our rent each month.

I probably would have worked at Wankcom indefinitely, but sometimes life throws you a curve ball. This next part isn’t easy for me to tell because it was a pretty dark and difficult time for me and my little family. Even when it was over, I still had some lingering resentments and self-recriminations for a few years afterward. I’m also afraid some of you may judge me harshly for some of the decisions I made at the time. Please keep in mind that they were made in what I thought were the best interests of my wife and children. Mrs. R has kindly said that I can go ahead and blame her for what happened, but I’m not going to do that. I’m just going to explain the “sitch” and let the judgmental cards fall where they may.

Mrs. R’s health had not fully recovered after her pregnancy with Rimpyette, especially her post-partum depression. She started seeing a counselor, who prescribed anti-depressants. At first she didn’t want to take them because she was still nursing Rimpyette. Right or wrong, we are of the hippy persuasion that lets a child nurse until they’re ready to quit on their own. Finally her depression got bad enough that she made the painful decision to wean Rimpyette. Kids are usually weaned before they’re fully verbal, so we never get to know how they really feel on the subject. In Mrs. R’s previous experience with SR, and our mutual experience with Rimpy Jr., the child eventually loses interest and it’s a very non-traumatic process. It was different with toddler Rimpyette, who was capable of expressing her dissatisfaction with this turn of events. All we could do was try to help her through it.

Mrs. R started taking the anti-depressants, but she wasn’t able to stick with them for very long. She has always been sensitive to many medications, and she was having too many adverse side-effects. I felt badly for Rimpyette, who seemingly had gone through all the trauma of weaning for nothing, but she didn’t seem to have any hard feelings about it.

Mrs. R’s mental state got worse before it got better. She doesn’t mind me saying that she was basically out of her mind for a little while. Eventually I had to make the painful decision that I needed to quit work in order to take care of my poor, distraught wife. It was one of the toughest choices I’ve ever had to make. I finally had a job which, while not always great, was usually enjoyable and even gave me a good deal of personal satisfaction.

Our situation didn’t really qualify for any sort of family medical leave, so I was going to have to stop working “cold turkey”. Of course, just quitting would have disqualified us for both unemployment benefits and any other public assistance, but our Section 8 would be unaffected, which was a blessing. Without me actually confessing to any fraud, you can probably imagination how I got around this. That was the most painful part of the whole sordid business for me. Just pretend that, for some reason, you had to get yourself fired from a job which you not only liked but at which you had been an excellent employee. Now pretend that scenario somehow applied to my situation. Wow - you have a really good imagination! Now maybe you can understand how I may have felt if that had somehow happened to me. Yeah –I felt like shit about myself.

I parted ways with Wankcom after exactly two years, to the day – a new personal best for longevity. That wasn’t by design – it was just a strange coincidence. I’m glad to say that my sacrifice was worth it. With my constant companionship and help, Mrs. R was restored to her usually sunny disposition within a few months. I am ashamed to say that those aforementioned resentments on my part continued to affect our relationship until I started getting some serious counseling myself. But, as usual, I’m getting ahead of myself.

Job #61: Appliance Delivery

After Mrs. R’s recovery, I was ready to re-enter the job market. I figured I had burned the Wankcom bridge, so I didn’t even try to beg for my job back. I got hired as the head receiving and delivery guy at a new Sear’s “Hometown  Store” – which are small franchises which specialize in appliances, electronics, tools and other “hard” goods. The owners were a guy named Ruben and his wife. Ruben had made a bundle of money as an engineer in Silicon Valley, and then decided to take an early retirement and invest in the franchise in O-Town, of all places.

This quickly became one of my most hated jobs, and it all had to do with my boss. He may have been good at making money in his previous career, but he didn’t know much about running a business, or dealing with people. He was a megalomaniac who took offense at the most minor perceived slight to his author-i-tah. When we were setting up the store before the grand opening, I was wheeling a refrigerator out to the showroom floor. Ruben and his wife were busy with something, so I asked their new head salesman, Ed, where I should put the fridge.

Well, Ruben wasn’t so busy that he hadn’t noticed this exchange. Later he took me aside and asked me why I had asked Ed where to put the fridge. I explained my reasons, but Ruben furiously scolded me for my transgression and informed that me that all decisions were to come from him – Ruben, and only him.

Things just got worse from there. Ed quit in frustration over Ruben’s dictatorial ways. I was miserable, but I didn’t know what I was going to do if I quit this job, not right after a period of unemployment. Besides, the wage was quite decent. It felt ironic that I’d had to leave a job I loved, but I couldn’t quit a job I hated. Then one day Ruben called me into his office. He explained that his accountant had told him that he could no longer afford to pay me the wage I was making, so he was cutting me back a couple of dollars an hour. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I’d never heard of such a thing before. I’m not even sure that what he was proposing was legal. Then he had the nerve to say, “Don’t worry, I won’t make you pay back what I’ve overpaid you.” I wanted to laugh in his face and yell, “Good luck with that if you try!”

As it was, I took my licks meekly, then went home and called Dave at Wankcom and asked for a second chance. To my amazement and relief, he said “Sure, come on back.” I gladly gave my notice to Ruben, and went back to my beloved paratransit. And that was on my birthday, so it was one of the best presents I’d ever gotten.

I ended up having to report Ruben to the department of labor practices. The law says that when an employee voluntarily quits, an employer has three days to give them their final paycheck. Ruben, of course, saw things differently, and said that his attorney agreed with him. I had to see his vile face one last time because he tried to fight the law and we had to go to a hearing, which I’m happy to say he lost. The best part was that for every day he had delayed giving me my final check, by law he owed me a day’s wages. So I got to humiliate the asshole and made a profit off of it.

1995-1996

Job #62: Para-transit/Fixed Route Driver

As you might expect, I have counted Wankcom twice, because I worked there two separate times. I can’t, for the life of me, remember exactly how long I worked there the second time, but it was until sometime in 1996. I had to leave on disability (legitimately, thank you) because I got sciatica from the driving and ended up in excruciating pain and couldn’t work. When I finally healed, I called Dave to report that I could return to work. He said, “Not interested” and hung up. I guess I had finally burned that bridge. I later found out that his refusal to take back an employee who had been out on disability was against the law, but by then it was too late to do anything about it.

Job #63: Community Service (Mail Room)

I had one more job that year, if you can call it that – and I do. I know I said many chapters ago that I had left my lawless ways behind me after my indiscretion with Mr. Schmossas and the dog repellant. Since that statement though, I have revealed that I was a prisoner in an Air Force jail, but it’s not like I had been convicted of a crime. I was just a very reluctant guest. Now I must confess to another brush with the law which resulted in civil penalties. I know – I’m just a recidivist and unrepentant reprobate.

Because of my wildly fluctuating income during those couple of years, and since I wasn’t driving while I was out on disability, I had let my driver license lapse. One night I had to sneak down to the laundromat for some badly needed…well…laundry-doing. Unfortunately, our then-current crappy car had a tail light out, and I got pulled over, and couldn’t present a valid license to operate a motor vehicle. I think because it had been a commercial license, I had to pay a higher than normal fine. Of course, we had no money, so I had to work it off in community service. Because of my sciatica, I got to do light duty, which was fine with me. I worked for a few weeks sorting letters in the county mail room, and that was the real end of my life of crime, except for a fine a couple of years ago because I hadn’t kept up on the ever-changing laws about exactly where a grandchild’s car seat can be placed. Wait…”grandchild”!? I am getting ahead of myself, aren’t I?

And with that shocking admission, I bid you adieu until next time.

The end.

Chapter 21: Death, Birth and Canned Goods

Chapter 21: Death, Birth and Canned Goods

Jobs 53 – 58

1989

Like I said before, marriage and parenthood did not, unfortunately, automatically bestow employment stability. I now had a new incentive to always try to have income. It was no longer just me I had to worry about. I couldn’t be so cavalier about leaving jobs. Despite my new-found sense of responsibility to others, sometimes circumstances were beyond my control. And just as often, I simply made bad decisions.

Job #54: Self-Employed Gardener

One such bad decision happened sometime during 1989. I had been working for Scoop in his landscape maintenance business, off and on, for some time when I thought I might be able to make a go of it myself. There seemed to be no shortage of work for gardeners, especially during the warm months. If you were clever and industrious, you could also support yourself during the lean winter months.

I borrowed a bit of money from my long-suffering brother Dick, which I used to buy some used equipment from Scoop, specifically a small utility trailer, a mower and a blower. I think I bought a new weed trimmer. I got a nice rake for a father’s day present. Our only vehicle was a trusty old Datsun station wagon, so I found a welder who worked out of his home who installed a towing hitch for me, and I was on my way.

I started finding my own customers, mostly through references from Scoop, who had as many as he could handle at the time. I quickly found that I was in over my head. It wasn’t that I lacked for ambition. It’s just that I don’t have much of a head for business. I tended to lower my prices if my customers looked at all reluctant about my quoted price. I also realized that I didn’t really know all that much about the technical aspects of the business. Before I had just done what Scoop had told me to do. When it came to knowing exactly what height to cut a particular kind of grass, or the best way to trim a bush, I was way out of my element.

It wasn’t long before I decided that being self-employed wasn’t for me. I sold my equipment back to Scoop, who being a good business man, undoubtedly made a profit on the deal.

Job #55: Assistant Landscaper

I also worked for a time for another gardener named Kent. In some ways Kent and Scoop were very similar – they were both skinny dudes who were freakishly strong. That’s where the similarities ended though. I had gotten used to Scoop’s methods, and like I said, he was good at what he did. Kent was competent, too, and seemed to be able to keep himself busy, but some of his decisions left me wondering. He would sometimes forget to bring necessary items for an landscape installation job, and then say, “Oh, well, I’ll bring it tomorrow.” I would think of how Scoop would have handled such a situation –leave me doing the grunt work while he ran to get the items – and I wanted to suggest a similar course of action, but I was just the hired help. Maybe that was Kent’s way of padding out a job so he could charge the customer more hours.

1990

Job #56: "The" Cannery

I also worked the swing shift for part of a season at the cannery – or rather: “The Cannery”, as most O-Towners refer to it - where they processed fruits and tomatoes (yes, I know – a tomato is a fruit, shaddap). It seems like everyone in town has worked at the cannery at some point in their lives. As implied, most of the workers were hired on a seasonal basis. If you worked one season, it was easier to get hired for subsequent seasons, and perhaps for earlier on and for longer each season than a new worker. A few people had been there long enough to have earned year-round positions there.

My first position was trimming pears. Two long lines of us would stand on either side of a conveyer belt where the steam-peeled pears would emerge from the coring machine. If we saw a pear with a bad bit, or maybe with a bit of stem still on, we’d grab it and lop off the offending piece with a small paring knife.

The work was easy, if a little boring. My pear-trimming cohorts were all Mexican ladies with little or no English. The cannery was so noisy, though, that it precluded casual conversation, even if I had been able to speak Spanish. I had never previously heard of “line hypnosis”, but I quickly came to found out how it could happen. As long as the conveyer belt kept moving, things were fine. Occasionally, however, it would stop. When that happened, if I didn’t look away from the belt, it appeared for all the world as if it were now moving in the opposite direction. The illusion made me feel dizzy and nauseous, like motion sickness.

One day I was pulled off the pear line and sent to work in a lonely corner of the plant whereunlabeled #10-sized cans of product (about 7 pounds) were brought in on pallets. My task was to transfer the cans onto a conveyer belt headed toward the labeleing machine.  The TWO people who usually did that job were both absent for some reason. My supervisors must have thought that here I was – a tall and seemingly fit young man – wasting my natural gifts trimming pears with tiny middle-aged women.

I’m sure they quickly regretted that decision. For some reason they couldn’t find me a partner, so I was expected to do the work of two people, and that kind of mindless, back-breaking labor at a fever pitch is the sort of work I hate most. I don’t like the idea of having to keep up with machines. The pear belt moved at a human pace, but I couldn't get the cans onto the belt fast enough to satisfy my robot overlords. I was reminded of that famous scene in “I Love Lucy” where she and her friend tried to work at the candy factory.

At one point a young lady showed up at my work station. I said, “Oh, good, am I finally going to get some help?” She said, no, she had been told to come ask me if I could work any faster. I gave her a hollow assurance that I would try, then I kept working at a pace I could handle.

My night of torture finally ended, and for some mysterious reason I was never invited to do that particular chore again. The next night I returned to my hypnotic pear belt for the remainder of my time there. I was hired quite late in the season, which soon ended, so all in all, I probably only worked there for a few weeks, but without the usual fuss and muss of quitting or being fired.

Job #57: Olive Cannery

This job I just remembered today as I was writing about “The Cannery”. There was another cannery in O-Town. It was nowhere as big as “The Cannery”, because it specialized only in olives. They cured the olives in long, open vats. When they were ready, we would scoop them out of the vats and into wheeled tubs with big plastic shovels with holes drilled in them to let the brine run out more easily. We then trundled the tubs to the head of the line where they’d go through the pitting machine, and then onto belts where the ubiquitous Mexican ladies would cull the funky ones.

There were other positions at the olive cannery which I got to do, such as working on a machine where the recently picked olives arrived from the orchards. It was similar to the dreadful machine in Job #27 (nut company), but I vastly preferred it to working in the vat room. The vat room was the oldest portion of the factory, and it was literally falling apart. One day we came in to find that a large chunk of one of the rotten wooden beams which held up the vast corrugated metal roof of the building had fallen to the floor.

Another day, we were having a heavy autumn storm. There was much creaking and groaning from overhead. Our supervisor told us that if we saw any movement in the ceiling we were to get out as quickly as possible. I was a nervous wreck until the storm abated. I figured that by the time we detected any movement, it would be too late for us to get out before the whole thing came crashing down on us.

We survived the day, but I decided something needed to be done about the situation. People shouldn’t have to work in a place where they needed to keep one eye on the ceiling. I made an anonymous call to OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration) and told them about the conditions there. A couple of days later I saw some of the managers leading a couple of people carrying clipboards around the place. Later it was revealed that not only had they ordered them to replace their ridiculous old roof, but the inspectors had found a couple of other violations, such as there being no emergency eye wash/shower station in the vat room, where harsh chemicals were often used (let alone the unlikely event of someone falling into the brine). I felt justified for my whistle-blowing. I left the olive cannery before they started replacing the roof, and I was glad of it.

Jobs #58 and 59

1990 and 1991-1992

My next two jobs were actually another instance where I worked in the same place on two separate occasions, this time separated by a period of time with no other jobs in between. The second time ended up being the longest-held job I’d had up to that point, so that’s noteworthy.

 I got hired as a temporary Program Assistant (fancy federal language for “clerk”) for the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Stabilization and Conservation Service, which is quite a mouthful. Basically, this is the department of the government which pay crop subsidies to keep prices stables. They also sell crop insurance and make sure that farmers are following various rules for conserving soil and wetlands. Oh, and we never called the people we served “customers”, or even “farmers” or – God forbid – “clients”. “Producers” was the only acceptable term. People who receive free money from the government to not grow stuff don’t want to be associated with something so vile as “welfare”.

The office was quite small. Besides myself, there was the director and three permanent Program Assistants. Our office was also quite behind the technology curve. The computer terminals were connected to a main computer in a back room, but not to anything outside the building, even though the internet was becoming a thing by then. I think new data had to be loaded by disk or tape. We didn’t even have our own fax machine. When we had to fax something, we had to walk to a copy place within the business complex which contained our office. I couldn’t believe it. This was the federal government, and we might have as well have still been using telegraphs.

I had been hired for the busy summer growing season, and when that ended, I remained unemployed until the following year, when I was hired back at the ASCS. I tried to find work, but there wasn’t much available. I got unemployment benefits because I had been laid off from my job. I’m not ashamed to say that we also got evil welfare, and I think I probably worked for Scoop some more during those lean months.

Those were tough times for us. We had been living in a federally subsidized apartment, so our rent was based on our income. It was always reasonable, but when we had little or no income, our rent was almost non-existent. Unfortunately, the compressor of our central air conditioning unit blew one day. They replaced it in a timely manner, but the residue of the burnt unit stayed in the duct work. Even after the smell faded, our throats would burn and our eyes would water whenever we ran the system. My wife is especially sensitive to such things, and it was miserable for her. We begged the property managers to either clean the ducts or move us to another unit. Our entreaties fell upon deaf ears, however. We even had an inspector from the city come check it out. The dumbass took a sniff and declared there was nothing dangerous. I explained that it wasn’t something you could smell, but he didn’t think there was anything to it.

Eventually we decided to take our chances and move out of the apartment. We put most of our stuff in storage, and at first we stayed during the week with our friend Sue and her kids. Those were fun times. We all got along great. But Sue had a difficult relationship with her husband. He worked and lived in the Bay Area during the week, and would come home on the weekends. Then we had to make ourselves scarce. Some weekends we would stay at a motel when we could afford to, and other times we stayed at Mrs. R’s mom Jordana’s place. She shared a small house with her mom, Mildred, so those were crowded weekends. They had a hide-a-bed couch for Mrs. R and I and Rimpy Jr., and Step-Rimpyette slept on a cot.

Finally this nomadic lifestyle became a little too much bother. I summoned up the courage to call my parents and ask if we could borrow the camper so we would have something to live in while we tried to save money to get another place to live. I felt bad for asking, because my dad been diagnosed a while before with colon cancer, and it was terminal. Dying certainly hadn’t improved his disposition. He angrily said that I could have the camper, but it would be the last thing I would get from him. In so many words, he said I would be written out of his will if I took the camper.

I was hurt and angry myself. I only wanted to borrow the darned thing. I thought his reaction was a bit overboard. Maybe my dad thought that making such an ultimatum would make me “grow up” and find a way to house my family without his assistance, in exchange for some reward after he was gone. Being the stubbornly immature person I was, I hadn’t given a thought to my parents even having an “estate”, let alone what it might mean for me. I was desperate enough and angry enough to think that I didn’t care about any will, so I accepted his cruel deal.

My sister and her family were going down to Cambria to visit the parental units, so I hitched a ride with them. We arrived in the evening. Buff and Roy and their kids went in to see Dad, who was in bed most of the time by now. I couldn’t bring myself to face him, at least not at first. Sometime after they had cleared the bedroom, I finally summoned up the courage to go see my father. He had fallen asleep, so I was spared for a little while longer.

I did eventually talk with my dad, but I don’t remember much about that visit. The next day I drove the camper back to O-Town. I couldn’t seem to get the heater working right in the cab, and by the time I got home I was a shivering mess.

We parked the camper in the driveway of Jordana and Mildred’s place. My dad had made the camper a fairly self-contained unit. There was a small solar panel on the roof, and a tank-less water heater and a shower stall/toilet unit. We hooked up a garden hose for water. We let the grey waste water run out into the empty field next door. We used the bathroom in the house by day, but we used the camper’s toilet at night, both for convenience, and to not have to disturb Jordana and Mildred. When the holding tank got full, I had to drive the camper to a campground to use their dumping facility.

We got along pretty well that way for a while. Then our old friend the city inspector (who had been so helpful with our apartment air conditioning) drove by one day and noticed that there were some people living in a camper in a driveway. It turned out there was an ordinance against that. We were forced to move into the house. I had never wanted to murder a petty bureaucrat so badly.

There was actually a third bedroom in the tiny house, but we hadn’t used it before because it was being used for storage. We moved all that stuff into the camper. Mrs. R and Rimpy Jr. and I slept in the spare room, and SR (Step-Rimpyette) would sleep on the hide-a-bed in the living room. After a couple of days a nice policeman was sent around to make sure we were in compliance with the ordinance. I showed him that the camper was now so full of junk that no one could possibly sleep in it. He was satisfied, and said he would tell the little so-and-so inspector to mind his own damned business. I wished he could have been there when the twerp had come by the first time.

While we were staying at Jordana’s, I had gone back to work at ASCS. There was a change of directors shortly after I returned. Our mild-mannered Kathy was replaced by a horrid woman named Dolores. In case you don’t know, that name means “Sorrows”, and that what’s she brought upon all her underlings. Despite this hardship, I did such good work that when the regular summer season ended, I was kept on indefinitely. I also started taking on more responsibilities. I somehow ended up being the person in charge of a complicated program that had fallen into disarray. There was another branch of the USDA next door to our office – the Farmer’s Home Loan Administration. In order to qualify for a home loan, the farmers had to come to us to prove that they were in compliance with certain regulations for which we were responsible. For whatever reason, our office had fallen down in its duties to this inter-agency co-operation, and the loan applications were badly back-logged.

At first I was terrified about accepting the responsibility of trying to comprehend all the steps involved in the program. After I had studied it a bit, however, I realized it wasn’t so very complicated. I soon developed a streamlined means of processing the applications, and the back-log quickly was a thing of the past. The director of the Farmer’s Home Loan office was so pleased that she wrote me a really nice letter of commendation, which I still have today. It hasn’t helped me get a better job, but I’m very proud of it.

There were significant developments in my personal life, as well. My father had succumbed to his cancer. He had arranged to have his ashes scattered at sea by the Neptune Society, and there was no funeral or memorial service. He was always a practical fellow, and I suppose his final arrangements were admirable from that perspective, but they also sound like the actions of a depressed, anti-social man who didn’t care much for himself or his family. I also think it’s significant that his wife or children never saw fit to defy his wishes.

I’ve heard some allegations about the Neptune Society mishandling some peoples’ “cremains”, and I sometimes wonder if my dad’s ashes ever got the respect of his very minimal wishes, or if they ended up sitting in a storage locker or just tossed in the trash. I’m sure he wouldn’t care, and I don’t much either, sad to say.

On the brighter side, another significant event was that Mrs. R had another bun in the oven! It wasn’t all fun and games, however. That pregnancy ended up being pretty rough for her. She had gestational diabetes, and started to have congestive heart failure. She ended up at a hospital in Sacramento. I had to quit working in order to take care of her and the kids. All in all, I had worked at ASCS for about one whole year. A new record!

Rimpyette was born six weeks early. The doctor decided to induce labor because my wife’s life was in grave danger if she tried to carry the baby to term. Those were scary times. Rimpyette was tiny, but otherwise healthy. She stayed in the Neo-Natal Intensive Care Unit for a couple of weeks. Meanwhile, Jordana and Mildred had moved to a different house. We has still been staying with them, but I didn’t want to have to bring my new baby to a place not our own.

Since I had traded my future inheritance for the camper, I decided to sell it. With the proceeds we rented an apartment in College Town. I’m not sure why we – or more likely, I – decided to live there, further away from our small support network in O-Town. I told myself that my chances of finding employment would be better in the larger town, but I think another factor was motivating me. I certainly didn’t have anything against my in-laws, but I think that I was trying to show that I could be an independent husband and father, without help from family, mine or Mrs. R’s.

Well, that didn’t work out so well. After a difficult pregnancy, Mrs. R fell into a deep postpartum depression, and here she was stuck in a strange town where she couldn’t see her mother and grandmother. SR, who was in junior high school, was also having a hard time adjusting to the new situation.

After a few months, we had to admit defeat, and we moved back to O-Town. Jordana and Mildred reluctantly agreed to let us move back in with them. Even though their new place was larger, it only had two bedrooms. One room was quite large, and the other was a dinky thing which had been added on next to the living room. It didn’t even have a real door, but those flimsy bi-fold things. It was probably never meant to be a bedroom, but more of a side lounge or something. At least it had a closet, so that was something. Jordana had been sleeping in the little room, but she moved into the capacious real bedroom with her mom.

Well. This is perhaps my longest chapter yet, and this seems as good a place as any to stop. Soon both my employment and our living situation were going to improve.

I would like to add one last anecdote about Rimpyette’s birth. I’ve never considered myself any kind of a psychic person, but  some time after Rimpy Jr. had been born, I started experiencing a strange thing. Whenever I would see the time 9:21 on a digital clock, something about it kind of “jumped out” at me. If I glanced at such a clock at that time, it gave me a bit of start. I didn’t know what, if anything, it could mean, but something about that combination of numbers seemed to have some great significance.

Well, Rimpyette was born about two hours into…you guessed it…September 21^st. Right after I greeted my little girl, and when she had been carted off by the nursing staff, I turned to Mrs. R and said, “Now I understand the significance of 9:21”. After that those numbers stopped leaping out at me from digital clocks. Now you may laugh, but from an early age Rimpyette has shown signs of being a medium of considerable power. It pleases me to think that my daughter could have been sending messages to her daddy about her future birthday, starting from before she was even conceived. Woo-OOO-ooo!

The end.

Chapter 20: Be AWOL You Can Be

Chapter 20: Be AWOL You Can Be

Jobs #48 - 53

1987

Job # 48: PFC (continued)

I arrived at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport and took the bus into the city and stopped by my old house. Two of my former roommates were still living there, and they let me crash on a couch in a sort of foyer at the top of the stairs. One of my former roomies was living a few blocks away with his new girlfriend.

Basically I just hung out and partied with my old pals for a couple of days. Then it seemed like it was time to move on. I hitchhiked south and stopped in Ashland, Oregon. I’ve always liked Ashland – it’s a beautiful place – but it wasn’t as much fun if you had no place to stay. I was starting to get a little tired of life on the lam, and I figured I would have to deal with the Army at some point, so I decided to try to turn myself in. I wasn’t sure how to go about that, so I flagged down a passing police man and told him that I was away without leave from the Army.

Apparently being AWOL isn’t really a crime anywhere but in the service. The cop told me there wasn’t much he could do for me. He suggested a few things I might try if I wanted to get back to the loving arms of the Army. I thanked him for his time and help, and then I went off to sleep in a park.

I figured I had tried to do the right thing and had been thwarted, so that was the same as a free pass to keep being AWOL. I continued hitchhiking south, with the intention of seeing my dear old friends “J” and Lurleen.

I stayed for a few days with “J”, and this is where I would have to say that my life truly began. Romance blossomed between me and “J”. Even though we’ve now been married almost thirty years, I consider these last almost three decades to be the “modern” portion of my life. Everything before it is ancient history. I’ve been married more than half my life now, which is quite an accomplishment for a guy who hadn’t been able hold a job more than a few months.

Of course, it hasn’t all been smooth sailing. No relationship is. And it’s not like marriage and family instantly bestowed stability in employment. And like the dork I am, it took me way longer than the average person to realize when I had it good. But, as usual, I am getting ahead of myself.

After several glorious days with “J”, I had to face the inevitability of getting the whole Army thing out of the way. If I could have afforded it, I would have taken Greyhound back to Fort Gordon, but I was now completely broke. After making some phone calls, I learned that the best thing to do was to contact the local chapter of the Red Cross, which I did. They bought me a bus ticket to the nearest military facility, which was Beale Air Force Base.

I arrived unannounced at Beale and wandered about the base until I found a likely-looking office. The Air Force seemed a lot more relaxed than the Army. I was used to having to stand at attention when meeting anyone who looked higher in rank than me, but no one there seemed to care too much about such formalities. I looked properly military with my short haircut and duffle bag, so the first person I spoke to asked if I was reporting for duty. When I explained why I was there, they were at a loss as to what to do with me. I was expecting to be arrested or something, or at least treated badly for being a deserter. Instead everyone in that office was incredibly nice to me.

If there is some sort of protocol for what to do when an AWOL serviceman returns, those guys didn’t know what it was. It probably would have been simpler if we had all been in the same branch of the service. They discussed my options with me. There were some accommodations available for visiting service members, but there was a nominal charge for them, and I was completely broke. The nice staff briefly considered taking up a collection for me to stay there, to avoid the unpleasantness of my other option, which was to stay at the base’s stockade. They told me I really didn’t want to do that. Soon I was too find out just how right they were.

Eventually it was decided that the stockade was my only option, and someone drove me over there. There were only a couple of young airmen (the Air Force equivalent of a private) on duty at the stockade when I arrived. They were also very nice to me, as well as being not sure how to handle me. I certainly wasn’t guilty of any offenses against the Air Force. They knew I was just trying to get back to my post after a mild indiscretion. They skipped a lot of the usual procedures and put me in a cell with a couple of other mild-mannered prisoners.

The stockade was a fairly low security facility. I guess it’s not hard to control people who are already used to being told what to do. The cells had bars, of course, but the hallway leading to the front offices did not. Instead there were lines painted on the floor in the doorways which prisoners were not allowed to cross without permission. The door to the outside was electronically controlled. The only other rule I was required to follow was to say, “Prisoner Rimpington requests persmission to speak” before saying anything. I kept screwing up and saying “Private Rimpington”, which was a little embarrassing.

A couple of hours later the sergeant in charge of the stockade arrived. I knew this because suddenly there was a bunch of yelling – liberally enhanced with much swearing – by one very loud person. He had just been informed of my presence, and was appalled at his underlings’ failure to follow strict protocol for incoming prisoners. He stormed over to my cell, followed by his now very flustered-looking staffers. I felt badly for them, being screamed at by this maniac just for trying to show kindness to someone.

I soon began feeling sorry for myself, though, because the sadistic son of a bitch seemed to have a real hard-on for me. Maybe he really hated the Army, or deserters in general. Either way, the nice treatment I had received came to an end. I was roughly put through the usual intake procedure for prisoners. The airmen had taken my duffle bag from me, but hadn’t searched it. When the sergeant heard this he really went ballistic. When the sergeant searched it he found a boot knife I had in there. Then I was subjected to a strip search. I had to bend over and spread my butt cheeks while the sergeant peered at my asshole with a flashlight. I didn’t feel sorry for him having to see that.

I was issued a stockade jumpsuit. Then I had to fill out a very long form in which I was expected to write down every address I’d ever lived at – ever. I’d had almost as many residences as I’d had jobs! I couldn’t remember them all, which did not please Sgt. Sadistic one bit. I then had to stand before his desk and answer a bunch of verbal questions. I’ve always talked with my hands, especially when I’m nervous, and I was especially agitated just then. He said that if I didn’t stop moving my hands, he would assume I was trying to grab the stapler on his desk, and he’d slam my head into the concrete floor.

I guess the sergeant was afraid I would be a bad influence on his other prisoners, and I was put in a single cell. Unlike the time I was in the Butt County Jail, I felt rather lonely in my cell. My only entertainment was the sound of jets taking off and landing. I spent a couple of miserable nights in the Beale stockade. The sergeant wasn’t always around, which was a relief, but the airmen were no longer quite as friendly as they had been. They were too afraid of their superior to risk being chummy.

My barracks lung was still afflicting me, and I was coughing so hard that I felt pain right down into the very base of my groin. One day one of the airmen put me in a van and we started driving for an unknown destination. And driving. And driving some more. I thought Army bases were big, but Beale seemed to go on forever. Finally prisoner Rimpington requested permission to speak, and then I said, “Where are we going?” He said he was taking me to the base clinic because of my cough. A nice doctor examined me and prescribed some powerful antibiotics. After that my condition started improving. I thought it odd that I had to be a prisoner of the Air Force before I got treatment for a condition I caught in the Army. It really made me wish that I had qualified for the Air Force when I decided to join the service (as long as I stayed out of the stockade).

I really can’t remember how exactly I got back to Ft. Gordon, but at long last I got to say a fond farewell to Sgt. Dickhead of the Air Force. I’m pretty sure Uncle Sam paid for me to be flown back to Columbia. I was a bit of a celebrity amongst my fellow privates when I got back to my post. They were especially interested in hearing of my adventures in the stockade. Perhaps I was able to serve as an example to them to keep their noses clean.

Ironically, my “less than honorable” discharge had come through shortly after I had rashly jumped on that plane a couple of weeks earlier. My superiors briefly considered tossing me in Ft. Gordon’s stockade, and I breathed a huge sigh of relief when they decided that there was no point, since I was essentially now a civilian. So I just hung out for a day or two. It was an odd sensation. My brief escape from the regimen of the service had made me less afraid of higher ranking people (except psychotic stockade sergeants). On my last day on the base, I was standing in line for morning mess. My hair had gotten a bit longer than regulations allowed. A strange sergeant came up to me and told me I needed to get a haircut. I could have told him I was leaving that day, but I knew that sergeants don’t like excuses, so I just lied and told him I would take care of it right after I ate, and he went away happy.

The Army bought me a bus ticket back to Butt County. It was such a good feeling to finally legitimately say “so long” to the job #47. I was heading home, and there was someone who loved me waiting for me there. As I made my way slowly across the country, I had this day dream that at some way stop I would find a little church in which I could offer thanks for my liberation and good fortune. I wasn’t a religious person, but I felt like something that big deserved a big gesture.

Amazingly, exactly that happened. I had a layover in some small town somewhere in the southwest, and just up the road was a beautiful old Catholic church. I didn’t know the proper procedure, but I got on my knees in a pew and gave a silent heartfelt prayer of gratitude.

I also had a layover in Dallas, Texas, so I played tourist. I visited Dealey Plaza and saw the infamous book depository and the mysterious “grassy knoll”. I also cruised through Neiman Marcus in my shabby civilian clothes and looked at things I couldn’t afford in a million years.

Finally I was reunited with my beloved “J”. Now, remember earlier when I said I was too dumb to know when I had it good? Maybe I was afraid of intimacy, or maybe I really am an idiot, but I decided I wanted to go back to Seattle. I had some half-baked notion that I was going to “make my fortune” in the Pacific Northwest, and then I would be worthy of the woman I loved, like a protagonist in an old novel. “J” was upset, but she let me go.

I hitchhiked back to Seattle. I had to sleep in an orchard next to the highway a ways north of College Town on the first night. When I hung my thumb out the next morning, I was picked up by a fellow with whom I was mildly acquainted. Small world.

On the last leg of my journey, on a drizzly night I approached a trucker at a weigh station somewhere in southern Washington. He gave me a ride into Seattle. On the way, he asked me friendly questions about my situation and plans. He couldn’t really understand why I was leaving a good woman behind and taking off to someplace where I didn’t even have a job yet. I had to admit to myself that I didn’t really understand it either.

I got into the city late, and decided to splurge on a dive motel room rather than sleep on the ground again. It was damp out, and my only other option was to sleep inside a jungle gym tube in a school play ground. The motel check-out time was 11 AM, and when I finally awoke, I was dismayed to find I only had about 10 minutes to vamoose. I had been hoping for a shower before I left, but there wasn’t time, because I didn’t want to pay another day’s rent.

Job #49: Telemarketing

I stayed with my former roommate Leo and his girlfriend until I could get on my feet. I quickly got a job at a telemarketing outfit. It was similar to job #38, but instead of delivering the coupon booklets, I was one of the people making the phone calls. I had to read from a script. It felt very stilted and unnatural. On the second day, I finally realized I had made a huge mistake in all ways. I used my employer’s phone to call “J” and tell her I was coming home to her.

I hitchhiked back to O-Town. I had good weather on my trip. I got picked up by an old weirdo who made me uncomfortable with his attitudes toward women. I could have ridden further with him, but I found an excuse to slip away. I then lucked into a ride with a cool guy who was a professional chef. He was on his way south to a new job. He even let me drive his beat-up Pinto while he slept. I made it the rest of the way home in good time. Yes: "home". It has a nice ring to it, doesn't it?

Job #50: Assistant Landscaper

There was a joyful reunion with my “J”, and I was ready to settle down and be one half of a couple. At last my long-time favorite hobby was replaced by something MUCH better! But where was I going to work? Luckily, Lurleen’s still-estranged-but-not-quite-ex-husband Scoop had recently started his own landscaping and yard maintenance business, and needed help, so I went to work for him. A few days in, Scoop was impressed with the way I whipped the lawn mower neatly around a small tree and gave me a dollar raise.

It’s hard to calculate just how long I worked for Scoop. I worked full-time for quite a while, and he gave me a couple of more raises over the months, because I was a good worker. That made me feel good about myself. I also got pretty buff with all that physical labor. When winter came along, there was less work available, and I began to think that an indoor job sounded nice. I had never worked in an office before, and that became my dream. Even after I realized my new dream, I continued to work for Scoop on Saturdays, and then off and on over the next few years. Being willing to work six days a week prompted Lurleen to tell me I was a good provider, which I thought was one of the nicest things anyone had every said to me. For you see, I was also by now on my way to being a parent. I legally made “J” Mrs. Rimpington. I was already getting some practice at parenting as step-father to “B” (now Step-Rimpyette), but now I was going to have a “biological” child (you know, as opposed to those inorganic ones). A whole new world of amazing and sometimes frightening responsibilities.

1987

Job #51: Office Manager

Somehow I got a job at a new United Way program for homeless mentally-ill people, which went by the imaginative name of Homeless-Mentally Ill Program. It was run by an earnest fellow named Warren, who was impressed with my honesty about my own experience with homelessness. I was one of the first people hired, along with a couple of other young people who had backgrounds in social work and counseling. I wasn’t quite sure what my exact position was called, and to be honest, I hadn’t given it much thought. Then Warren surprised me by saying that I could call myself the office manager. It was the most impressive job title I’d had by that point.

The whole program was a little ill-defined. There was definitely a feeling that we were all making it up as we went along. I certainly felt like I had no idea what I was doing most of the time, but I worked very hard at it none the less. Our office was an old Victorian house near downtown. It had a living room which we used as a sort of lounge area and lobby for the clients. Off of that was a large kitchen. The former bedrooms were used as offices and counseling rooms.

We had quite a few clients, and they were some interesting characters. Basically we tried to help them navigate the often confusing various social services bureaucracies in order to get them some sort of steady income and stable living situations. It wasn’t easy, and often ended in failure. Some people are just too damaged to be stable without constant supervision. Warren and the other workers would also try to counsel the clients on their emotional issues, with variable results. One day, Warren was in a session with a sensitive young gay man. Unfortunately, the old walls and air vents weren’t at all sound proof, and we in the living room could hear the young man talking about how he found himself always being attracted to abusive men who reminded him of his father. I didn’t have exactly that problem, but I could sympathize with his daddy issues.

Suddenly, voices in the other room got raised, and the young man came bursting out and raced into the kitchen. He snatched open the drawer containing the knives and was about to try slashing at his wrists with one of them. I had never witnessed such a thing before, and I was slow to react. Fortunately, Warren –who was a pretty big guy - was right behind him and grabbed him from behind in a bear hug before he could do himself an injury. As it was, he had grabbed a butter knife, so I don’t think there would have been much damage.

1987-1988

Jobs #52 and 53: Clerk-Typist

Soon I transitioned to a job as a clerk-typist at the Butt County Child Protective Services department. Lurleen had been hired there as a social worker, and she gave me a glowing reference. I may not have been an office manager anymore, but the new job offered better pay and benefits. No one tried to kill themselves there, but we did occasionally receive death threats. People don’t like it when the government takes their children away, even if it is in the best interests of the children.

I actually worked for CPS on two different occasions, but I decided to only count it as one job. Rimpy Jr. was born while I worked there the first time. Then, stupidly, I thought I could better myself by returning to school, so I quit CPS. Yeah, that didn’t work out. CPS took me back, but I can’t remember exactly for how long or where precisely that fell in this time line. Even though it was the exact same job for the exact same employer, I'm counting it as two jobs for two reasons: 1) because it had two separate portions, and 2) because I like to inflate my numbers in a desperate attempt to generate interest in this project.

Okay, that’s enough for now. Wow, we’re well past the half-way point on all these jobs. What’s up next in this crazy merry-go-round of employment? Tune in next time to find out.

The end.