The First Time I Got Fired From A Job- Or Did I?

As the ambiguous title indicates, there is something to be said for the first time one is let go from a job.  There's no mistaking that "who me?" moment of shame and confusion.  My first time was no exception, so I'll tell you how it happened for your edification and amusement.

After moving to downtown Saegertown (only two houses away from the traffic light!) Mom made it clear that I was old enough to get a job.  I cannot recall who asked, whether she or I did, but my old pal Jim decided to take me on to help a friend of his who was working at the Shop.  At this point I better explain that everyone who knew Jim and his brother called their business "the Shop".  It was, in theory, a welding shop/wrecker service.  Over the years it had branched out into tree-cutting, house moving and industrial odd-job functions.  Above all that it was a boy's dream job- to get dirty every day in a unique way.  More on my experiences with Jim and the Shop in later stories.

Jim's pal was a carpenter whose wife of 17 years had decided to leave him and her two children due to religious differences.  As I agreed that this was a downright nasty thing to do, especially in relation to the "Golden Rule" she professed to honor, I was happy to be of some service to this man.  Accordingly I showed up to work on Monday morning to learn what I could and to do as I was told.  This fellow, who for the sake of this story I shall name John, was rather quiet, never giving more than short orders and expecting you to know how to carry them out with efficiency.  I confess what I took to be simple work involved more skill than I possessed.

The job was to remodel a metal building the Shop had bought into administration offices and sundry storage.  John was framing the interior walls and the crew were staining wood for the office walls.  I had painted before, but staining is slightly different.  Frankly, Jim could have hired vandals that could do a better job than I did.  John saw my difficulty and explained as well as he could how I was going wrong.  However, at 16, I wasn't able to focus to my task long enough without daydreaming.  After a morning in the summer sun I was both tanned and stained from the work- which is more than I could say from the pieces I'd completed.  Finally around noon John called lunch break and asked who of us wanted to ride in his pickup truck to town to get sandwiches at the deli.  I was the only holdout.

Now, of course I would've liked to have gone- eating was a teenage passion with skinny me.  Unfortunately our family was poor and on food stamps, so the only food I could eat was at the apartment.  So I started to walk home as soon as they left.  I'd gotten about two miles when I met their truck returning to the Shop.  John leaned out the window to ask where I was going, so I told him 'home for lunch.'  Then, in front of my friends and the crew, he told me not to bother coming back as he couldn't have a worker who walked off the job like I had done.

In hindsight I see that I should've asked John if he'd mind dropping me by my house to run up for food while they went to the deli.  It was on the way in both directions and I feel sure he would've gladly done it.  Alternatively, if I had given it some thought, I could've packed a lunch.  The reality is that up to that point in my life I had always had jobs where the employer fed his workers.  The farm, the circus, what have you... when you were there you got fed.  So anyway, my first "real" job and I got fired in half a day.

I'm not ashamed to admit I cried when the truck pulled down the road.  I hesitated to walk further, but finally settled down and made my way to the apartment.  I told Mom what happened and she asked the neighbor to use her phone to call Jim and explain my story.  A short while later Jim kindly came by and picked me up to go back to the Shop to work for him directly.  He explained that John was a demanding taskmaster, which is what he needed to be as a businessman, but that he didn't really have the authority to fire me as the both of us worked for Jim.  (As an adult I believe this was a specious argument meant to assuage my hurt feelings.)  In any event, I was sorta fired that day.

Now the lessons in this tale are manifold, but I've taken at least two to heart all my life:

1. Never work for a carpenter.  Jesus also left that type of employment- and I would never say my temperament is as congenial as was his.
2. Always rub the handle of the tool you are about to use between the palms of your hands.  You do this to "get the feel" for the instrument, thus making it an extension of you.  I especially recommend this for your razor, and that is what I do when I shave in the shower.  My eyes may be closed but the razor and I are as one.

Walk By The River

Dad's Historical Society connections and friendships sometimes yielded odd adventures when I was a kid.  Looking for Indian arrowheads was one of the short ones I remember from one cold Spring morning.

A fellow came to town with the idea to look for Indian artifacts along the river which runs past my Grandmother's house and on through town.  He and Dad asked a farmer's permission to carefully walk in his newly plowed field which followed the course of the river next to the big bridge.  I was instructed to go along the rows and look in the furrows for stones which were shiny or unusual.  I was rather young and I freely admit that what is adventure now was a cold, muddy Spring day to me at that age.  At least it was until I found my first arrowhead.

I suspect now that the adults wanted me along for my being shorter, my vision, and my energy to cover ground almost at a run.  I rather doubt they thought I'd be so lucky, but we took quite a haul that morning of shaped obsidian (plentiful as shale in that area of the country) and slate tools.  Most of them went to the collector- it was his idea, after all- but I was allowed to keep a good one for show and tell at school.  I dutifully mounted it on a bed of cotton balls in an old jewelry box Mom had kept.

I wish I could say I knew where it is now, but I lost the whole thing at recess to a bully who shall remain nameless here.  (I wonder if he still likes cows on his daddy's farm the way he did back then?)  So I'll call this story a lesson in archeology.  Just because there's a farm or a building there now doesn't mean adventures didn't happen there maybe thousands of years ago.  Always keep your eyes open for a shiny reminder of days gone past.  Oh, and avoid bullies at recess if you can...

Connections

Just a reminder that you can follow me here also:

http://twitter.com/Evergreen_Man


http://www.facebook.com/bthroop1

And one I rarely update or visit:  http://www.myspace.com/gallifreyan

See you around!

Fossils In The Clay

Feedback from the last story seemed to revolve around the notion that I may have exaggerated the time I spent in cemeteries as a youth.  Unfortunately, I haven't told the half of it.  Here's another scenario that occurred when I was in 5th grade:

Dad had volunteered, and in some cases contracted, to mow and maintain a few cemeteries which held some distant relatives.  (Back then it seemed to me that our family had A LOT of relatives, mostly dead, but that few had the same last name.  I wondered if other families had this problem.)  Our usual routine on a weekend was to go to a cemetery on Saturday morning after a few "vital" cartoons and Dad would have me, and my sister when she came, pick up sticks to put in a fire pit or bonfire location while he was mowing.  We weren't really organized and he frequently had to yell to split us up as one tended to follow the other.  The mowing took longer than the stick gathering, so we would frequently play until Dad was finished.  After he loaded up the mower we would often light the fire and roast marshmallows or hot dogs on sticks we had held back from the flames.  (More on fire later, though it isn't such a good tale.)

If we had a particularly good day where the grass hadn't grown enough we would go to another cemetery.  Often one where Dad had transcription work to do or where he just wanted to see what additions had happened since his last visit.  There was one whose name was something like Spring Hope that my sister and I visited in the summer of 1982.  At first we looked around to see the lay of the land while Dad did his thing.  It was mostly a modern cemetery, so the stones were either small or were flat to the earth.  We preferred the Gothic look of our usual haunts, with tattered VFW flags marking the last resting places of soldiers from days past and tall granite pillars for the family plots.  (I'll admit to feeling a bit sad every time I saw one of the old child gravestones which were usually bone white with the carving of a kneeling lamb on the top.)  In any event, this graveyard was kinda boring.  I don't know which of us decided the next idea was good, but we chose to pick flowers for Mom from among the discarded funeral arrangements dumped by the maintenance people at the edge of the woods.  That's when we found the stream.

About a 10 foot drop down a wooded cliff face was a small stream with a good swift current.  At this time I was very much into engineering and the idea of building a dam came into my head.  My sister often followed my lead because, being two years younger, she hadn't discovered the idolatry of Barbie.  (More on that story at a later time as well.)  So we climbed down the embankment and started to explore the stream for a likely dam spot.  I selected the curve nearby because the water had to slow and the chasm was narrowest at that point between the wooded hills.  The problem was that there was a large pinkish-gray clay deposit right there.  Of course, in the way of children, we immediately decided the dam could wait while we fashioned the clay into pottery to be baked on the shale bank of the stream.  It was a short time later that I found the first fossil.

I found set into stone the footprints of what appeared to be a large bird.  The clawed feet seemed to be about six inches across the foot with three front toes and one in the back.  Laura found one or two of shelled creatures, though I can't say where they are now.  Mine I washed off and donated to my social studies teacher whose name, if I recall correctly, was D'Zurko.

I wish the story had a happier ending.  It took about a year before we could convince Dad to visit the cemetery again.  In that time the spring rains had done their work: the clay bank was washed away and we didn't find a trace of anything interesting in the stream after an hour's hard search.

So what is the lesson in all this you ask?  I'm not sure I have one, but if I must I would say hold on to your fossils.  Enough said.

Grandfather Tales: How Not To Get Stampeded

I received some feedback on this story idea so I have decided to tell the tale here.  First off, it's important to understand why an 11 year old boy was standing in a muddy grass field with a herd of heifers.

It isn't like this is how I normally spent my childhood.  I was bored to tears on one of Dad's cemetery search projects.  We had come out to a farm in western Pennsylvania because he had received permission to catalog a private cemetery in what was now pastureland on a dairy farm.  A forest and fields now grew where a family had lived and farmed for the last two hundred years.  The small business they had left had let the cemetery's few remaining upright stones be kept mowed by a small herd of young cows.  Don't ask me if they were Holsteins or Jerseys- they were light brown is all I remember.  That and they were a bit, shall we say, unsettled by our presence.

Dad went to work with his modified rebar poker, jabbing it in the ground every couple feet in an effort to find headstones which had toppled and been buried by the years.  Each one he found was lovingly cleaned and the inscription recorded for his records.  Later he would compare his findings with old newspapers and family Bibles if things went as usual in these circumstances, but for now it was time to systematically probe the ground for missing graves.  There was little I could do, and with no book to read I decided to wander around.  Fortunately, the cows looked amenable to my approach.  They had grouped together near the edge of the small woods both to get away from us and to get out of the spitting rain.  I walked toward them unconcerned.  I'd been around cows on the Stan's Farm all my life, although usually with the milk cows or their calves.  These were teenage cows and, as I was to learn, they didn't act like any cows I'd ever met.

Once I got within a couple car lengths of them (1970's cars, not these modern Mini Coopers), talking to them calmly as they watched me approach with cud in their mouths, I noticed a rather wild look start to appear in their eyes.  They started to get antsy and made strange moaning and snorting sounds.  I stopped and decided, belatedly, that maybe they didn't want company.  Dad had gotten farther away than I liked and, as was his routine on these trips, he was on his knees taking chalk rubbings of fallen stones.  I could've screamed and I doubt he would have looked up.  It turns out I was right...

The lead heifer decided I'd gotten too close and started to walk toward me.  I backed off, looking her in the eyes, and was just trying to decide my next move when she and her buddies snorted and started running toward me.  Boy, could those big things move!  I high-tailed it toward the car, figuring the fence and gate were closer than getting to Dad.  They were very, VERY  close and I knew I wouldn't have time to unhook the electric fence.  Instead I dove like a baseball player to get under the gate.  I almost made it.

Whether it was the constant drizzle or that my backside was a bit too elevated, I got hit by that electricity with what seemed like a double dose.  I plowed into the mud face-first thinking I'd been kicked by those cows.  I was stunned, emotionally, and spent from the sprint.  After a moment I got up and looked through the fence.  The cows had returned to chewing their cud and slowly walked back to their tree-covered refuge as I watched.  I swear the last one kinda winked at me, but it could've been mud in my eye.

Once they were well and truly gone I went back into the pasture to tell Dad what happened.  He only stopped to look at me once I was right on top of her speaking.  He wouldn't let me in the car looking like a mudcake, so he decided to have me jump in the nearby pond clothes and all.  Of course, that was when the sun finally came out, wouldn't you know.

So I don't really have a lesson here except: don't trust a teenage cow.  They're as spooky as kittens and move much faster than something their size has a right to do.  They'll completely cure you of any urge to visit Pamplona, Spain.

Starting At The End...

So I've been batting around a book idea for years, collecting stories and anecdotes for it, but I felt I was missing one key ingredient: offspring.

The book I had been planning was to be called "Grandfather Tales" and was to chronicle miscellaneous events and life's lessons that had come into my experience.  Of course, given the title, one would expect I had at least one grandchild.  But no, not even one child has come and I do not see this as an option for me personally.  Though I'd love to raise a child better than I was myself raised, I fear I would do as Henry Kissinger once said about the Kennedy team: 'We will not make the same old mistakes.  We will make our own.'

So... no children on the horizon and I start to wonder whether the book's title should be changed to something more appropriate like "How To Avoid Being Stampeded" or "The Circus And The Shovel" or "Kerosene and Hornets Don't Mix".  I figure the story titles might make for a grabbing book title, but then I come across other issues.  Does the first option make the reader court danger just to try to avoid being stampeded?  Does the second title make one believe you need a shovel to be a good circus worker?  If so, for what would it be used?  The third title option just makes me seem like I'm cruel to lower life forms.

In any case, life's lessons are best when repeated to others to enlighten and, as I hope, to entertain.  Some things, to be sure, should not be spoken of in a public manner, not because they would harm one's current reputation or even one's "legacy", but because to speak of them even in the most off-handed fashion is to almost encourage people to do the very thing you advertise as a mistake in your own life.  It allows your reader to say "Hello, he did this-and-that and still he abides well and seems to have profited in life none the less."  (Or they would speak that way if they lived @ 200 years ago.  I need to read more modern prose to get my head out of the 18th century.  My prose suffers to imitate whatever I am currently reading, so today I am blaming Ben Franklin's Biography.)  An example of what not to say in this type of book is in Franklin's Biography where he says: "And this Persuasion, with the kind hand of Providence... preserved me... without any wilful [sic] gross Immorality or Injustice that might have been expected..."  In the footnote of the Franklin Papers Collection edition I am reading it is noted that Franklin crossed out the words "some foolish intrigues with low Women excepted, which from the Expence were rather more prejudicial to me than to them."  So it would seem to me that Franklin also considered those words to fall into the category of TMI (Too Much Information) and, for his reasons or my own as above, he chose not to have them in his final edition.

So to sum up I feel I want to do a book on the line of autobiographical sketches but without self-serving, legacy-building nonsense.  The question now is whether I could make it profitable to myself and to others.  Profit of the mind and heart, not money, being my foremost consideration.  Therefore, to try the ideas for a spin, I think I'll post a few of them on this blog.