tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22820434884884740802024-02-19T07:33:47.368-08:00High Turnover: 85 Jobs in 35 YearsOne man, three and a half decades, eighty-five jobs. What is up with that?Rimpy Rimpingtonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13017152542056998917noreply@blogger.comBlogger33125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2282043488488474080.post-80538638165973986082016-05-28T11:40:00.001-07:002016-05-28T11:40:08.671-07:00Bonus Post: Book Progress Update and a Solicitation of Reader Opinion<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Portrait of the author as a young man</td></tr>
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Hello dear readers;<o:p></o:p></div>
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I am currently stalled in my work on the book because I am
waiting to print all the chapters into a spiral-bound, double-spaced manuscript
to facilitate the proof-reading and note-making process.<o:p></o:p></div>
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In the meanwhile, I have recalled three other things which
could be considered jobs, in that I received money for my labor, no matter how
middling that was. I need your opinion
as to whether I should: 1) add them to the job count, raising the total to 88; or
2) include them somewhere in the book, but explain why they’re not part of the
count; or 3) forget about them all together.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The memory of these jobs came to me in reverse chronological
order. The most recent one was about the time that I had my first bus driving
job. It was probably shortly after I had quit that job, and was floundering
about for a way to pay the rent on my groovy studio apartment. One of my
neighbors worked for an above-ground pool and spa merchant. One day he asked me
if I would help him set up a working pool on the display floor of his employer’s
store. The work only took a few hours, and he probably paid me a flat fee, like
25 dollars (and probably a few beers while we waited for the pool to fill), for
my time.<o:p></o:p></div>
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When I remembered this “job”, I asked Mrs. Rimpington if she
thought I should include it as one of my 80+ positions. She thought I shouldn’t,
and then she asked, “You didn’t include the time you got paid to baby-sit my
cousins, did you?” I paused a moment before responding in the negative. She
said that in that case I shouldn’t include this pool thing, either, because
they were both just minor things I did mostly as a favor for someone and for
which I also received compensation.<o:p></o:p></div>
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However, the reason I
paused before answering was because I had forgotten all about the time I
watched her two young cousins while their parents were out for evening. I was
about 16 or 17 at the time, and they were about seven and nine. I was pondering
whether I shouldn’t actually include that gig as well as the time I helped my
neighbor.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The baby-sitting thing got me to thinking if there had been
any other instances in my life of the kinds of things that children and teenagers
typically do for money which I could add to my job list. 85 is a lot of jobs,
so I don’t really <i>need</i> any more positions
to inflate my numbers, but I do want this to be as accurate a history as
possible.<o:p></o:p></div>
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I think I may have once opened a Kool-Aid stand (I didn’t
know how to make lemonade) on the sidewalk in front of my house, but I wouldn’t
include that as a “job”. However, I did recall that one autumn in my childhood,
a chum and I offered our services raking leaves in the neighborhood. We went
door-to-door and actually got a few customers. When it came to pay us, one lady
asked, “Who’s in charge here?” Without hesitation, we each pointed at the other
and said, “He is!” Then we looked at each other funny, and all we and the lady
started laughing. I don’t remember whose idea it was – it just seemed to have spontaneously
generated between two bored boys without allowances who thought it would be
swell to have some money of their own.<o:p></o:p></div>
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So there you have it: three minor tasks performed for cash
money – leaf-raking, pool-setting up and baby-sitting. Do they count as jobs,
are they noteworthy anecdotes, or should they be consigned to the dustbin of
personal history? I value your thoughts.<o:p></o:p></div>
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By the way, even in the mid-1960s, no one was saying things
like “chum” and “swell” anymore. It’s just that when I recall my early
childhood, I tend to go all ‘Leave it to Beaver’-y.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Rimpy Rimpingtonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13017152542056998917noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2282043488488474080.post-86264515321569183402016-05-01T15:27:00.001-07:002016-05-01T15:27:52.868-07:00Blog to Book: An Update<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />
Hello faithful readers!<br />
<br />
I've just finished turning my blog chapters into something resembling book chapters. I then assembled them all into one long document to get an idea how long it would be if published as a book.<br />
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I had kept a running page count in my head as I went along, and the finished item is 148 pages, close to my estimate of 150. The trouble was, I had no idea how long a typical memoir should be, especially for a nobody like me who hasn't done anything interesting apart from having an insane number of jobs.<br />
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When I first started this project, I tried looking up the average length of a memoir. I ran across an article which was a list of "do's and don'ts" for writing a memoir. I started to look at it, but suddenly stopped myself and clicked away from that page as if my life depended upon it. I don't know if you're like me, but unless it's the instructions on how to put together a bookshelf or something, if I read <i>how </i>to do something before I do it, I'm less likely to actually do it. I become filled with self-doubt and the belief that I'll never be able to perform to the "expert's" advice.<br />
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I'm also glad that I didn't find out how long my memoir "should" be before I started. As it started to become apparent how long the finished product would be, I began to fret that it wasn't long enough. Of course, I still had no good idea what was typical, but I was sure mine was inadequate.<br />
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So when I had the first draft laid out before me in all its glory, <i>then </i>I compared it to what the experts say. Actually, word count is more important than page numbers, which can be affected by things like font and the actual size of the page. I'm happy to report that my first draft of approximately 84,000 words was right in the target area of 75,000 to 90,000 words cited by a couple of reputable pundits for a first time nobody. If I had known that before I started, I would have been constantly nagged by the notion that I was either going too long or too short.<br />
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That gave me the courage to go back and actually read that list of "do's and don'ts" I had run away from before I started. It gives me more than a little pride to now know that I did most of the "do's" and avoided most of the "don'ts".<br />
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I've still got a lot of work to do before I feel confident in submitting my memoir to a publisher. To that end, would any of my lovely readers care to volunteer to read the manuscript and make corrections, suggestions and edits? It would be very helpful, and you would have my eternal gratitude (and probably your name mentioned in a published book).Rimpy Rimpingtonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13017152542056998917noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2282043488488474080.post-90672409408647732432016-03-13T16:05:00.001-07:002023-01-16T10:41:54.250-08:00Chapter 30: 85th Time's the Charm<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
Chapter 30: Chapter
the Last<o:p></o:p></div>
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Job #85: Bus Driver<o:p></o:p></div>
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2010 to 2019<o:p></o:p></div>
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It has taken me awhile to get around to writing this, what
should be the final chapter in this on-going saga I call life. Part of the
delay was simply time constraints. There has been a lot going on around the
homestead the last few weeks. The real problem, though, is it just felt weird
to try and write a final chapter for a life that is still going on. I’ll admit
to a bit of superstitious thinking that writing the last chapter <i>about </i>my life might have the same effect
<i>upon</i> my life.<o:p></o:p></div>
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I’ve read a few biographies and autobiographies or memoirs
in my time. From my perspective, the biographers have the easier time of it: “So-and-so
was born at such-and-such a time, did some stuff, then died, the end”. I can’t remember how the autobiographers and
memoirists ended their tales – probably at some point in their recent past or then-present.
What if something amazing happened to them after they published their life’s
story? It reminds me of how Trivial Pursuit put out their first 1980’s Edition
just before the fall of the Berlin Wall, thus missing one of the biggest events
of the decade. Why didn’t they wait until 1990? I guess I’m going to have to go
back and re-read some of those autobiographies for some hints as how to wrap
this up. But let’s plunge ahead, shall we? After all, this whole blog is really
just a rough draft for the book I plan to write.<o:p></o:p></div>
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I’ve already written about some of the differences in bus
driving between the mid ‘80s and today in Chapter 16, so there is no need to
rehash those. I’ve certainly had some
crazy experiences in the past five years. I could go on at some length about
the many weird people I’ve encountered on the bus, but I think I’ll save those
stories for my moribund other blog, <i><a href="http://theidiotsaboard.blogspot.com/">The Idiots Aboard</a></i>. The point of this
chapter – and indeed, the whole project – isn’t really about the jobs
themselves. It’s supposed to be about <i>why
</i>I’ve had so very many jobs over a lifetime.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Before we get into that rotten stuff, however, let me catch
you up on some of the significant events which have occurred since I’ve been
working at job #85. When I first started, I saw it as an easy stop-gap position
while I continued to look for that elusive GIS job I so coveted. Unfortunately,
I was working long hours and split shifts, so time for job-searching was
limited. Also, the nature of the job itself was quite draining. Remember what I
said in Chapter 16 about people seeming to be dumber today than 30-odd years
ago? I still hold to that, and, if anything, it only seems to have gotten worse
in the half-decade I’ve been doing this job. Also, the number of mentally ill
people roaming the streets seems to have increased, at least in our
formerly-quiet part of the world, and the severity of their illnesses also
seems to have worsened.<o:p></o:p></div>
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By the end of a day of driving bat-shit crazy and bag of
hammers-dumb people around, I had no energy whatsoever left for job searching,
so that quickly fell by the wayside. Before that happened, however, I did try
to keep up on my GIS skills. I often had long breaks between my split shifts.
It was not economically feasible or practical from a safety viewpoint to try to
commute home and back again during those splits. If the weather was amenable, I
might nap in my car or in an empty bus at the yard. Otherwise, I was stuck in
College Town with nothing to do for several hours.<o:p></o:p><br />
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I approached the good folks at the City of College Town GIS
department and volunteered my services, much as I had done with Jesse in
O-Town. Just like Jesse, they were happy to have the free help. I did that for
a little while, but then my schedule changed. We have new “bids” every three or
four months, mainly because whether or not the university is in session has a
big impact on the number of riders. Mainly, there are two “student shuttle”
routes, which do not operate when the college is “out”, such as the spring, summer
and winter breaks. This being a union job, seniority is very important. The
drivers of those student shuttles (usually the same two guys year after year) are
entitled to bid for a schedule with sufficient hours during the college’s down
times, and that is why we all bid four times a year. As a new guy, I didn’t
have a lot of options about what I got to bid on, so I had to take what I could
get, and that is why my schedule changed so dramatically. I could never be sure
what I would be doing from one quarter to the next, so I had to give up on the
idea of volunteering at the city GIS department.<o:p></o:p></div>
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We also relocated from O-Town to College Town about a year
after I started driving bus. We had contemplated moving to reduce the amount of
time and money I spent on commuting, but it didn’t seem worth the effort and
expense of finding a new place and packing. Then our landlord and lady made up
our minds for us. It wasn’t an eviction, per se. I admit, we had been pushing
the limits of their patience for a while. Our current house was only three
bedrooms, and it was just supposed to be Mrs. Rimpington and I and our two
biological children living there.<o:p></o:p></div>
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However, Step-Rimpyette hadn’t had much luck in the
relationship department. She had broken up with Grandrimpy’s father, and she
and her son came to stay with us. It was just supposed to be temporary. She
slept in the living room, and we put Grandrimpy in a reluctant Rimpy Jr.’s
room, which had a bunk bed. <o:p></o:p></div>
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SR soon met another guy (whom I shall call DSB – for “Devil’s
Stinky Ballsack”) and…well…ended up pregnant by him. She had been careful about
birth control, but this unscrupulous fellow later admitted that he so badly
wanted to start a family that he had poked holes in her diaphragm with a
needle. So DSB got the kid he wanted (which wasn’t his first, by the way), but
it turned out he was no good at providing support for a family. He was just a
total loser. Unfortunately SR didn’t realize this in time to avoid marrying the
guy. All she wanted was a legitimate spouse and legal father for her second
child.<o:p></o:p></div>
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SR’s pregnancy with Grandrimpyette 1 was rough on her, and
GR1 ended up being delivered by Caesarean two months early, at the same
hospital in Sacramento where Rimpyette had been born.<o:p></o:p></div>
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SR and DSB tried to make a go of living together, but it
ultimately failed miserably. So SR and her now two children were back in our
home. Some ugly custody battles ensued between SR and GR1’s father, which SR
barely won with her sanity intact.<o:p></o:p></div>
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One month lead to another, than a few years went by. SR went
through some rough times while trying to recover from her traumatic
relationship with DSB. She met a Hmong man with a vast past. He was good to SR,
but it was obvious he was never going to be a financially viable partner. At
least we didn’t have to worry that he would impregnate the imminently pregnable
SR. He had previously been in a long-term relationship with a Hmong woman, and
much to his mother’s dismay, they never produced a child. Finally she had him
tested, and he was diagnosed as sterile. Still, after her past experiences, SR
was taking no chances, and continued to use birth control. Then, one fateful, drunken
night, she let her guard down, and a miracle happened. Apparently “sterile”
doesn’t necessarily mean “totally sperm-free”, and now a third grandchild was
on the way.<o:p></o:p></div>
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SR’s health had not been great since her second pregnancy.
You may recall that she was already having problems when she was working for me
at Osmosis. This last pregnancy really did her in. SR’s doctor decided to
deliver GR2 by Caesarean two weeks before her due date, but SR’s water broke
about a week and a half before then.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Meanwhile, our now grown biological children were having
grown-up relationships of their own, and their significant others moved in with
us. Fortunately, no progeny ensued from any of those relationships. I would
like to have “blood” grandchildren someday, but I can wait a bit longer.<o:p></o:p></div>
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So at the height, we had 10 people living in a three bedroom
house (with only one bathroom). I can’t even remember where everybody slept,
but the living room was definitely doing double-duty as a makeshift fourth
bedroom. All this might not have been so bad if our house had been on a sewer
system rather than a septic tank. The tank just wasn’t built for that many
people, and that was the straw that broke the landlord-camel’s back. They got
fed up with having to pump out the septic tank and our seeming inability to get
SR and her kids into a place of their own. It’s not that we were unwilling, it’s
just that circumstances prevented it. SR had had a bit of trouble while trying
to recover from DSB, and was not eligible for public housing. She was sick and
couldn’t work. There was no way she could afford full rent on assistance,
especially with no support coming from any of her babies’ daddies.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Finally, our landlord, Rich, who was basically a kindly
person at heart, came by while I was at work and gave Mrs. R the news that we
had 60 days to find a new place. They had rather a long conversation about our
situation, by the end of which Rich said we could have 90 days. Then Rich apparently went home and told his
wife (who was not basically a kindly person) what he had done, because he
called Mrs. R and said that it was going to have to be 60 days after all.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Okay. 60 days. After 17 years with the same landlords, we
had eight weeks to find a new place and move into it. I try not to bear them
too much ill will over that. After all, they had owned their house for
probably decades, and couldn’t have any idea what it was like for renters in
this modern world.<o:p></o:p></div>
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90 days would have been better (and kinder), but I figured
we could it in 60. We barely accomplished it, and it nearly killed us. Part of
the problem was that potential landlords had gotten a lot more finicky about
renters since we had last had to find a place. Now credit checks are much more
common, and our credit has never been great. We thought that the fact that we
had been with the same landlords for 17 years would impress potential new
landlords, but it didn’t. In fact, it seemed to have the opposite effect. It
reminded me of when Hank Hill finds out how long an underling at Strickland’s
has been renting, and asks incredulously, “Who rents a house for 20 years?”<o:p></o:p></div>
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Mrs. R finally found an apartment belonging to an agreeable
fellow. It’s in a somewhat dodgy part of town, and hard by the railroad tracks,
which wouldn’t be so bad if it weren’t also near a crossing, so the frequent
trains have to blow their horns as they pass our building. It was going to be
different, adjusting to apartment living after almost two decades of living in
stand-alone houses with yards. Actually, I was looking forward to the idea of
no longer being responsible for yard care. The backyard at our last house was
quite large, but only about a quarter of that was livable lawn. The rest was
wild grasses and weeds. When the wild part finally dried out during the summer,
it wasn’t much trouble right through the winter, but I dreaded the spring when
the new growth came in with a vengeance.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Another complicating factor in our move was that poor Mrs. R
got pneumonia and was in the hospital for several days just as were switching
homes, so I was on my own trying to wrangle all the other inhabitants into some
semblance of order. Mrs. R got released from the hospital just in time to walk
through our now empty former home to say goodbye to it. We had been there for
11 years. Our children had grown from actual children to adults there. Just
before she went into the hospital, we celebrated our 25<sup>th</sup> wedding anniversary
in the midst of all packing. It was a bittersweet time full of conflicting emotions
and stresses.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Man, we had accumulated a lot of junk in those 11 years
(plus the six years at the previous house, where we’d had almost nothing when
we moved in, after a few years of gypsy-like living). We rented a 4 cubic yard
dumpster and filled it to overflowing with discarded items. Even then, we weren’t
able to fit what was left into our new place, and had to rent a storage unit.
There has always been something reprehensible to me about our culture’s
accumulative nature, and what a huge industry self-storage has become. It kills
me to have to shell out money to someone else to protect our excess stuff, but
I can’t seem to whittle it all down to a less profligate amount.<o:p></o:p></div>
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At last we settled into our new apartment, and now we’ve
been here almost four years. Rimpy Jr. broke up with his significant other
here, and that was rough. He has since relocated to Portland, Oregon, where we
plan on moving in a couple of years. Grandrimpy got old enough to get his own
significant other, who moved in with us, so there are now nine people under
this roof, only one less than the previous domicile, but at least we are spread
out over four rooms instead of three (and two bathrooms), so the living room only
sometimes functions as a guest bedroom.<o:p></o:p></div>
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That catches us up on current events. So what have I learned
from all this living and working and writing about it? In the introduction to
this project, I told the story of an addle-pated woman who had a hard time
remembering how to pay her fare on the bus as she commuted to beautician school,
and my impatience with her and her slowness. I don’t know what became of that
lady. I like to think that she graduated from beauty college and went on to a
better life, but I’ll probably never know.<o:p></o:p></div>
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When I wrote that introduction nearly a year ago, I wondered
why I was such an impatient butt, and who I was I to talk, anyway - a guy who
got hired for 85 different jobs over the course of 35 years? Were the two
things somehow related? I think they are.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
My parents were both critical in their own ways, but my
father was by far the worse. He managed to make me feel like I’d be worthless
if I didn’t match his idea of how a man should conduct himself in this life. He
did some things right in his life. He was a responsible worker and a homeowner
and paid his bills. There is nothing wrong with that. But nobody liked him. He’s
been gone a long time now, and all anyone remembers about him is how he made
them feel about themselves - which was never “good”. The world he’s no longer a
part of doesn’t care about his good credit or what he owned.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
For my part, I took a convoluted path in dealing with how he
made me feel. Like many children, instead of saying, “I’m never going to make
MY children feel bad about themselves”, I repeated the behaviors I’d seen
modeled. I’ve had to work hard to change that behavior in my personal
relationships, but I’m still prone to dickishness when dealing with co-workers
and passengers. After my disastrous turn as a foreman with Osmosis (you know,
when I fired my own step-daughter?), I have had no interest in any kind of
supervisorial position. Being a bus driver is no picnic, but I don’t think I
could handle even the little bit of power that would come with a higher
position - like dispatcher, trainer or safety supervisor.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
In general, I rebelled against my hyper-critical father’s
ideas of what makes a successful man by being about as irresponsible when it
came to work and personal finance as I could get. Paradoxically, however, when
I did work, I usually tried to do the best job I could at whatever it was. That
may have been a combination of nature and nurture (if you can call my father’s
approach to parenting “nurturing”). I think I have a naturally strong work
ethic, plus I had seen it modeled by both my parents. I just wish it hadn’t
taken me so long to come to grips with my feelings about my father and buckle
down to being a grown-up. Ah well. Better late than never, I suppose.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It hasn’t been easy accepting my current position in life. I
can’t escape the nagging feeling that I could have done better than being a bus
driver this late in life. Sometimes I have despaired when I felt like this is
all I have to look forward to until I retire. But I’ve managed to hang in
there. Sometimes I can’t believe it’s been five years. When I hit that anniversary,
my wages suddenly jumped from less than I was making at my previous job at
Intersection to more. Finally I’m making a decent living, but it’s sort of a
double-edged sword. Even if I found a job that was more amenable in working
conditions, it probably wouldn’t pay as much as I’m making now. This is the
risk I’m taking with our planned relocation to Portland. If I get the job I
want up there, it will pay less than I’m currently making, at least for a
little while, so that could be rough. I’ve gotten gun-shy about making risky
moves with employment, but nothing ventured, nothing gained, right?<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
So now I’m a stable worker, but I still struggle with being
critical of others. I try to remember that poor beauty college student and her
struggles with tickets. We all have struggles. It’s how we deal with ours and
how it affects our interactions with others that defines us, and I’m trying to
make a better definition for myself.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The end.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
P.S.: It’s mostly been fun writing this, but it has been
hard, too. Now comes the really hard work of going back over this and trying to
work it into a book someone would want to read (and pay for the privilege of
doing so). Wish me luck.<o:p></o:p></div>
Rimpy Rimpingtonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13017152542056998917noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2282043488488474080.post-50322757828682238542016-02-14T14:32:00.002-08:002016-03-13T11:20:31.554-07:00Chapter 29: Breaking Up Is Hard To Do<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
Chapter 29: Breaking
Up Is Hard To Do</div>
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Jobs 83-84</div>
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2010</div>
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Job #83: Intern, Geographical Information Center</div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
When I started the Geospatial Workforce Training Program
(GWTP), I was nervous that I would again experience the sort of difficulties
with the computer software which had plagued me during my time in college. To
my delight, I thrived in it. I knew I just needed a second chance in order to
master it. The only part that gave me trouble was our final project, in which we
needed to show that we knew how to use the software in order to solve
real-world problems. The project was approximately equivalent to a senior
thesis for a bachelor’s degree, but geared toward vocational students who
perhaps hadn’t had any previous college education. The idea was that we were to
partner with a local business or organization which could use some GIS-based solutions
to specific issues (even if they weren’t aware they had a problem).</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I’ve always hit a wall when it comes to projects of this
sort. I don’t mind doing research, and I’m okay at writing papers, but when it
comes to thinking up some new and original idea to try to convince someone that
I actually know what I’m doing, I blank out. The other students in the GWTP
were coming up with some really interesting-sounding and practical ideas for
projects, but I was floundering about, trying to think of something, anything.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
My instructor, Chris, suggested a possible project. The GWTP
shared a building with an electrical lineman college, and they needed some help
with something. The facility was located next to the O-Town airport, and so
they had to report the height of their practice poles to the Federal Aviation
Administration. The FAA has a handy webpage which allows users to enter data
about the structures they’re reporting, then the FAA’s software generates a map
showing the location of the structure in relation to the airport. The problem
the lineman college was having was that their FAA-generated maps were showing
their poles as being almost a mile from the airport, rather than a few yards.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The answer to their problem was actually quite simple. It’s
been long enough ago that I can’t remember the exact details, and they would
probably bore you anyway. Basically, there are various methods in which to
record one’s position on the earth’s surface, such as Digital Degrees and
Degrees Minutes Seconds. The FAA’s web page only allowed the data to be
submitted in one of the methods, but the GPS (Global Positioning System) device
the lineman college was using was set to a different method.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The campus director for the lineman college was actually a former
classmate of mine from my college geography courses, named Jennifer. Her job at
the lineman college didn’t really have anything to do with geography, and it
was really just a funny coincidence that it was her responsibility as director
to submit the GPS data to the FAA. She didn’t know about the difference in the
versions of the GPS data, and the FAA’s website was not particularly
informative that the data could only be in the one format. When my former
classmate entered her numbers, the FAA’s webpage was truncating the last few
characters, resulting in the grossly inaccurate maps it was generating. It was
an easy matter to set the lineman college’s GPS unit to the FAA’s required
method, and the data that was already recorded was automatically converted.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Jennifer was pleased to have that issue resolved, but that
didn’t constitute enough of a “real world” solution for my final project. I
decided to provide them with a GIS map of all their poles, with the heights of
each one recorded along with their GPS coordinates. Of course, they already
knew where their poles were, and how tall they were. But every time they
replaced a pole, even if it was in the same place and the same height as its
predecessor, they had to submit a new report to the FAA. I figured my map would
facilitate this process.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I painstakingly gathered the GPS coordinates for each pole.
I often had to work around the student linemen as they were practicing their
new trade. Working near all those utility poles and the rough men who serviced
them sometimes gave me flashbacks to the bad old Osmosis days, but it pleased
me to reflect upon how two past experiences – one good but under-utilized
(geography major) and one bad (utility pole inspector) – were coming together at
that particular point in time. I felt like I was on the right path to something
better.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Unfortunately, a map of some utility poles – while useful to
my “client” – still did not satisfy the criteria of the project, which had to
involve some actual analysis. I had already spent the majority of my time
creating the map, and had to scramble to come up with some way to use the data
in a meaningful manner. With Chris’s help I was able to come up with a
hypothetical utility company and demonstrate how GIS could be used to calculate
maintenance costs based upon the location of different parcels of land.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
My project passed the requirements to graduate from the
GWTP, but I was not very proud of it. All the other students had come up with actual
problem-solving projects for actual businesses and groups. I felt like mine was
weak by comparison. Even at that, it did attract the attention of a real
business owner with a real problem that needed fixing, which actually lead to a
real job…sort of.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
We presented our final projects to our clients and pretty
much anyone else who was interested. Among the attendees was the owner of the
businesses which rented a space in the converted factory where the GWTP was
held. This nice lady, whom I shall call Susan, in partnership with her father
and brother, was trying to develop a radical new form of clean energy
production called flying electric generators (FEGs). They are sort of like
little helicopters which are tethered to the ground. They fly to a certain
height under battery power. Then high-altitude winds keep them aloft while at
the same time generating power by turning their turbines. The electricity is
then transmitted to the ground via a cable attached to the tether.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Of course, these high-flying, stationery wind turbines and
their tethers present a hazard to aircraft, so they can’t be flown just
anywhere. Susan had settled upon Minnesota as the being the best place in the
United States for a steady source of high-altitude winds. Now she needed to
know just where all the airports were in Minnesota, and other airspace restrictions.
She was interested to note that my project had made me familiar with the FAA.
There was another student by the name of Dave. I forget what his project was
about, but it also attracted Susan’s attention as being relevant to her needs.
It probably also didn’t hurt that Dave was from Minnesota.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Susan approached our instructor Chris about the possibility
of recruiting my and Dave’s help with her project. Part of the GWTP included a
paid internship at College Town University’s Geographical Information Center.
The GIC was an off-shoot of the university, but it sold its services to clients
in the real world. Our internship was carefully crafted to provide us with
actual paid work experience while not violating our unemployment insurance
benefits. We had to submit the hours worked each week to the California
Employment Development Department, who then adjusted our benefits accordingly. </div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Generally, the internships ended when students graduated
from the GWTP. Special dispensation was made for Dave and me so that we could
work with Susan. Susan became a client of the GIC, and my and Dave’s
internships were extended so that we could work for our client. We divided up
the work. I gathered data and put it into a usable GIS format. Dave was
responsible for creating the actual maps. This arrangement suited me just fine.
I love finding and collecting data, but my cartographic skills have never been
particularly strong. Dave was less keen on data, but he had a real talent for
creating attractive looking maps.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In a short amount of time I had to become something of an
expert on our nation’s airspace, which is rather complicated. I also had to
find data on every airport in Minnesota, and I mean EVERY airport, no matter
how small. I actually found one small airport which, when displayed in our GIS,
didn’t match the description of its coordinates. In fact, this Minnesota
airport was displaying as being in a completely different state when plugged
into our GIS software. I discovered that its coordinates had been erroneously
entered, much like Jennifer’s poles. I informed the good people responsible for
such things back in Minnesota of the discrepancy, and they were very grateful.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I also found two more anomalous airports which at first I thought were
mistakes. The first one appeared to be in the middle of a lake, but it turned
out to be a sea plane base. The runway of another one appeared to cross the border
with Canada, which didn’t seem right. Upon investigation, this tiny airport
really does span both countries. You start your take-off or landing in one
nation, and end it in the other one. I don’t know how this came about, but it’s
the only one of its kind.</div>
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<br /></div>
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All in all, Susan was very pleased with our results. She
wrote me a very nice letter of recommendation, which I still have. So now I had
a brand-new certificate in GIS to update the one I had received from College
Town University and a new-found confidence in my ability to parley my training
into a lucrative career, which is something I had not gleaned from my earlier
education. We were in a fortunate position at the time wherein we would have
been able to relocate if needed, so I began to apply every place I could think
of.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Some organizations often offered different positions for
which I was felt I was qualified. It started to become difficult to remember
just which ones I had already applied for, so in order to avoid repeating
myself, I started keeping a very thorough log of the exact details of each
position I applied to with the date and other relevant information. Chris had
said that on average a person had to apply one hundred times before finally
landing a job. By the time I reached about 80 applications in my log book, I
figured I must be getting close. Out of those 80, I only got three interviews
(all by phone because of distance), but they did not result in an offer of
employment. I used to think that I was pretty good at getting jobs. After all,
I’d had over 80 of them by that point. Of course, there had been more jobs that
I tried to get, but hadn’t, and apparently I’m not so good at getting a very
specific job. It seems rather ironic
that the guy who’d had over 80 jobs couldn’t get one job out of over 80 applied
for.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Under Obama’s various programs to stimulate the economy, I
kept getting extensions on my unemployment insurance benefits, but that was
about to end, and I was getting desperate to find a job. This desperation led
me to make a very tragic mistake. One of the few jobs which I came close to
landing was with Davey Tree, which has a GIS division which gathers data on former
trees, A.K.A: utility poles. I was very careful that the job wouldn’t be like
Osmosis, and by all appearances it only involved tramping about the quiet
countryside with a GPS device. I ended speaking by phone with a (seemingly)
nice man who was fairly high up in the management structure of Davey. He
advised me that all their data collection positions were on the east coast, and
the pay wasn’t high enough to justify me relocating. Despite our previously mentioned
fortunate situation, I had to admit the wisdom of his advice. He said he was
willing to help me, and he knew someone in my area who might be interested.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Job #84: Utility Pole Inspection and Treatment (again!)</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
That someone was a woman (whom we shall call Molly) who had
been a manager at Davey, and had started her own pole inspection and treatment
business. Davey also inspects and treats utility poles, and Molly sub-contracted
with her former employers to provide this service for utility companies.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This woman, whom we shall call Molly, upon the suggestion of
the (seemingly) nice man from Davey, had one of her foremen contact me. When he
told me the nature of the job, I was very apprehensive after my traumatic
experience with Osmosis. I asked a lot of questions to make sure this would be
different. Molly’s company wasn’t big enough to have recruiters, so I felt
confident that I wasn’t being lied to. I eventually agreed to sign on with this
small company. I knew the work would be hard, but I wasn’t afraid of hard work.
I just didn’t want to kill myself while constantly being told I wasn’t meeting
some unrealistic production quota. I was also giving in to my old habit of
trying to correct a mistake from the past. I thought if I could do well at
Osmosis-type work in a non-Osmosis-type environment, I would redeem myself for
the mistakes I had made at Osmosis.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Well, it turns out I had been lied to. Molly’s was just like
Osmosis. If anything, Molly’s was worse because they were less well-funded than
Osmosis. I reported for my first day of foreman training in Orland. I had been
told that if I was working out of town, my accommodations would be paid for. This
was in September, and it was still brutally hot in the Sacramento Valley. After
that first 10-hour day, I showed up at the local motel where the rest of the
crews were staying. When I gave my name at the front desk, I was told there was
no reservation for me. I called the foreman (whose name I can’t recall, but he
was such a carbon copy of Osmosis’s Rick that I shall call him Rick 2) to find out
what was up. Rick 2 informed me that in actuality they only paid for a room if
the work was more than an hour from my hometown, and Orland was “only” 45
minutes away. The other crew members were from further away than me, so they
got a room. This was bullshit. Now I was faced with a 90 minute round-trip
commute in addition to 10 hour days. I should have quit right then, but I had
already made an investment in boots and other gear, and I needed work badly, so
I grimly determined to stick it out in the hopes that things would be better
when I became a foreman again and got my own truck and crew.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I had one near-death experience with Molly’s which topped
anything Osmosis had thrown at me. I was drilling into a ridiculously small-diameter
pole which supported the cable and fuse-box going to a massive pump on a farm.
At Osmosis we had never drilled into poles that small, and also never on
privately-owned poles like this one. I had accidentally drilled all the way
through larger poles with Osmosis, and now I was a few years’ out of practice,
and working on a much smaller pole than previously encountered. I went right
through that sucker in no time flat. Oh, well, I figured – it happens
sometimes. Then the foreman I was training with pointed at something on the
back side of the pole. The 400 volt cable ran down the back of the pole, and my
drill bit had come within less than an 8<sup>th</sup> of an inch of nicking the
insulation of the cable. If I had nicked it, the rubber soles of my boots probably
wouldn’t have been thick enough to prevent all 400 volts from going to ground
right through me. At least I probably would have been dead before the gas in
the drill’s tank could have exploded.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Also the intervening years as a vendor and a GIS intern had done nothing to
prepare my body for jumping back into the rigors of pole inspection and
treatment. Every joint and muscle in my body was screaming. And apparently I
had not invested enough in those boots, for they soon started to wear away at the
backs of my heels. I tried applying moleskin and an extra layer of socks, but
it kept getting worse. One day I couldn’t walk anymore because the pain was so
intense. I had go sit in the truck with
my boots and socks off until the crew could take a break and drive me to my
Blazer (which was parked at the motel I couldn’t use). When the other guys on
the crew saw the hideous half-dollar sized holes on the backs of my heels, they
knew I wasn’t just being a wimp. They couldn’t believe I had lasted as long as
I did. I then drove home barefooted while trying to keep my raw wounds off the
dirt on the floor of the Blazer.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
So I had some time off. I had to apply for Worker’s
Compensation and Disability. The thing with Worker’s Compensation is that it is
paid for by your employer’s insurance company, so trying to get money out of
them is no easy task. The investigators I spoke to on the phone were incredibly
sympathetic when they saw the photos of my heels, but that didn’t stop them
from ruling that Molly’s was not responsible for my injuries. I wasn’t
surprised. Disability insurance, on the other hand, is a state- run program
paid for by you, the employee. They are usually much more relaxed about paying
you if you are injured and can’t work, even if it’s your fault. So at least I got some disability payments for
the few weeks that it took my heels to…heal.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I put my time off to good use. I kept searching for GIS jobs
to apply for. I approached Jesse, the head of the GIS department of O-Town city
government, and volunteered my time just so I could keep up on my skills and to
gain more work experience that I could put on a resume. Actually the GIS
department at O-Town city hall was so small that Jesse was not only the head,
he was pretty much the entire department. I met him when he came to the GWTP
along with some other local GIS employers to tell us about employment
opportunities in the area. He was a fairly recent graduate of the geography College
Town University, and he had lucked into this real government GIS job because he
had gone to school with the person who was leaving the position.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Anyone loves free help, so Jesse took me on. I feel like I
did some good work for him during the short time I was there, and I increased
my understanding of GIS in the process. Unfortunately, my feet had healed sufficiently
to allow me to return to Molly’s. I desperately needed to extricate myself from
that awful situation. I had even sent an email to the (seemingly) nice man at
Davey, explaining my unfortunate injury at Molly’s, but reiterating my interest
in data collection, despite the distance of the jobs from my home. I told him
that as long as I was careful and had good boots, I felt I could handle a bunch
of hiking. I followed up a couple of days later with a phone call. The
(seemingly) nice man must have talked to Molly, because he suddenly wasn’t so
nice anymore. In as many words, he said he wasn’t interested and hung up with a
bang.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
When it came time for me to make my reluctant return to
Molly’s, I bought a different pair of boots – ones which seemed like they
wouldn’t hurt my heels. When I tried them on, my wounds were still too recent,
and the pain was too much. I had to call Molly’s and beg for more time off. I
was hoping they would fire me, because I was no longer technically on
disability, but employers are reluctant to fire an injured employee under any
circumstances for fear of lawsuits.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I was once again in the awful situation of needing to get
out of a job, but unable to quit with nothing to fall back on. When I could no
longer claim that my feet were preventing me from working, I pretended to have
car trouble. I ended up talking to Molly herself for the first time. She asked
why I couldn’t take Greyhound to work, which was now located in Redding, more
than an hour’s drive from O-Town, so at least my accommodations would be paid
for. I tried to be as difficult as possible without actually being defiant in
the hopes that she would decide I was too much trouble and fire me, but to no
avail. Eventually I had to say I’d figure something out about my car (which was
fine except for an unfortunately quart-a-day oil habit), and a couple of days
later I drove myself to Redding the night as if
driving to my own execution. I stayed in the motel, but I didn't sleep well because I had tremendous anxiety about what lay ahead of me.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Those first few days back were awful. The crew I had been
working with in Orland were there, and they were genuinely concerned about the
welfare of my feet. I was going to be working with a different crew, however for which
I was glad. I was definitely not planning on being a good employee, and I didn’t
want to subject them to that, because they had been decent to me. I had worked
with the other foreman a couple of times in Orland, and he had been nice then,
but by now I had gained a (well-earned) reputation as a difficult trainee. He
was none too pleased to be stuck with me, so that made for a pleasant couple of
days.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
My new boots protected my feet just fine, but the rest of me
was a wreck, emotionally and physically. October in the North Valley is usually
still hot, and Redding is notorious for being one of the absolutely hottest
places in California. And the soil there is nothing but hard-packed red clay
and rocks. One day I had to make a full excavation around a large-circumference pole. The dirt was so hard it was like
hacking through concrete. The foreman I was working with kept coming around to
check on my progress and couldn’t believe how little of it there was. I didn’t
care – I was trying to get fired, after all. In reality, I don’t think I could
have done much better if I had cared to. That Redding soil is ridiculous.</div>
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An eight-hour day under such conditions would be bad enough,
but 10 hours is like a never-ending trip through hell. After 9 hours I couldn’t
take any more. I went to the poor foreman who was saddled with me and said I
had to go back to the motel because I was sick. He didn’t want to take the time
to drive me, so hecalled me a cab, which took a big chunk out of my expenses budget
for the week, because we were working some distance from beautiful downtown
Redding. I got back to the motel and took a shower. IRick 2 called me and said I
was suspended for three days for leaving work early. I thought, “Okay. Now we’re
getting somewhere. It’s not fired, but it’s a start".</div>
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<br /></div>
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I began packing up my stuff for the drive back to O-Town. I took my time because it was past check-out time on the room. I was even wondering if I could sleep there and leave in the morning. That question was soon answered when Rick 2 called me back and said that I’d better not be thinking about
trying to sleep at the motel because they weren’t going to pay for it if I was
suspended. I didn't bother to remind him that the room was already paid for.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
So I got another nice little reprieve from that awful job,
albeit unpaid. Sadly, the three days came to an end and once again I was forced
with having to go back to Redding - and on my 51<sup>st</sup> birthday, too – but I had hatched a new plan. I didn’t tell
Mrs. Rimpington my plan, because she was convinced that nothing I could do would
get me fired free and clear, and she wouldn’t have approved of this plan, but I
was confident it would work.</div>
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I would have preferred to drive up the night before work and
stayed in the motel so I could be fresh for work the next morning. Molly’s,
however, was not going to pay for a room for me on the last night of my
three-day suspension, so I had no choice but to get up extra early (much too
early for our family tradition of birthday breakfast in bed) and drive for 90
minutes to report for my 10-hour day. If my plan didn’t work, I’d be in for one
fuck of a miserable day. </div>
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I left an hour earlier than I needed to, which was actually all part of my
plot. About 10 miles north of College Town, I pulled over and took a nap. I
figured I could explain later that I had left so early because I wasn’t sure
how long the drive would take, but when I realized I was ahead of schedule, I
decided to take a nap. You know, out of concern for safety and being a
productive employee.</div>
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I actually did sleep a
bit, but instead of setting the alarm on my cell phone to allow me enough time
to finish my drive in time for work, I set it so that I would be late. When I
awoke, I made a “panicked” call to Rick 2 explaining that I had over-slept – I dunno,
I guess my alarm didn’t work, or I hadn’t heard it. I told him I was on my way
and gave him an estimated time of arrival. He told me to forget it, I was done.
I wanted to make absolutely certain I understood him, so I asked him to
clarify. He said I was fired –terminated -discharged. Such magical words to my
ears! But I had to play along. I said, “Are you sure?” I didn’t want to protest
or beg too much in case I accidentally stimulated some long-dead sympathy nerve
in him and he changed his mind. He confirmed that they had given me all the chances
they could and “sayonara”. I muttered, “Oh,
okay” and hung up and then did a happy jig alongside the Golden State Highway.</div>
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I drove back to O-Town with a lighter heart. When I walked
into the house, Mrs. R couldn’t believe it when I said I had actually gotten
fired. I then explained my brilliant scheme, and she had to admit the sagacity of it. I then sat
on the bed and asked Grandrimpy to bring me two slices of left-over pizza on a
plate. Those in attendance sang “Happy Birthday” and I had my breakfast in bed,
after all. It was one of the best birthdays ever.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
So, okay, I committed fraud. I admit. But it wasn’t for
long. Barely two months later I got hired at Job #85 (bus driver). I didn’t
even put Molly’s down as a previous employer on my application. I knew I wouldn’t
get a good reference, and my total time with them hadn’t been long enough to
constitute a significant gap in employment.</div>
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<br /></div>
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I’ve been at my bus job for over five years now. However, I don’t plan on being with them until
I retire. Plans are underway for a major relocation and a similar job for a
different employer, but that won’t be for a couple more years. I will be very
careful to never get myself into a situation where I need to get fired from a
job, for any reason. I’m too now old for such shenanigans.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In the next (and hopefully final) chapter I’ll talk about my
current job, and we’ll see if I’ve learned anything. I think I have. Ta!</div>
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The end.</div>
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<br /></div>
Rimpy Rimpingtonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13017152542056998917noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2282043488488474080.post-24115164848626225462016-02-07T19:17:00.002-08:002023-01-16T08:52:58.929-08:00Chapter 28: Best Job Ever<div class="MsoNormal">
This chapter is dedicated to Tim “Casher O’Neill” Pouncey, one
of the best friends and without a doubt the best writer anyone could hope to
meet, in “real” life or on-line.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
Chapter 28: Best Job
Ever<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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2006 -2009<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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Job #82: Vendor<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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I seem to operate opposite of the old wisdom “if you don’t
have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.” I’m finding it difficult
to think of anything to say about this employer (whom we shall call
“Intersection”), because I have nothing negative to say about them. This was – hands-down
– my favorite job (so far). I’d probably
still be working there if fate – in the form of economic forces and consequent
corporate decisions – hadn’t intervened.<o:p></o:p></div>
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As mentioned in the previous chapter, Intersection provided
what’s known as in-store services to a popular chain of home improvement
stores, whom we shall henceforth call Home Improvo. “In-store service provider”
is a bit of a mouthful (that’s what she said), so we answered to various
titles, usually “merchandiser” or – most often – “vendor”, although vendors
usually represent a particular manufacturer. Intersection didn’t do that,
instead providing general merchandising services for all the products in the
electrical department at Home Improvo.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The job was so simple that I almost felt guilty for making
15 dollars an hour doing it. It really required no special skills or even any
knowledge of electricity or electrical products. The going rate for new hires
was nine dollars an hour, and 14 for more senior employees, but it tended to
vary on a case by case basis. Pete talked his regional manager, Nan, into
offering me 15 an hour because he knew I was a good worker and had
supervisorial experience, and that they had to make it lucrative enough to lure
me away from my higher wage at Osmosis. Actually, I was so grateful for any
reason to flee Osmosis that I would have done it for peanuts. Later
Intersection officially set the top wage at 14 an hour, but they continued to
honor my wage, so I was actually making more than other people who had been
there longer than me. I kept that a secret from my co-workers to avoid
engendering resentment.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It wasn’t a hard secret to keep, because I rarely saw any of
my co-workers. We usually worked alone, which suited me fine. If there was a
big project, such as a “reset” of several “bays” (the shelves between the
upright supports) of a major group of products, some other vendors would come
in to help. I never traveled, because I still had transportation limitations,
in the form one crappy automobile which I couldn’t deprive my family of. I
spent two days a week in the O-Town store, and three days a week in the College
Town store. On O-Town days, Mrs. R or Step-Rimpyette would drop me off and pick
me up, and on College Town days I would take the bus.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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The co-worker I saw the most often was my supervisor, Pete,
at first. He would stop by about once a week to see how I was doing, and to
give me any supplies I might need to do my job. Pete soon left for a different
job, and he was briefly replaced by another young man whose name I can’t
recall. When he departed, another former co-worker was my supervisor for a
time, and then my former peer Lisa took over the position, and she remained in
that post until shortly before I left Intersection.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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My life soon settled into a rhythm of contentedly working <i>at</i> Home Improvo, without actually
working <i>for </i>Home Improvo, if you take
my meaning. Of course, my company worked <i>for
</i>Home Improvo, so I guess the case could be made that I did, in fact, work <i>for </i>HI, although we once worked in an
Orchard Supply Hardware Store. For all intents and purposes, HI was basically
Intersection’s only client. It didn’t seem particularly wise to me to put all
their eggs in one basket like that. What if HI changed their minds? We’ll find
out.<o:p></o:p></div>
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It seems like it was almost no time at all before I had
passed that mythical two year mark which always seemed to be the death knell
for any job I had. I did indeed start to experience that familiar sense of ennui
after having done one job for too long. But rather than doing something stupid
like quitting, I just kept plugging away, and eventually the feeling passed,
and before I knew it I had breezed past the three year mark, which left my
previous longevity record at Lear Memorial Chapel in the dust. All told, I was
with Intersection for about three years and two months.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Despite the generally non-strenuous nature of the work, I
managed to injure myself rather grievously a couple of times on that job. One
time, I was resetting a bay, which involved removing the shelf beams from their
slots in the upright supports. This usually involved smacking upward on the
underside of one end of the steel beams with a small sledge hammer until it
popped loose, then repeating the process on the other end. It was usually
tricky trying to find a balance between hitting the beam hard enough to
dislodge it, and not hitting so hard that you sent it crashing to the floor.
Sometimes the end you had loosened first would work itself firmly back into its
slot while you were smacking away at the other end, so you’d have to wang away
at that end a second time. If you were doing this while standing on the floor,
you could support the middle of the beam with one hand while flailing away with
the hammer on the end. I could have
recruited the help of one of the store associates, but I tried to avoid having
to bother them while they were trying to do their jobs.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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One this particular day I had to move the top shelf of the
bay, so I procured one of the huge rolling metal stair cases you’ve probably
seen in warehouse stores. I got one end of the beam just loose enough to support
itself, and then I moved the stair to the other end. From this precarious
perch, I couldn’t support the middle of the beam. When the second end came
loose, the beam flew out of the bay and went crashing down the stair case to
the tile floor below. The noise was incredible. As it fell, the end of the beam
struck me on the right shin. While the echoes of my catastrophe were still
ringing throughout the store, I pulled up my pants leg to see an L-shaped wound
in my leg. A split second later blood came welling out of that new hole. So…much…blood.
I think that was the most I have ever bled at any one time. A store associate
called out from a neighboring aisle, “Are you alright?” I quietly said, “No”,
then sat down on the floor and applied pressure through my pants. The associate
ran and got some gauze pads and bandages and did a good job of patching me up.
I sat down in the break room with an ice pack on my elevated leg and called
Lisa to tell her what happened.<o:p></o:p></div>
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I ended up finishing my shift that day with a goose
egg-sized lump and a bloody bandage on my leg. My pants were black, so the
blood didn’t show, so I wasn’t frightening the customers. I really should have
gone ahead and gone to the hospital to be checked out, but I didn’t want to be
any more trouble after my stupidity with the beam. When I got home, I showed
Rimpy Jr. my pants leg and said, “You see this dark stain here?” He said he
did, and I said, “I’m sorry, son, but that’s blood”, then I showed him my gory bandage
and formerly white sock. He said, “That’s terrible, but why are you sorry?” to
which I replied, “These are your pants.” I had unintentionally grabbed his pants out of the dryer.<o:p></o:p></div>
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I think Intersection told me to take a couple of days off,
which I gladly did. The next day, my lower leg was turning some interesting
colors, which concerned me, so went to the hospital after all. I’m a bit of an
idiot when it comes to work-place injuries, and the whole miasma of rules and
regulations surrounding Disability Insurance and Worker’s Compensation. When I
innocently told the doctor I had hurt my leg at work, he had to call my
employer. Lisa had to bring me yet another form to fill out. I had already
filled one out the day before so that Home Improvo could be exonerated from any
blame. She was a little peeved that I hadn’t informed Intersection before I
went to the doctor, but I didn’t know I was supposed to. My leg was okay, but
it took a while to heal. I still have an ugly mark from that beam. After that I
got smarter about how I moved beams. I got a couple of bungy cords and used
them to support the beams at both ends while I smacked them loose. I wish I had
thought of that earlier, rather than inviting injury, embarrassment and
inconvenience.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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My other on-the-job injuries were less dramatic, being of
the repetitive-stress kind. One of my duties was the care of the “light cloud”,
that section of the store with working models of ceiling fans and wall and
ceiling lights. The hardest part of that job was hefting heavy chandeliers and
other hanging lights up a ladder and into place in the overhead rails.<o:p></o:p></div>
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One day I began to notice discomfort in my shoulders while
doing this. I figured it was just muscle soreness and took ibuprofen. When that
didn’t help, and the pain worsened, I decided it was time to seek help. I had
learned my lesson from the incident with the beam, so I called Lisa to inform
her of the problem.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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Intersection sent me to a doctor, where I was x-rayed and
diagnosed with bursitis in my rotator cuff. All that extending my arms over my
head to install heavy fixtures had taken its toll. I had never been at a job
long enough to acquire a slow-to-develop injury like that. Intersection’s insurance
offered to pay for some physical therapy, but I couldn’t get to it with my schedule,
so I let it go. I just made sure to be extra careful when hanging fixtures, but
the pain didn’t completely go away until long after I left Intersection. To
this day I still have twinges of pain when I reach over my head.<o:p></o:p></div>
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This was in the late summer or early fall. About this time a
lot of things were happening at once regarding my future. Because of the great
economic downturn which occurred in 2008, Home Improvo decided that they could
save money by forming their own teams of associates to handle the merchandising
services which they had been paying contractors like Intersection to provide.
Now that “all the eggs in one basket” business model I mentioned earlier was
biting my employers in the butt. They were scrambling to find ways to survive
the loss of their biggest and practically only client. Finally it was announced
that almost all of us would be laid off at the end of September<o:p></o:p></div>
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I applied to be one of Home Improvo’s in-store services team
members. They had seen my work for over three years, and I was well-liked by
the staff of the stores I worked in, so I had no trouble being offered the position.
Before I could accept, though, a much more attractive opportunity presented
itself.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Among president Obama’s many programs to stimulate the
economy was a series of courses to train displaced workers for new careers. In
my area, a geography professor at College Town University had put together
something with the weighty title of “Geospatial Workforce Training Program”.
Essentially this course would train people with no prior experience in
Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to find work in that field. It was just a
stroke of luck that I found out about the program, and just in time to apply
and be approved. The best part of the program was that participants could
collect Unemployment Insurance payments. Normally UI won’t allow you to receive
benefits if you’re in school.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The fact that I had prior training in GIS was not a bar to
qualification. One problem was I needed to actually be a displaced worker. It
was true that I had been downsized from Intersection, but I had an offer from
HI. If I accepted the new job, I couldn’t take the course. So I had a choice: work
for HI at about my same pay, or subsist on unemployment for a year or so while
getting re-trained for a more lucrative career. I chose the latter. I thanked
HI for the offer, but politely declined.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Another problem was that the geospatial program was going to
start before my last day at Intersection. I couldn’t leave Intersection early
without disqualifying myself from the program. Fate intervened once again on my
behalf, albeit in a rather painful manner.<o:p></o:p></div>
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My final on-the-job injury couldn’t have had better timing.
Vendors spend a lot of time on their knees, in order to service the lowest
shelves. After a bit, my knees were getting a bit sore from this, so I started
wearing knee pads, which helped. Toward the end of time at Intersection, and
despite the use of the pads, a large lump appeared below the cap of one of my
knees, accompanied by discomfort. I dutifully informed my employers, who once
again sent me to a doctor. It was my old nemesis bursitis. I had to take a couple
of weeks off from work, which meant I missed my last official day there, but I
was still a displaced worker, so I was able to start the geospatial course on
time.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The other interesting thing that happened near the end of my
time at Intersection was that my supervisor Lisa suddenly departed shortly
after the announcement of the lay-offs. Intersection needed somebody to fill
her position, but apparently there were no qualified people in-house, and they
didn’t want to hire someone for a job that was only going to last a few more
weeks. I called our regional supervisor, Nan, and offered myself for the job.
She said she was very glad to hear me say that and the job was mine if I wanted
it, which pleased me greatly (although I wondered why she hadn’t asked me) Actually,
I hadn’t properly thought through the realities of the position. I was still transportationally-impaired
with the one oil-hemorrhaging Chevy Blazer we owned. I couldn’t go ver well go gallivanting
all around the region, checking up on vendors and visiting the company
headquarters in the Bay Area (which I never once saw the whole time I worked
there). I think I knew these things in the back of my mind when I called Nan,
but I really wanted to see whether she would accept me or not. It was an ego
thing. So I had to embarrass myself a little by calling her back the next day
and admitting that I had made the offer in haste. If I’d had a dependable
second car, I probably would have tried my hand at being a supervisor. I hadn’t
enjoyed being a foreman at Osmosis, but I think I could have made a go of it at
Intersection.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Intersection almost went under after they lost Home Improvo.
They went through some serious restructuring and even changed their name. A
year or so after I left I visited their website, just to see how they were
doing. The employee portal, where we kept track of our current and up-coming
projects, had not been updated since that fateful September of 2009 when we
were all laid off. It was a little eerie – like a cyber ghost town.<o:p></o:p></div>
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I just checked again to see if I could safely use their real
name in this chapter. They’re again using the original name and talking about
their glorious history with Home Improvo. I'm glad to see they survived all the economic turmoil.<o:p></o:p></div>
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I was in College Town’s Home Improvo store with the family
just before Christmas when we were shopping for a tree. I paid a nostalgic
visit to the electrical department. In the bay with demo models of work lamps,
I saw that my handwritten “TRY ME” in Sharpie was still visible on the switch
box. It made me wish I was still working there, but I’ve been driving the bus
for so long that I’m finally making more than did with Intersection. And oddly
enough, I don’t hate bus driving so much that I’d be willing to take a cut in
pay to get out of it. Funny how life goes, isn’t it?<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But getting back to the narrative, I had left job number 82 –
the best job ever – and was about to embark upon a new journey with the
Geospatial Workforce Training Program, but we’ll save that for the next
chapter.<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
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The end.<o:p></o:p></div>
Rimpy Rimpingtonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13017152542056998917noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2282043488488474080.post-4315910221616941632016-01-17T19:30:00.005-08:002023-01-16T11:49:40.985-08:00Chapter 27: Pole Inspecting with the Devil<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
Chapter 27: Pole
Inspecting with the Devil<o:p></o:p></div>
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<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
Jobs 80 – 81<o:p></o:p></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
2005<o:p></o:p></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I’ve been dreading the moment when I would have to sit down
and deal with Osmosis – the worst job I’ve ever had. This period was a dark one for me and my
family. Osmosis definitely contributed greatly to the difficulties, but there
were other unfortunate things which happened to us during this period.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Yesterday I sat down and re-read all the 35 or so pages I
had already written about Osmosis years ago. It was not a comfortable
experience. What’s even more uncomfortable is I still haven’t quite figured out
why I left Lear Memorial Chapel. It was probably one of the biggest mistakes
I’ve ever made.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
My wage at Lear was pretty decent. Also, Mrs. R returned to
the work force. Our youngest was now old enough that she didn’t need her mom
around the all the time. J’s health was stable enough to allow her to
contemplate employment. Through our family friend Sue, she got a job at a small
social service organization. This program provided perinatal support services
to low-income families. When J and I got together, she had been an eligibility
worker at the county welfare office, but she left there after she got pregnant
with Rimpy Jr. Her education and experience in social services put her in good
stead for this new job.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
J has great organizational and people skills, and her new
boss loved her work. J kept getting raises, and was soon making more than I did,
which made me a little envious. It was
also the first time in our marriage that we achieved something like a middle-class
income. For a little while we had enough money that life didn’t feel like quite
such a struggle to pay for rent, bills, food, and all those other necessities
of life.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
However, having both parents working created a situation we
had not encountered before: who was going to do the cooking? We hadn’t intended
that our family roles should be divided along such traditional lines; it just
worked out that way. J already knew how to cook, and fantastically. I didn’t.
Since I was working, it only made sense that she would take care of feeding us.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Now that she was also working, it wasn’t fair to expect her
to also be responsible for all the cooking. Unfortunately, I never had been any
kind of cook, and certainly hadn’t had any reason to learn in the nearly two
decades of our marriage. I was at a loss as to how we were going to handle this
situation. We ended up eating out a lot, and sometimes it seemed like the
financial gains we were getting from our new two-person income were being
negated by all the food from restaurants. It was obvious to me that I was
somehow going to have to learn how to cook so we could at least split that
chore.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
As I write this, it’s occurring to me that it’s just
possible that this dilemma may have played into my decision to try my fortunes with
a new job. I hope that’s not true, but if it is I will accept the blame for
being a wanker. Another bit of wankerishness which probably factored into that
decision, has to do with my ADHD. As I mentioned before, up to this point I’d
only had a couple of jobs that lasted for a couple of years: paratransit
driving and mortuary transportation. If you don’t count the time I returned to
the paratransit job after my first departure, both of those jobs, in fact,
lasted EXACTLY two years.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In both of those jobs, I had noticed that as I approached
the two-year mark, I started getting restless, especially with the paratransit,
which was full-time, as opposed to the part-time, on-call nature of mortuary
transportation. I became bored with the routine, and the pride I felt in doing
a good job tended to decline. When I became aware of this feeling of boredom
and frustration in paratransit, I also attributed it to another realization. My
dad had always trumpeted the twin ideals of “finding something and sticking to
it”, and that work was the only thing that defined a person. I thought that if
I just kept working, everything would be fine. After close to two years, I
realized I was still struggling to make ends meet. I thought steady work was
the cure for such ills. Of course, my dad made much more than I had, and my
parents had good credit, and owned their homes, and all the other yardsticks of
middle-class “success”, which helped them have a comfortable existence on a
one-person. I had not achieved anything close to that.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Also, after long enough in a job, even if it gave me a lot
of strokes for being a good worker, I would start to feel like I didn’t want to
just be known as good receptionist, or a good paratransit driver, or a good
hauler of stiffs. I wanted more, somehow, but I was too scared to attempt
anything creative. It’s too bad I couldn’t just learn to accept the fate of so
many of us who just have to work to live, and tried to find happiness with in
that. I think the “two-year itch” was starting to hit me at Lear, and that may
have contributed to my asinine decision to depart.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
My memory of the exact timeline of events for this period is
a little fuzzy, but in many ways the new problems inherent with a working
couple got resolved in an unfortunate way. Poor J’s health took another
downturn, and before long she had to leave her job at the perinatal agency. But
that didn’t mean I was off the hook about learning to cook. She was so sick,
that she couldn’t really do many of her former domestic roles, either. It still
causes her great sadness that she can’t do a lot of things she used to do. A
sad practical effect of her not working was that now our income had been
reduced by more than half (since she made more than me), but we were still
spending a goodly amount of money eating out, since there was still no in-home
cook.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I got it into my head that somehow I could do better than I
was doing at Lear, where I got an annual raise of one dollar, which I viewed as
being rather stagnant. I figured I was going to have to do something bold in
order to increase my earnings. I wanted to go against tradition and truly apply
myself in some job where my income could increase with the more time and
industry I put into it, as opposed to a flat hourly wage.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But what kind of job? Incredibly, I began to think about
trucking again. The fact that Rimpyette was now old enough for J to work played
a part. There were no long any little children who needed a daddy around all
the time, as well. But there is another problem with my brain in that I often
feel a need to return to things I regarded as failures in an effort to correct
the past. I viewed my past experience with trucking as one of those failures
and I wanted another shot at being good at it.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And here’s the final, dirty little secret: I was probably
running away again. I wasn’t handling J’s illness very well. My dad had been an
asshole about people being sick, and it was hard for me to shake that modeling.
I think I wanted to distance myself from it, physically as well as emotionally.
So, there it is: a whole bunch of poor excuses for a terrible decision. I began
to put my redonkulous plan into action.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
Job #81: Truck Driver-in-Training
(again!)<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
My commercial license
had long ago lapsed, so I was going to have to find a company other than Turkey
that provided training. I found one, and applied and was accepted. I gave my
notice at Lear. I then traveled by Greyhound to somewhere in southern
California (where is immaterial, since it’s all horrible), and checked into the
company-provided motel. I didn’t even last a week. I quickly realized it was
one of the worst decisions of my life. It wasn’t a problem with the company - I
wasn’t there long enough to even find out if they were bad, although I was
already having some trepidation about their strange team-driving set-up. No.
The real problem was that I had left a very sick wife back home. Poor J was
just falling apart. What had I been thinking? So I quietly slipped out of the
motel one night with my bags and took a
transit bus to the Greyhound station and bought a ticket home. I never did hear
anything from that company regarding the money they had already spent on me. I
guess they considered it too small a loss to fuss over.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
So once again I was back home in O-Town and unemployed. I
had been warned that anyone who left Lear was never welcomed back, but I tried
anyway, with predictable results. Great. I needed work fast. In addition to any
job, I also started trying to again find something in geospatial. I didn’t have
much hope for success there. Geospatial skills go stale quickly, given the
ever-evolving nature of the technology. I hadn’t been able to get a job immediately
after graduating, so my chances three years hence were even more dismal.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I put my meager geospatial resume on Monster.com. To my
surprise, I was contacted by a company called (and here I shudder
involuntarily) Osmosis. If you haven’t read my lengthy history with Osmosis in
this blog, I’ll briefly recap. Osmosis started life back in the 1930s as a
company that made wood preservatives. Soon they began specializing in applying
the preservatives to wood that’s currently in use, such as railroad trestles
and utility poles.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Now Osmosis is a leader in inspecting and treating utility
poles. They have a small GIS division at their headquarters in New York, which
is what brought my resume to their attention. However, they weren’t really
interested in me for my questionable GIS skills. They just needed warm bodies
to fill their ranks of foremen for their pole inspection and treatment crews.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I talked to a recruiter from Osmosis, which should have
warned me away right from the get-go. Way back when I was in the army, there
was a common joke – more commonly attributed to lawyers – that circulated among
the enlisted ranks and went like this: “How can you tell a recruiter is lying?
His mouth is moving.” After my experience with Turkey, which also has
recruiters, I realized that same folksy wisdom applied to them as well. I was
slow to realize that any job which has to have people who talk other people
into working there is not a good job.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I drove down to Sacramento to meet with an Osmosis
supervisor, a pleasant Canadian named Jason. We met at a McDonald’s because due
to the highly mobile nature of their business, Osmosis doesn’t really have
offices, except at their headquarters in New York. I think Jason had a desk in
the SMUD (Sacramento Municipal Utilities District) building, but it wasn’t
conducive to job interviews.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
After talking with Jason for a bit, I rode with him to where
one of the crews was working. I met a foreman named Peter, who later became my
trainer. Peter looked a little harried, but he had time to shake my hand and
say hello. We watched Pete and his crew work for a while, then Jason drove me
back to my vehicle. The work looked a bit rougher than what I had been used to
in my comfy job as a funeral director, but I hadn’t seen anything to frighten
me away. I told Jason I was interested, and I drove back to O-Town.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Jason must have given a favorable report of our interview to
his superiors, for a couple of days later the recruiter called me with a job
offer, at the handsome fee of approximately 18 dollars an hour (the exact wage
varied depending upon the contracts with the utility clients). That was the
highest wage I had ever been offered. There was also the potential for extra
income (so they said) from “production bonuses” if I exceeded my daily quotas.
That sounded like a fine way to make good on my earlier idea of earning more money
for more effort. Too bad it didn’t work out that way.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
My only qualm about the job was being away from home.
Everyone I had spoken to at Osmosis had openly admitted that the job involved a
lot of travel. As with trucking recruiters, however, they weren’t entirely honest
about exactly HOW long I would be gone at a time. I talked it over with J.
After all, I had just come back from the trucking school because she was sick.
She said that for 18 dollars an hour, she could put up with anything. So I
signed with the devil.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
Job #81: Utility Pole
Inspection and Treatment Foreman<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
2005 - 2006<o:p></o:p></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Around mid-December Osmosis flew me down to Ventura,
California to begin my on-the-job training. That was a couple of weeks before
Christmas. Osmosis took a break during the winter holidays, and when I returned
to training it was in Sacramento. First I stayed in a flea-bag motel in West
Sacramento at Osmosis’ expense. Then I stayed in a room over my brother’s
garage in Sacto proper. Osmosis gave me a 600 dollar stipend for my own
lodging. My brother wasn’t charging me rent, so I got to pocket that money.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I trained with Pete for a few weeks during the rainy
northern California winter. Our district manager was a psychotic hillbilly with
moldy teeth named Rick. When I finished training, I got my own Osmosis truck
and a crew. I even hired Step-Rimpyette for my crew, whom Rick fell head over
heels in lust with.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Step-Rimpyette and I were transferred to Turlock. Then
things started getting shitty. I had a new district manager in Turlock, so at
least I was rid of Rick, but already I was starting to realize that Osmosis and
I weren’t a good fit. I was having a hard time finding my groove as a foreman.
I had trouble making quota, let alone making any production bonuses for
exceeding it. I did one day manage to exceed quota. My production bonus for
that day? Five cents. No, really – a freaking nickle. Wow.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Basically working for Osmosis was like living with my father
again: I constantly had a critical authority figure telling me I wasn’t good
enough. I began to take my feelings of frustration and worthlessness out on
those I loved. I actually fired my beloved Step-Rimpyette because she was sick
with vague symptoms one day and couldn’t work. Little did I know then that her
occasional mysterious illnesses were an early sign of her own future health
problems. We now know that she has Hashimoto’s thyroiditis and panhypopituitarism.
She’s a very sick puppy, much like her poor mother. But all I understood then
was that my father was a dick about sick people, but he was a successful,
hardworking man. If I was going to be a successful, hardworking man like my
dad, then I had to be a dick with sick people.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And that dickishness extended to my ailing wife. From the faraway
places I was working, I thought of my sick wife at home and instead of seeing a
person who needed sympathy and support, I saw a weakling, a slacker. Just like
Daddy would have done. And J was going through more than just her own illness.
Her mother was dying of congestive heart failure.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But I just kept spinning away into more anger and
resentment. Meanwhile, Osmosis was sending me to such charming places as Las
Vegas (where I nearly died more than once on Mt. Charleston) and Reno. </div><div class="MsoNormal"> </div><o:p></o:p>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In early July J’s mom passed away. I went home and
officiated at her funeral (as she had requested), which was hard, because I had
loved my mother-in-law, and I was crazed by Osmosis. While I was home, I got a
phone call from Pete, the Osmosis foreman who had trained me. He had moved on
to a job with a company called which provided
merchandising services in the electrical departments of a popular chain of home
improvement stores. He needed someone for the Butt County stores. He knew I
lived in the area, and that I was a good worker. He also figured that I – being
a relatively normal and intelligent person – probably hated Osmosis as much as
he had. He said it was only part-time work to begin with, and my wage would be
15 dollars, which was less than Osmosis was paying. The main reason I had stuck
with Osmosis for as long as I had (other than trying to work out my daddy
issues) was because I couldn’t afford to just quit and start looking for work
again. Going down in pay and hours was risky, but it was better than nothing
for the chance to be free from those fuckers. I told Pete “YES!”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I dutifully returned to Osmosis, but immediately gave them
two weeks’ notice. Going to that hateful job for those two weeks was one of the
hardest things I ever did, but at least there was a light at the end of the
tunnel. I had barely been with them for 7 months, but it had felt like years.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Sadly, my mental health did not immediately return just
because I was no longer with Osmosis. There were some difficult times in the
ensuing weeks while I transitioned to my new job. J and I still fought about
money. I wasn’t done being an angry fuckhead. J
and I almost separated. All told, my reaction to my time with Osmosis nearly
cost me my sanity, my marriage and my family. I sunk so very low, and I am
still inexpressibly grateful to my family for not giving up on me.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And that, I think, is enough about that rotten stuff. In the
next chapter, we get to the best job ever, and then it’s a short hop (with a
brief stumble) to my current job. Bye for now.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
The end.<o:p></o:p></div>
Rimpy Rimpingtonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13017152542056998917noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2282043488488474080.post-1733601162991530272016-01-10T15:30:00.002-08:002016-01-10T15:32:01.814-08:00Chapter 26: You Can’t Spell Funeral Without “REAL” and “FUN”<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
Chapter 26: You Can’t
Spell Funeral Without “REAL” and “FUN”<o:p></o:p><br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEip5GCbuljxl0C65bwUJewLJ1JJUeBbojjTKXUeOnI1CXQC8fBFDhwPXAtXsNxEh7qijeyR8ExU_lSJ0iRBswjgxZl47wHAHIqQKZjGBQidfn77sci9Obc3eoZ75t5zaE8H_ssnWv_deUQ/s1600/landau+bars.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEip5GCbuljxl0C65bwUJewLJ1JJUeBbojjTKXUeOnI1CXQC8fBFDhwPXAtXsNxEh7qijeyR8ExU_lSJ0iRBswjgxZl47wHAHIqQKZjGBQidfn77sci9Obc3eoZ75t5zaE8H_ssnWv_deUQ/s320/landau+bars.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
Jobs 77 – 79<o:p></o:p></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
2002 -2003<o:p></o:p></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
Job #77: Temp
Agency/Packaging Company<o:p></o:p></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Shortly after I was laid off from Walmart, my sciatica was
sufficiently healed to allow me to look for a new job. I had registered at
several temporary staffing agencies. The most famous one (let’s call them “Smelly
Services”) actually found me a job, albeit not the kind I was hoping for.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
After the debacle of the Walmart truck crew, I wanted a job
that was a little more…gentle. I had plenty of clerical experience, and was
hoping for something where I could sit down, indoors, and not sweat so much,
and not throw out my back. I took Smelly Services’ test for clerical work, and
while my typing and other mundane office skills were fine, I didn’t have any
experience with 10-key operation or data entry. Despite that, my handler –
Curtis – explained that with my college degree, I was rather over-qualified for
such work.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
So I thought it was interesting that they didn’t consider me
over-qualified for the job they did find me – at a company that made paperboard
packaging. Their biggest contract was making six-pack holders for College Town’s
world-famous brewing company. They also made six-pack carriers for other
breweries, as well as packages for all kinds of products, food and otherwise.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I wasn’t thrilled with the prospect of factory work, so I
was pleasantly surprised by what a decent place to work it turned out to be (at
least temporarily). The work wasn’t particularly strenuous, everyone was nice, and they had a great lunch/breakroom,
with a decent variety of snack vending machines. They even gave Christmas hams
to the temporary staffers.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
2003-2005<o:p></o:p></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
During this time, I even attempted to return to college. I
figured that my best chance of getting any kind of geospatial job was to get a
Master’s Degree. Even though most graduate courses are held at night, I knew I
couldn’t work full-time at the packaging company during the day if I was going
to have any time to read the endless required amounts of dry scholarly books
and reports. I needed a part-time job to supplement my financial aid package.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
Job #78: Mortuary
Transportation Driver<o:p></o:p></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I saw an interesting item in the local want ads: someone
needed an on-call mortuary transportation driver. I wasn’t even sure what that might
entail, but I figured, “What the heck?” and applied. I was a little confused when
I went in for the interview, because it was held at the owner’s day business –
a small auto repair shop and used car dealership.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The owner was a guy named Ken, and he had a contract with a
mortuary in O-Town to do all their after-hours transportation. When someone
passed away, and they were slated to be handled by this mortuary (who shall be
named later when I can think of an appropriate alias), Ken and/or one of his
employees would transport the decedent in a black van from the place of their
death to the mortuary. Most of this type of business came from nursing homes
and hospitals, but death can happen anywhere, so Ken also had to transport
accident and crime victims. He asked me if I had a strong stomach. I wasn’t
sure I did (I didn’t, really, at least not at first), but I lamely told him
that my wife liked to watch surgery shows, so I had at least seen lots of blood
and guts there. He thought that was funny.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
During the course of that interview, I learned some things I
had never really thought about before. For one thing, I found out that Butt
County didn’t have a morgue. In movies and television, bodies are always shown
being hauled away, either my ambulance or a coroner’s vehicle, to some
mysterious place full of drawers full of dead people. That may be true in
better-funded communities but in Butt County, the various mortuaries in the
county took turns acting as a de facto morgue on a monthly rotating basis. If an
unsupervised death occurred, the county medical examiner would travel to whichever
mortuary was hosting him that month and perform the autopsy in their embalming
room.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Despite my lack of experience, I got the job. I have a
feeling not many other people had applied. I made Ken aware of my plans to
attend school, and he said it would be no problem working around my schedule
there.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I went with Ken on my first few calls, to learn the ropes,
and for him to see how I handled myself. I had seen a couple of dead bodies
before, including, sadly, Mrs. R’s grandmother, Mildred, who had passed away
not long before, and whose final arrangements had been handled by the very
mortuary Ken was contracted to. Still, it was a little weird actually handling
someone who had just passed away.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Most of our first few runs together were pretty cut and
dried – hospitals and nursing homes. There was one fellow who had passed away
unexpectedly on the floor of his bedroom. He was a bearded guy, and was laying
face-down. When we turned him over, I was a little creeped out to see his
whiskers slowly relaxing <i>en masse</i>
from the unnatural position they had been in.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Pretty soon I was ready to go solo, as it were. Ken supplied
me with a pager and cell phone. If the call was at a hospital or nursing home,
I could do it alone, since those places are designed to handle gurneys. One
person could easily slide a normal-sized body from a hospital bed onto the
gurney. If they were large, I could get a facility employee to help me.
However, if the body was in a private home, or at an accident or crime scene, I
had to take a helper. Even though the gurney could be lowered to just a few
inches high, it usually took two people to lift the body that far. Then there
might be stairs or other difficult access which would require a person at both
ends of the gurney.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I had a number of helpers over the two years that I worked
for Ken, including my own Step-Rimpyette. The work was strictly on-call, and I
made 25 dollars per call. That may not sound like much, but I got enough calls,
whether they were solo or team, that it was actually a pretty decent part-time
income. However, my helpers only got 20 dollars per call, and team calls were
much less frequent. It was difficult to retain people who were willing to get
up at odd hours of the night and schlep dead bodies for such meager and
inconsistent earnings. More than once, my boss Ken had to be my helper when no one
else was available.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Ken let me keep the van (which I sensitively dubbed “the
Death Mobile”) at home. He also said I could use it as I needed for errands.
Ken had made the questionable choice of putting landau bars on the sides of the
van. He said he wanted it to look appropriate because he occasionally used it
for funerals, either as the hearse itself, or a flower van. If it hadn’t been
for those bars, no one would really have had any indication that it was anything
other than a black, windowless utility van.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Once I was coming back into town after picking up a body at
the College Town hospital. There were two chubby hillbillies whose car had
broken down or run out of gas at the off-ramp I used. I stopped to see if they
needed any help. I offered to call someone for them, but told them I couldn’t
offer them a ride because I had a “passenger” with me. One of the yokels was
staring at the van, and when he saw the landau bars, he loudly exclaimed to his
brother, “Dang, Butch, this thing is a hearse! It’s a full-on hearse!”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Another time I picked up Grandrimpy in the van from his
elementary school. It was the practice at this school for a staff-member to
walk the child to his or her vehicle. The staffer couldn’t tell that my van
only had a front passenger seat, and since any child would ride in the back, as
California law required, she opened the
side door before I could stop. She was greeted by the sight of a gurney covered
by a tasteful gray velour shroud. She said, “Oh my”, while my grandson
excitedly shouted, “See!? I told you it was a death mobile!” I was somewhat
embarrassed.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
There are many other blackly humorous and down-right
gruesome tales I could tell you of my time under Ken’s employ, and perhaps I’ll
include some more in subsequent drafts of this memoir. My work for Ken wasn’t
my only experience in the business of death, however. I had rather quickly
given up on my graduate school plans. Much like my experience with evening
classes during Army AIT, I couldn’t stay awake in class at night, and I was bored
to death by all the reading. All in all, I only lasted a few weeks into the
semester.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Now that I was a free agent, I was able to pick up more work
with Ken, including day runs. During business hours, the mortuary handled their
own transportation, when they could. If they were tied up, however, they called
Ken, which meant me. Because of this I got familiar with the staff at the
mortuary, particularly the manager, Mike. He liked me, and more importantly,
the owner liked me. The owner, a nice lady named Susan, along with her husband,
had purchased the mortuary – or memorial chapel – in O-Town from a family named
Lear (not their real name) and had kept the name, because it was a
well-established business. They also owned a memorial chapel, named after a type
of flower, in Mountain Town. Susan’s husband also ran a successful computer
repair business in Mountain Town, where they lived.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
Job #78: Funeral
Director<o:p></o:p></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I began talking to Mike about the possibility of me coming
to work for Lear Memorial Chapel, and after a few months he hired me as an
assistant funeral director. I continued to work for Ken for the next several
months. It was an odd arrangement, to say the least. I spent my days at the
chapel, which of course included making transportation calls in their vehicle. If
we were too busy to pick up a body, we had to call Ken himself, which he
grumbled about. He had originally hired me to take some of the burden off
himself. At night, I was on-call for Ken, and was transporting bodies in Ken’s
van to the same funeral home for which I worked during the day.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
One of the best things about this whole arrangement was that
the memorial chapel was only a block from my house. By day I would walk to and
from work. At night, after a call, I didn’t have far to drive back home. It was
the easiest commute I’ve ever had.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Eventually the unusual nature of the relationship between my
two jobs created some problems. Ken’s resentment about having to pick up bodies
during the day because I was unavailable finally caused him to cut me out of
day runs, and he hired someone else to do that job. Then Susan’s lawyer pointed
out that as an employee of Lear, if I was injured on the premises while doing a
call as an employee of Ken, I wouldn’t be covered by their workers’
compensation insurance. This meant that I essentially I couldn’t work for Ken
anymore, so I had to give him my notice. Amazingly, my last day was exactly two
years after my first day, just like the time I left the paratransit driving
job.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But at least I still had my day job, which paid a decent
wage. For my first few months there, I did not have any kind of license to be a
funeral director, and it didn’t seem like I needed one, because all I was doing
was assisting with funerals and their arrangements. I certainly wasn’t an
embalmer, which requires two years of schooling. At first, I wasn’t sure I this
was something I was interested in. I would sometimes help out in the embalming
room, and even assisted the medical examiner with a few autopsies. The first
few times I got a little light-headed and turned an interesting shade of green,
but I never actually passed out or threw up. I was used to seeing gore after
having already worked for Ken, but there was something about watching someone
slicing or poking a human body, especially if they were so recently deceased as
to still be warm. Eventually I got used to it enough to the point of wishing I
could go to embalming school. Not only would I have made more money, but I
would have been more useful to the business. As a funeral director, I was
supposed to be in the rotation of on-call directors for after-hours calls. Most
arrangements were handled the next day, but it was desirable that any
embalming, if requested, or just setting of facial features (which is way more
involved than just shoving the corners of someone’s mouth into a smile) be done
as soon as possible. I couldn’t do any of that stuff, so the other funeral
directors, who were all also embalmers, had to take extra days on-call, which
didn’t make them happy.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Susan used to be willing to finance her funeral directors’
embalming training, but had been burned by a former employer who let her pay
for his education, then quit and opened a competing funeral home in O-Town.
There was no financial aid available for private schooling of that kind, and I
couldn’t afford it myself, let alone the fact that the nearest embalming school
was in Sacramento. So I contented myself with my informal status, until one
slow day I was reading up on the laws pertaining to funeral directing, and I
came across a passage which said that anyone who acted as a funeral director, but
who did not have a license, was guilty of a crime. I thought that described my
situation exactly. I showed this to Mike, who said, “Well, I guess we’d better
get you a license, then.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Getting a license as a funeral director is pretty easy: you
read up on the rules, pay 100 dollars (which Susan put up), get a background
check (which was actually less involved than the one to become a cab driver),
and take a test in Sacramento. If you pass, you’re a licensed funeral director.
Once I had my license, a framed copy was displayed on a wall of the funeral
home alongside the other directors’. I didn’t get any more money for being
licensed, but I got something almost as good: my very first business card, with
my funeral director’s license number right on it (as required by California
law). I felt more excited about getting a real business card than I had about
getting my Bachelor’s Degree.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I worked for Lear for a total of two years and a couple of
months. I had many interesting experiences there, but this is getting over
long, and there is one other thing which transpired there which I wish to share
with you, for it was one of my proudest accomplishments.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It is well that I am writing this pseudonymously (I love any
chance to use that word), for the information I am about to reveal could get me
rubbed out by some secret cabal of funeral home owners. It often happens that
funeral homes become the unwilling long-term custodians of cremated remains, or
cremains. This can happen for a variety of reasons. Sometimes a person dies
without anyone to handle their final arrangements. In cases like these, the
county will pay for disposition of the body, which is always cremation. Butt
County has what is often called a “potter’s field” for indigent decedents, but there
has not been a burial or inurnment of cremains there for many, many years.
Despite this, Butt County is disinclined to actually take responsibility for
the cremains. Perhaps if they had a morgue, they would have a place to keep
unclaimed cremains, but as it is, the funeral homes get stuck with them.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Another reason cremains get abandoned is due to family
dynamics. A survivor may have arranged for the cremation, but then either flat
out refuses to take charge of the “ashes”, or can’t deal with it right away,
and so leaves them at the funeral home. A week goes by, then it’s July, then it’s
a couple of decades and, well, “out of sight, out of mind.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This may not sound like much of a problem for the funeral
homes, and on a practical level, it isn’t. Cremains don’t take up much room,
and require no special storage. The only real problem is that in California
(and probably other states, as well) it is actually against the law for a
funeral home to keep cremains indefinitely. However, the funeral home cannot
dispose of the remains themselves, not without something signed by a survivor.
So funeral homes are in this Catch-22 of having no choice but to illegally hang
on to people’s unwanted cremains, which is a lesser crime than unauthorized
disposal. The keepers of the laws are no doubt aware of this conundrum, and mercifully
turn a blind eye to it. So I’m sure every funeral home, at least in California,
has this dirty little secret of abandoned cremains hidden away in some dark
corner. In Lear’s case, the cremains were kept in a locked cabinet in the
basement.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This situation bothered me. I thought it was awful that the
last mortal remains of these people were just gathering dust in some musty
cellar – abandoned, forgotten and un-memorialized. I also hate an unresolved mystery, and that’s
what these cremains felt like to me. I think I would have made a great
detective (but a lousy police officer). Here was a chance to put my amateur sleuthing
skills to work. I got Mike’s permission to undertake (see what I did there?)
the task of finding the responsible parties for all those cremains, which
totaled about 20 urns. He said I could try, but he didn’t think I’d have much
luck. The other funeral director on the staff agreed with him.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I gathered up all the files I could find regarding the
abandoned cremains, and then I began making some phone calls. A few of the
cases were actually quite easy. Those were mainly the result of simple forgetfulness.
Sometimes survivors said they thought that one of their siblings had picked up
the cremains. That may have been just an excuse, but one lady was genuinely
upset that her sister had not done what she said she would do, and came right
in to get her mother’s ashes.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Other cases proved more difficult. Often the survivors had
relocated, and it took a bit of digging to track them down. The first case of
that kind was willing to pay for us to ship the cremains to them, but others balked
at the expense. I got Mike to agree to Lear paying for any shipping to
facilitate the egress of the cremains. Pretty soon ashes were practically
flying out the door. Mike seemed to like to pretend as though none of this was
happening. I think he was worried that word might get to the wrong ears. The
other funeral director had to admit he couldn’t believe I was having as much
success as I was.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
One sad case turned out to have a burial plot waiting for
his cremains in Susanville, California, but none of his survivors could be
bothered to transport him up there. On a slow day at the funeral home, I grabbed
a shovel from home, drove up there and personally buried him.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I began keeping separate files for each of my searches, with
a log in each one of what I had done and the dates, so that I wouldn’t
accidentally repeat some phone call or letter. After a few more months, I was
down to one last stubborn case, which became quite personal to me. The decedent
shared my first name: Rimpy (not my or his real first name) – Rimpy Johnson. His
cremains had been there the longest - almost 20 years - so it’s not surprising
that it was so difficult to find any information on his descendants. I dug and
I dug and tried everything I could think of in my limited arsenal. I even
consulted with a local private investigator and a detective at the Butt County
Sheriff’s office (the sheriff is also the coroner for the county – which just
means he is responsible for investigating suspicious and unattended deaths and
signing death certificates for same) for any tips and tricks I hadn’t thought
of. The private investigator told me about an amazing professional investigator’s
database program, but Susan was unwilling to pay for a subscription to it.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I did manage to find a couple of sisters of Rimpy Johnson’s.
I almost had some luck with the family of one of them, but suddenly they
stopped answering my calls. The other sister was living in a nursing home in
Texas. Unfortunately, she was too far gone with Alzheimer’s for me to talk to,
and the staff couldn’t give me any information about her immediate family.
Finally I just had to put Rimpy’s file away in a drawer and try to forget about
it as a lost cause. One day, a few months later, I suddenly had a feeling. My
funeral director/private detective sense was tingling! I pulled out Rimpy’s
file and called the sister’s nursing home. I was informed that she had passed
away. That was the intuition I’d had! Now that she was no long a patient, they
were able to give me her granddaughter’s phone number. When I called and
explained who I was and why I was calling, she was very gracious. Even though
she had barely known her great-uncle Rimpy, she was willing to take
responsibility for his cremains.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
So Rimpy Johnson had been the first one in and he was the
last one out. I had successfully found resting places for all 20-odd abandoned
cremains. The other members of the staff said something to the effect of “cool,
good job” and went about their business, and of course, it wasn’t something I
could brag about too much, because of the weird laws regarding cremains. After
an initial feeling of pride and elation on my strange and secret
accomplishment, I experienced a let-down – a feeling of emptiness after all
those months of obsessive work. That low feeling may have contributed to my
eventual decision to leave Lear. But I’m getting ahead of myself, again.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I did get a bit of recognition for my mystery-solving skills
from an unexpected source during the time I was still “working cases”. The
sheriff’s detective whom I had contacted called me one day. There was a
peculiar case of someone throwing a container of cremains in a dumpster behind
a gas station. The security cameras had caught the act, but the resolution of
the footage wasn’t great. A local man was incorrectly identified as the
culprit, but he was able to prove that he wasn’t near the area at the time. The
detective called me because he knew I was well now versed in identifying the
owners of cremains. The answer to his problem didn’t require the skills of an
amateur cremains detective – any funeral director knows that each container of
cremains includes a metal tag with the name of the crematory and a unique number
identifying the decedent stamped into it. Then it was a simple matter of
contacting that funeral home (which was all the way in Florida) and finding the
name. The falsely accused man also called me and thanked me for proving beyond
a shadow of a doubt that he wasn’t involved, since no connection between him
and the cremains could be found.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I don’t remember if they ever caught whoever it was who so
unceremoniously disposed of somebody’s ashes that way. That’s such a shitty
thing to do to someone. He could have just emptied the cremains out on the
ground somewhere (which is not always legal, depending on the location, but who’s
going to know?) and then thrown the empty container away (which isn’t illegal).
Maybe he was just squeamish about ashes (like I was as a kid with that woman’s
cremains in my garage), but it seems like you must really have to hate someone
to just trash their earthly remains in such a callous manner.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 12.0pt;">
I think that’s about enough for
now. In the next chapter, I will try to explain my stupid reasons for leaving
Lear (I’m not sure I understand them myself), and briefly relate the brief job
which immediately followed it. Then I have to deal with…<a href="https://youtu.be/bW7Op86ox9g">DUNT DUN DUNNNN</a>...Osmosis! Until then, you can read the long version <a href="http://82jobs.blogspot.com/p/the-osmosis-saga.html">here</a>, or just wait for
the condensed version. Tah!<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 12.0pt; text-align: center;">
The
end<o:p></o:p></div>
Rimpy Rimpingtonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13017152542056998917noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2282043488488474080.post-17963740493287754262016-01-02T15:58:00.001-08:002016-01-02T15:58:38.056-08:00Chapter 25: Caged Ennui<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
Chapter 25: Caged
Ennui<o:p></o:p></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHyYeBDvpVtjeAMG4bLBzl0HtnvNlWRHxkwjWnO-wtWAVkUhjo2JpdvUKagSHG4NJWO_ljoTxUfaDSgcrb9D5gJ07nhUvWL45J8982ML6rNHxSqNje5JCC5C0005P3yDYZ6RujGkG5ek0/s1600/caged+women.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHyYeBDvpVtjeAMG4bLBzl0HtnvNlWRHxkwjWnO-wtWAVkUhjo2JpdvUKagSHG4NJWO_ljoTxUfaDSgcrb9D5gJ07nhUvWL45J8982ML6rNHxSqNje5JCC5C0005P3yDYZ6RujGkG5ek0/s320/caged+women.jpg" width="150" /></a></div>
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<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
Jobs #73 – 76<o:p></o:p></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
2002<o:p></o:p></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
There was one major life event which transpired while I was
a student at the university. My dear mother passed away, rather suddenly in
October of 2000. Her health had been rather poorly for a number of years. She
had given up smoking several years earlier, but it may have been too late. She
had long suffered from angina, and had some close calls with cancer, resulting
in a double mastectomy, and I think a hysterectomy as well.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Finally her health became poor enough that she sold her
little house in Cambria and moved in with my sister Buff and my brother-in-law
Roy at their home in Fair Oaks, near Sacramento. Then one day she had what was
apparently a massive stroke. My poor sister performed CPR on her for a good
hour before the paramedics could arrive.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Unfortunately, it was too late. My mom lingered for a day or
so before the painful decision had to be made to turn off her life support. It
all happened so quickly that I didn’t even have time to drive down to the
hospital to say goodbye. Actually, that may have been one of the times we were
carless. I got updates from my siblings via telephone. I had seen my mom that
summer at my brother Dick’s house in Sacramento, so at least I had seen her
fairly recently after a gap of a couple of years. My other brother Jack had come
out from Virginia for a rare visit and my mom wanted to see all her children.
Perhaps she sensed her time on this earth was short.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I was rather stunned, to say the least. It may sound
callous, but I hadn’t been terribly moved by the passing of my father, so this
felt like my first real experience of losing a parent. I didn’t really know how
to behave. I emailed my teachers to tell them I’d be taking a couple of days
off and why, but I went to work for Scot as I was scheduled to do. My heart
wasn’t in my work, though. When I told Scot that my mom had just passed away,
he very kindly told me I should go home, which I did.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
My mom had made arrangements with the Neptune Society to
handle the disposition of her earthly remains, and there were no immediate
plans for a funeral. In April, which was my mother’s birth month, my sister
held a memorial service at her home. In the intervening months, the settling of
my mom’s estate had taken place. My mom had always been very good at being
frugal – to the point of rinsing out and drying paper towels for re-use. I
reckon the house in beautiful sea-side Cambria probably sold for a pretty penny
as well. Whatever the reason, my mom left behind the tidy sum of almost exactly
200,000 dollars, and each of her kids got one-fourth of that. Roy said he used
to try to encourage her to have some fun with her money rather than leaving it
for her children, but she wouldn’t listen to him.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
50,000 dollars seemed like all the money in the world to my
perpetually financially-developmentally-delayed mind. Lurleen asked if we were
going to buy a house. I doubted without really knowing that even that princely
sum would be enough of a down payment for a person with extremely bad credit to
purchase a home. To be honest, I didn’t even consider it. I figured even if we
could buy a house, then we’d just be sitting – broke as ever – in a house we
owned, with all the expenses involved in that. There’s something to be said for
renting, especially when you’re poor. If something goes wrong with your
domicile, your landlord is responsible for it (provided you have a decent
landlord). Of course, it is a shame that all that money we spend on rent doesn’t
build up anything, the way equity in a home does.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
A few years later, I
sometimes watched “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition”. I thought it was cool how the
show helped struggling families, but it was interesting that these poor
families always somehow owned their homes. It amused me to think that if we had
somehow been able to purchase a house, we might qualify for a makeover from
ABC. However, those families always had something else going on besides
financial difficulty – whether it be a family member with a dread disease or life-altering
disability, or they are just super-duper people who do tremendous things for
their community. None of those things applied to us.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
As it was, I spent some of my inheritance paying back my
long-suffering brother Dick for some long-overdue loans. The largest single
investments we made with our windfall were a mini-van and a maxi-family vacation.
The van was just under ten years old, which made it the newest car we had ever owned.
For the vacation, we drove the kids and my mother-in-law to her family’s annual
reunion picnic at her brother’s house in Arlington, Washington. Mrs. R’s
grandmother traveled by train every year to attend the event, but her mom,
Jordana had not been for able to attend for many years. After the picnic, we
took the ferry to Victoria, Vancouver Island, British Columbia. The trip was
spread over several days, and a splendid time was had by all.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
We hadn’t been able to afford to take our kids on the kind
of vacations that both Mrs. R and I remember from our childhoods. Critics may
say we spent a little too much on the trip, or didn’t invest the rest of my
inheritance wisely, but I (no longer) have any regrets. I used to torture
myself wondering how things might have been different if I had just been
smarter with money, but I finally decided that I was expecting too much of
myself and 50 thousand dollars.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Okay, back to the jobs! After graduating from the university,
I tried to find work in what I had just been trained to do. Unfortunately, I had
a run into a problem while in my upper division classes. For one thing, I
learned that while I’m generally very good at academic stuff like reading,
writing papers and taking exams, I’m a little slower at learning things which
are more “hands on”. Unfortunately, old-fashioned cartography and its newer
incarnation – GIS (Geographic Information Systems) – are very “hands on”. I was
already pretty comfortable with computers, but the software for GIS was
overwhelmingly complex. Many of the younger students seemed to take to it like
ducks to water, but I struggled.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I ended up passing with C grade from my GIS and cartography
courses, and those were the core classes of the particular geography option I
had chosen. I thought desperately of changing my option to planning – which I
also found very interesting, but didn’t require so much computer gim-crackery –
but it was too late to switch. If I could have repeated the classes, I’m sure I
could have improved that grade, but that wasn’t an option, either. Getting C’s was
a blow to my ego, and it made me worry for my chances of finding gainful
employment in my chosen field.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
However, the old saying says, “‘C’s get degrees”, and
besides, the rest of my grades had been almost all A’s. I hoped that any
potential employers wouldn’t be looking too closely at my actual grades.
Unfortunately, when you’re trying to enter a field for which you have no
practical experience, employers don’t have much else to judge you by. As it
was, one job I applied to did ask me to send copies of my transcripts. I
complied with their wishes, with little hope of success, and – as expected – I never
heard back from them.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The three problems I had with finding work in geography were
location, location, location. There was just nothing available in Butt County. Most
of the jobs I could even hope to get would have required relocating, which wasn’t
really feasible. The closest place I could have found work would have been in
the state capitol, Sacramento, and that would have been a very difficult
commute, as I had no desire to live there. In fact, I did apply for a state job
there, and even traveled down for the civil service test, which consisted of
both a written and an oral exam. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I quickly found out that oral exams are the most awful
things in the whole broad spectrum of job search hurdles. Having already gotten
over 70 jobs, I had become fairly adept at the art of the interview, but an
oral exam combines the worst aspects of an interview with the stress of trying
to answer questions without benefit of pen and paper. For some reason, oral
exams always seem to involve three interrogators, rather than the usual
one-on-one of an interview. I’m not very
fast at thinking on my feet, and here I had three people staring me in the face
and expecting me to answer questions off the top of my nervous head. At one
point, I mistook their request for an explanation of the term “topology” in
relation to GIS for “topography”. I think my answer included a fairly good
definition of topography, but it certainly didn’t answer the question. In fact,
I’m sure I appeared to just be babbling. I did wonder at the time why they were
looking at me funny, and I really wondered later why they didn’t see where the
mistake lay and give me a chance to correct myself. Needless to say, I didn’t
get that job.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I’ve had to endure a few more oral exams since then, for
various types of jobs, and I can safely say that I’ve never passed a single
one. I don’t know if they represent a valid way of evaluating applicants, but
they certainly seem to be effective at keeping me from getting hired for the
job in question.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
Job #73: Cage(d)
Cashier<o:p></o:p></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
While I was engaged in the increasingly hopeless task of
looking for a job in geography, I also needed to think about how I was going to
feed my family. One of the local Native American casinos was advertising for
cashiers. I applied and was hired for the swing shift. I was the only guy
locked in a cage with a bunch of women, which sounds like the plot of a Z-Grade
exploitation film, but wasn’t nearly that fun.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It’s already established that I’ve never been good with
money, and, to my chagrin, this extended to the simple task of making change.
At the end of the night, my cash register drawer almost never balanced with
what I had started with, usually to the negative. It was never a huge amount,
but I was giving a little too much change to some lucky recipients. It became
something of a joke, but amazingly, they kept me on.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
Job #74: GIS
Technician (!)<o:p></o:p></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Meanwhile, I still kept my eye on the geography market.
Soon, my fortunes seemed to take a turn for the better. A lady who ran a small consulting
firm in College Town needed a part-time GIS technician. Her daughter had previously
filled that role for her while she was in the geography program at the
university, but she had recently departed for a real job in a city far away.
Fortunately, she didn’t ask to see my grades, and I was able to talk my way
into the job with a combination of sincerity, charm and a little bullshit.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I continued to work at the casino while I worked part-time
at the consulting firm. My wages at the casino were decent, but my new job paid
a whopping 15 dollars an hour, which the highest wage I had ever earned. So I
was feeling pretty good about my situation. I occasionally felt as though I was
paying for the bullshit part of my interview because I sometimes found myself
stymied by some aspect of the GIS software. I had to call my employer’s
daughter a couple of times for help, which caused my boss to question her
hiring of me. However, in some ways that job was a bit bullshit itself. It
turned out that the GIS software she had me using was the same student version
I had used when I was in school. Obviously her daughter had provided her with a
copy of it. So she wasn’t even paying for the software she was using for
profit, which is illegal. It also meant that we could get no updates or
technical support. I kept this fact in mind whenever my boss seemed
dissatisfied with my lack of experience.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Soon my boss got a rather lucrative contract, and she began
to pressure me to come to work full-time so we could get the project done in
short order. I was a little reluctant to quit my full time casino job for
short-term gain, but she assured me that she would have plenty of work for me
afterward. So urgent was she that I didn’t even give the casino the standard
two weeks’ notice of my departure. That was my second mistake. The first was
believing my other boss.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I have no doubt that she simply fucking lied to me. I went
to work full-time at her dodgy little firm, and thought that at last I had “arrived”
in the job market, with a good-paying “professional” job for which I had
studied at a university. I figured I was finally doing everything right. Even
my long-deceased father might have grunted approvingly from the belly of whatever
fish had mistakenly swallowed his bitter, bitter ashes.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I quickly finished the project she was so hot for, and no
sooner had I done so, then she laid me off, with the added insult that she
wished my GIS skills had been just a little better. I thought about reporting
her illegal use of the software, but didn’t follow through on that.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I petitioned the casino for my job back, but it had been clearly
stated at the time of my original hiring that failure to give a full two weeks’
notice was clear grounds for not being rehired. I continued to beg and plead, even
taking my case all the way up to the general manager. I explained that the only
reason I had not given sufficient notice was because of the pressure from my
duplicitous other employer. I think I had them on the verge of relenting, and at
one point one of my supervisors from the cashiers’ cage told me over the phone
that I could come back, and to give her a call later to finalize the details.
When I did call back, that supervisor was mysteriously unavailable, and one of
her male superiors told me that she had spoken in error and under no
circumstances would I be coming back. I was crushed. Perhaps if my drawers (the
cash ones, not the ones I wear) had balanced more often I might have had a
chance, but I’ll never know for sure.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
Job #75: Cashier,
7-11 Store<o:p></o:p></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Meanwhile, the winter holidays were fast approaching, and I
needed work. I started applying everywhere I could. One place was at one of the
three O-Town 7-11 franchises. Another was Walmart. I got hired at 7-11.
Seemingly moments later, Walmart called me for an interview on what would be
the second day of my new 7-11 job. I must have had an intuition. I agreed to
come in for the interview, because Walmart sounded like a better deal, but I had
already committed to 7-11, so I reported for training there.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It took only one day to convince me of the folly of that
decision. I’ve stated before that I’ve never been comfortable in fast paced
jobs, and working alone behind the counter of a busy convenience store/gas
station is the very definition of “fast-paced”. I thought I was in hell. The
young man who was training me seemed at ease in his job. He liked the
hurly-burly of it. He told me of one incident in which he had jumped over the
counter and tackled a man who was trying to run out of the store with a purloined
12-pack of beer. He had enjoyed the fracas, but I couldn’t imagine risking limb
and possibly life over your employer’s money.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Another interesting thing he told me was that I was going to
see “a lot of tit” (as he put it) on that job. Apparently a common way for
young women to get free products was by offering to show the clerk their breasts.
I guess this wouldn’t be very effective on female clerks, unless they were of a
certain persuasion. I also wondered what a clerk would do if he found the
proffered bosoms lacking in some way. Could he insist the woman had to pay cash,
or had he already agreed to give them their Slurpee just for the viewing? Even
the promise of boobs was not enough to convince me that this was a worthy job.
When Mrs. R picked me up after that first day, I said, “I think I’ll see what
Walmart has to offer.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
My Walmart interview was scheduled prior to when I was
supposed to report for my second day of training at 7-11, so I wasn’t even in
violation of any proprieties. If Walmart didn’t pan out, at least I could still
go to work at 7-11 until something better came along. The first thing they had
me do was take a sort of personality assessment.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I had encountered these sorts of tests before. The first one
was when I had applied many years before as a driver/salesperson for Schwan’s
Ice Cream. It was very similar to the infamous Minnesota Multi-Phasic Personality
Inventory, which I’d had a chance to look at when I worked at Children’s
Services. I wasn’t expecting to be bombarded by such a thing at Schwan’s, and I
almost ran screaming from the place in the middle of it. I wish I had. These
tests are designed in such an insidious manner that you just can’t win. If you
try to answer in a manner that you think your prospective employer would like,
say on a subject such as your attitude toward minor pilfering of office
supplies, you soon find yourself entrapped. Later questions may touch upon the
same subject, but the multiple choice answers are worded in such a way so as to
completely contradict your earlier answer.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
As it was, I made it through Schwan’s first interview after
the test, but quickly decided I didn’t want to work for such a weird, cultish-seeming
place. I declined their offer of a second interview. If I had passed that one,
the THIRD one would have been at my home. I had nothing to be ashamed of in my
home life – I just felt that was very invasive and none of their damned business.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But getting back to Walmart, their personality test wasn’t
nearly as mind-fucking as Schwan’s and some other places had been. Some of my
answers were geared toward trying to make them happy, but at least they didn’t
try to trip me up to the extent that Schwan’s test had. Right after the test,
my interviewer went over my answers with me. She only had an issue with one of
my responses. It had been a weird question having something to do with how an
employee who had been caught stealing should be treated. The response I chose
was that she should be discharged, obviously, but that was all. The response
they preferred I would have made had something to do with her misdeed also being
made known to her co-workers. My interviewer wanted to know why I hadn’t chosen
this. I said that I thought that would be a violation of not only her rights as
a person and a citizen of a free society, but that it was almost certainly in
contradiction of standard human resources practices, and possibly illegal. She
didn’t seem terribly satisfied with my response, but since it was the only
question I had “failed”, I passed the test. It did make me worry a little,
however, about what Walmart was willing to do to me if I ever violated one of
their rules.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
By the end of the interview, I was offered a job on the
truck crew. I didn’t really know exactly what that would entail, but it sounded
better than 7-11. I was essentially being hired as extra help for the
approaching holiday season, but there was the possibility of continued
employment after Christmas, so I accepted. I called 7-11 and said thanks, but
no thanks, and I wouldn’t be coming in any more. Perhaps a slightly shitty
thing to do on such short notice, but it was a shitty job.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
Job #76: Walmart
Truck Crew<o:p></o:p></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I soon found out what truck crew was all about, and I was a
little surprised that they had hired a 43 year old man for the job. Most of the
people I was working with were about 20 years younger than me. I guess I somehow
looked fitter than I was. I’ve had less physically demanding jobs for which I
was given a physical examination to see if I was up to the tasks. Usually
companies are wary of having to make payments to injured workers. Walmart
seemed to have no such qualms. They probably changed their policy after me.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Truck crew is simple in concept, but brutal in practice. A
tractor-trailer would back into one of the two receiving bays. We would set up
a long, serpentine belt of little rollers at the back of the truck, then two
people would stand in the trailer and furiously unload boxes and shove them
down the line to the other workers, who would stack them on pallets according
to which department they were destined for. We usually unloaded two trucks a
night, but sometimes there were as many as three or four, especially the closer
we got to Black Friday, that much anticipated “biggest shopping day of the year”
that retailers dream off the rest of the year. However, even if it were only a “one
truck night”, all trucks seemed to have to be unloaded at the same fever pitch.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I tried to keep up as best I could, but it was murder. I was
so sore and tired at the end of each night, I sometimes wept when I got home. One
night I was one of the pair of people in the trailer. Apparently I wasn’t
getting boxes on the line fast enough, for at one point our supervisor stuck
his head into the trailer and screamed, “FREIGHT!” I thought he had said, “BREAK!”, and it was
with great relief that I stepped out of the trailer. Then I noticed nobody else
had stopped working. Realizing my error, I took a place along the line and
began transferring the boxes I had just unloaded onto a pallet. Somebody else
took my place inside the trailer and nothing was said about my mistake, if
anyone even noticed. I think they were all just satisfied that the freight was
now moving at an acceptable rate.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Eventually the rigors of the job took their toll upon my
body, and I was stricken with a horrible case of sciatica, which I’d had
problems with before. I had to go to the emergency room, and was off work for a
couple of days, and then I returned to work, but on light duty. By law, Walmart
couldn’t discharge with me a pending worker’s compensation case, but they didn’t
really have an open position that fit the requirements of “light duty” for
which I was qualified, so I was sort of left to my own devices. It may surprise
you to hear it, but I do have a work ethic, so I made work for myself. I began
limping about the store, finding misplaced merchandise and returning it to its
proper department. I got pretty elaborate about it. I borrowed a shopping cart,
and began carrying a roll of packing tape, some zip ties, a pair of scissors
and a one-hole punch, so I could make repairs on torn packages that didn’t hang
on their hooks properly. I kept quite busy that way, and no one seemed to worry
about me. Much later I found out that this role I had taken upon myself was
almost exactly the same as a position called “zoner”. Why no one had simply
told me to be a zoner was beyond me<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
A couple of weeks before Christmas, I had paused in my self-appointed
tasks to converse with an acquaintance of mine who was shopping. A call came
over the public address system asking me to come to the manager’s office. I
thought I was in trouble because I had been spotted slacking. No, that wasn’t
it at all. It was worse. It was explained to me that Black Friday hadn’t been
as profitable as they had hoped, and they had to lay off some of the extra
help. I’m sure the fact that I was an injured free agent factored into their decision.
Now they had a legal excuse to get rid of me. They gave me my final check,
which had a candy bar tied to it with a bow, and wished me goodbye, good luck
and merry Christmas. I left with mixed emotions. On one hand, I hated working
at Walmart, so I was glad to be rid of it. On the other hand, I wasn’t happy
about being unemployed again, but at least it wasn’t my fault.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And that seems as good a place to stop as any.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
The end.<o:p></o:p></div>
Rimpy Rimpingtonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13017152542056998917noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2282043488488474080.post-60581265900648040852015-12-27T15:21:00.000-08:002016-01-02T08:58:13.709-08:00Chapter 24: Mapping Out a Future<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
Chapter 24: Mapping
Out a Future<o:p></o:p></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYC4Hev2DQwYnvb8D1XuOYWP5Y-QPkeq6Ux-GMNFmRdBNDMWVK_G-QJUh1nCgRVEUeYnrLoc0SPvWXQC_VksQPWtVJ_0DsifQmvaBhkRVB1HaMIrryLyNh9nUxxHZIuVwB9TXvR344ips/s1600/cartographer.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="244" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYC4Hev2DQwYnvb8D1XuOYWP5Y-QPkeq6Ux-GMNFmRdBNDMWVK_G-QJUh1nCgRVEUeYnrLoc0SPvWXQC_VksQPWtVJ_0DsifQmvaBhkRVB1HaMIrryLyNh9nUxxHZIuVwB9TXvR344ips/s320/cartographer.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
Jobs 67 - 72<o:p></o:p></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
1997 - 1998<o:p></o:p></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
Job #67: Taxi Driver<o:p></o:p></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
After I left Turkey, I was able to get a job with one of
O-Town’s two local cab companies. Unfortunately, I first had to pay 100 dollars
I could ill afford to the city of O-Town for a permit to operate a cab. I had
to pass a government-level background check and be fingerprinted and all that
jazz. I was surprised that mere cab driving required such scrutiny, but
considering the generally sleazy nature of most of the cab drivers I met, it’s
probably for the best that not just <i>anyone
</i>could drive a cab.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The cab company I worked for shared the name and color with
the most famous cab company in the country: Yellow Cab. And by “shared”, I mean
“stole” (I’m not really afraid of being sued by a guy who operates a small fleet
of cabs out of a dodgy auto salvage yard; besides – he’d have to admit to
stealing the name in order to sue me for saying it). It’s my understanding that
Yellow Cab, whose ubiquitous name and color can be found in just about every
city in the nation, franchises out those operations. There are, however, many small-time
operators who just use the color/name combo without so much as a “by your leave”
to the owner of the copyright. O-Town’s was one such operation, and I’m sure
the real Yellow Cab corporation in Chicago couldn’t be bothered about what was
going on in a Podunk town in northern California. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Yellow Cab’s rival also stole their name from another famous
cab company: Checker. The owner of Checker had once worked for Yellow until
going into business for himself. The competition between the two reached ridiculous
levels. Yellow started painting checkers on their cabs in order to confuse and
snag costumers from Checker, who responded by painting their cabs yellow.
Finally the city council had to step in and order that henceforth and
forevermore Yellow Cabs shall be yellow and Checker Cabs shall be checkered.
The two idiots probably spent more money painting and repainting their cabs
than they ever made from trying to steal each other’s passengers. Eventually
Checker went out of business, and for a while Yellow Cab was the only game in
town, but now there are a few smaller competitors to Yellow in O-Town. Shortly
after he officially shut up shop, the former owner of Checker was rumored to still
be hauling passengers for a fee in his private vehicle, which was illegal at
the time, so I guess it’s a good thing that the city required permits to drive
cabs. Now I suppose with the advent of such things as Uber, all bets are off.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Driving a cab was quite different from driving a paratransit
vehicle. We didn’t have meters in our cabs, so we used a “zone” system drawn on
a map of O-Town to determine the fares. There were two problems with this
system. First, the zone map had been drawn when the cab company had been under
different ownership and their office was located downtown. Now the office was a
couple of miles away from its original location. The price of fares had been
updated over the years, but the zones had not been redrawn to account for the
new location of the origination point of the cabs. This was unfair to
passengers and drivers for various reasons. If a passenger was making a short
trip near the current office, they were actually paying more for their ride
than someone making a trip of similar distance near the old office. By the same
token, the drivers weren’t making as much money despite having to drive a
couple of extra miles to transport someone near the old office. The company
owner, Nick, was also losing money through this oversight, since he got a
whopping 60 percent of our fares.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The other problem with the zone system was, of course, that
the lines between the zones had to be drawn somewhere, usually coinciding with
streets. If your destination was just on the far side of a zone line, the cost
of your ride jumped up considerably. I spent so much time arguing with
passengers over what they thought was a fair fare, among other things. I used
to wish so badly that we had meters in the cabs, so that no matter how unreasonable
the price may seem, at least the passengers couldn’t really argue with the
amount showing on the screen. Besides, they could have monitored how much their
ride was costing and asked to be let out short of their destination if it was
starting to exceed their budget.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
That’s a strange thing about cab rides – you often don’t
know how much it’s going to cost until the end of the ride, and you don’t have
to pay until the end. We had a flat “pick up” fee like most cab companies, and
the zone system at least made it possible to know in advance how much the ride
would cost. But there were additional fees, such as waiting, which was based
upon a certain price per minute. IF someone wanted me to wait while they ran
into a store or something before continuing their journey, that added to the
price. This usually ended in an argument about how long they thought they had
been away from the cab compared to my time-keeping. Again, if we’d had meters,
there wouldn’t have been room for dispute.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I usually got ripped off by people who said that someone
waiting for them at their destination had the money to pay for they ride. They’d
disappear into the house and I’d never see them again. One time I took two
teenage girls out to the reservation near one of O-Town’s two – count ‘em:TWO –
Native American casinos. At the time violent
inter-tribal rivalry necessitated that the entrances to the reservation neighborhoods
be closed to all vehicular traffic except those of residents. I stopped at the
gate while one of the girls walked in to purportedly get the money for their
fare. After several minutes of awkward waiting, I suddenly realized what was
about to happened. Sure enough, the second girl suddenly jumped out of the cab
and disappeared into the darkness as fast as her feet could carry her. I didn’t
even bother yelling. I certainly wasn’t going to run after her – I could just
imagine what might happen to a white man caught chasing a teenage girl through “the
Rez” at night.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Of course, all our pick-ups and drop-offs were logged by the
dispatcher, so if we got ripped off by a passenger, we still owed the owner his
60 percent for the time and use of his cab. We also had to pay for our own
fuel. So I had to become very careful. The only time we actually asked anyone to
pay upfront was for out-of-town trips. That was company policy. The dispatcher
would calculate the cost of the trip, and the passenger paid that amount before
we set out. For the local rides, though, if
I didn’t know someone, or had any reason to doubt their willingness or ability
to pay, I would sometimes ask to see their money before we started.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
O-Town is not like
New York, where it seems like every other car on the streets is a taxi, and you
could just hail one at any time. Since we had such a small fleet, and there
weren’t any “taxi stands” where someone could expect to find a cab, a person on
the streets could never know when or if a cab might pass by. Most of our rides
were called into the office, and then the next driver in the rotation was
dispatched to pick the passenger up. People could still hail us, but I quickly
learned that people hailing a cab in 0-Town usually didn’t have any money.
Often their decision to take a cab was a spur-of-the-moment thing based upon
the unexpected appearance of a cab crossing their path. If they’d been planning
on taking a cab, they would have called for one. The fact that they didn’t call
usually meant that they didn’t even have enough money for a pay phone. It’s sad
to report how many times I was accurate in this cynical assessment. Such
passengers were the mostly likely to “rabbit” on you at the end of the ride.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It didn’t take me long to figure out that cab driving under
such conditions as existed in O-Town at that time was just a money-losing
proposition. I worked a twelve-hour shift from 6 at night until 6 in the morning,
and some nights I barely made any money after paying the owner his lion’s share
of my fares and refueling the cab. Many nights it didn’t pay nearly as well as working
a normal human-type shift at a minimum wage job would have. Shortly after the
new year, I decided to call it quits. The owner actually tried to talk me out
of it, which was a new experience for me. I was flattered, but I just couldn’t
keep working such long hours for such low pay.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
1998<o:p></o:p></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
Job #68: Cement Work<o:p></o:p></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I found some temporary work with the step-father of our dear
old family friend Becky, Lurleen’s niece. He was a free-lance cement mason, and
a decent fellow. The work was sporadic, though, and nothing I could rely upon
for regular income.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
About this time I got pulled into one of many well-meaning
programs which people on public assistance and unemployment insurance often
find themselves. It was a series of job search workshops. I had been through
such programs before, so they didn’t have much that was new to teach me. They
did, however, offer instruction in job interview skills, which included video-taped
mock job interviews. That was actually quite valuable and helpful. They also
helped with job placement.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
Job #69: Crop Dusting Company<o:p></o:p></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
With their help, I got a weird, short-lived job working for
a crop-dusting company located in a remote corner of Butt County. Rice is a big
crop here, and this company needed extra help during the seeding and
fertilizing season, which was in full swing by now. We would meet at the
company’s hangar, and then convoy in various vehicles out to whatever rice farm
needed servicing that day. The basic set up was that a couple of open-top,
bottom-dump hopper trailers full of seed or fertilizer would be parked alongside
the “landing strip” (which was any piece of flat ground wide enough and long
enough for the duster to land and take off). A couple of people would be
stationed inside the hoppers with shovels to make sure the material all got
out. A special loading machine, powered by a tractor, would suck up the
material from underneath the trailers and transfer it into the hopper on the
duster. The duster could only hold enough material for one or two passes of a
typical rice paddy, so it was frequently landing and taking off. My usual job
was to jump up on one wing while another guy took the other wing when the pilot
landed. We would then clean the spattered bugs and dust off the windshield of
the plane during the brief refilling procedure, then jump off and run clear so
the pilot could roar off again for another pass or two. I really had to admire
the skill and bravery of those duster pilots to operate safely under such
conditions, which were often complicated by nearby power lines.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Of course, everything was done with great hustle. After a
couple of days of repeatedly clambering on and off of the wings of an airplane,
my nearly 40 year old body was just agonizingly sore. I begged off of that job,
claiming that my car was not sufficient to the commute, which it really wasn’t.
It was either that or ride with a co-worker I couldn’t stand.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It wasn’t long, though, before things started looking up for
me, and good thing, too. I had been going through hell personally since leaving
Turkey, and the financial fiasco of cab driving didn’t help. I went through one
of the longest and darkest depressions of my life. When I wasn’t sleeping off
my 12 hour shifts, I was surly and sullen to everyone around me. Mrs. R says
that on at least one occasion she actually found me curled up in a ball inside
our closed and dark bedroom closet. I have no memory of this, but I have no
reason to doubt her. I was really low.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But there was hope on the horizon. It centered upon a kernel
of an idea which had germinated when I was trucking. I was remembering how much
I had actually enjoyed my time as a paratransit driver, and I realized that one
of the things I liked best about the job was working with the elderly people
who comprised the greater part of our ridership. Oh, sure, some of them were
cranky, and some were downright demented, but for the most part they were an
enjoyable group of people to work with. I thought that if I had the chance, I
might like to return to school and learn to become a social worker specializing
in the elderly.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Now, I’ve said before that college and I were never a great
mix. I like to learn, and I’m good at it, but I don’t enjoy formalized
education. I had made some faltering attempts to return to college, but they
never lasted long. Despite my personal feelings about school, the real road block
to further education was my outstanding student loan debt. At the time, if you
owed the gubmint money, you were ineligible for further educational financial
assistance. Without that, college was out of the question for me. When Clinton
came into office, he changed that. I could go back to school if I wanted!<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And now I wanted to go to school. After scores of dead-end
jobs, I was ready to make good on my earlier idea of becoming a geriatric
social worker (before I myself became a geriatric). Despite my crushing
depression, I somehow managed to make all the necessary arrangements and fill
out the necessary forms for financial aid. I was slated to start school in the
fall of 1998. I was a little dismayed to find out that all the courses I had
taken when I was younger didn’t really count toward anything, so I was looking
at a full four years of college (two at the community college and two at the
university) before I could earn my bachelor’s degree.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
1998-1999<o:p></o:p></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
Job #70: Pizza Cook/Delivery "Boy"<o:p></o:p></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Now all I needed was a part-time job to supplement my
financial aid. That soon came in the form of a job at a pizza place. The owner
had a few independent video stores, one in O-Town, two in College Town and one
inside a supermarket all the way up in Alturas, California. He used to be a
manager at one of the supermarket chains in Butt County, before deciding to go
into the video business. He also opened a pizza restaurant next to the O-Town
store, and that’s where I worked. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
That was actually one of my favorite jobs.
Working in a pizza place is probably not something I would have chosen for a
career, but it was perfect as a part-time job for a middle-aged college
student. There were also a lot of perks. We got discounts on the food, and free
video rentals from next door. We also got free movies at work. The video store
had a few TVs hanging from the ceiling, as well as one piped into the pizza
place to show movies to shoppers and diners. The staff of the video chose what
to put on, and they weren’t always careful about whether the movie was strictly
family-oriented. I remember seeing the famous shower scene from “Sixteen
Candles” and the “draw me like one of your French girls” scene from “Titanic”
while working. I didn’t complain.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
My favorite part of the job was delivering the food. The
owner provided a car, so I didn’t have to worry about fuel, insurance and wear
and tear on my own vehicle. Sometimes I shake my head when I remember some of
the risks I took in pursuit of higher tips for a speedy delivery.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Meanwhile, my focus at school changed almost as soon as I
started. My first semester, I had to take a geography class as part of my
general education requirements. I discovered that I absolutely loved geography.
I quickly changed my major to it and began to pursue it with vigor. I planned
on becoming a cartographer. I had always loved maps, and I had this romantic
image of myself sitting at a drafting table, patiently drawing lines and dots
that represented the world. I was soon to learn that the new reality was much
different than my old-fashioned notion, and that would present some problems
further down the road. But I didn’t know that then, and was just happy to have
found something I was passionate about.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I probably could have happily worked at the pizza place for
the entire time I was in school, but it seems like whenever I find a job I like,
the universe seems to need to strike some kind of balance by taking it from me.
After about a year, the owner announced that he was going to have to close the
pizza place because it wasn’t showing a profit. I was sad. Now I had to find a
new job.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
1999 – 2001<o:p></o:p></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
Jobs # 71 and 72:<o:p></o:p><br />
Instructional Assistant and Geography Tutor</div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I had just started a new school year, and had become pretty
friendly with one of my professors, whose name was Scot (yes, with only one “t”).
He was a few years older than me, and had been a quadriplegic most of his adult
life due to an unfortunate collision with a submerged boulder while diving into
a local creek. His disability had not prevented him from achieving success in
college and life. He was now the chair (no pun intended) of the geography
department at the community college. One day after class I pushed his
wheelchair across the hall to his office, which he shared with a couple of
other professors. During the course of our conversation, I revealed that I was
looking for work, and he said they needed help in the geography office. I was
overjoyed. To actually work alongside the professors who were teaching my
favorite subject. It was like a dream come true that I hadn’t even dared to
dream.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I also worked for a time as a geography tutor in the
learning center at Butt College as part of my financial aid package. I didn’t
get many tutees. Geography really isn’t that hard.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In summation, I continued to work for Scot at the community
college even when I moved on to the university in College Town, so that was
actually one of the longer jobs I’ve had, if you don’t count winter and summer
breaks. I can’t really remember how I made ends meet during those lulls in
financial aid from the schools. I may have picked up work with Scoop from time
to time.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I will touch briefly upon some of things that happened
during my time at the Big U in the next chapter. I graduated in May of 2002,
and my work history continued to take some interesting turns and bumps, but the
overall rate at which I changed jobs began to decrease. We only have 13 more to
go until we reach my current job.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
By the way, at the time of this writing (December 27, 2015),
tomorrow will be my fifth-year anniversary at my current job, making it my
longest job by about a year and half over its predecessor. Hurray?<o:p></o:p><br />
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
The end.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
Rimpy Rimpingtonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13017152542056998917noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2282043488488474080.post-18669117511795322992015-11-29T14:17:00.002-08:002016-01-02T08:54:38.808-08:00Chapter 23: Student With Idiot For Trainer<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
Chapter 23: Student With
Idiot for Trainer<o:p></o:p></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
Jobs 64 – 66<o:p></o:p><br />
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
1997<o:p></o:p><br />
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
Job 64: Long Haul Truck Driver<o:p></o:p><br />
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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?<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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”.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh38ZApl2ehDzu2LpFVnrxpNs_TPFQFSbk0Hy1c2xxvH5B5Kf3G4jtV9jf889ocR1WZBDoOPt6pIXBuZnqhjwQ9YrRMJsuBWISkYxG3LBDjhKXOrjvv_7mEBVRqWEWltInRKKIcM-ZTNQY/s1600/lobster_plush_animal_634570104830687989_1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="190" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh38ZApl2ehDzu2LpFVnrxpNs_TPFQFSbk0Hy1c2xxvH5B5Kf3G4jtV9jf889ocR1WZBDoOPt6pIXBuZnqhjwQ9YrRMJsuBWISkYxG3LBDjhKXOrjvv_7mEBVRqWEWltInRKKIcM-ZTNQY/s320/lobster_plush_animal_634570104830687989_1.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">No! Not like that! Jesus.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
Job 65: Milk Truck Driver<o:p></o:p></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
Job 66: Long Haul Truck Driver (again)<o:p></o:p></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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.<o:p></o:p><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
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.<o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
The end.<o:p></o:p></div>
Rimpy Rimpingtonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13017152542056998917noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2282043488488474080.post-44965672711700602672015-11-15T16:00:00.001-08:002016-01-02T08:51:24.127-08:00Chapter 22: Highs and Lows<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
Chapter 22: Highs and Lows<o:p></o:p></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFOPRdIKb9tbdMh_2u1M1uNCaDmB5BsbFgf2fK34CinvGv_2BdDyIjPbuhzP73C00rFMIkxSCfNXpKCoVKJPvSHj60ccZMGrzU6YehIyaYOiVXTV_AbRMlQ4su5_GTJUsuBEMDB469p5A/s1600/paratransit_ext_LRG.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="189" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFOPRdIKb9tbdMh_2u1M1uNCaDmB5BsbFgf2fK34CinvGv_2BdDyIjPbuhzP73C00rFMIkxSCfNXpKCoVKJPvSHj60ccZMGrzU6YehIyaYOiVXTV_AbRMlQ4su5_GTJUsuBEMDB469p5A/s320/paratransit_ext_LRG.png" width="320" /></a></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
Jobs 60 – 63<o:p></o:p></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
1993 -1995<o:p></o:p></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
Job # 60: Para-transit Driver/Dispatcher<o:p></o:p></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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!?”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
Job #61: Appliance Delivery<o:p></o:p></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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!”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
1995-1996<o:p></o:p></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
Job #62: Para-transit/Fixed Route Driver<o:p></o:p></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
Job #63: Community Service (Mail Room)<o:p></o:p></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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 <i>am </i>getting ahead of myself, aren’t
I?<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And with that shocking admission, I bid you adieu until next
time.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
The end.<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
Rimpy Rimpingtonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13017152542056998917noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2282043488488474080.post-25942080659646808982015-11-09T17:40:00.002-08:002016-01-02T08:47:24.159-08:00Chapter 21: Death, Birth and Canned Goods<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
Chapter 21: Death,
Birth and Canned Goods<o:p></o:p></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
Jobs 53 – 58<o:p></o:p></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
1989<o:p></o:p></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
Job #54: Self-Employed Gardener<o:p></o:p></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
Job #55: Assistant Landscaper<o:p></o:p></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
1990<o:p></o:p></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
Job #56: "The" Cannery<o:p></o:p></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
Job #57: Olive Cannery<o:p></o:p></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
Jobs #58 and 59<o:p></o:p></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
1990 and 1991-1992<o:p></o:p></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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”.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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!<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Well, Rimpyette was born about two hours into…you guessed it…September
21<sup>st</sup>. 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!<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
The end.<o:p></o:p></div>
Rimpy Rimpingtonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13017152542056998917noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2282043488488474080.post-15697849939592713742015-11-02T15:57:00.000-08:002016-04-03T14:51:44.642-07:00Chapter 20: Be AWOL You Can Be<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
Chapter 20: Be AWOL
You Can Be<o:p></o:p><br />
<br />
Jobs #48 - 53</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjszUri7ZPv6kjTIieRCpakmMqYvQ0IvfnpyP6wiFckQ5ewJyGV-yRMsgWxI3IhZjD0boMx9sqyCB7T1ZFgWnCUVMgBkOMhKs4RDo7D6Ov04bYYEgTZpmcQzskKKZhUbbSIEi80koyEXx4/s1600/beale.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjszUri7ZPv6kjTIieRCpakmMqYvQ0IvfnpyP6wiFckQ5ewJyGV-yRMsgWxI3IhZjD0boMx9sqyCB7T1ZFgWnCUVMgBkOMhKs4RDo7D6Ov04bYYEgTZpmcQzskKKZhUbbSIEi80koyEXx4/s1600/beale.jpg" /></a></div>
<span id="goog_1028190724"></span><span id="goog_1028190725"></span><br /></div>
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1987<o:p></o:p></div>
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Job # 48: PFC (continued)<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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).<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
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Job #49: Telemarketing<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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?<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
Job #50: Assistant Landscaper<o:p></o:p></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
1987<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
Job #51: Office Manager<o:p></o:p></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
1987-1988<o:p></o:p></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
Jobs #52 and 53: Clerk-Typist<o:p></o:p></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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.<o:p></o:p><br />
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
The end.<o:p></o:p></div>
Rimpy Rimpingtonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13017152542056998917noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2282043488488474080.post-49932487511190369652015-10-25T16:20:00.002-07:002016-01-02T08:36:26.246-08:00Chapter 19: Private Parts<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
Chapter 19: Private
Parts<o:p></o:p></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
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<br /></div>
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Job 48: PFC (continued)<o:p></o:p></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
1986<o:p></o:p></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Now that I had “graduated” from Fitness Company to real
basic training, the yelling really began in earnest. It was quite unsettling. I
was bused to a distant part of the seemingly endless Fort Jackson and mustered
into a large auditorium with hundreds of other nervous new recruits. Then a
strange thing happened. The drill sergeants told us that if any of us were
having second thoughts, now was our chance to back out, but with a catch. They
said that if any of us had withheld any information that would have barred us
from entering the Army, now was the time to ‘fess up, and we could be on our
way, no more questions asked.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
As a matter of fact, I was thinking that I had made a
horrible mistake, and there was something I had withheld. I held up my hand,
and joined a small group of other new-comers in another room to make our
confessions. A DI (drill instructor) came up to me to ask what I hadn’t
admitted. I told him I’d lied about not using hallucinogens. He told me that he
hoped I started having a flashback right then and there so he could kick my
ass. I appreciated his candor, despite his lack of understanding about how
drugs work.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Finally I got to a table behind which sat a more
reasonable-seeming DI. I told him my sin, and he basically said that it wasn’t
so bad, so I was going to have to stay. I’m not sure what the point of that
whole exercise had been. I guess they wanted to make sure they weren’t taking
anyone <i>really</i> unsuitable, or just to
see who the quitters were. As it was, I didn’t hear anymore about my illicit
drug history (mild though it was), but I felt like I had been lied to. I was
embarrassed for admitting to something uncomfortable, and it hadn’t even gotten
me what I’d hoped it would. At least I never again saw that one DI who wanted
to see me start gibbering and hiding from the moon or god knows what.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
So began the long weeks of basic training. As time went by,
I even managed to adapt to the rigors of such an existence. I still had occasional
bouts of extreme depression, and even thoughts of suicide at times when I felt
like it was the only way to get out of that excruciating situation In general
though, there wasn’t a lot of time to dwell on one’s problems, and I even have
some pleasant memories of that time. That’s the nice thing about memory: we
seem to remember the good stuff more than the bad of difficult times.<br />
One of the best memories I have from BT (and which I can’t
really work into this narrative in a seamless way, so I’ll just bung it in
here) is one that still makes me laugh out loud today. It happened on bivouac,
which is a fancy army way of saying “camping”. We were learning what it was
like to work and fight in the field and sleeping among the sparse, piney woods
of the south east in tents at night. There was one private from a large city
who had never been in the “woods” before. He had an unusually large concern
about encountering snakes (which we never did). The rest of us found his phobia
amusing, and then somewhat annoying. The first night, I was in my two-person
tent with my buddy Rogers (whose first name I can’t remember because in the army
we only ever addressed each other by our last names). The quiet was suddenly
shattered by the sound of a huge explosion some distance away. We weren’t sure
if maybe this wasn’t some drill that required a response on our parts. When we
heard nothing more, I ventured to whisper, “What the fuck was that?”. After a
brief pause of perfect comedic timing, Rogers said, “Maybe…it was a snake.” I
couldn’t roar with laughter the way I wanted to for fear of an ass-kicking by a
DI, but I giggled into my sleeping bag for the next several minutes<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
One thing that helped get me through BT was Vicks Formula
44-D. I was allowed to take this for my persistent “barracks lung”, even though
it had a surprisingly high alcohol content. Every night just before lights out
I would have my little cough syrup “night cap”, and I slept quite well until
reveille, which always came way too early for my tastes.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
One of my favorite parts of basic training was BRM (Basic
Rifle Marksmanship). I had fired guns before, and I seemed to be a naturally
good shot, but in the Army I found I had a real talent for it. I wasn’t exactly
sniper quality, but I quickly got a reputation for my skills. Don’t worry – I didn’t
wind up like Vincent D’Onofrio in “<i>Full
Metal Jacket</i>”. I was just glad to have something for which I could get
praise in a world full of Dads in BDUs.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
One day I was at my position on the shooting range. We were
taking a break, while one of our DI’s was accompanying the captain and
lieutenant of our company on an inspection of our targets. The group paused at
my target and looked at my tight shot grouping, and then they turned and looked
admiringly at me. I was very proud, but a little nervous at all the attention.
I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to salute or wave or what, so I just stood
still and nodded back.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Towards the end of BT, we were graded on our marksmanship,
of which there were three levels (from lowest to highest): marksman,
sharpshooter and expert. We were given forty bullets to shoot at forty plastic targets
which popped up from behind little hillocks. They varied in their speed and
distance. One was called “Fast Freddy”, and he had a cousin named “Quick Rick”.
Everyone in my platoon expected me to be a “Dead Eye” and get all 40. However, I
missed Fast Freddy and one of the furthest targets. I was a little disappointed
at not getting them all, but it was enough to make me an expert marksman. There
were actually a couple of soldiers in our battalion who got “Dead Eye”. They
didn’t get a special medal for their acumen, but they got the dubious honor of
the “Blood Badge”, which meant that when the DI attached their “Expert” badge
to their field jacket, he slapped it into their chest before the little clips
were put on the back of the pins that poked through the cloth. When I heard
about that, I was quite content with my measly score of 38 out of 40.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Even more than shooting guns, my favorite part of BT was
meal times. I’ve always been a fan of free food, and the Army wasn’t stingy
with the vittles, and it wasn’t bad either, despite jokes you may have heard
about “shit on a shingle”. The other nice thing about mess hall was that for
some reason the DI’s didn’t scream at you while you were eating. Maybe too many
privates had choked or thrown up from stress (or choked on their stress vomit).
So meal times were like islands of peace and comfort food in a sea of stress. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Actually, there was one time when they did holler at us
during mess. For some reason one day a small group of female privates were
dining in our mess hall. We males kept sneaking peaks at the girls. Finally the
DI’s decided to just get it over with. They made us Joes stand up, then they
ordered us to either “look left” or “look right”, (depending on which way we
were facing) so we could good get a good look at “Molly”, and then meal time
continued on schedule.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Other than one female DI, we often went for weeks without
seeing women. One day we were practicing crawling under barbed wire, which is
apparently something that happens a lot in the real world of warfare. A small group
of Mollies was drilling on the same field, but they were kept off to the side,
away from us. I was in a line of privates on the edge of the practice field,
closest to Molly, who were separated by several empty tracks. We were doing the
low crawl, which meant we couldn’t really see where we were going, and we
couldn’t lift our heads because of the barbed wire. I just tried to follow the
guy in front of me as best I could. I kept glancing forward to keep him in
sight, and I began to think, “I guess I’ve been without the company of women
for too long, because this private has a really nice ass.” Then I discovered I
had somehow gotten way off track and was following one of the females. I got
yelled at, but it was worth it to know I wasn’t turning gay.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Getting back to the subject of meal time: somebody had to
help prepare all that food. Each mess hall had a sergeant in charge of the
kitchen, and a small, permanent staff of underlings, but most of the grunt work
was performed by us trainees. They couldn’t get anyone to volunteer for “Kitchen
Patrol” (at least, not more than once), so each day a few luckless, random
privates were pulled away from whatever training was on tap that day to work in
the mess. When my turn came, I was marched into the mess hall along with
several others from the battalion. We lined up in front of the mess sergeant,
who wrote mysterious letters upon pieces of masking tape which were placed on
the front of our caps. This way everyone knew where we were supposed to be.
Mine said, “P&P”, which I didn’t understand, but I was hoping it stood for
something nice, like “Pies & Pastries”. No – it meant “Pots & Pans”. For the next 16 hours,
all I did was scrub pots and pans – extremely large pots and pans. After all,
we were feeding an army. It was probably the toughest assignment one could land
on KP.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I had a partner from my platoon helping me with the P&P,
and I found I wasn’t the biggest wimp in the Army. After a few hours, this guy
couldn’t stop whining about how much his feet hurt. I was tired and sore, but my
feet were okay, so I regarded his complaints with disdain. Finally, after the
last pot (or maybe it was a pan) had been cleaned after the evening meal, I
slouched back to my platoon. After wearing my cap in the kitchen all day, I
forgot it was still on my head. For some reason, under normal circumstances, you’re
not supposed to wear your cap indoors. I stumbled through the door, and one of DI’s
was standing there. He just looked at me. I didn’t wait to be told. I pulled
off my cap and dropped and starting banging out 25 push-ups – the standard
punishment for minor infractions. A great home-coming after a hard day.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
You would think that with all the push-ups we did in the
normal course of our days, and the extra ones doled out as punishment, that I
should have been a ripped, push-up monster. Actually, I didn’t have to do a lot
extra push-ups on my own account, because I was good at doing what I was told,
and I didn’t make trouble. Most extra push-ups were done <i>en masse</i> because one private had fucked up, so we all suffered.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But despite all the opportunities for practice, push-ups
were still the bane of my military existence. At the very end of BT, I didn’t
graduate with my platoon because I still couldn’t quite pass the stinking
push-up test. I had become friends with a few of the other guys, and all us had
been through this amazing experience together (except one guy who tried to kill
himself by taking an overdose of aspirin and had been discharged). I was
humiliated and downcast.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I didn’t go back to Fitness Company, but I was stuck in the
now mostly deserted battalion barracks with a few other weaklings. At least
some of them were girls, who are always better company than guys. Over the next
week or two, we did a lot of exercise, and eventually I barely managed to do
enough of those damned push-ups to pass on to my AIT.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The radio operator school was at Fort Gordon, near Columbia,
Georgia – which is only about 100 miles from Ft. Jackson. A private from
another battalion and I were the only ones headed for Ft. Gordon at that time.
We were given our orders for our change of assignment (I’m sure there was an
official name for such papers, but I can’t remember what that was) and we were dropped
off at the local Greyhound station. I had been hoping that we might get a
little time off before having to report to our new post. On the bus ride, I
noticed that although the date of our exit from Ft. Jackson was that day, the
date of having to report to Ft. Gordon wasn’t until the next day. When we
arrived in Columbia, I called the phone number on the orders and asked the
clerk on duty if I was correct in my interpretation of the orders, which he
confirmed.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
So – a night of freedom, after all. My new buddy and I
rented a motel room, and then we proceeded to explore the nightlife of
Columbia, Georgia (which ain’t much) and get blind, stinking drunk. I won’t go
into the details about some of the mayhem that occurred that night. Let’s just
say that neither of us will probably ever be welcomed back at that motel. The
next day we reported for duty at Ft. Gordon with massive hangovers.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Advanced Individual Training was easier than boot camp.
There were still the usual obsessions with exercise and clean barracks, but
most of our time was spent in class, learning our chosen specialties. The school
was done in two shifts. My company’s classes were the during the second shift.
We’d get up at 8 in the morning (which seemed really decadent after being
rousted out of bed at 4 AM in BT), have breakfast and do our usual Army stuff
for several hours, then have lunch, and then march across base to the school,
where we would be stay until late in the evening. Then we’d march to a
different mess hall for a late dinner, then be bused back to our barracks. Part
of our march crossed a huge parade field. There was a forest on one edge of the
field, and it was actually quite inspiring to hear our march songs echo back at
us from the wall of trees.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I had a hard time adapting to such a schedule. Considering
how late we were at school, 8 AM still seemed rather early for reveille. I’ve
always been a morning person, and being in school after dark was really hard
for me. I was often punished by the sergeant in charge of our class for dozing
off at my desk.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Classes and our company we co-educational, but Joe and Molly
slept in separate buildings. In AIT there wasn’t the draconian proscription
against “fraternization” as there had been BT. There was also a lot more free
time when we weren’t in class. In fact, we essentially had our weekends to
ourselves. Most of the time they were spent on the base, but we could go
anywhere we wanted with in that vast space. There was even a civilian-run taxi
service, and a bar! With alcohol and everything! Not a great idea for a drunk
like me. Sometimes we were even given passes to spend our weekends off-base. On
those occasions, most soldiers rented rooms in the same motel for purposes of co-ed
partying. I wasn’t interested in hanging out with the same people I’d been with
all week, so when I got a weekend pass, I rented a single room at the Columbia Holiday
Inn. I checked in during the wee hours of the morning, and the first thing I
did was sleep. The room was dark and quiet and no one bothered me, and I slept the
sleep of the dead. When I awoke it was still dark out. I thought my watch must
have stopped or something, but I confirmed the date and time with the front
desk. I had slept a staggering 18 hours! I guess I had a deficit to make up
for.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I was well-rested, which felt great, but now I was wide
awake in the middle of the night. It was too late to go anywhere. I ordered
room service, watched TV, took a long bath, even got in some leisurely hobby
practice in complete privacy, but mostly I was bored and lonesome, so I was
actually glad to get back to the base.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
All that free time and access to alcohol wasn’t really a
good thing for me. Booze is a depressant, and I had more time to ruminate on
what I was doing with my life, for which the answer was still, “I don’t know,
but I don’t like what I’m currently doing.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Eventually I became desperate to get out of the army. I kept
trying to find a way out, but I had signed an iron-clad contract. They just
weren’t going to let me out, no matter how much I begged. I finally hit upon a
technique used by people much better than I, for causes more noble. I went on a
hunger strike. I just stopped eating. Of course, being hungry didn’t make it
any easier to do all the push-ups we were still forced to perform, but I
persisted. My biggest mistake was wandering into the base PX (Post Exchange),
which was a full-fledged supermarket. I felt like Robin Williams’ Russian
defector in “<i>Moscow on the Hudson</i>” – overwhelmed
by a bewildering array of food choices, and I almost passed out like he did.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Soon word of my shameful hunger strike got to the right
people. I suppose that technically they could have charged me with disobeying a
direct order and chucked me in the brig and force-fed me or something. They
apparently didn’t want to go to all that trouble, and they grudgingly gave me
my discharge.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It’s difficult for me to admit this. On one hand, I feel
proud that I was able to do this thing which took a lot of will power to get
out of a seemingly inescapable situation. However, I’m not proud of being essentially
a pussy, when many fine people have bravely served in the military, even ones
who didn’t want to go but were drafted. I don’t usually tell anyone I was in
the service, especially veterans, because I don’t want to have to tell them that
I got an early discharge. And I really don’t want the subject to come up of
just how I achieved that rare privilege.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Of course, paper work never moves very quickly in the Army,
so it took a few more weeks for my discharge to actually come through. I gladly
started eating again, but meanwhile, I just banged about, going through the
motions of attending class and all the other stuff – and getting drunk on the
weekends.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
One Sunday night I had been partying all night. It felt like
my discharge was never going to come through, and as the sun came up on another
day in the Army, I couldn’t take it anymore. I had just gotten paid, so I packed
some civilians clothes in my duffle bag, caught a cab to the airport and
boarded a flight to San Francisco.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I had sobered up a bit by the time my plane landed. I didn’t
know if the army would come looking for me, but I thought it might be a good
idea not to just go back to Butt County – the last known residence they had for
me. Of course, this was in the “good old days” – long before 9-11 – when you
didn’t have to show ID to book a domestic flight. So PFC Rimpy Rimpington got
off a plane in San Francisco, and a few minutes later a person matching my
description by the name of Max Rockatansky bought a ticket to Seattle. Some of
you may recognize that name from a popular film franchise, but in 1986 the
ticket clerk didn’t even blink, except at having to spell it.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
So I winged my way northward once again - no plan in my crazy
head, other than not being in the Army any more. Of course, you can’t just walk
away from the military, unless you plan to stay Max Rockatansky forever and
never use your social security number. Maybe some people have done that, but it
sounded like an even drearier existence than I’d already led. So job #48 didn’t
end when I got on that plane in Columbia. There’s a bit more to wrap that up
after my escapades on the lam, but that’s a story for another chapter.<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
The end.<o:p></o:p></div>
Rimpy Rimpingtonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13017152542056998917noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2282043488488474080.post-56492129246891512682015-10-18T19:45:00.000-07:002016-01-02T08:35:27.721-08:00Chapter 18: PFC Rimpy<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
Chapter 18: PFC Rimpy<o:p></o:p></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6MzZ3tq0owfCtKuOvHrywjFlTFyo9lzwYS4D_Dpu1kioPzwCUrFHQ_ACzshovf5WIUgLtrFGSUxeZXVAvXn4Uvl97CiLcuOlIciY-TsUUtnQDE9Ejm1KJs6gy876i99yksRPdSWc6r1o/s1600/hqdefault.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6MzZ3tq0owfCtKuOvHrywjFlTFyo9lzwYS4D_Dpu1kioPzwCUrFHQ_ACzshovf5WIUgLtrFGSUxeZXVAvXn4Uvl97CiLcuOlIciY-TsUUtnQDE9Ejm1KJs6gy876i99yksRPdSWc6r1o/s320/hqdefault.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">It's nothing like this.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
Job 48: Private First Class, United States Army<o:p></o:p></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
1985 - 1986<o:p></o:p></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I arrived back in Butt County during a period of very
pleasant warmish weather, which is not unusual in November. It was a wonderful
feeling after the chill and wet of Seattle, but that was the only good thing about my situation. I had
no job, no money and worst of all, no place to stay. I’d sleep on friends’
couches when I could, but I was beginning to wear out my welcome most places I
went, because I had developed a bit of a drinking problem. If I could get my
hands on some booze, I’d drink to excess, and then I became extremely
obnoxious.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It wasn’t long until I found myself having to take shelter
under a bridge for the night. I had become a bum. There weren’t any billy goats
in the neighborhood, so I couldn’t even make a living as a troll. My father, during
one of his innumerable lectures on the importance of finding a vocation and
becoming very good at it, once said that even if I was going to be a bum, to be
the best bum I could be. I’ve never been sure if “the best bum” would be the
most pathetic bum, or the one with the best cardboard box, shopping cart and
other accoutrements of bum-dom. I seemed
to fall into the former category, because despite having gone on numerous
guided backpacking trips in my teens, I had no experience with urban camping.
However, I did pick a pretty good bridge, so maybe my dad would have been a
little proud of me.<o:p></o:p></div>
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I had the bridge to myself, because it was a bit off the
usual paths beaten by College Town’s homeless, whose population wasn’t nearly
as large in those days as it is now. The flat part of the embankment was only
about three feet from the underside of the concrete bridge, so it was actually
very dry under there. One rainy night, though, I couldn’t fall asleep because I
had this irrational fear that the creek would rise and sweep me away to a cold
and watery death.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Desperate times call for desperate measures, and by the time
morning finally arrived, I had made a desperate decision. Perhaps my father’s
phrase “be the best bum you can be” was banging around in my head and reminding
me of “Be all you can be”, for I went to the local U.S. military recruiting
office and volunteered for job number 48: the United States Army (the toughest job you'll ever love). I settled on
the Army because I didn’t qualify for the Air Force, and I had heard horror
stories about the Navy. The Coast Guard was also out of the question, because,
honestly, I don’t like boats. Of course, I didn’t even consider the Marines,
since I’m not a tough guy, not by any stretch of the imagination. As it turns
out, I was barely tough enough for even the Army.<o:p></o:p></div>
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I wanted to make a good impression on my future employer,
Uncle Sam, so I went to the library and studied for the ASVAB (Armed Services
Vocational Aptitude Battery), a series of tests to determine what MOS (Military
Occupational Specialty – the military really likes acronyms and initialisms)
you’re suited for, and I got a good score. However, I was in dire need of
money, food and shelter, so I wasn’t choosey about which MOS I selected. I went
with the unglamorous Single Channel Radio Operator because it was the soonest
one available. Additionally, because I had some college credits, I was able to
enter the service as a Private First Class, which is the third level of privacy.<o:p></o:p></div>
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As it was, I wouldn’t
be departing for basic training until January, so I still had the problem of
where I was going to stay until then. Fortunately, just the fact that I was entering
the military made people feel more kindly toward me than the average bum. I
went to the state employment office to see if I could get Unemployment
Insurance Benefits from my rash of jobs in Washington. Technically, I didn’t
quite qualify, but the lady who interviewed me had been in the service, so she
approved my claim. Also, the Catholic Ladies Relief Society took pity on this
nice young man who was about to serve his country, and they put me up for a few
nights at a flea-bag motel.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Then the best thing of all happened. I had to go to O-Town
to take care of some sort of official document business in relation to going
into the service. As I was leaving the county clerk’s office, I ran into my
dear old friend “J”. You remember me saying a few chapters back that Mrs.
Rimpington’s first named started with “J”? You remember me mentioning in the
last chapter having had a brief romantic interlude with the future Mrs. Rimpington?
Yes! They are one and the same woman! We had been close friends since high
school, but I had lost contact with her for a couple of years, what with all my
gallivanting off to Washington and general instability. And suddenly here she
was, in what some may call a chance meeting, but which I call “fate”. I look
back on that moment as probably the most important in my life. It feels like
that was when my life truly began.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Of course, I didn’t know that at the time. It’s not like
romance was instantly rekindled. We were just old friends who were happy to see
each other. I caught her up on all I had been up to in the last couple of
years, and more importantly, what I was about to do. She was surprised by my
choice of the military. In fact, all my friends who knew me well were a little
incredulous when they heard the news. They knew I wasn’t really the army type.
I should have listened to them, but once again I’m getting ahead of myself!<o:p></o:p></div>
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J invited me to stay with her for a few weeks. I then
relocated to my brother’s house in Sacramento for the last few weeks until it
was time for me to fly off to South Carolina for basic training. J was sharing
a rental house with our old friend Lurleen. J had an 8 year old daughter from a
previous marriage named…hmm…what to call her here? Now I usually call her
Step-Rimpyette in my writings, but she wasn’t a step-child yet. I’ll just call
her “B” for now.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Lurleen had a little boy we shall call “Z”, with her
estranged husband Scoop. J also had her young cousin “C” living with her. It
was a happy, crowded little house, and I was welcomed warmly. It was wonderfully
soothing to someone who was between the recent unpleasant experience of
sleeping under a bridge, and an uncertain future in the military.<o:p></o:p></div>
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As the weeks passed, true affection began to develop between
me and J. Silly boy about love that I was, I don’t think I knew exactly what I
was feeling. I was also afraid to try to take it further because I was leaving soon for my brother’s house and then
on to the army. I knew I couldn’t stay indefinitely with J and the gang, but it
made me sad to have to leave this group of loving people.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Eventually the day came when I boarded a plane in Sacramento
for Columbia, South Carolina. During the flight, I reflected that all I knew
about “boot camp” was what I had seen in movies. I fully expected that the
screaming of orders and calls of “maggot” would start as soon as I stepped off
the bus at Fort Jackson. The recruiting office had given us a little practice
in marching and about-facing and whatnot so that we wouldn’t look like total
morons when we entered training. I was surprised to find that I knew the drill
sergeant who led us in those drills. He was the older brother of one of my
former roommates (the who worked at the rice cake factory). When I knew him
then, he was just a guy, going nowhere and having occasional run-ins with the
law. Now here he was, a sergeant in the U.S. Army, and looking very comfortable
in his new profession. It made me wonder if there was hope for me. <o:p></o:p></div>
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At the airport in South Carolina, I forget how they rounded
up us handful of recruits, who had arrived from various places around the
country. The staffers from Fort Jackson who herded us weren’t yelly drill
sergeant types, but they were somewhat impatient with us. Instead of a bus, we
piled into a couple of olive-drab vans for the ride to the base. We arrived in
the middle of the night, so nothing was really going on. We would have to wait
until the morning to receive our gear, so we were simply assigned some bunks
for the remainder of the night. <o:p></o:p></div>
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There wasn’t much remainder of the night, since the Army
likes to get an early start on its day. We were rousted out of bed, and then
the yelling started in earnest. Seems like you could never move fast enough for
the liking of anyone with power over you. That first full day was a blur,
especially after some 29 years. It was basically (pun intended) the sort of
things which, if you’ve never done it yourself, you’ve probably seen at the
movies: a fast and severe haircut, the issuance of uniforms, et cetera, all
accompanied by hollering non-commissioned officers. One important part of that
day, which I had not seen depicted in any popular entertainment, was a test of
our fitness to see if we were really fit for basic training.<o:p></o:p></div>
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I had already passed the Army’s physical, which was
admittedly rather perfunctory, so I was a little confused by this new test. I
thought that the point of basic training was to get you into shape for service.
Why did we need to prove fitness for getting fit? The test mainly consisted of
“how many push-ups can you do?” My result was “not many”. I’ve never much of a
physical type, and push-ups had always been a bit of a bug-bear for me in PE
classes in school. I had certainly not kept up on them in the years since.<o:p></o:p></div>
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I quickly found out what happened to those recruits who
didn’t pass the test: Fitness Company. Apparently the new, all-volunteer army
had realized that too many recruits were washing out of basic training because
of the physical rigors. So, if you weren’t already reasonably fit, they put you
in Fitness Company, which was like BT Lite. We didn’t get to do any of the fun
stuff like shooting guns or throwing grenades. We just spent most of our days
exercising to get our flabby bodies into the minimum condition needed for real
BT. Every other day was a “hard” day, full of calisthenics, running and other
PT. Alternate days were “easy”, which
usually consisted of slightly more enjoyable physical activities, like volley
ball. Great. I hated volley ball in high school, now I was playing it for my
country.<o:p></o:p></div>
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To their credit, the drill sergeants in charge of Fitness
Company didn’t make us feel bad about not being in “real” BT. It’s funny to
think that they it’s likely that they were teased by their peers in the rest of
the camp for their assignment to a bunch of sissies. They just wanted to get us
through it and on to the rest of our military training. A popular song sung
during marches and runs goes along the lines of, “from the east to the west, [insert
name of company here] is the best”. I thought it was ironic that we sang that
song in Fitness Company, because we so obviously weren’t the best.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Fitness Company was also pretty chill in that it was more
gender-mixed than the rest of BT. The guys and gals had separate quarters, of
course, but we were all in the same multi-story building, and we did our
training together, so I least I got to see and occasionally talk to females. One
day, during the dreaded volley ball, I noticed that one of the girls on the
opposing team always ducked when the ball came towards her. Oddly enough, one
of my few athletic skills is being good at “serving” a volley ball and sending
it exactly where I want to. When it came my turn to serve, I just served it
every time at that girl, who of course threw her hands over her head and
hunkered down rather hitting it back. Her teammates were reluctant to knock her
over to get to the ball before it hit the ground. My team won by a wide margin
thanks to my dastardly Scorpio “win at all costs” ploy.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Despite the the Fitness Company's co-ed training,
the Army strictly forbade fraternization between the sexes (which is a
weird choice of words because it literally means “turning people into brothers”).
One Sunday we were allowed to relax at a nearby base recreation center, but the
frivolity (such as it was) was brought to a screeching halt because a sergeant
spotted a “Joe” playing checkers with a “Molly”. Despite this rather
overweening proscription, I knew of some privates who risked punishment to
engage in late-night assignations in areas out of view of roving non-coms. I
wasn’t one of them, even though there was a girl who would have been willing - I
was thinking of the girl I’d left behind. Actually, the girl I’d left behind
probably wouldn’t have minded, since we hadn’t made any commitments to each
other yet. I was still just a total dork when it came to the opposite sex. This
young female private had sidled up next
to me one day when we were all standing around, listening to some wisdom from
some sergeant. She slyly slid the side of her foot against mine. I knew this
meant something, but I was too terrified to follow up on it. It’s a wonder I’m
not still single.<o:p></o:p></div>
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One thing I didn’t expect about being in “the South” was how
cold it was in January. One night we were blasted out of bed by a fire drill.
We just had time to throw on our barracks version of leisure wear, which were
sweat pants, before running outside, but other than that I only had on socks
and a t-shirt. We were out there for quite a while before the all-clear was given.
Those tough-as-nails drill sergeants were similarly attired, but seemed
unfazed. One of them tried to talk us through putting mind over matter by
picturing warm scenes, in which effort I was like Dickens’ Bob Cratchit: not
being a man of strong imagination, I failed.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Another thing about the Army for which I was not prepared
was the never-ending lung infection which I acquired practically on my first
night of sleeping in a closed room with dozens of other humans, and which
plagued me for the rest of my time in the service (which was mercifully shorter
than originally intended, but I’m getting ahead of myself again).<o:p></o:p></div>
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There is one funny memory I have of my time in Fitness
Company. I was standing outside our barracks one day, when a middle-aged female
sergeant walked by. I had never seen her before, and I experienced the utmost
confusion, because this woman was a dead-ringer for my mother! I thought I must
be losing my mind, to be seeing my mother walking about Fort Jackson in battle
dress fatigues. She saw me staring at her and bellowed, “What are you looking
at, Rimpington?” In panic I wondered how, if she weren’t my mother, she could
possibly know my name, until I remembered that it was written in big letters
above the right pocket of my field jacket.<o:p></o:p></div>
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I was probably in Fitness Company for no more than a couple
of weeks, but it seemed like an eternity. Eventually I was able to do enough
precious pushups to pass on to actual BT. Even though we were all going to
different parts of the same base, so vast was it that I never saw again saw any
of the people I had come to know during that brief time. I soon found out that
Fitness Company was a breeze compared to actual BT. My trouble with push-ups continued to be a
problem for me through-out the remainder of basic training and into AIT
(Advanced Individual Training), where you learn your MOS (have you been paying
attention?)<o:p></o:p></div>
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Wow. This is the first (and hopefully only) job in this long
list which it will take more than one chapter to tell, with the exception of
the Osmosis Saga, which was written several years ago. Even though my time
there wasn’t much more than about half a year, there are so many memories from
an intense experience like military training, that it requires more space than
your average job. We should be able to wrap this up in the next chapter, and
then I can move onto what I consider my real life, where I was more than just a
holder of a string of jobs.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The end.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Rimpy Rimpingtonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13017152542056998917noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2282043488488474080.post-68621529094330694612015-10-12T12:58:00.001-07:002016-01-02T08:33:27.672-08:00Chapter 17: Loveless in Seattle<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
Chapter 17: Loveless
in Seattle<o:p></o:p></div>
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Jobs 39 - 46<o:p></o:p></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_TZeqC0t5W2FnIVzDndxAFwT8QbGMbW4bGdEutNiGZEVr87ZRWtbU5KIEYuiAK5boTZy4534L45JTLaT7XqF8AkGUKGQDLCds-nnPTQ9MP1rL3lns5R58DU_aMTXwA-bdQqIV13Qd_-E/s1600/bookstore.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="191" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_TZeqC0t5W2FnIVzDndxAFwT8QbGMbW4bGdEutNiGZEVr87ZRWtbU5KIEYuiAK5boTZy4534L45JTLaT7XqF8AkGUKGQDLCds-nnPTQ9MP1rL3lns5R58DU_aMTXwA-bdQqIV13Qd_-E/s320/bookstore.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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My new Seattle domicile was in the Fremont district, a
little northwest of Lake Union. I had never lived right in a large city before,
and it was very exciting. I didn’t
consider that my time near Los Angeles counted, because Lake View Terrace was
just one of many in the great suburban sprawl, many miles from the city itself.
I spent a lot of time exploring my new home that probably would have been
better spent looking for work, but I couldn’t resist. Seattle really is a
beautiful city, with many interesting things to see.<o:p></o:p></div>
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To facilitate my explorations and job search, my first item
of business was to learn the local transit system, so I went downtown to their
headquarters. You could buy a large book which contained all the route maps and
schedules, or you could take for free little pamphlets of individual routes. I
of course chose the option that didn’t involve money. I didn’t know where any
of those routes went or where I might need to go, so I took one of each. I took
them home and put them in numerical order in a shoe box. There were so many
that they filled the box.<o:p></o:p></div>
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I did however splurge on a three-day transit pass, intended
for tourists, which also included one ride on the famous old monorail system,
which had been built for the Seattle World’s Fair in 1962, and was still in
use, more as a tourist attraction than public transportation, since its route is
very limited. I didn’t have any real reason to ride the monorail, but since I
had a free ticket, I was determined to use it. Trouble was, I wasn’t sure where
to catch it. You can see it over your head seemingly everywhere when you’re in
the central business district, but it only has two stations, one at each end.
As I was riding a bus in downtown that first day, I kept an eye out for the
station. I was sitting right behind the driver, and as we were about to pull
away from a stop, I spotted the monorail station, just as the bus doors were
closing. I jumped out in the nick of time, barely avoiding catching my heel in
the doors and startling the poor driver.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Job #40: Dishwasher<o:p></o:p></div>
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I got my money’s worth out of that three-day pass. I covered
a lot of ground and it wasn’t long before I landed Job #40, which was washing
dishes in the kitchen of a large convalescent hospital. The job was alright, I
guess, but most jobs like that sort of suck. What really bugged me was the realization
that I had not come all the way to Seattle just to continue doing the same dumb,
dead-end jobs I’d been doing all along. I was in a new place, and I wanted a
new kind of job. I’d had a dream for a while of being able to work in a
bookstore. I love books, and the thought of working in a clean, quiet store
full of them sounded like heaven. Still does, actually.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Job #41: Bookstore Clerk<o:p></o:p></div>
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I quit the dishwashing job, and spent the next few days
remaking myself. I put together a resume (which was mostly bullshit) that
somehow suggested I’d be a likely candidate for being a bookstore clerk. Then I
started bombarding every bookstore I could find. And amazingly, it worked! I
found job #41 in a new, tiny bookstore in an old school building that had been
converted to shops. My lady boss co-owned the store with her friend, who worked
a regular job. I was so happy because I felt like I had found my dream job.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Unfortunately, my dream job only lasted about a week, when
my boss’s partner (in more than just business, I suspect) decided she wanted to work at the bookstore rather than her
other job. So I was out – and I was crushed. But I still had my bookstore
resume, to which I could now add a real bookstore job. That’s the nice thing
about resumes – you don’t have to put down just how long you were at a
particular position.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Job #42: Setting Up a Bookstore<br />
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In short order, I found job #42, which was helping to set up
a B. Dalton’s bookstore (which I’ve just found out no longer exist) in the
brand-new Columbia SeaFirst Center (now just Columbia Center), which at the
time was the tallest building on the west coast. Cutting open boxes of books and putting them
on shelves according to some plan-o-gram wasn’t quite the kind of bookstore job I
wanted, but they said that some of us would be kept around as store clerks once
the store opened. That day soon arrived, but I wasn’t among the ones kept on. I
don’t know what criteria, if any, they used for their decision, or if it was
all just bullshit to lure minions to unpack boxes. I don’t even know if any of
the people I had been working with had been retained. Either way, I didn’t take
it personally, but I was still bummed that I needed to continue my job search.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Job #43: Making Instrument Cases<o:p></o:p></div>
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I found a job at a place that made cases for musical
instruments. What a miserable job that was. Basically I just had to stand at a
machine and punch rivets into cut pieces of leather to assemble them into
working cases. If you did a bad job of riveting, you could take the piece over
to a different machine which would push the rivet out. I had a hard time
acquiring the knack for riveting, and I seemed to spend as much time at the
unriveting machine as I did at my riveting machine.<o:p></o:p></div>
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My co-workers were all young men who looked like they wanted
desperately to be in a rock ‘n’ roll band, but this job was the closest they
could get to the music industry. Long hair and black t-shirts seemed to be the uniform
of the place. They spent their lunch breaks sitting in their Camaros, blasting
heavy metal music. I felt very out of place there.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The factory was in a remote corner of the city that wasn’t
well served by the otherwise stellar bus system. After one particularly bad
day, I got off a little too late to catch my bus, and there wouldn’t be another
one for a long time, so I had to walk the five miles home. I tried hitchhiking
along the way. One person did pull over, but just as I reached their car, they
tore off. Ha ha! Funny! By the time I got home, I’d decided I wouldn’t be going
back to that place the next day.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Job #44: Hanging Door Hangers<o:p></o:p></div>
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I found a job distributing door hangers. Groups of us would
pile into vans or the backs of pickups, and then be driven around at break-neck
speeds to different residential neighborhoods. We would split up and go from
house to house and hang the advertisements on all the front door knobs we could
access. The job was simple, but it was actually a lot of work. Seattle is a
hilly place, so many of the front walks presented goodly little climbs. We
weren’t allowed to short-cut across lawns, which is reasonable, but even if we
could have, we would have been thwarted by the fact that a lot of the houses
had garages, and the driveways were cut level into the slopes, which created a
deep, wide, walled trench between each property. After full days of trudging up
and down innumerable front walks and streets, my leg muscles were on fire.<o:p></o:p></div>
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We didn’t make an hourly wage, but were paid according to
how many hangers we were able to unload. Of course, the managers were aware of
the potential for cheating by disposing of hangers in trash cans or down storm
drains and such. They told us they knew where all hiding places were and would
be checking them regularly. I’m not proud of it, but I took a chance and tossed
a few anyway, and got away with it.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
Job #45: Unloading Blueberries<o:p></o:p></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I forget the details of my departure from that job, but job
#45 was a one-day gig unloading blueberries at a warehouse, which I got through
my roommate Leo, who was friends with the boss. The blueberries had just come
in after being picked. You can’t get much fresher than that. Golly, they were
tasty. Don’t worry, I didn’t eat TOO many.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
Job #46: Selling Flowers<o:p></o:p></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This job was a bit of a low point for me. My great Northwest
adventure just didn’t seem to be panning out the way I’d hoped. For a couple of
days, I was actually one of those sad people you see hawking flowers on a
street corner. A young man would drop me
and some buckets of bouquets off at various busy intersections, and I would
wave flowers at passing cars in the hope they would stop and purchase some. Few
did. I tried to look lively and cheerful, but my heart wasn’t in it.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
My young boss would periodically check in on me (and
whatever other flunkies he had stationed at different intersections) to collect
the money and replenish my supply if needed. I forget how my pay was worked
out, but I certainly wasn’t earning an hourly wage. After a few days of this
nonsense, I was standing morosely at my corner, barely noticing the passing
traffic. My roommate Jim and his girlfriend happened by in her car and stopped
to ask how I was doing. I made a rash decision, and handed the girlfriend the
bouquet I was holding, and hopped in their car and abandoned the rest of the
flowers. I had what little money I collected for that day’s meager sales in my
pocket, and I kept that, too.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Yes, I stole from my employer, and left his wares to
possible theft. I’m not proud of that fact. It’s the worst thing I’ve done to
an employer (even worse than dumping a few door hangers), and it wasn’t at all justified,
but like I said I was sort of bottoming out. Oddly enough, I never got any
consequences for my malfeasance. I think my boss tried to call me once after
that, but I ignored him. Luckily I hadn’t even given an address when I got that
job. A few days later I was walking around downtown, and I saw my former
employer turning onto a street I was about to cross. I don’t think he saw me,
but I turned tail and disappeared into the crowds.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I think one thing that was contributing to my generally low
mental state was the Seattle climate. I’m a California boy, and I’m not used to
a lot of rain. Coming from a Mediterranean climate, at first the cool moisture
was fun and refreshing, but after a few months it started to wear on me. I
think I may actually have Seasonal Affect Disorder, and too many days without
sunshine get me down.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But there was something bigger than a little rain that was
bothering me. I went to see the movie “Choose Me” with Keith Carradine and Rae
Dawn Chong. I didn’t think it was a particularly good film, but it affected me
because it was all about love and relationships, and it made me realize I..was…LONELY!
I had always been a shy and retiring sort when it came to the opposite sex. I’ve
mentioned that I had a girlfriend in high school, and in 1983 the future Mrs.
Rimpington and I had a brief romantic encounter, but otherwise I had resigned myself
to being a loner with a boner.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I thought I would be content just practicing my favorite
hobby, but that movie brought it home to me that something huge was missing
from my life. Suddenly I wanted a girlfriend very badly, but I wasn’t sure what
I was going to do about it.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
Job #47: Taxi Driver-in-Training<o:p></o:p></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
While pondering this imponderable, I got a job as a taxi
driver. I spent a few days riding around with another driver, learning the
streets and other aspects of the job. That might have been a good job, but I
never went solo, because the shortening autumn days and increasing rain finally
got to me and I decided to flee back to California.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It was a fateful decision, because it led to the lowest
point in my life, but once you’ve bottomed out, there’s nowhere to go but up.
And fate also intervened in the romance department, but you’ll have to wait to
hear about all that.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
The end.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
Rimpy Rimpingtonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13017152542056998917noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2282043488488474080.post-17481869591291708502015-10-04T17:57:00.001-07:002016-03-13T11:11:39.168-07:00Chapter 16: Go North Again, Young Man<div align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Chapter 16: Go North
Again, Young Man</div>
<div align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Jobs 37 - 39</div>
<div align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
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<br /></div>
<div align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
1984</div>
<div align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
(continued)</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Job #37: Bus Driver</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Job #37 was my first foray into public
transportation. All of my jobs in this field have been right here in
Butt County, for three different contractors (and even more name
changes) for what has essentially remained the same public transit
system. Since the first contractor has long since gone out of
business, normally I would feel comfortable using their real name in
this pseudonymous memoir. I know my disguised business and place
names are as thin and transparent as fairy wings, but I must be
careful. So, I'll have to call them...oh...Eastwagon. Yeah, that'll work.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
There is only one other person at my
current job beside myself who was there back in the Eastwagon days
(and she has been there this whole time, which is very impressive –
one job in thirty one years, especially compared to my 47 or so in
the same period), but my employers would know who Eastwagon was if I
used their real name, and therefore they would know I'm talking about
them (in a very actionable kind of way). I don't think they'd
necessarily know the real identity of Rimpy, since I've never used
that name at work. But since I've just admitted that there's one
other person who knew me at Eastwagon, all they'd have to do is ask
her. Then I'd have to kill her, and I'd hate to have to do that. Or I
could just take that bit out. Naw! She'll just have to take her
chances.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I'm probably going to spend a bit more
time on this job than many of the others, because it relates to my
current position. It's interesting to compare public transit then and
now. I know it's easy to say something like “people are getting
dumber”, but from my view from the driver's seat of a bus over a
few decades, it really looks like they are.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I suppose it could be a matter of
simple numbers. The population of Butt County has grown in the last
30 years, and so has the size of its transit system. The old bus
schedules used to be printed on a single piece of paper which was
folded into a handy pocket size, with a map of the routes on one
side, and the times on the other side. Now it's a quadra-fold,
multi-page affair with a staple in the middle and everything, and it
seems to strike fear and loathing into the hearts and minds of
average bus passengers.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
The downturn in the economy has also
caused an uptick in bus ridership. So it could be that the proportion
of blithering idiots in the population has remained constant, but I'm
just seeing more of that slice of the demographic because of my job.
That could be part of it, but I don't think it's all.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
At the risk of sounding like the old
fogey that I am, thanks to the proliferation of the internet and
mobile devices, never before has so much information been so readily
available to so many people, and yet fewer and fewer people seem
interested in accessing that information. A lot of people on my bus
carry smart phones and other devices, but they can't be bothered to
look up what bus goes where and when, let alone take down one of
those scary paper schedules in the rack behind the driver.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
There were other things that made my
first job as a bus driver truly seem like “the good old days”.
Back then buses didn't have cameras in them. You're probably thinking
that cameras help protect us in case we're attacked or robbed, and
you'd have a point, but more often than not they are used to catch us
making mistakes. We also have sensors that trigger the cameras when
we hit the brakes too hard, or don't wait long enough at stop signs. It's all in the name of safety, but it feels very oppressive at times.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Back in the day, the fare boxes were
simple brass and clear plastic cylinders with an opening at the top into
which passengers dumped their money. If they used a lot of change, it
was impossible to verify that they had paid the correct amount, but, oh well. The worst thing that happened with those old fare boxes was
when a dollar bill would hang up in the opening. Then we drivers had
to take a piece of Venetian blind we kept on hand and push it down,
and we considered ourselves misused when we had to do that. We also
kept count of fares manually with a big clicky machine thing.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Now the fare machines count each coin,
which sounds great, but the coins must be deposited one at a time,
and they're absolutely terrible at taking any dollar bill which isn't
as pristine as when it rolled out of the mint. If you think that
helps the buses run on time, then you haven't ridden public transit.
Consider yourself lucky.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
The other thing that made them “the
good old days” is probably going to upset some politically correct
types, but here it is: prior to 1990 and the Americans with
Disabilities Act, buses didn't have wheelchair lifts or ramps. The
transit company had a division of vans with those capabilities for
people who couldn't access regular public transit. We still have that
division, but now all buses have to be able to accommodate
wheelchairs as well. I'm not saying that's a bad thing, but it
certainly doesn't help us to run on time. The buses can only take two
chairs at a time, but you can get several getting on and off over the
course of just one loop, and then you're thirty minutes late and
you've got bunches of angry people waiting at bus stops, who of
course always think it's the driver's fault.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
In the mid-eighties we didn't know how
good we had it, but now I look back on those golden days and let out
a sigh of longing. I really can't remember how long I drove bus, but
it was probably most of a year, which is a goodly while – for me at
the time, anyway. For a while things were good. I had a tiny but very
adequate studio apartment and even cable TV (great fodder for my
favorite hobby).</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
My downfall came in the form of a bunch
of unruly high school students. I was only about 25, so I wasn't a
whole lot older than them, but I was ostensibly an adult, and the
captain of the ship, and I wanted them to respect my author-i-tah! I
just hadn't dealt with children before. I was the
youngest in my family by a good ten years, so I didn't even have the
experience of relating to younger or near-age siblings.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Things went from bad to worse. I had
parents wanting to murder me for saying something rude to their
precious progeny. Eventually I couldn't take it anymore, and quit.
Sometime after I left, Eastwagon went bankrupt, and the various
cities within Butt County and the county itself that supported the system had to scramble to
keep it running. My long-ago and current co-worker said that some of
the drivers actually worked for free for awhile because they cared
about the passengers.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Soon a nationally known contractor took
over operating the system, which is who I worked for in Jobs #60 and 62. By the time I came back for job #85 in 2010, that contractor had
been bought out by an international firm. Since I've been there, that
company separated from its parent company, merged with yet another
international firm and changed its name once more. Oh, the hurly
burly of public transportation contractors!</div>
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<br /></div>
<div align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
1985<br />
<br />
<br />
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</div>
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<div align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<div style="margin: 0px;">
Job #38: Delivering Coupon Books</div>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: start;">
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<br /></div>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: start;">
<div style="margin: 0px;">
I went into a bit of a slump after leaving the bus driving job. I couldn't work up any enthusiasm for, well, work. I couldn't get unemployment benefits because I had quit the bus driving job, so I found odd jobs when I could be bothered. Job #38 was once again delivering coupon books, but for an outfit operating out of a dingy office downtown. A handful of workers cold-called people and tried to sell them the books. When they were successful, I would then deliver the books in my 1959 VW van, named Klaus. He was a rusty old bucket, but I loved him. He was rather rare, having the double cargo doors on both sides. I wish I still had that rig.</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<div align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
</div>
<div align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Job # 39: Yard and Job Site Clean Up</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
The coupon job wasn't enough to pay the
rent, however, and I got evicted from my groovy studio apartment. I
stayed with my friend Steve for a while (a very little while, because
his roommate didn't like me), and together we performed my 39<sup>th</sup>
job. Steve had acquired the use of a dump truck through his
roommate's brother, who was in the construction business, and we
would go around to construction sites and anywhere else someone
needed junk and debris hauled to the landfill. We also did some yard
work as needed.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I hadn't done any really physical labor
in awhile, and after a couple of days of that, I was so sore I could
barely move, but I kept at it. I was basically killing time waiting
for my tax refund, which promised to be substantial because I had
been pretty steadily employed for most of the year. You see, I had
hatched another (escape) plan.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I felt like I had already burned out
the local job market, and needed a change of scene. I had a vague
plan of moving north. I wasn't sure whether I would settle on
Portland or Seattle. I didn't know much about Portland, but it seemed cool, especially with that flashy major...</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXECSrOt04ePx8aFga2yP-MpVYIWFVm6HhyF__IgGQaI7C2vqWCMt1x_K5OcA440bbLqqzLj7Fin-1UTVuxD4Uf0o2ij1oJ1upA1XD7QvftyyrawnMqEOaHXcptjezz7MpDtB80VwLqtg/s1600/exposeyourselftoart.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXECSrOt04ePx8aFga2yP-MpVYIWFVm6HhyF__IgGQaI7C2vqWCMt1x_K5OcA440bbLqqzLj7Fin-1UTVuxD4Uf0o2ij1oJ1upA1XD7QvftyyrawnMqEOaHXcptjezz7MpDtB80VwLqtg/s320/exposeyourselftoart.png" width="289" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expose_Yourself_to_Art">Hizzoner</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
But I had spent more time in Seattle, and sort of knew some folks
there - a couple named Lan and Lar(ry). Lan was the sister of my
brother Dick's girlfriend at the time, and we had stayed with them on
our way through town on our wonderful Alaskan vacation. I had also
called upon them when I was on my to live in Alaska, and they had
helped me get to the airport shuttle in downtown Seattle so I could
catch my flight to Juneau.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
There had been some sort of delay in my
tax refund, and I had to contact the IRS about my much-anticipated
check. When it finally arrived, I cashed it and started making final
preparations for heading north. The next day there was another check
in my post office box! They had somehow sent me two separate checks
for the same amount. I was sorely tempted to try to cash the second
one before they realized their mistake. I even solicited the opinions
of the other patrons of the bar where I was having a couple of drinks
while mulling over the problem. The general consensus was that I
shouldn't cash it, so I tore up the second check.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Soon I was on my way north in my rusty,
trusty Klaus. Steve had built a platform in the back so I could put
in a full length mattress, so I had a pretty comfortable makeshift
camper. It was late spring or early summer, and I was under no
deadline, so took I my time on my trip. The national speed limit then
was 55 MPH, but I stayed at a steady 50, for no particular reason. I
told myself I just wanted to savor my trip, but I'm sure I was just
delaying the inevitability of having to look for work where ever I
settled.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
While cruising through rural areas on
Interstate 5 at five miles below the speed limit, I discovered a
curious phenomenon. Packs of cars doing 55 would pass me, then there
would be long stretches when I had the road to myself, then another
cluster of cars would go zooming past. I thought it was funny that
even though most drivers were content to all do the same speed, they
didn't seem to want to be alone. If you were in the middle of one of
those packs, you probably couldn't tell that there were large patches
of empty road between yours and the next pack. They probably wouldn't
want to admit that they were engaging in herd mentality, but it
seemed pretty obvious to me.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
By the time I reached Portland, I had
already decided that I would continue to Seattle, where I at least
knew somebody. I gave Portland a cursory visit, then headed more
north. I stopped in Tumwater, Washington to tour the Olympia brewery.
We had stopped there on our Alaska trip, but I had been too young to
sample the wares after the tour. I intended to correct that
temporally-enforced oversight.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
The amount of free beer they gave us
after the tour wasn't huge, but I've always been a bit of
lightweight, and I got rather more light-headed than I had intended.
For some reason I can't recall, I didn't want to spend too much time
in Tumwater. Perhaps I was aware that my funds were dwindling, and I
needed to get to Seattle and procure lodging before they ran out
altogether. I walked in the park along the nearby waterway and viewed
the famous falls from the beer label until I felt like my head was
clear. I may have been mistaken about that, and it may have
contributed to what happened next.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
As I was getting back on the freeway,
there was road work on the on-ramp. I was following what I thought
was a safe distance behind the car in front of me. The flag woman
abruptly halted that car, and Klaus' brakes never having been
terribly good, I banged into the back of it. There wasn't much
damage, but we had to exchange insurance information and wait while
the highway patrol did their thing. They cited me for following too
close, which I didn't appreciate, but I was just glad that the fact
of my recent visit to the brewery never came to light.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Unfortunately, the collision somehow
blew out what little was left of Klaus' already dodgy brakes. I
managed to limp him into a nearby regional park, which was at the
bottom of a terrifyingly steep hill. The park didn't allow overnight
camping, so I drove back up (much easier) and parked behind a bar. I
had a few more drinks before crawling into my now-crippled
transportation to sleep.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
The next day I called ahead to Lan and
Lar's to tell them I was coming into town. They were a bit caught
off-guard, but were much more gracious than I had a right to. I
really had a bad habit of surprising people with my burdensome
presence, didn't I? I then caught a Greyhound into Seattle. I rented
a U-Haul truck and a car-trailer, and Lar and I drove down to
Tumwater to recover Klaus. I parked him behind Lan and Lar's house. I
stayed with them for a couple of days until I found a room in a house
with some other people.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I probably shouldn't have bothered to
haul poor old Klaus up to Seattle, because I ended up having to junk
him. Repairs were beyond my means, especially (and ironically) after
the unexpected expense of the hauling.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
So now I was in my new chosen city, in
need of work, but without my own transportation. Fortunately, Seattle
has a wonderful public transportation system, so I could get just
about anywhere I needed to. In the next chapter, we shall embark upon
a whirlwind of false starts and dead end jobs above the 45<sup>th</sup>
parallel.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
The end.</div>
<br />
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<br /></div>
Rimpy Rimpingtonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13017152542056998917noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2282043488488474080.post-62398435005998569222015-09-21T19:02:00.001-07:002016-01-02T08:15:21.185-08:00Chapter 15: Junior College Days<div align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Chapter 15: Junior College
Days</div>
<div align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Jobs 32 – 36</div>
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1983</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Around this time I decided to really
take a stab at a college education. As far as financing school went,
I probably could have gotten by on a combination of work and
financial aid in the form of grants. You know, the kind of money you
don't have to pay back. It's odd that public colleges cost money, but
the government will give you money to afford college. Why not just
make college free in the first place?</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Unfortunately, I found the lure of
receiving a large sum of extra cash in the form of a loan
irresistible. I really think that they were a little too quick to
hand out those student loans. Of course, no one was twisting my arm,
and true to form, I didn't properly consider the likelihood of being
able to repay that debt, or the consequences of not paying. Now I'm
one of the <a href="http://www.wsj.com/articles/about-7-million-americans-havent-paid-federal-student-loans-in-at-least-a-year-1440175645">several million Americans</a> in default on their student
loans.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Of course, I started at the local Butt
Community College, because it's a cheap way to get your lower
division units out of the way. It's also a great way to explore
various disciplines if you were like me and didn't yet know what you
wanted to pursue at a university. So, yeah, I really didn't need
student loans just to do general education at a junior college. It
makes me wonder why they agreed to loan me any money in the first
place, let alone why they even make it available at that level of
education.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Back then, the junior colleges were on
the quarter system, but the state colleges were on the semester
system. I couldn't see the point, since the length of a quarter
wasn't all that much shorter than a semester, and it's not like they
were actually a quarter of a year long, anyway. You could knock out
three quarters in one academic year, and if you were really serious,
you could subject yourself to a tough, short “quarter” during the
summer vacation. At university, you could do two normal semesters in
one year, plus a brutal summer session if you wanted. And for real
masochists, there was even a super-mega-brutal winter break session.
No thank you.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Since quarter units counted for less
than semester units, there was a complicated unit conversion process
if you transferred to a state college. Eventually the junior colleges
switched to the semester system, so their units counted the same as
the universities', which simplified the transfer process.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I did really well for my first two
quarters, but mid-way through my third quarter, I had some sort of
breakdown. I think the act of doing well at something actually
sabotaged me. I had become used to thinking that I wasn't really
academic material, and earning straight A's those first two quarters
was more than my self-image could process. There was one teacher in
particular who factored largely in my troubles. Mr. Oxstrangler was a
history teacher and a self-made millionaire. He owned hundreds of
rental properties in the College Town area. He didn't really need the
salary of a community college professor, but I guess he did if for
his love of history. Right-wing, Repulican history.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Oxstrangler was an ultra-conservative.
The effusive way he would talk about the old system of debtors'
prison gave me the impression that he probably thought we should
reinstate that venerable institution. In his office he had a picture
of himself meeting then-President Reagan. In the picture, Oxstrangler
was talking to the president, who I was alarmed to note looked like
he was listening intently to what Oxstrangler was saying. I wondered
what Oxstrangler was telling the leader of the free world.</div>
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<br /></div>
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Politics aside, Oxstrangler was also
very critical, so I'm sure he reminded me of my dad. Before long, I
just couldn't do any of the work in that class, and the rest of my
courses fell like dominoes, and I dropped out of junior college.</div>
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<br /></div>
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While I had been in school, I
experienced a relatively stable period in my work life. I “only”
had four jobs (depending on how you count them) that year, three of
which were short-term gigs – so in comparison to other periods in
my life, I was a model of responsibility. I don't recall the exact
order in which I got and lost these few jobs, so let's just start
with...</div>
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<br /></div>
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Job #32: Stationary Store Janitor</div>
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<br /></div>
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...which was working as a janitor at an
office furniture and stationery store in College Town. I got the job
through the school's student employment office. A couple of nights a
week I would come in and dust and vacuum and such. It was a great
part-time job. I got to work alone, which I had discovered I
preferred. They trusted me with a key to the place. However, they
shouldn't have trusted me with the “honor snacks” box. If you've
never seen one of those, it's a simple, open cardboard rack thing
with candies and chips and the like. There was a slot in the front of
the box into which you were expected to put the stated cost of the
item. They're designed for the employees of small businesses.</div>
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<br /></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-Ft8Dqv3DLMstMxAUrYzJAg0TMgP5PdrEkWTksV8fMr4Iraly75jz6-VBKzGWiv7o1erm35GJEIFlA0yfXqV4SAta9A3imhFV_hKTk9as1QQ4IX_VKH_XzbHxe42PgyDUyu5XUm54kGI/s1600/honor_snack_box.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="208" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-Ft8Dqv3DLMstMxAUrYzJAg0TMgP5PdrEkWTksV8fMr4Iraly75jz6-VBKzGWiv7o1erm35GJEIFlA0yfXqV4SAta9A3imhFV_hKTk9as1QQ4IX_VKH_XzbHxe42PgyDUyu5XUm54kGI/s320/honor_snack_box.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">It does say it's "MY" snack box</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I was always hungry, and usually always
short on pocket change. Before you jump to conclusions, I didn't
dishonor the snacks to the point of actually stealing them. I took
seriously the threat of loss of snackage, so I would write little
IOUs with my name and the amount and slip them into the slot.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
After a while, during one of the rare
times I was in the store during business hours, the owner told me
that the honor snacks guy had recently serviced the box and found
about 20 dollars worth of IOUs from me (and only me). Even I was a
little surprised that I had managed to scarf down that much junk
food. I made good on my debt, but I wasn't allowed to put any more
IOUs in the box.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I had that job right up until I after I
quit school. Once I was no long in school, I began petitioning my
employers for more hours, and eventually they agreed to let me work
with their delivery guy. I blew that chance, however, by getting
drunk and not showing up for the first day of my new position. Bye
bye, Job #31.</div>
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<br /></div>
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Jobs #33 & 34: Work Study</div>
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<br /></div>
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Either concurrent with or just prior to
#32, were two jobs which probably could be counted as one, but you
know how I like to go for those numbers. They were definitely
individual positions, but they could conceivably be viewed as one
“job” because they were both through the work-study program at
the junior college.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
#33 was working at the recycling center
at the college, which has a long history of being very
environmentally conscious. My job was to drive around to all the
combination trash/recycling receptacles on the campus and collect the
cans and bottles. This seemed right up my alley, because I had long
been an avid advocate for recycling, but the receptacles were always
surrounded by clouds of bees attracted by the sugary residue in the
drink containers, and I have an irrational fear of bees. I wasn't so
concerned about the environment that if left to my own devices, I
wouldn't have simply sprayed them with some insecticide and been
about my business. I couldn't do that, however, because the college
had bee hives as part of its agriculture program. Goodbye, Job #32.</div>
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<br /></div>
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#34 was a temporary work-study gig
helping to line some gullies around the campus with river rocks to
control erosion. It was pretty arduous work, with a bunch of cretins
who didn't seem like they belonged in college, even at the community
level. I was glad when that job concluded.</div>
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<br /></div>
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Job #35: Personal Care</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
#35 was another example of subbing for
Charlie on one of his jobs. For some time while he was at the
university he worked for a wheelchair-bound man who had one of those
dreaded degenerative diseases – Multiple Sclerosis, I believe. Once
when Charlie had to go out of town for a few days, I filled in for
him.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
1984</div>
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<br /></div>
<div align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Job #36: Dishwasher</div>
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<br /></div>
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After I left school and my office
supply store job, I got job #36 as a dishwasher at a popular downtown
restaurant and bar. Much like old Hobbie Auto, this place also
recently closed up after I started writing this memoir. It seems that
I'm out-living some of the places I've worked, which at the time had
already been around a long time and which seemed like they'd continue
forever. I wonder how many other legacies I can destroy before I
finish this?</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
The job was pretty good for what it
was. I got some free food and all the fountain soda from the bar I
could quaff. What got my goat, though, was the fact that various
people employed there kept popping up to inform me of yet another
chore that was my hitherto unknown responsibility. I think they just
saw the new dishwasher as an opportunity to foist some chore of
theirs off onto someone else. When someone I had never seen before
showed up and told me that one of my many tasks was to water the
trees in the sidewalk out front, I nearly stomped off the job. None
of these various chores was insurmountable, even taken all together.
I was just irritated about finding out in such a slip-shod manner. I
had never previously heard of the concept of asking for a job
description, but this job taught me the importance of such a thing.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
After a rough week of ever-increasing
responsibilities, I was looking forward to my first official day off.
My much-anticipated morning sleeping-in was ruined by a phone call
from work asking me to come and fill in for somebody who hadn't
shown up. I went in, but it wasn't long before I walked away from
that job.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I only had one other job in 1984, which
was a personal best for me at that time. But since Job #37 is closely
aligned with current job #85, it will take more explaining than I
have time for today. So, until next time!</div>
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<br /></div>
<div align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
The end.</div>
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<br /></div>
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<br /></div>
Rimpy Rimpingtonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13017152542056998917noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2282043488488474080.post-15518289192850130362015-09-13T14:33:00.001-07:002016-01-02T08:10:40.868-08:00Chapter 14: Rimpy: Agent for G.U.N.S (Ground Up Nut Shells)<div align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Chapter 14: Rimpy: Agent
for G.U.N.S (Ground Up Nut Shells)</div>
<div align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Jobs 23 - 31</div>
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<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
After I got the cast off my leg, there
was nothing to prevent me from returning to the work force. Nothing,
that is, except my own idiocy. I got a fairly substantial settlement
(a little under $10, 000) from the insurance company of the nice
church organist who had struck me on my moped. I wasn't trying to be
greedy or vindictive, but I felt like I was owed something for my
pain and suffering.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
With money in hand, I returned to
College Town. Charlie was by now attending university there, and I
went in thirds with him and another guy named Eddie on a
three-bedroom house. To my stubbornly immature mind 10,000 dollars
seemed like a lordly sum, and I saw no reason to rush out and get a
job.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I bought myself a cute little 1967 VW
Karmann Ghia. I didn't really need something quite so fancy, but I
had this deluded idea that the car would be some sort of investment
that would increase in value. I didn't factor in such things as
whether or not I would be able to afford the upkeep on a classic car
in order to protect my investment. The whole “investment” idea
quickly became moot when I lost control one night on a curve and went
backwards through a barbed wire fence, scratching up my pretty blue
paint job something fierce.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
It didn't take me long to burn through
the rest of the money, and with it went my ability to pay my rent. It
was time once again to get a job. God bless him, Charlie very
patiently covered my portion of the rent quite often until I could
pay him back as I bounced from job to job. Charlie was the “good”
one in our friendship. I, for my part, wasn't necessarily a <i>bad</i>
friend, but looking back on it, I wasn't a particularly good one,
either. People probably shook their heads and wondered why he put up
with me.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<b>1981</b></div>
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<br /></div>
<div align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Job #23: Kiwi Farm</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I got job #23 at a kiwi farm on the
south of College Town. Most of the work consisted of pulling tiny
young kiwi plants out of the ground and preparing them for shipping
in pairs to nurseries. The work wasn't bad or particularly hard, but
it was winter and a lot of the work was spent outdoors or in unheated
greenhouses.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I forget how long I was with the kiwi
farm, but it seems like it was a fair bit (for me). A new problem I
was starting to have <i>vis a vis</i> work was alcohol. There used to
be bar and music venue called Cabo's that had a popular tradition
known as “Tipsy Tuesday”. At the start of the evening drinks were
incredibly cheap, and would go up in increments as the night wore on.
It was a clever marketing ploy on their part, and a cheap way to get
wasted. One Tuesday night a bunch of us from work went there
together. Probably not a great idea on a work night, but maybe my
co-workers had more self-control than me (gee, you think?).</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
The next day I was badly hungover, but
I tried to work anyway. I was useless, however, so they sent me home,
but thankfully didn't fire me. I forget the circumstances under which
I left that job, but given my history, I'm sure I quit for no
particularly good reason. I'm pretty sure I wasn't fired.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
The next few jobs aren't necessarily in
strict chronological order. Such are the ravages of time upon the
mind of a flake.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Job #24: Yard Maintenance</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Job #24 was at a yard maintenance
company whose name I can't recall, which is just as well since I
would be unlikely to use it. I do seem to recall that this was the
job in which I was asked in the interview if I liked to “hussle”
- which I've always interpreted as “work really fast for no good
reason”. Of course, I lied and said I did, but it soon became
apparent to them that I didn't. Most of the work involved crawling
about on my hands and knees pulling weeds out of people's lawns. It
was quite similar to job #2, pulling weeds at Hobbie Auto. I tried to
perform to their expectations, but like my dismissal from job #6
(Yancey Derringer's), the warning signs were there, but I didn't heed
them. A supervisor came by once or twice and told me to hurry up. I
thought I was doing a good job of pretending to “hussle”, but
next thing I knew the supe came back and said something to the effect
of, “That's it, Rimpy. You're fired.”</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
On my previous experience with being
fired, I got to just walk away. I forget how the matter of my final
pay had been handled at Yancey Derringer's. I don't know if the law
existed in 1978 that says employees are to be handed their last check
at the time of their involuntary termination. If it did, it's more
likely that the bellicose management of Yancey's weren't very
concerned with such niceties as “laws” and “fair labor
practices”. I probably had to go back on their regular payday to
get my last check, but I didn't know better at the time, anyway.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
This time, however, we were in some
remote part of College Town, so I had to ride in a pickup with that
supervisor back to their office so they could give me my final check.
It was an awkward ride – I didn't know what to talk about with
somebody who had just fired me.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
It didn't occur to me until years later
that any job involving pulling weeds was probably one I should have
avoided. That was one of those chores that my dad seemed to delight
in torturing me with when there weren't any tubs of shit that needed
dragging. I remember once, when I was only about 7 or 8, I had gained
permission from my parents to try to stay up all night one weekend. I
can't recall if I managed to stay awake the whole night, but even
though my dad knew I was sleep deprived, he had me out early the
following morning pulling weeds along the side of the garage. As he
went about his weekend projects, he kept passing by and yelling at me
to work harder. I was watering those weeds with my tears by the time
my mom finally spoke up and reminded him that I had not had any
sleep, and I got to crawl into bed. I'm sure that my dad didn't need
reminded of that fact. I think he thought that my wanting to stay up
all night was indicative of some kind of character flaw that needed
corrected with some good, hard work.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Job #25: Personal Care</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Job #25 was a very temporary gig
helping to care for a elderly man who had suffered a stroke. He was
home with his wife, but she wasn't in great shape herself, and needed
the extra help with cooking and personal care.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Job #26: Delivering Coupon Books</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
For job #26 I got to make my dubious
investment in the Karmann Ghia work for me. A lady sold coupon books
by telephone out of her apartment, and it was my job to deliver the
books to the customers. I remember very little about that job, or the
circumstances of my leaving, but take a wild guess.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Job #27: Nut Company</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I tried very hard to get job #27, which
was at the nut company. It's not really a factory, because it's not
like they <i>make</i> nuts there,
but it's not really a cannery, either, so “company” will have to
do. College Town is famous for almonds (which the locals
insist on pronouncing with a short “a” and no “l”) and other
tree nuts, and the old nut company has been a large presence on the
north side of the neighborhood known as “The Avenues” for many
years. It has diminished a bit in eminence in the last couple of
decades, but it used to be one of the largest single employers in
town, and a well-paying one. Of course, most of the work was
seasonal. Only a handful of people worked there year-round. I had
applied well before the season, and had been tentatively selected.
Then it was just a matter of checking in regularly to let them know
that I was still interested. I came to be on a first-name basis with
the nice ladies in the personnel office. Finally the blessed day came
when they told me to come on in and work on the swing shift. I felt
as though I had “arrived”. I didn't entertain any notions of
working with nuts for the rest of my life. I just wanted a good
paycheck for awhile.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
My usual position was at the ass-end of
a machine which ground nutshells. The shells would flow through a
pipe from the grinder into the top of a huge contrivance which would
shake them through a series of screens and spit them out in uniform
granules into burlap sacks. My partner and I would sew up the ends of
the bags and stack them on pallets. I was never clear of what were
the uses of ground nut shells. I heard the Japanese liked to use them
for pillow stuffing. They must have had some fatal pillow fights with
those.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Sometimes we had to change the size of
the screens in the machine, depending upon what size of granule was
needed. We climbed up on a catwalk near the top of the machine. The
screens were held inside the machine by large segmented metal bands.
We had to loosen the bolts holding the screens tight against the
machine, swap out the screens, and then bolt them back together. The
screens came in designations like 20-20, 20-30, 30-30, etc. I don't
know what those numbers meant, but the problem I had was that my
partner had a heavy Mexican accent, and every screen size he said
sounded like “tooty tooty” to me.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
The first time I changed some screens
on my own, I thought I had done a good job of securing the bands. I
climbed back down and we fired up the machine. Moments later, my
partner tapped me on the arm and pointed overhead. I looked up and
was horrified to see the bands spinning merrily around the
circumference of the machine while unfiltered granules poured out of
its sides. We spent the rest of the night fixing my mistake and
cleaning up the horrendous mess.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Work at the nut company involved other
duties as needed, such as loading trucks, or helping out in other
sections of the plant. Sometimes a few of us would pile into private
vehicles and drive out to one of the nut receiving stations in the
vast orchard lands surrounding College Town. Most nuts are harvested
by shaking the trees with special Suessian-looking machines. Then
everything that falls down is scooped up, along with anything else
which was already on the ground. At the receiving stations, they had
huge machines which would separate the nuts from the leaves, twigs,
rocks, and other trash, like live rats and mysterious large animal
bones. My job on those nights was to walk back and forth next to the
machine and keep the screens clear with a hoe on the end of a long
metal pole. Those were not my favorite nights.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Working at the main plant was much more
preferable, in part because there was a small market across the
street, where some of us would buy a beer to go with our lunches. My
job didn't involve driving, <i>per se</i>, unless of course, you
count forklifts and the little Bobcat loader I sometimes used to
shove the un-ground nut shells into the hopper for the grinding
machine, and you probably should. So, yeah, it was pretty
irresponsible to be drinking at work. After all, we were working
around dangerous machinery. I wouldn't dream of doing something like
that now, but then it just seemed like an acceptable thing to do.
Back then, companies didn't have all the drug and alcohol testing
they do now. Sometimes the modern policies can be a pain in the ass –
such as when you've been randomly selected to drug test, and you've
been good a good boy – but it's probably a good thing we have them
now.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I can't recall how long I was with the
nut company before I quit, but I suspect it was less time than I had
spent actually trying to get the damned job. I recall Charlie
commenting on this irony. One night, I went out drinking after my
shift with a bunch of co-workers. I had a good time, but I fell into
an alcohol-induced low blood sugar funk and decided I didn't want to
go in the next day. I probably would have stayed with several of my
jobs longer if I hadn't mixed them with booze. When sober, I could
deal with the drudgery of the working week, but when I would drink I
would start to imagine some sort of better life beyond the confines
of my current position. Perhaps one where an imaginative and creative
mind could make a living from his talents. I didn't have the
fortitude to try to make my dreams come true, so the only control I
had was to quit whatever job seemed so restrictive at the time.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
Job #28: Gorilla</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
(Updated Jan. 1st, 2016)</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
Happy new year, everybody. Observant readers may have noticed that the title of the blog has changed (slightly) yet again. That's right - yesterday I suddenly recalled a job which, though I think of it often, I - for some reason - forgot to include in my list. This brings the total to 85. I guess I may not have thought of it as a "job", <i>per se</i>, because although I was definitely "hired", I'm not sure I was actually paid for any of the small amount of time I spent being where I was expected to be. I'll explain in a moment.<br />
<br />
I remember where I was living at the time, and what car I was driving. Given the nature of the job, it puts it around September into October, so I'm going to say it was in late 1981. As for the job itself, I was hired to be a gorilla in a haunted house. No, really. In the weeks prior to Halloween, a married couple was advertising for workers for a new haunted house they planned on opening up. This wasn't going to be just one of the many run-of-the-mill, short-lived haunted houses which pop up at that time of year. It seems like those are usually run by some fun-loving volunteers who either just really love scaring people and want to make a quick buck, or by charitable organizations who are trying to raise funds for a worthy cause. My new employers actually planned on trying to make their haunted house a year-round attraction. That was something of a warning sign right there.<br />
<br />
I don't know if they bought or rented, but they had acquired the use of an abandoned motel on the far north end of the Promenade in College Town. That area has always had a lonely and forlorn feeling to me. At the time it was mainly a mix of orchards and light industry. It has grown up some since then, mostly with somewhat expensive housing developments, but the rest of the area still has the dodgy look that unplanned development tends to bring.<br />
<br />
For the past several months, most days of the week I drive my bus right through this neighborhood. I'm pretty sure that the site of the old motel has been replaced by one of the new housing developments, but there is one weird old pair of buildings which looks approximately like the place I remember. I'm pretty sure they're not, though; they don't really look like a motel. I don't know what they are, to tell you the truth. I was looking at them as I drove past yesterday when I suddenly thought, "Oh my god - I forgot to put that job on the list!"<br />
<br />
The couple hired several young people, and we met a few times at the old motel to discuss the plans. I think there was an understanding that we weren't getting paid for those early meetings. That may have been legal back in the early '80s, but I'm pretty sure it's not now. If you expect people to report for duty, they need to be paid for their time. Another warning sign ignored.<br />
<br />
For some reason I was chosen to be the gorilla. I don't know why a gorilla would be in a "haunted" house with ghosts and ghouls and such. That should have been another warning sign. I never ended up even trying on a gorilla suit before I left.<br />
<br />
There was one interesting thing that happened during one of those planning meetings. There was an intense blond fellow in our party.I think he was slated to be a vampire. He was standing in the middle of one of the motel rooms explaining an idea he had for a spooky effect. He said he could slowly raise his hand (which he did), and then the light in the room could dim. Which it did. But no one was near the light switch, which wasn't the dimmer kind anyway. The rest of us exchanged nervous glances, but blondie acted like it was the most natural thing in world. I kept my distance from him after that.<br />
<br />
One morning, I was having stomach pains, They became quite severe, so I asked to leave early. When I got back to the house I shared with Good Time Charlie and our roommate Eddie, I couldn't get in because everyone was gone and I had forgotten my key. It was a cold day, so I curled up in the old easy chair on the front porch and covered myself up as best I could with a foam rubber mat I found in the backyard. Eventually one of my roommates came home and let me in, and I crawled into bed. I ended up having a bout of intestinal illness that lasted several days and left me weak and drained and even skinnier than I already was. Needless to say, I gave up on the gorilla job as a lost cause. It was too flaky, anyway - even for me.<br />
<br />
The couple did open their haunted house before Halloween, and I heard it did a pretty good business during the season, although I never went to see it. There was a segment on the local news about it, and they paid for radio advertising. They tried to keep it open after Halloween, but it wasn't long before they had to admit the folly of this and closed up shop. So much for "job" number 28 - a total non-starter from beginning to end.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<b>1982</b></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Job #29: Cleaning a Warehouse</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
So, onto another series of short-term
jobs. #28 was helping a man clean a warehouse he was leasing, in a
row of old warehouses next to the railroad tracks just south of the
university. Those buildings are long gone now, razed to make room for
the never-ending expansion of the college, which seems to be the only
growth industry left around here.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I can't recall exactly what business
this fellow was in (if I ever knew), but he was a nice guy, and
seemed to be doing well in whatever it was. He was restoring a 1930s
era Rolls-Royce in the loft portion of the warehouse, which was
accessible by a ramp of massive wooden beams built into one corner of
the building.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Job #30: Yard Clean Up</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Job #29 was doing some yard clean up
and stacking firewood at a small daycare center that a lady operated
out of her home. There were about six little girls and a toddler boy
running around. The job only took a couple of days, which is good
because the little brats were driving me crazy. At one point, all the
girls popped their heads up over a low wall and the ringleader
shouted, “Hey, mister. Do you want to see our bottoms?” and then
they fled in gales of shrieking giggles. Thankfully, I'm not a
pervert, so I had no interest in seeing their bottoms, but I was
eager to get away from there before a neighbor could overhear a
similar bizarre question and get the wrong idea.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Job #31: Dormitory Janitor</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Job #30 was actually a pretty cool job.
I was part of a large crew of janitors at a huge complex of
privately-operated dormitories for the college. Each “apartment”
had four bedrooms and a bathroom. My main task was to clean the
bathrooms of the apartments. We worked in pairs, and the schedule was
designed so that each bathroom got cleaned once a week, so they
didn't get too gross.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Cleaning up after college kids wasn't
tons of fun, but the job had lots of perks, not the least of which
was being surrounded by hundreds of young women. There was even an
all-female wing, which was informally known as “The Nunnery”, but
I very much doubt that any of the girls there were as chaste as a
Bride of Christ.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Sadly, I was too shy to take proper
advantage of the proximity of all these single females. Most of them
didn't pay much mind to we lowly janitors. I did work up the courage
to ask out one friendly young woman, but it turned out she was going
out with a young man from another wing. It was kind of funny because
I had become friendly with both of them without realizing they were
seeing each other. They were both really nice people, so I was happy
for them, despite my broken heart.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Another great perk of this job was
almost-free food. The complex had an on-site cafeteria, and we
workers were allowed to have one meal a day for a mere dollar. I've
always been a big fan of breakfast, and I took full advantage of this
boon. Also, our boss, Chip, was really mellow. As long as we got our
jobs done on schedule, he didn't care how about making sure we were
busy all the time. He gave us two thirty-minute paid breaks a day,
instead of the lawful minimum of ten minutes. We also got an
hour-long unpaid meal break rather than the usual half-hour. A very
civilized place, all in all. It seems silly 33 years later to say
that I should have stayed there forever, but I probably should have
stayed longer than I did. As it was, I was there for at least a few
months, which was quite long for me back in those days.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I can't remember the particulars behind
my decision to leave the dormitory job, but at least I know I wasn't
fired. My decision may have had something to do with my resolution to
finally attempt to attend college, which we will explore in the next
chapter.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
The end.</div>
Rimpy Rimpingtonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13017152542056998917noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2282043488488474080.post-63388481175645292612015-09-06T17:17:00.004-07:002016-01-02T08:01:07.178-08:00Chapter 13: Broken Bones and Dreams<div align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Chapter 13: Broken Bones
and Dreams</div>
<div align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Jobs 18, 19, 20, 21 &
22</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjS5lo6hYtOl8vRg0DMOBXXLD3YnAd-ghySjMqW3IgE2Ruldc7H6wsZwEjD625VfR49T35tKlkS026WM3X9xd2-aUU6oM2GceiodstRMGrVDLIn5VdzmsrwW1_n3df-40RuGjO2oXbb1Oo/s1600/reagan.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjS5lo6hYtOl8vRg0DMOBXXLD3YnAd-ghySjMqW3IgE2Ruldc7H6wsZwEjD625VfR49T35tKlkS026WM3X9xd2-aUU6oM2GceiodstRMGrVDLIn5VdzmsrwW1_n3df-40RuGjO2oXbb1Oo/s1600/reagan.jpg" /></a></div>
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
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.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Now you've probably noticed that the
name has been changed to “<i><b>82</b></i><i> Jobs in 35 Years</i>”,
and you must be thinking, “But Rimpy, shouldn't it be <i>81</i>
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.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
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.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
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.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I can't recall the exact order of the
next three jobs, but let's just go for it.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Job #18: Dishwasher</div>
<div align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
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.</div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Job #19: Car Wash</div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
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.</div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
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.</div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
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.</div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
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.</div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Job #20: Rice Cake Factory</div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
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.</div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
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.</div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
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.</div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
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.</div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
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.</div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
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.</div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
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.</div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
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.</div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
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.</div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
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.</div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
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.</div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
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”.</div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
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.</div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Job #21: Mucking Out the Underside of a House</div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
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.
</div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
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.</div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Job #22: Church Janitor<br />
<br />
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<br /></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
My 22<sup>nd</sup> 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.</div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
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.</div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
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.</div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
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!”
</div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
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.</div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
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.</div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
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.</div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
It was two days before my
21<sup>st</sup> 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.</div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
That night of October 23<sup>rd</sup>,
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.</div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
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.</div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
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 <i>fait
accompli </i>anyway.</div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
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.</div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
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.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
The End</div>
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<br /></div>
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<br /></div>
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<br /></div>
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<br /></div>
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<br /></div>
<br />
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<br /></div>
Rimpy Rimpingtonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13017152542056998917noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2282043488488474080.post-30719384424160801722015-08-31T17:59:00.001-07:002016-04-03T11:11:15.859-07:00Chapter 12: Slouching Towards Bedlam<div align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Chapter 12: Slouching Towards Bedlam</div>
<div align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Jobs 11 - 17</div>
<div align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
From here on out, the jobs start coming
fast and furious, so you'll have to look sharp or you might miss
some. Even I am not sure I haven't forgotten one or two, and I
certainly won't swear to the chronological accuracy of this
“history”.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
In fact, at the end of the last
chapter, I made reference to an unorthodox method of job search I
used. Upon reviewing my notes, I think that doesn't come until a bit
later, but I'm going to let the previous chapter stand for now, and
come back to that later.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I think I've said before that you'll
probably start to figure out that, at least early on, when it came to
work, I was a bit of a wanker. I wasn't a victim of circumstances –
I was just a neurotic dork. Another thing you should know about me is
that I do not quickly learn from my mistakes. Please just keep that
fact in mind when you start to wonder “What on Earth is wrong with
this guy?”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
For a lot of these early jobs, I can't
usually remember how I got them, but I suppose that doesn't matter.
Before the internet added new possibilities, the usual methods for
finding a job included the state employment office, temp agencies,
classified ads (those were predecessors of Craig's List that came out
in things called “newspapers”, kids), word of mouth and just
plain “pounding the sidewalk”. So it's safe to assume that if I
can't remember the specific means by which I came to a new job, it
was through one of those means.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
Job #11: Cleaning Out a Garage</div>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
Job #11 was a one-day gig cleaning out
an old man's garage. I think it was located on a property he had been
renting to someone else, but which hadn't been occupied for some
time. A lot of junk had piled up in the garage. When I saw what was
in there, including mountains of aluminum cans, I made a deal with
the gentleman that for a reduction in the cost of my labor, I could
keep anything I might find in there, to which he readily agreed. I've
never seen myself as much of a wheeler-dealer, and in fact, I may
have done myself down on that one. The old guy probably wouldn't have
known or cared if I kept some of the stuff or just trashed it, so I
likely didn't need to offer the reduced wages, but I felt it was
better to be upfront and clear from the get-go.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I made a pretty penny by recycling the
cans, and some of the better items I gleaned from that job were a
pair of removable, canvas Jeep doors. I had no use for them myself,
but I figured I could sell them, which indeed I later did. I forget
how I transported all that stuff, since I didn't own a vehicle. I
think I was using a pick-up belonging to the owner.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
Job #12: Groundskeeper</div>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Job #12 was as a groundskeeper at the
golf course, which was located by the airport. It was actually a
pretty nice job, but the commute was murder. I would get up well
before dawn and ride my bike over 5 miles to work, then of course the
same distance home at the end of the day. That was probably the
deciding factor in my not-so-eventual decision to leave that
otherwise unobjectionable position.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Of course, I was still living at my
parent's house, and chaffing to break away. Old buddy Good Time
Charlie was then living and attending school in Santa Barbara, so I
decided to try my luck there. I rode down with the parental units,
who were on their way to a Thanksgiving gathering of my dad's
relatives. Charlie welcomed me to his tiny studio apartment. I think
the plan was that once I got on my feet, he and I would room together
in a larger place.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Santa Barbara is almost exactly
half-way between my old home of San Luis Obispo and my dreaded former
residence near Los Angeles. Fortunately, it's much smaller than LA,
and its geography was more reminiscent of SLO, so I didn't get me
that heeby-jeeby feeling that LA induced in me. In fact, I had a very
interesting experience being back in southern California – one
people smarter than me would call a Proustian memory. I was in a
natural foods cooperative near Charlie's place when I saw some fruits
called pineapple guavas. I was suddenly smacked with the memory that
we'd had a pineapple guava tree in our front yard in SLO. I used to
love the taste of the fruit, but I had not seen or heard of it since
we had left there, and had completely forgotten about it. That may
seem insignificant, but it was a very powerful feeling to suddenly
have some long disused door in my mind yanked open and a bunch of
thankfully pleasant memories come spilling out.<br />
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<div style="text-align: center;">
Job #13: Jack in the Box</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
This is one of my many brief jobs which I'm having the hardest time placing confidently in the time-line. So much so, in fact, that I somehow missed it on my messy hand-written chronological list of the jobs, subsequently forgetting to include it when I first published this post. That job was at none other than O-Town's Jack in the Box restaurant. As previously mentioned, I had worked in restaurants before, but never in fast food. What a different world that is. I donned the itchy, horrible polyester tunic and silly paper hat and stepped into hell. I just couldn't keep up with the insane pace of places like that. After a couple of days, I quit. Yeah, I know - I'm a wuss. You would think that slinging burger patties would be a breeze compared to - say - dragging a tub of shit. I think it was more the getting yelled for not being fast enough that got to me. Too many shades of my father for my angry, insecure mentality to deal with.</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Job #14: Sales Associate in Training</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Another thing that helped me forget my
proximity to LA was the clothing-optional beach near Charlie's
apartment. I probably should have spent more time finding work than I
did collecting material for my favorite hobby. As it was, it wasn't
long before I landed job # 14, as a sales associate at a home
improvement warehouse store.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
That was an interesting job. During my
training, I learned about all kinds of things I had never done
before, like calculating square footage, cutting glass and operating
a fork lift. After a couple of weeks, they said that we needed to
begin thinking about what department we wanted to specialize in. It
was nice we had a choice, but this made me very nervous for some
reason. I guess I didn't feel prepared to try to become an expert on
anything.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I don't think this minor anxiety was
enough to push me on my way down instability lane, but true to my
developing pattern, I began itching to be on my way again. I think
the southern California ambiance was starting to get to me, after
all. It seems that I never wanted to stay where I was, but I wasn't
brave enough to just set out for parts unknown, unless there was
someone there I knew. When the thrill of a new location began to wear
off, and the dull reality of having to work to live set in, all I
could think of was returning to the only place that seemed like home.
These brief interludes of relocating provided me with an escape from
the humdrum of being a grown-up. I was able to delude myself that I
was somehow moving toward an as-yet-unknown goal. The world was my
oyster, but I didn't know if I even liked oysters. I'd never had
them, but I was allergic to abalone, so maybe oysters were just as
bad.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Since I didn't have the luxury of a
ride in my parent's motor home, but a little too much stuff to
reasonably carry aboard a bus, I got an empty bike box from a shop
and put in my partly-disassembled bicycle, along with my few other
possessions. The driver of the bus looked at me funny when he
attempted to heft the box. Of course, it was heavier than the average
bike, so he threw it on a scale, but it was still under their limit,
so it got put in the cargo hold of the bus. Then I was on my way,
once again, toward O-Town and an uncertain future.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
Job #15: Personal Attendant</div>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
The months after my return to O-Town
are a bit of a blur. I stayed for a bit with my parent's, but then I
happened into job #15. In high school I had a girlfriend named Liz,
and her mother is a wonderful lady named Sandy. Both of them are
still dear friends to this day. At that time, however, Sandy had
ovarian cancer, and had to have a hysterectomy. She was very sick for
a long time. Sandy was living with an older gentleman named Al, who
was in a wheelchair. In addition to being his partner, Sandy also
provided for Al's medical needs. Of course, she was too sick to that,
so they hired me as a live-in care-giver for Al. I also had some
responsibility for Liz's brother Andy, who was about 10 years her
junior.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
It was a mutually convenient
arrangement, but it was especially beneficial to me. I had free room
and board, and money to boot. Of course, I was too dumb to look far
enough ahead to see that this arrangement couldn't last forever.
Instead of saving my wages toward this eventuality, I spent it on
silly stuff like a .22 rifle. Sandy gently tried to talk to me about
this, but I was too clueless to heed her wisdom.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
Job #16: Yard Work</div>
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I also picked up a little work on the
side. Job #16 was doing a bit of yard work for an old lady friend of
Al's. Really nothing much to say about that.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Eventually, and thankfully, Sandy was
once again well enough to resume her usual domestic duties, as well
as attending college, which would eventually lead to her relocating
to Berkeley to attend the Pacific School of Religion. Liz would
follow in her footsteps a few years later.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
Job #17: Air Conditioning Helper</div>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
With Sandy back in the pink, I needed
to find new digs and a new job. I once again squeezed behind the
piano in my former bedroom in my parent's house. It was then that I
hit upon the unusual idea of just cold-calling a bunch of possible
employers. I started at the beginning of the yellow pages and called
every local business who seemed likely and asked them if they needed
workers. My dad was sure that such a method would never work, but I
proved him wrong. Before I even got out of the “A's”, I got job
#17. I think I can safely say the real name of the place, since they
don't seem to be around anymore. Besides, you'd probably think I was
making this name up anyway: Sweem's Air Conditioning.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Now I had a job, but I still needed a
place of my own. My parents departed on yet another of my mom's
painting trips, and I was left alone for a bit. I jumped into action,
and had a yard sale. I sold a lot of my old stuff, including those
Jeep doors I mentioned before. I also sold a pachinko (Japanese
pinball) machine I had received as a gift, for which I got a good
price.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
The proceeds were enough to get a dumpy
little studio apartment on the south end of town, near the railroad
yard. It was one of about four units under a common roof. I'm sure it
used to be company housing for the railroad, which at one time had
been a major employer in the area. It was hideoulsy furnished, and
had strange Art Deco prints on the walls, but it had a wall
air-conditioner, and it did nicely for my purposes.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Sweem was a funny old guy. He never did
seem to be able to get my name right, instead calling me by any name
starting with R. I finally gave up on correcting him and just
answered to whatever he called me. Eventually he figured it out –
probably when he had to issue my first pay check – and then he gave
me some ribbing for letting him call me by the wrong name.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I was initially hired as extra help
around the shop, which was in desperate need of some cleaning and
organizing. Pretty soon, I was going out on calls with some of the
technicians, one of whom was Sweem's son-in-law, Jeff, who had been a
pretty good friend of mine before high school. It was a funny feeling
now being a subordinate to a former peer. Jeff had never been a very
happy kid, and work had only seemed to make him a grumpier man.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
For my part, I didn't really know how
to do construction-related work. I was learning on the fly, inside
dark, dusty, super-heated attics in the Sacramento Valley summer. One
day I was struggling to nail a bit of duct-work into an opening of a
ceiling, and just making a total bollocks of it. Jeff came storming
over, and with a few angry but well-aimed blows of his framing
hammer, and a few choice words, he slammed the troublesome sheet
metal into place. He later apologized for his temper, but I felt
especially unmanly and incompetent that day.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Another time our only access to an
attic was through a very narrow hole in the roof. I knew I could fit
my skinny self through it, and though it was a creepy prospect, I was
about to do it. But Jeff – who was thin enough to fit as well –
said that he wasn't being paid enough to go down there. I can't
remember how much he made then, but it was well above my legal
minimum of $3.10 an hour. I found it odd that the well-compensated
employee felt underpaid for such work, and the definitely underpaid
employee was ready to tackle the task.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Some of the other pros were more
agreeable. I preferred to go on calls with an older guy. He was more
of a repairman than an installer like Jeff, so I usually had little
to do, which suited me fine. That guy was funny. One time he said
that when he was on a tough job, he liked to let his dong hang out of
his pants and go about on all fours. When I asked why, he said,
“Well, if I'm going to work like a donkey, I might as well look
like one.” Heh heh. Donkeys.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Then a new technician joined the crew,
and I seemed to get stuck with him a lot. I couldn't stand that guy.
He wasn't much older than me, but he seemed to think he knew
everything, and wasn't shy about sharing his wonderful wisdom. One
day he left me alone to do some menial work at a house in the
foothills that was being remodeled, and said he would be back later.
I couldn't stomach the idea of having to see that jerk again, so
I walked all the way back to the shop and told old Sweem I was
leaving.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
So now we're at 17 jobs and I was still
only 20, and I had been on the work force for barely five years.
According to my understanding of math (which is poor, at best), that
yields an average of one new job approximately every 3 and a half months. Ye, Gods! Now you can start to see how I've managed to pack so many jobs
into a lifetime. It's a dirty job, but somebody had to do it.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
In the next chapter, the whirlwind of
employment continues, despite being briefly interrupted by the crunch of broken glass and
bone, on the eve of that dark period known as the Reagan era.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
It's</div>
<div align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<b>The End</b></div>
<div align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
of the</div>
<div align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
World as We Know It.</div>
Rimpy Rimpingtonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13017152542056998917noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2282043488488474080.post-58891277428235147232015-08-24T13:43:00.002-07:002016-01-02T08:50:40.057-08:00Chapter 11: Working with the Fishes<div align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Chapter 11: Working with
the Fishes</div>
<div align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
(Jobs 9 and 10)</div>
<div align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Anything involving the legal system
seems to take forever. Even though I was prepared to plead guilty and
throw myself upon the mercy of the court, there was still a long
series of meetings with lawyers, appearances before judges, etc. I
was assigned a public defender, who seemed like a decent fellow, if a
bit lazy. When I met with him, at one point he was in a telephone
conversation with a colleague about my case. He said something about
the nature of my crime (spritzing a teacher with dog repellent), and
then he said that in his opinion I ought to be given a medal. This
surprised me a bit. Up until then, everyone involved in the legal
system had seemed so deadly serious and devoid of any sense of humor.
A little levity was refreshing. His joke also made me feel like not
everyone hated me for what I had done. As a little side note to this
erstwhile public servant, much later I ended up mowing the grass at
his suburban ranchlet as part of job number 47. It was memorable
because he had a donkey, and I love donkeys. No! Not like that!</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
In true prosecutorial fashion, the
district attorney wanted to punish me to the maximum extent possible,
in order to make an example of me. Apparently my case was the first
time in Butt County history that a teacher had been attacked in such
a brazen and bizarre fashion. In addition to assault, they were also
charging me with interfering with a public official in the course of
his duties. Even though this was my first crime, together the two
charges could have added up to something like a year or two in jail,
the prospect of which frightened me very much.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Then there was almost an 11<sup>th</sup>
hour miracle. My lawyer missed it, but the judge noticed the fact
that I had confessed before being officially charged. This presented
a legal technicality, and the judge was prepared to dismiss the whole
case, which made me like that judge very much. However, the district
attorney talked him into a compromise, to which my lackadaisical
public defender acquiesced. It seems that I just had to receive some
sort of punishment for my dastardly deed, which I suppose is fair. In
the end, I was given a year of formal probation and a few weeks of
community service. Pretty light, when you think about it, although a
criminal record is not a great thing to have, especially when looking
for work. Fortunately, things were easier in the late 1970s than they
are now. Back then, not as many employers ran background checks. If I
didn't want to reveal my felonious ways, I just didn't.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
While all these legalities were
grinding along, I was in a bit of a bind at home. I couldn't really
look for work until I knew what my fate would be (or maybe that was
just a handy excuse), so my parents decided for me. If I didn't go to
jail, then I was going to enroll at Sacramento City College. The plan
was that I would spend my weekdays staying with my dad in the travel
trailer on the truck yard in West Sacramento, and getting to come
home to O-Town on the weekends. Apparently I wasn't to be trusted to
attend O-Town's own Butt College without parental supervision.
Needless to say, I was <i>thrilled</i> at the prospect. Is there a
typeface more sarcastic than italics? Hmm, apparently<a href="http://glennmcanally.com/sarcastic/"> there is</a>.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
Job #9: Working with Dad</div>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
In the meanwhile, most of my time
between court appearances was spent performing job number 9, the one
mentioned previously as involuntary and indirectly related to my
legal imbroglio. I was working for my dad at the truck yard. It was
involuntary in that I didn't really have a choice, but it was
voluntary in the sense that volunteers work for free. It was just
what I had to do to earn my keep.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
My dad was head mechanic for the
trucking company, and he decided to use the free labor to clean out
some junk from around the shop and yard. I made countless trips with
the company owner's pickup truck full of metal objects to a scrap
yard across town. It was rather fun to watch the crane operator
carefully lower the huge electric magnet into the bed of the pickup.
He had to be especially cautious because the pickup had those silly
rails along the tops of the walls of the bed for tying down loads.
Even though there were a scant few inches of clearance between the
magnet and the rails, so consummate was his skill that the operator
never once bumped them. Even more fun than that was when I had to go
up to the window for the payment for the scrap, because the girl who
worked the window was gorgeous. On the last day I performed that job,
I summoned up the courage to tell her I thought she was very
beautiful. She didn't seem impressed.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
The work itself wasn't bad, it was just
having to spend so much time in the presence of my father which was
no picnic. My oldest brother Dick lived in Sacramento, and he would
visit from time to time, so I had a sane person to talk to. One night
he and a buddy came around to take me out. Despite the fact that I
was awaiting judgment for a crime, somehow it was decided to try to
get my under-aged self into a bar. I must still have looked older
than my years, because it worked, and a splendid time was had by all.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
Job #10: Community Service (Fish Hatchery)</div>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
When my legal fate had been decided, I
undertook job number 10: community service. This was also involuntary
and unpaid – unless you count the fact that I was working off my
debt to society. I met with a very rotund man whose job it was to
assign miscreants like myself their tasks. I lucked into a gig at the
local fish hatchery, a part of the State Water Project, of which
O-Town Dam was the keystone.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
The people who operated the fish
hatchery were used to having small-time criminals working off their
community service obligations, which were mostly for traffic
violations and other minor crimes. It was a little unusual for a
violent madman like myself to be assigned there, but fortunately the
hatchery men weren't privy to the nature of my charges. They treated
me like I was any other mild-mannered misdemeanor-maker, which is to
say with respect and kindness. It was quite a tonic for my psyche
after months of having prosecutors, my father and even myself telling
me I was a bad person.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
The bulk of the work consisted of
cleaning the long, shallow concrete tanks where the tiny hatchlings
matured until they were big enough to be transplanted to lakes all
around the state. The tanks had a constant current flowing through
them. The fish spent most of their days just swimming in place
against the current. I put on a pair of hip waders, lowered myself
into a tank and then just walked up and down its length with a wide
squeegee on a long handle. All I had to do was loosen the gunk that
collected on the bottoms of the tanks so that it could flow out with
the water at the downstream end. I had to shuffle along without
lifting my feet so as not to crush the little fishies, especially in
the tanks with the youngest hatchlings.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
The bigger fish were in less danger of
being stepped upon, but they were a little harder to walk amongst
because they took up more room, and were big enough to bump your feet
about when they got riled up – which the appearance of a bipedal
giant in their realm tended to do. Under normal circumstances, they
tended to stay away from me, but the thing that really got them
excited was feeding time. Periodically throughout the day, one of the
hatchery workers would drive up and down between the tanks in a
strange vehicle which blew tiny food pellets into the tanks. If I was
in the water at that moment, I had to turn away and shield my eyes.
It was quite a sight to see the moving spray of pellets breaking the
surface of the water, followed immediately by a furious boiling
caused by thousands of hungry fish in a feeding frenzy. The big fish
temporarily forgot their fear of me in their rush to gorge
themselves. I sometimes felt like I might be swept off my feet. I
dreaded to think what might happen if my delicious flesh should
happen to land in the water with the ravenous hoards.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
After a few weeks, the physical portion
of my debt to society was paid in full, and I rather reluctantly said
goodbye to the friendly fish wranglers. That wouldn't have been a bad
job to have for money. I then settled into a dull routine of having
to report monthly to a probation officer. For the first couple of
months I had to appear in her office in person, then just a phone
call was sufficient until the year was up. And that was about it for
my life of crime. Unfortunately, now that my community service was
completed, I had to face the grim prospect of attending college and
staying with my father in West Sac.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I went through the motions of enrolling
for classes, and I even attended a few. I had only skipped a class
once when I was in high school, and I got a fair amount of grief for
it, but it became a regular habit in community college, because they
don't call your parents. I found a lonesome spot at the top of a fire
staircase in a corner of some campus building. I never saw anyone
else up there, but I knew some unknown number of scrutiny-avoiders
were using it, because I often found “roaches” on the stairs, and
not the kind that scurry about on six legs – which is good, because
I would gather them up and assemble them into a new tobacco
alternative stick. Reduce, reuse, recycle, you know.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
One week, my father left me alone in
the trailer. He was accompanying my mom on one of her group trips
with other aspiring artists (read: bored, middle-aged women with
disposable income), usually lead by <a href="http://www.californiaart.com/artist-yip.html">Richard Yip</a>, a reasonably famous
artist of the day. My parents had apparently decided I could be
trusted to fulfill my obligations. Oh, poor, deluded fools.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I continued to make a stab at being a
college student, but I was becoming more and more depressed. One day,
after I rode my bike back “home”, I lay down upon my bed in the
trailer and turned on the TV, when I should have been studying. I
didn't even eat – I just stared at the television with unseeing
eyes until late that night, when I fell asleep. The next day I
didn't bother to go to school. I had decided to face my parents'
wrath and tell them of my decision that college just wasn't for me.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Surprisingly, my dad didn't seem
particularly disturbed, but my mother threw up her hands and yelled,
“I guess I'm never going to have a child who's going to be a doctor
or a lawyer!” I was surprised – I didn't know my mother was
Jewish! <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9CdVTCDdEwI">Badum-tish</a>. Seriously, though, I hadn't been aware that my mom had held these
hopes for her children. I was a little sorry to be the last in a
four-part line of disappointments, but at least I could take some
comfort in not being the only disappointment.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Once again, I was back in my parents'
home in O-Town and in need of work. This just wouldn't do. The
chances of finding employment seemed good. After all, I hadn't yet
come close to exhausting my opportunities, even in an economically
depressed area like Butt County. This time, I was
uncharacteristically motivated by the strong desire to get out of my
ancestral home. I embarked upon an unorthodox method of job search,
but that's a story for another chapter.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
The end.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
Rimpy Rimpingtonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13017152542056998917noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2282043488488474080.post-32678442000271589992015-08-13T21:57:00.001-07:002015-08-23T10:03:37.889-07:00Chapter 10: My Brilliant Criminal Career<div align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Chapter 10: My Brilliant Criminal Career</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
This chapter is probably going to be
one of the hardest ones to write. The funny thing is, I could easily
leave this part out, and you could just think that I'm simply a
somewhat neurotic doofus who has had problems keeping a job. After
this chapter, you'll probably think that I'm at best a total fuckwit,
and possibly dangerously insane. I'm willing to take that chance,
however. I think honesty is the best policy if we're going to come to
some kind of understanding of my emotional state over the years.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
The other reason I felt I should
include this life episode is because it lead to two of the positions
that I've included in this memoir – one directly and one
indirectly. Neither were jobs in the traditional sense – they
didn't pay anything, and I didn't really have a choice about doing
either of them. The indirect one could have been easily explained for
other reasons, or left out entirely. I've included the direct one
because it actually was rather healing to my psyche after the events
I'll soon describe.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
But before we get into that grim stuff,
let's do a quick recap. In the space of about my first 5 years in the
workforce, I had 7 jobs (not counting the paper route gig). That's
not so bad for a young fellow, is it? That's the equivalent of a new
job about every 8.5 months. I don't think anyone expects great
consistency and years-long commitment from someone still in their
teens. At least that rate is a little better than my lifetime average
of a different job every 5.25 months. That's my story, and I'm
sticking to it.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Getting back to the narrative, I now
found myself back in my parent's home, and faced with the prospect of
looking for work in the economically depressed seat of Butt County.
However, I seemed to have stalled in my life plans (as if I had any
in the first place). The threat of having to start attending college
if I was still at home and not working was hanging heavily over me,
but it seemed to do little to motivate me. Instead I recall being
more interested in hanging out with my old high school friends, many
of whom were still in high school.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
At O-Town High School there was a math
teacher – whom we shall call Mr. Schmossas. I had never been smart
enough in mathematics to have had any classes with him. However, many
of my smarter friends – including the future Mrs. Rimpington –
had, and they told some tales of what a cruel and rude tyrant this
fellow was. It really seemed like this guy needed to be taken down a
notch, but of course, as mere students, my friends were in no
position to do anything about it.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
So I got the idea in my head that a
former student might be just person to teach this cad a lesson. Don't
worry, I'm not talking about murder or great physical violence. I'll
admit that there is a scary little part of my personality that has
made it easy for me to imagine that I could have been some kind of
stone cold assassin or hit-man. After all, I sure showed those
chickens who was boss, didn't I?</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
No, I just figured that something
humiliating and perhaps a little uncomfortable would fit the bill. As
I mentioned in the last chapter, I also seemed to be riding on some
sort of high after my Alaskan adventure. It was probably completely
unwarranted, but I was feeling pretty full of myself – as if I had
accomplished something great. Unambitious as I was, I seemed to think
I could do anything I put my mind to – and the wackier the idea,
the better.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Mrs. Rimpington has a worthy theory
about why I did what I did. She thinks my overweening sense of my own
importance was compensation for feeling as though I had failed in my
first quest for independence, and that I was unhappy about being back
under the roof of my overbearing father, who certainly didn't share
my high opinion of myself. I probably decided to take on the critical
Mr. Schmossas as a substitute for the father I still couldn't yet
stand up to. Smart lady, that wife o' mine. Lord knows why she
married me.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Whatever my motivations, I decided to
make a non-lethal hit upon the pride of the evil Schmossas. Remember
that can of <i>Halt!</i> dog repellent from Chapter 8? Well, I still
had that can. I also had a balaclava and some gloves from my recent
life in Alaska. One December day just before Christmas break, with
ski mask, gloves and weapon of choice in the pockets of a
loose-fitting jacket, I ambled nonchalantly onto my former high
school campus during class hours, at I time I had previously
determined that Schmossas would be oppressing a room full of hapless
students.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Amazingly, I was delusional enough to
think that no one at the school would recognize me, even though I had
graduated only the previous summer. Aiding me in my imagined
anonymity was the fact that I had grown a nifty little beard in my
absence (I had always been precociously hirsute). As it was, I had no
close encounters with any of my former school mates or staff. In the
empty hall outside Schmossas's classroom. I donned my gear, and with
capsaicin cannon in hand, I pulled open the door and sauntered into
the room. I kept my knees bent to try to confuse witnesses as to my
height.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Schmossas was in front of the
classroom, as teachers do. When he saw me coming he laughed, thinking
it was some kind of joke, but he stopped laughing when he got a face
full of mace. The classroom erupted in screams and yells and I turned
tail and beat feet. As I exited the hallway, I threw the can of
repellent into a trash can. I waited until I had cleared the school
grounds and was sure that no one was in pursuit before I pulled off
the mask and gloves, which I deposited – along with the jacket, for
good measure – in a dumpster behind the supermarket a few blocks
from my house. I then backtracked to my home via some side streets.
When I came in, I was a little flushed from all the exertion and
excitement. My mom asked what I had been doing. I gave her some lame
story, then went to my former bedroom to contemplate my successful
caper.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Or was it? A few hours later, I heard
my mom answer the phone, and moments after that she came to my door and said
that the police department had called and they wanted to know if I
would be so kind as to come down to the station to talk with them.
She of course wanted to know what was going on. I feigned innocent
ignorance as to what the police could possibly want from little old
me, and I set off with dread in my heart. I can't help but wonder
what would have happened if I had decided to let the police come to
me. I don't know how strong their case was against me at that point.
But I was no hardened criminal, despite my daring escapade, and at
that point I thought I would look more innocent by appearing to
cooperate.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
The O-Town constabulary was located in
a dumpy trailer next to the municipal courthouse on the levee above
the river. I sat down with a Detective Spumoni (not his real name,
but the ethnicity is accurate). He was actually the father of a girl
I had gone to school with, but I had never met him before. At the
risk of sounding racist, Spumoni was the embodiment of some common
stereotypes of Italian-American police detectives you've probably
seen in many a cheesy movie or TV show. He was a portly, greasy
loudmouth in a cheap suit. His sense of humor ran to sexist jokes
toward the females in his department, and he alone thought he was
very funny. I took an instant dislike to him, although, all in all,
he treated me rather kindly.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Our conversation started out as you
might expect. He asked me if I knew anything about what had happened
at the high school that morning, to which I responded that I did not.
He proceeded to tell me that some witnesses claimed to have seen me
on the campus before the incident. He could have been making that
part up, but I wasn't savvy enough to think of that at the time. As
it was, I said that I was just passing through. Then he dropped his
bomb. He pulled an evidence bag from his desk drawer. Inside it was
the can of <i>Halt!</i> He said
that it had been found by a janitor. He also said there were
fingerprints on it, and he had a strong suspicion that if I were to
agree to submit my own prints, that they would match. Now I think
that the bit about the fingerprints may have been a lie. I had been
careful to wipe the canister down with alcohol, and then not to
handle it again with my bare hands before the “hit”. At the time,
however, I figured I must have missed a couple of incriminating
prints, and the jig was up. If it was a ploy on Spumoni's part, it
worked. I broke down and tearfully admitted to my crime.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Spumoni then read me my rights, and I
was officially under arrest for the first (and only) time in my life.
He didn't cuff me. He could probably tell I had no threat of fight or
flight in me. I decided that cooperation was my only hope for a light
sentence. I agreed to show Spumoni where I had ditched the other
accouterments of my crime. We drove down in his unmarked car, and I
even climbed into the dumpster to retrieve the evidence against me.
Spumoni certainly wasn't going to heft his fat, polyester-clad ass up
into a dumpster.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
We went back to the station. Spumoni
called my mom and told her I was going to jail, and would she like to
bring me anything for my stay. She drove down with my toothbrush and
some clean underwear in a bag. I stood with my chin on my chest while
my poor, confused, sad mother handed Spumoni the bag. He then drove
me out to the jail. Since I was a cooperative suspect, and a
first-time offender, he pulled some strings to get me a cell to
myself, rather than putting me in with a bunch of real criminals. I
was very thankful for that.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I traded my clothes for some rather
butch jeans and a denim shirt with “Butt County Jail” stenciled
on the back. No ugly orange back in those days. The guards found my
homey bag of personal items amusing, and relieved me of it. There
went my plans for making a shiv out of my toothbrush.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I only spent one night in the pokey,
but it seemed like forever. I could hear the other inmates in a
common cell watching TV, but I had nothing to distract me from my
worries. I tried to nap on my cot, and was just about to succeed
when some asshole who was passing my cell with a group of inmates
yelled, “Wake up!” at the top of his lungs. He was probably
envious of me and my luxurious private cell.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Eventually a kindly old trustee came by
and asked me if I would like something to read, to which I eagerly
agreed. He came back with a western novel by one of the famous
authors of the genre - either Louis L'Amour or Zane Grey. This brand
of fiction had never appealed to me before, but I fell to it in
desperation. I didn't get to finish that book before I left, and I
desperately wish I could remember the exact author and title. I still
want to find out what varmint done it.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I had no way of knowing what time it
was. I was still reading when I heard the Brady Bunch theme song
coming from the far off TV. I knew that a local affiliate always
reran the show at 10 PM. I was surprised it was so late. I had
thought that the light which was shining from down the the hallway
must be sunlight coming through a barred window, but I didn't notice
that it hadn't moved. Soon it was lights out, and despite my anxiety,
I drifted off to sleep.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
The next day we were roused early, and
those of us with appointments with a judge were handcuffed and herded
into a paddy wagon-style vehicle for the trip to the courthouse. Back
in those days, three of O-Town's more notorious scofflaws were these
twin brothers and their nearly identical cousin. They were really
something to see. They had no hair on their rather simian-looking
heads, except for long, straggly goatees. I heard that the brothers
had some kind of rare condition wherein they had no sweat glands. All
three of them liked to boom around town on big Harleys, striking fear
into the hearts of the more mild-mannered populace.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
The cousin was one of my fellow
passengers in the paddy wagon, and at first I was nervous to be in
such close proximity to this infamous and frightening-looking outlaw.
You know what they say about judging a book by its cover, though. It
turns out the guy was really cool. He was obviously highly
intelligent, and well-spoken. He was full of friendly advice for us
other inmates. He chose to represent himself when he came before the
judge, and he did so admirably. No doubt he'd had a lot of experience
at it.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I don't remember all the legal details
of my appearance in front of the judge. The important thing is that
it was determined that I was fit to be released on my own
recognizance. I had to return to the jail to get my street clothes
back and get processed out. Most of the guards seemed pretty
friendly, and were even joking with some of the inmates. I remember
one guard laughingly telling a prisoner to always plead “innocent”,
even if he were to be caught standing over the body with a smoking
gun in his hand.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
By the time I was able to leave, they
were just starting to serve lunch, which was friend burritos, and
they smelled pretty damned good. I was a little disappointed that I
couldn't stay and partake. Jail had not been as bad as I thought it
would be, but it's not something I wanted to ever repeat. I'm proud
to say that I have avoided incarceration since then – with one
minor exception, though I wasn't actually under arrest for anything
then. We'll get to that later.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Of course, being out of jail was by no
means the end of my new legal entanglements, but this has gone on
rather longer than I intended. Next time I'll wrap up my criminal
career, and we can get back to all those jobs.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
The end.</div>
Rimpy Rimpingtonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13017152542056998917noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2282043488488474080.post-8320722725839224102015-08-07T17:23:00.002-07:002016-01-02T07:51:22.431-08:00Chapter 9: Go Even Further North, Young Man<div align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Chapter 9: Go Even Further
North, Young Man<br />
(Jobs 6, 7, and 8)</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUDXToL_ZVfY89V4Lx2Nga8XgNDElC6iQF7qTCAHykkMLRATisRZ62Vr0VOXqqaJTkw1XP9atMDfdWPlsN-KsCRuU7kTZZsd4yvn6GKytYQSnp9UcR5gbmTPJOdbkzVyeOax4iejJFSBk/s1600/juneau.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUDXToL_ZVfY89V4Lx2Nga8XgNDElC6iQF7qTCAHykkMLRATisRZ62Vr0VOXqqaJTkw1XP9atMDfdWPlsN-KsCRuU7kTZZsd4yvn6GKytYQSnp9UcR5gbmTPJOdbkzVyeOax4iejJFSBk/s320/juneau.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
So there I was – and here we are –
at the start of my adulthood. I've actually been dreading this part
to some extent. I've seldom felt like I've done a terribly great job
of being a responsible adult, and I'm not sure I've ever completely
figured out why that might be. I've had a goodly bit of counseling
over the years (thanks to the encouragement of my good lady wife),
and I've spent more than a little time on introspection. In fact,
working on this project is helping me to realize some new insights.
But still, I have nagging doubts about my worth as a person, and
downright mystification at some of my past behavior.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Before we go any further, then, I
thought I should get some of the self-loathing and self-pity out of
the way. I've already spoken of how my father was a critical and
judgmental parent. It seemed like his only criterion for a meaningful
life was work. He emphasized it to the point that the idea of work
started to seem terrifyingly stultifying to me. Physical labor didn't
appeal, and I had no mind for business. My dad would sometimes tell
me of some young man or another he had heard about who had taken a
simple idea and turned it into a highly profitable business. That
sounded like death to me.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I leaned more toward the creative side
of life, particularly writing. Unfortunately, I lacked the
self-confidence to ever dare to submit my work to a publisher. I also
seemed to lack any kind of drive. I was like Ferdinand the Bull –
all I wanted to do was sit just quietly and smell the flowers. As my
father would be quick to point out, however, no one pays anyone for
flower smelling.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Along with a stunted attitude toward
work, I also lacked financial acumen. In fact, most of my adult life
has been characterized by fiscal irresponsibility. I'm not trying to
be glib about that – It has made certain things difficult; my
credit rating is a joke of cosmic proportions, and it has damaged
relationships with certain family members and friends. But do not
feel sorry for me. I can do that very well on my own, thank you. I
made most of my decisions with a reasonably sound mind, although
sometimes I wonder just how sound (and so will you later).</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
When the plane home from Japan landed,
I didn't know what I would be doing for work, but I had already
decided where I was going to try: as far from my parents as I could
get without a passport (which I had, but I wasn't interested in
emigration).</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
One of the places I had visited on my
Alaska vacation was Juneau. I had a good friend in high school named
Tammy who had married a nice man named Greg, who was stationed in the
Coast Guard in Juneau. Since it was a place with which I had some
familiarity, and there was somebody there I knew, I decided to move
to Juneau to start my life. Of course, myopic idiot that I am, I
didn't tell Tammy that I was coming. I guess I just figured that she
would be so surprised and happy to see an old friend that it would
all work out. And for the most part, it did, but I still cringe when
I think of what a rude and self-centered act that was.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I had some money, probably graduation
gifts, and some of my relatives were happy to “grub-stake” me a
little cash for my great undertaking. I flew into Juneau (the only
way in or out of Juneau is by boat or plane), and found Tammy and
Greg's apartment. They were out at the moment, so I left a cryptic
little note that said, “I was here, where were you? - Rimpy.” I
then found a place to wait for their return. I may have been hiding,
or I may have just returned from a reconnoiter when I saw Tammy
reading my note. When she said, “RIMPY!?” in shock and confusion,
she turned and saw me standing there. It was a memorable moment.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Tammy and Greg were very gracious. I
guess I somehow expected that there would be no problem with me
staying with them, and thankfully, they acted like there wasn't. If
they had, I suppose I had enough money to get a motel room, but I
hadn't thought that far ahead. In fact, it's a good thing I didn't
have to pay for lodging upon arrival. To thank them for letting me
stay, I offered to pay for dinner that first night. We ordered pizza,
and when I got the bill, I realized that the cost for goods and
services was much higher in Alaska than what I was used to in the
lower 48. That one dinner put a goodly dent in my meager budget.
Tammy and Greg nodded knowingly and said, “Yep.”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Over the next few days I started
blanketing Juneau businesses with applications and seeking living
quarters. I rented a room from a man across the street from the
Alaska State Office Building, and next door to Bullwinkle's Pizza, which is <a href="https://www.google.com/maps/place/Bullwinkle's+Pizza+Parlor/@58.300651,-134.412366,3a,75y,213h,90t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1sOuhideuGnJdNdxrbOv6uEg!2e0!6s%2F%2Fgeo0.ggpht.com%2Fcbk%3Fcb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile%26output%3Dthumbnail%26thumb%3D2%26panoid%3DOuhideuGnJdNdxrbOv6uEg%26w%3D374%26h%3D75%26yaw%3D213%26pitch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D120%26ll%3D58.300651,-134.412366!7i13312!8i6656!4m2!3m1!1s0x5400df838f296989:0xac1129ec7a37fe2d!6m1!1e1">still there today</a>, although my old residence (just to the right in the picture) seems to have
lost its top story – not surprising when you consider its age and
condition and the way it would shake when the infamous “<a href="http://juneauempire.com/outdoors/2014-01-17/science-behind-taku-winds">Taku winds</a>”
would roar down off the nearby glacier. A local legend said that a meter was once installed to measure those winds, but it was blown away.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
My place was a small, two-story
wooden house which was probably built in the 1940s. There was a
living room, kitchen/dining area and a bathroom downstairs. The
bedrooms were upstairs. In fact, my “room” was little more than a
laundry space at the top of the stairs. My landlord-slash-housemate's room, which
had a real door and everything, was on the end of this space,
opposite the stairs. In other words, he had to pass through my room
to get to and from his, so there wasn't a lot of privacy to practice my favorite hobby.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
My housemate was a decent sort. He was
probably in his mid-thirties, and looked a lot like David Crosby. He
had worked on the Alaska pipeline. Because he had a college
education, the other roughnecks he worked with had dubbed him “Doc”,
although I think he only had a Bachelor's degree.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
Job #6: Busboy</div>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
In short order I managed to procure job number 6, as a busboy at one of Juneau's finer restaurants, called Yancey
Derringer's (no longer extant). I had to buy a long-sleeved white
shirt and black pants for my first real, grown-up job (even if “boy”
was part of the title). The store I got them at let me have them on
credit until my first paycheck. Things were rather laid-back in
Alaska.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
The manager and the chef were also the
owners of the restaurant, and it was quite popular with tourists and
more well-to-do residents. Sometimes we would have staff meetings, where the chef would basically scream obscenities at us. I couldn't
understand what he was so angry about, or why he thought he could
talk to people like that. I was just glad that I seldom had to deal
directly with him.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
One of the best parts of the job for me
was that the wait staff had to put their tips together, and then it
would be divided equally between all of us. I suppose the waiters
probably didn't think this was fair, and I think that busboys
probably got a smaller percentage, but some nights I would leave work
with upwards of 18 dollars in my pocket. Life seemed pretty good.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Unfortunately, my time there didn't
last long. One day I was setting tables for the dinner shift. The
manager passed by and said that I was going to have to move faster.
This surprised me, because I hadn't been aware that there was a
problem. Maybe my anal retentiveness (which has bordered on
Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder at times) made me spend a little too
much time getting the placement of cutlery just right. I tried to
move quicker, but a few minutes later the manager suddenly reappeared
and grabbed my tub of clean silverware and napkins and said, “That's
it, Rimpy. You're out of here”, as he began slapping down place
settings. I wasn't sure what he meant – I had never been fired
before, but I was pretty sure it actually involved the word “fired”.
I thought maybe I was being given an unscheduled break or something.
Seeing my confusion, he kindly explained, “You're too slow. You're
fired.” Ah. Now I understood.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
This was a bit of a blow to my
self-esteem. After a few more years in the work force, I realized
that fast-paced jobs and I were not a good fit. I am a good, steady
worker, and I like to produce quality results. Jobs that require some
sort of super-normal pace are not for me. At the time, though, I was
rather devastated.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
Job #7: Building a Back Office</div>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Through the local employment office, I
got temporary job number 7, helping to build a new office space at the back
of a downtown store. I didn't have any construction skills, but I
didn't really need any. A Native American man and I helped the
store-owner. After we had nailed up the drywall, but before we
applied the skim coating (I had to look that term up, because I
certainly didn't know it at the time), I insisted on signing my name
and the date on the sheet rock. My employer thought I was weird, and
he was probably right. I knew it was going to be covered up and no
one would ever see it, but I felt this need to have my name on this –
my first (and pretty much only) construction job. Sometimes I wonder
if that sheet rock wall still exists with my name hidden away on it.
<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
Job #8: Dishwasher</div>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
After that job, I found job number 8 as a
dishwasher at Sally's Kitchen, a cafeteria style diner next door to
the State Office Building (and therefore just a short walk from my
home). After being declared “too slow” at my previous restaurant
job, I was a little nervous about how well I would fare at this job,
but I received no complaints about my speed. Sally T. and her husband
(last name withheld because there is currently a bed and breakfast up
there with the first name “Sally's” ; it's a shame I can't use it
– because it's a great name and I'm amazed that I still remember it all these
decades later), were very nice people.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
That was a great job. I could eat there
for little or nothing. Sometimes slices of cellophane-covered pie
that had passed their prime in the refrigerated display case out
front would find their way back to my station for disposal, which
usually meant into my perpetually hungry teenage belly.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
One of my favorite parts of the job was
setting up the grill for the lunch-time hamburger crowd, which
included preparing the soft-serve ice cream machine. I would pour the
mix in the top, then do other chores while the machine chilled and
stirred it. When it was ready, I would squeeze off a sample cup, you
know, to make sure it was mixed properly. Quality is job one, after
all, and “waste not, want not”, so of course I would wolf that
down as well. I only weighed about 150 pounds back then, stretched
over a 6'1” frame. I was always starving, and I could eat anything
without worrying about gaining weight. Sigh. Those were the days.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Sally and her husband also owned a
liquor and convenience store on the north side of town. Another duty
of mine was to help make sandwiches which were wrapped up and sold at
the store. Occasionally I would go out to the store to help unload a
truck. I called it a “liquor and convenience” store rather than
one or the other because of a curious quirk of Alaskan law, at least
at the time. A store that sold food wasn't allowed to sell alcohol,
and liquor stores couldn't sell food. Why, I don't know. Even though
Sally's liquor and food enterprises were under the same roof, they
complied with the law by having a dividing wall down the middle, with
separate entrances for the two halves. The same cashier would serve
both sides from a central corral with a cash register on each side.
If you wanted chips and beer, you had to buy one, then go outside and
in the other door for the other. It seems a little silly, and this
setup was probably pretty common, but it struck me as a rather clever
work-around.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Another interesting thing about Alaska
was that the drinking age then was 19. I bought my very first legal
beer while living there. When I returned to California, where the
drinking age was 21 (like it would be nation-wide in 1984. See?
Orwell was right!), it was like being sent back two years. I had to
wait to be able to legally continue my burgeoning alcoholism.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
The only thing I didn't like about my
dishwashing job was how early it started. I had to get up at some
ungodly hour like 4 AM for work. But I got off early in the
afternoon, and the rest of the day was mine. As long as I got to bed
at a reasonable hour, I was fine. One evening I was talking to my
parents on the phone. I had the handy (and true) excuse of concluding
the conversation in a timely manner because of having to get to bed
for my early day. My dad said that so did he. There was something in
the way he said it that sounded like he was proud of me, and I
remember feeling very good about that. It wasn't easy to get my dad's
approval, and he seldom specifically said it in so many words. After
all the lectures about work, it's seems silly that it should have
mattered to me, but it did. Such is human nature.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
All in all, life in Juneau was pretty
good. I had even managed to talk the owners of Bullwinkle's into
starting a tab for me. I felt like quite the swell, being able to
order pizza and beer without money, then walking about 20 feet to get
home. I probably could have worked at Sally's Kitchen indefinitely,
but then the Alaskan winter descended upon this California boy like
some sort of metaphor. Juneau is quite southerly for Alaska, and the
waters of the Gastineau Channel are warmed somewhat by the Japanese
current, so their winters are nothing like what is experienced
further north and inland, but it still seemed like Siberia to me.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
A funny thing about people who moved to
Alaska is they tended to build they way they had in the lower 48,
with no consideration for extra insulation and such. My old house was
no exception. Some nights I would take my laundry right out of the
drier and put it in my bed and climb in after it so I could get to
sleep while still warm.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Eventually the cold and long, long
northern winter nights (which take up much of the day, as well)
became too much for me, and I decided to head home. In true form, I
didn't inform my parents of this ahead of time. I did, however, tell
Charlie, and he picked me up at the San Francisco Greyhound station
(I flew from Juneau to Seattle) because he was attending school at
Berkeley at the time. He was about to travel to O-Town for the
Thanksgiving holiday, so I rode with him. I surprised my mom by just
walking into the house behind Charlie on the pretext of a friendly
visit on his part. She was very happy to have me back. She had never
been too keen on my choice of new residence to begin with. It had to
have been hard for her to see her last child leave the nest (and
leave her with only my father for company). My dad, for his part,
wasn't impressed with my quick return. After all, I had only been
gone about 4 or 5 months.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
So now I was back in my parent's home.
My mom hadn't been so cut up by my departure that she hadn't wasted
any time converting my former bedroom into an approximation of the
arts and crafts room she had enjoyed in southern California. I had to
sleep on a sleeper sofa that barely fit between the wall and an
upright piano. I can't remember when my parent's got that piano –
perhaps during my absence. Certainly no one in the home played. I 'm
sure my mom had plans to learn, but I don't think she ever did.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
This situation was not acceptable, even
if I did plan on staying – which I didn't. My dad had always said
that I could live at home rent free if I would attend college, which
would probably be a pretty sweet deal for someone who didn't mind his
parents' company. If I stayed at home and didn't find work, there was
the ever-present threat of having to go back to school. The choice
seemed simple to me: the first order of business was to get a job,
and then a place of my own.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
But despite the cramped conditions in
my former room, I still spent a few days enjoying the mild winter
weather of California and just sort of taking it easy. Looking back
on it, I was acting as though I had just returned from some taxing
adventure and was in need of rest and recuperation. Like I said
earlier, this was one of those time when I really wonder what was
going on in my head.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
During these days of slack, I got
another bad idea – one that really makes me wonder if maybe I
wasn't a bit schizophrenic at times. This astoundingly bad decision
sent my nascent adult life off the rails for a bit, but you'll have
to wait for the next installment to hear about that.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
The end.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
Rimpy Rimpingtonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13017152542056998917noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2282043488488474080.post-73040141033184497652015-07-31T19:22:00.000-07:002016-01-02T07:47:59.865-08:00Chapter 8: Summer Jobs and Vacations<div align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Chapter 8: Summer Jobs and
Vacations<br />
(Jobs 2, 3, 4 and 5)</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdo3vK6b-Rg21dDUKmZryX5DnsS2ZkIsBbIajIzRARnwHqlDOkqbke0BTy0CHoiDAvubDtf-ZCu-ry2nD-9SPRaRR7nC-9bayP5vSjPY12Ja3uew9jTNyfYKv7FlNT9hBTnFdJCtUKrgo/s1600/halt-01.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdo3vK6b-Rg21dDUKmZryX5DnsS2ZkIsBbIajIzRARnwHqlDOkqbke0BTy0CHoiDAvubDtf-ZCu-ry2nD-9SPRaRR7nC-9bayP5vSjPY12Ja3uew9jTNyfYKv7FlNT9hBTnFdJCtUKrgo/s320/halt-01.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<div style="text-align: center;">
Job #2: Weed Puller</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Like I said in the last chapter, the
egg farm job may not have strictly been my actual first job. The
other contender for that title was Hobbie Automotive, but it shall now be known as job #2. It seemed that
they had already been around forever when I started working there,
and they've been around for the forty-odd years since then, at least
until recently. I noticed a couple of weeks ago that the Hobbie name
had been replaced by the much more generic “O-Town Auto Center”.
That is why I feel safe using their actual name.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I can't remember how I came to this
job, but I took it very seriously. The nice man – probably a Mr.
Hobbie – who interviewed me asked me questions which indicated that
they were looking for someone who was willing to work hard, and I
answered all them in the affirmative. I meant what I said, too, even
though I hadn't yet had enough experience to really know what hard
work was (except for dragging a shit tub). This was my first
encounter with the strange phenomena of job interviews. You wouldn't
be there if you didn't want the job, so even if down in your heart of
hearts you're a bit a slacker, you're not going to tell the keeper of
the job that.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I was mainly hired to pull weeds in the
landscaping surrounding the property, and to keep the lot clean of
trash. Occasionally I was asked to perform other tasks as needed. One
day one of the many adults who worked there asked me to move a
company pickup truck from one side of the lot to another. This put me
on the horns of a dilemma. For one thing, I was only about 14, and
was still a long way from having a driver's license. I guess I looked
older than I was – which was a compliment, I suppose. I had been
trained from infancy that when an adult tells you to do something,
you do it. I figured the good people of the car lot must know what
they were doing, so I nervously climbed behind the wheel of the
truck. I had once “driven” our family station wagon in circles in
a parking lot while seated on my dad's lap, so I knew enough to be
able to turn it on and get it in gear (thankfully it had an automatic
transmission).</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I set out very slowly, and I probably
never got above a few miles an hour, but this just seemed
terrifyingly fast. Even though I was nowhere near any other objects,
I panicked and slammed on the brakes with a great deal of noise,
leaving some nice black marks on the concrete surface of the lot. I
finally got the truck into the designated spot. The experience shook
me up enough that I confessed to my employers my total lack of
qualifications for that particular chore. They weren't upset, but
they certainly never asked me to move any more vehicles.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
One afternoon, I was doggedly pulling
weeds in the summer sun when I began to realize that work can suck.
I'm sure I was just sun-burnt, thirsty and hungry, but above all –
hungry. It wasn't until I was in my late twenties that I was
diagnosed as having hypoglycemia (chronic low blood sugar), but I'm
sure I must have had the condition all my life. Had I known earlier
about the importance of healthy snacks, it might have made a
significant difference in a lot of areas of my early life, like
school and work. It's rather sad to think of a little boy who already
had Attention Deficit Disorder (oops, Hyperkinetic Impulse Disorder)
compounding his behavior problems because he probably just needed to
eat – or worse yet, had eaten the wrong thing – like Shake A
Pudd'n [<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uKV7yd6RWYk">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uKV7yd6RWYk</a>].
Is anybody here old enough to remember that stuff? It was the bomb,
but what a poor choice for a brown-bag lunch for school! Like the kid
in the commercial says, “What a crazy way to make a snack!” No
wonder I had troubles.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
That fateful day on the car lot,
though, I suddenly felt like I couldn't take it anymore. I went into
Mr. Hobbie's office with my head hung low. I told him that I knew
they wanted somebody who could work hard, but that I guessed I just
wasn't that person. I felt genuinely ashamed for betraying the faith
they had shown in me. Mr. Hobbie seemed to take it well enough. He
probably found my earnestness amusing. We parted amicably, and I
slouched my slimy self home. So much for job number 2.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
Job #3: Moving a Bookcase</div>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Job number 3 was a temporary gig at a
local law office. It was one of the more prestigious law firms in
O-Town, located in a beautiful, tall Victorian house in the historic
downtown residential neighborhood. It was right across the street
from future job number 20, the Congregational Church. It was one of
those heritage law firms with the same family name repeated on the
sign, like “Kardashian, Kardashian, Sputter, Booboo and Moore”
(names changed to protect the lawyers).</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
My mother was in the local art league
with Mrs. Kardashian, the matriach of the family business. They
needed someone to disassemble a metal book shelf on the second floor
and move it into the attic – which was more like the third story of
the old building – and reassemble it. My mom suggested me for the
job.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
The day I performed this chore was the
hottest day of the year, which in the Sacramento Valley is nothing to
laugh at. I don't know how accurate the LED time and temperature sign
outside the bank on the main drag was, but the entire town seemed to
take it as meteorological gospel. That day it was reading 114
degrees. The business portion of the law firm had air-conditioning,
but that didn't extend to the attic. It was probably in the upper
120s in that airless space.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I managed to finish the job, but my
clothing was absolutely soaked with sweat. I also somehow hurt my
finger, and went in search of a bandage. One of the lawyers asked a
co-worker if they had any band-aids on the premises, because – as
he said – “our boy” had hurt himself. I felt quite honored that
he had called me <i>their </i>boy.
It made me feel like I belonged, even though it was only a one-day
job. So, I'd call job number three a success. If I had been asked to
spend another day in that oven of an attic, though, I probably would
have balked.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
That
summer of 1975 was fun because I got to go on a prolonged trip
to Alaska with my brother Dick and his friend Al. I won't go into
detail, because they are not germane to this memoir. In short, we
drove up in Al's VW van, which he had rigged up with a bed in
the back. We were up there for a few weeks. I saw a lot of great
sights and had some interesting adventures, including being charged by a ferocious marmot. Additionally, I was out of the
California heat for the remainder of the summer.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXTHJPthKXQteABnem1Pw1C6ArQYv4t0MNFoBF1m7NZFZdjaBba3rFrZj094I53dheRJ_QlfJehtQ3EHVhd5nPST-FD9bTJNmD7ACtuIRVmF5Y-cd4t08CJkLjnadZOyccUT7hPMe46n4/s1600/marmot.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXTHJPthKXQteABnem1Pw1C6ArQYv4t0MNFoBF1m7NZFZdjaBba3rFrZj094I53dheRJ_QlfJehtQ3EHVhd5nPST-FD9bTJNmD7ACtuIRVmF5Y-cd4t08CJkLjnadZOyccUT7hPMe46n4/s1600/marmot.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">"I'll get you next time, Rimpy!"</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
A day
or two before we were to depart for Alaska, my mom and I drove down
to Sacramento. We stayed in the trailer at my dad's then-current job
at a trucking yard in West Sacramento (the place of my first
residence as an infant) until it was time for me to leave. On the
morning of August 1, the day our journey was to begin, I was walking
Bonnie, the family dog, around the truck yard. I noticed that Bonnie
was acting strangely. She was whimpering and hunching her shoulders
and pawing at the ground.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
A few
moments later my dad came out of the mechanics' shop and said, “Did
you feel that?” I asked him “Feel what?”, and he said, “We
just had an earthquake!” I couldn't believe it. I hadn't felt a
thing, even though I was standing outside, on the very earth that was
allegedly quaking.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
My mom
had been inside the trailer at the moment, and she had felt it
shaking. She thought that perhaps I was jumping on the towing tongue
of the trailer, and she yelled at me to stop. When the shaking didn't
immediately cease, she looked outside and was mystified to find no
naughty boy to blame.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
It
turns out that a 5.7 magnitude quake had occurred in none other than
O-Town! There had never been an earthquake there before in recorded
history, and I was out of town the day it happened! Here we had left
southern California because of earthquakes, and now they were
happening in the seemingly safe foothills of the Sierra Nevada. In
the months following the quake, I wondered if the relatively new
O-Town Dam (1968) and – more importantly – the weight of the
water it impounded could have triggered the quake. Resevoir Induced
Seismicity is now a more well-known phenomenon, but relatively
unheard of in 1975. I felt pretty smart for thinking of it as a teen.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Damage
was later estimated to be around 2.5 million dollars. There were no
fatalities. I don't think there were even any injuries. The quake was
the death blow for my old alma mater, Bird Street School. It didn't
collapse, but its already unstable portions were damaged enough that
it had to be torn down and replaced by a boring modern one-story
building. The old Catholic church across the street from the school
had damage to its bell-tower. They didn't remove it, or rebuild it,
but instead shortened it. It was never as impressive-looking after
that.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
On the
day of the quake, through phone conversations with friends and
neighbors, we were able to determine that our house had received no
outwardly visible damage. There was another large temblor in the
early afternoon. I did feel that one way down in Sacramento, so I
didn't feel too ripped off. Being Friday, it was time for my dad to
go up to O-Town. My parents departed to see how the homestead was
faring, and my Alaskan adventure began unimpeded.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
Job #4: Moving Stuff</div>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Returning
to the subject of jobs, number 4 is so vague in my memory that I've
had a hard time placing it with great certainty in this chronology.
It was at the old Montgomery Ward store in O-Town. I don't recall
exactly how I got the job. I do recall applying at MW. It was one of
the first times I had to fill out a typical job application form. I
was embarrassed because I had nothing to put in the “work history”
section. I didn't want to leave it blank, but the one or two things I
had done didn't seem sufficient. I spoke of this with Charlie, who
later went on to great success as a business man. At the time,
though, he confessed to the same problem, which I found comforting.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
The MW
store was a great relic of a bygone era. It seemed almost too nice
for little O-Town. It had a full-service diner inside. Actually, the
Woolworth's store across the street had one of those as well. It was
a glorious time for retail. The MW store had really nice restrooms,
as well. Later, during jobs 55 and 57 (I'll explain later), when I
was a para-transit driver, that restroom became my favorite to use
during the course of my work day. I could park right outside the door
closest to them. They were clean, climate-controlled and (sadly,
because the chain was in decline by then) almost always devoid of
other humans.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
In my
teens, I somehow landed a temporary job helping to move some stuff
around at the MW store. I had never been “behind the
scenes” there before, and I was amazed to find out that not only
was there a vast second story storage area, there was (obviously) a
freight elevator to transport items up and down. Interesting what you
never suspect.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
Job #5: Substitute Paperboy</div>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Finally,
there is another job that I had originally considered for this list.
I initially rejected it, because, for one thing, I couldn't remember actually receiving any monetary compensation for it. Charlie assures me I did, however, and I believe him. Pay or not, it was really more in
the nature of a favor for a friend. At prompting from Goodtime
Charlie, I've decided to include it now, but I am reluctant to number
it, for reasons I just cited. Besides, I like that nice round 80
number. 81 jobs just doesn't have the same ring to it. Let's just call it Job Number 4.5 and leave it at that.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Charlie
and his younger brother and sister shared a paper route in their
neighborhood. It wasn't a very large route, and they did it on foot
rather than on bikes. When their family went on vacations, I would
fill in for them. Seems like every kid since time immemorial has had
a paper route. Although I never had one of my own, I can proudly
claim membership in that honorable club, at least as a substitute.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
It was
an easy enough job. It had some perks, too. A pretty young woman
would deliver the papers to Charlie's house. One time when she was
leaning into the trunk to fish out my allotment of papers, I could
see down her shirt. This being the '70s, she wasn't wearing a bra,
and I got a full view of her breasts. This makes quite an impression
on a teenage boy.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
The
job also had its annoyances, and even dangers. This was mostly in the
form of people's dogs. I took a clue from the mail carriers and got a
can of <i>Halt!</i> dog
repellent, which I carried on my belt. There was one vicious little
poodle, whose elderly lady owner never seemed to want to constrain
him in any way when it was time for the paper to be delivered. I
ended up having to spray that little bastard, in front of the old
lady. I warned her I was going to do it, but she didn't do take any
action, so I let him have it. And it didn't seem to bother him much!
His vile, curly hair was growing down over his eyes, and most of the
spray got hung up in that.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Or
maybe it's just something about poodles. What's with that breed,
anyway? They don't seem to respond to things the way other dogs do. A
tactic my dad had taught me when I was younger, when menaced by a
dog, was to act like you were picking up a rock, even if there was no
rock available. Almost every dog I had ever used that on had
responded by turning and running away. The only one that didn't was a
fucking poodle! Are they too dumb for self-preservation? No less
luminaries than Dennis Haysbert in an All State commercial and the
internet claim that poodles are one of the smartest breeds. Maybe
they're smart enough to know that unless they actually see you pick
up a rock, your threat is an empty one. Hmm.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
The
main reason, however, that I decided to include this sort-of-job is
the significant role which that can of <i>Halt!</i>
would play a couple of years later in my life, but you'll just have
to wait to hear about that.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I
feel sorry for anyone who just goes to work immediately after
graduation. I think you need one last chance to be a lazy kid before
taking on the adult world. My last summer vacation, the one after
graduating high school, but before entering the grown-up work force,
was a blast.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
My
high school had been participating for a number of years in a
cultural exchange program. Well, exchange isn't quite the right word
in our case – it had always been one-sided. For one month every
school year, a group of Japanese students would stay with host
families. In my senior year, we hosted a young man named Takuya.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
That
year it was announced that for the first time a group of us Americans
were going to travel to our sister school in Japan. I was surprised
when my parents said they were going to pay for me to go, as a sort
of graduation present. Spoiled, First World, middle-class brat that I
was, I was also a tad disappointed. You see, my siblings had each
received a car from my parents upon graduation. While I realized that
a trip to Japan was a once-in-a-lifetime experience, I couldn't very
well drive it around when it was over.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
My far
east adventures could fill a separate book. I'll just touch upon the
basics here. We and groups from other high schools flew into Tokyo,
and spent the first week touring that city, as well as Kyoto and
other locales. We spent a night in a Buddhist monastery, where we ate
terrible food and some of us got hit upon the shoulders with bamboo
sticks during meditation practice. You know, to loosen us up.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
At the
end of the first week, the different groups separated to travel to
the cities of their respective host schools. I stayed with Takuya's
family in a small town outside Nagoya. Japanese schools don't have a
summer vacation, like we do, so most of our days were spent at the
school. All in all, it was a rewarding experience, despite the
culture shock I sometimes suffered. The extremely high humidity
played absolute hell with my already acne-prone skin. Despite my
hideous appearance, I fell in love with a Japanese girl. Good times.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
On our
last night in Japan, we were back in Tokyo prior to catching the
plane home. Because I had repeated kindergarten, I was the only
18-year-old in the group, and could legally buy alcohol in Japan. Not
that I needed to be legal. There was actually a beer vending machine
on one of the floors of the hotel and no one watching. We had been
ordered not to drink on pain of being sent home. I figured that on
the last night it couldn't make much difference if I did get caught.
Long story short, I got terrifically drunk and much mayhem ensued.
Something involving lit firecrackers being thrown from a fifth-floor
window. My buddy Edmund had managed to get drunk somewhere else, and
the next morning he threw up french fries and grape skins all over
the floor of our room.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Despite
that international incident, and all the other American hi-jinks that
had gone on during that trip, the Japanese school still agreed to
host another group the following year. Apparently that group was even
worse than we had been, because after that they went back to it being
a one-way exchange program.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
And
that is how I spent my last summer vacation. I flew home with a
hang-over and the pressure of what to do with the rest of my life.
But I had already formulated a plan. Of sorts.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
The
end.</div>
Rimpy Rimpingtonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13017152542056998917noreply@blogger.com3