Stop the Presses!

 

When last we left the My Jobs thread -

I retooled my career by taking business courses at Berry College (1982 - 1984). Unfortunately, despite stellar grades and high recommendations, the best job I could get was working at Atlanta Seal & Stamp for an insensitive "entrepreneur" who was incredibly nasty and self-centered (see Seal of Destiny). I stayed in that job for less than a year).

I hate looking for other jobs. That's why I often leave because I am forced to. Not the case with American Seal & Stamp. I wanted to get out, restart my career, and maybe get on a course with more opportunities.

So, when a chance to interview at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, I took it. I was hired, interviewed by the assistant controller. The beginning of a salary pattern emerged - the assistant controller offered me slightly more than what I made at my last job. I don't know if it was the norm for everybody, but it certainly was for me. You're not paid based on merit - you're paid based on what they can get away with.

I started out as the newsprint accountant, tracking purchases and inventory levels. I checked how much we used compared to how much we should have used. Think that's a small job? Think of how much newsprint a paper the size of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution uses daily. They published the Constitution every morning, the Atlanta Journal every night, and myriad other local papers and supplements.

One day, not long after I was hired, the newsprint supervisor took me on a tour of the newsprint presses so I could have a better understanding of the process. While he showed me the presses, printing the current edition, the presses suddenly stopped. The newsprint supervisor was puzzled because the run needed to be completed.

Turns out they wanted to change the front plates because of a breaking news event. The Challenger space shuttle had just exploded shortly after taking off. He told me that what happened was an extreme rarity, to stop in the middle of an edition. So, just like in the movies, I witnessed "Stop the Presses!"

The inventory was done perpetually and then checked each month physically. They were kept in separate bays and, as time went on, at two locations, one downtown and one in Gwinnett County.

A forklift lifted me to the top of the stacks, and I counted from there. And yes, I don't like heights. And yes, sometimes the stacks were wobbly.  

The physical inventory had to occur on the last day of the month, and it had to happen between editions. Even if that meant the inventory had to be done on Sunday morning at 4 AM. That was fun.

I learned my first lessons in dealing with layers of corporate bureaucracy and management. The controller met with upper management in the middle of the month, and he would project how the numbers would turn out. Then, when I did my newsprint usage numbers at the end of the month, if they did not conform to his projection, he would send me back to the drawing board until I came up with the numbers he wanted me to come up with.

The controller, someone close to my age, was impressed because he knew I had been a teacher and had chosen to do this instead, that I was willing to take the salary hit to do it. Yeah.  That should have been a warning sign that I may have made a terrible mistake. For most of my career,  a teacher with a master's degree would have made more money than me.

I always tried to make sure I was one of the first ones there and one of the last to leave. I was salaried, so it didn't help me make any more money. I thought it would impress them, but I don't believe they gave a ratatouille.

Eventually, I was named General Ledger Supervisor. I had four people to supervise. The accounting department as a whole had about 100 people. With few brief exceptions, everyone I supervised was a minority, and almost all of them were female. I got along well with most, and I was proud of our work.

One person did not like me. When there was a workplace shooting in the news, she would remark on it positively and insinuate it might be needed here. Upper management wanted me to get rid of her but do so with cause to lessen the likelihood she would sue (which she also delighted in suggesting). My efforts failed until she was tardy a few times, and they used that as an excuse to fire her. She didn't come back with a gun; she didn't sue.

She was extreme, but I understood some of the resentment. The white guy got promoted in a department that was decidedly not white. There was a changeover while I was there in Accounts Payable when their elderly white supervisor retired and was then managed by a very competent young black woman.

While I was there, they introduced personal computers - three or four for a department of 100. I became a leader in using those computers, creating spreadsheets and macro-programs to modernize how the newsprint inventory was kept. But, unfortunately, my reward for this innovation was...nothing.

I wanted to advance my career, so I prepared for the CPA exam. This was an intense two-day, four-part test, and for the first time, I did not prepare well enough. The first time I took it, I flunked all four parts. The second time I paid for a training class, studied my toucas off and passed it all in one sitting.

I was so happy and proud. I went to the assistant controller and will never forget his response -  "No sh--! Why the f-- did you do that?"

I became disenchanted with them, and they became disenchanted with me. They told me I had 90 days to prove I could do better, or they would fire me. Rather than go through that farce, I told them I would go if they would certify my experience with them so I could become a CPA. To get your license, you need either need two years of public or five years of private accounting experience. And that's about what I had with them - five years.

And that's what they did. My CPA certificate was like my golden parachute. Now if I could only parlay that into something greater and grander.

Spoiler Alert:  HAHAHAHAHAHA!

 

Seal of Destiny

 When last we met on the My Jobs thread:

My garden epiphany that led me to realize that I would NOT get to do what I wanted for a living, began a roughly two-year period where I took business and accounting courses at Berry College near Rome, Georgia.

I came out of Berry College with high hopes and even higher grades and recommendations. I was confident that I could go out into the workplace and acquire a high-powered career path that would lead to even more lucrative pay than my aborted teaching career.

I must have been high to think this.

Coming out, I found that most potential employers did not think of me as an accountant but a teacher. This was not the background they wanted. I tried CPA firms from Dalton to Atlanta. I tried private industry.

The most hoped-for job by top accounting graduates was to be hired by one of the top eight accounting firms.* I did have one interview with a large firm in Atlanta; it was a day long, and for most of it, it appeared they were more courting me more than I was them. I thought I had this in the bag. But no job offer ever came.

After a few months in the wilderness, I finally got a job offer from American Seal & Stamp, a small business just at the edge of downtown Atlanta. They were offering $13,500 a year. Does that sound low? Even for 1984, that was rock bottom for someone with six years of college education.

I felt like my Dad had taught me that you must be willing to start wherever you can and work your way up.

I was wrong. When I told my Dad about the job, he thought I was crazy for taking it, and that I needed to hold out to start somewhere else at a higher rung. On the other hand, I felt morally obligated to take it since I told them yes. Over the years, I have realized what a stupid decision it was.

American Seal & Stamp sold mostly corporation kits, which included corporate seals and something called Goes paper, which was used for stock certificates. It contained everything you needed to legally incorporate. Except the lawyer. And the actual incorporation.

American Seal & Stamp was owned by Howard Massell, the ne'er do well brother of former Atlanta Mayor Sam Massell.  But Howard was never there. His day-to-day operations were managed by somebody else. He talked to that manager by phone and sent orders over.

You see, Howard decided to move from Atlanta to avoid, uh, some legal entanglements. He wanted, in part, to leave Atlanta to avoid the temptations of drugs like cocaine. And to accomplish that, he moved to Miami.

I repeat. In order to avoid drugs, he moved to Miami.  

His reputation was as a snarling, self-centered asshole. A legend from before I came was that he visited the company one time, and that the manager was so nervous she had a breakdown that caused her to literally collapse. He emerged from his office, saw her writhing on the floor, and said, "Great! Now, who's gonna take me to the airport?"

And this was my introduction to accounting and the business world. It would not get much better from there.

But have no fear! Your intrepid hero stayed less than a year and was able to parley over to another job, one that rocketed his career to...

Well, that is a tale for next time.

*well, it was The Big Eight at the time. Now it's just the Big Four. Is this a great country or what? And people wonder where inflation and price gouging come from? Hah!

A Very Berry Remake

 

Previously: having lost my second teaching job, having met little success as a circulation manager and radio ad salesman/ad writer, I had the epiphany that I would not be able to earn money from my creative abilities and that I would return to college to improve a more business-oriented background.

The time is circa 1982.  One of the closest colleges to Cartersville was Berry College near Rome, Georgia. It had an excellent reputation and a gorgeous campus on 27,000 acres, making it the largest school in the United States (by land area, not by the number of students). In addition, it had an extensive student work program, which I would need.

There was a program you could take that combined business, math, and computer science courses. I forget what they called it - business systems analyst? Sad that I've forgotten, but I have.

I don't remember much about the computer science courses. COBOL? Is that a computer language? Stuff like that.  

Math was a challenge. I had taken no math at the University of Michigan. I was not a great math student in high school. Nevertheless, I was going to give it my best shot.  

I started with College Algebra. I had never worked so hard in a class in my whole life. Even though I only got a B, it was the grade I was most proud of in my academic career.

The next class was Precalculus. But I had limited time, and my algebra grade gave me the big head, so I decided to skip Calculus.

I got my posterior handed to me. I should have quit the class, but I was stubborn. By the time of the final, I was utterly lost. Instead of solving the exam problems, I wrote a dissertation on how calculus was actually magic. I got my only academic fail.  

Business classes, however, went swimmingly. Economics, business writing, business statistics, marketing, business theory - all went well. But the course where I barely had to think and still shined was ... accounting. I don't know why it came so easily to me, but it did.

The final exam in one of the accounting classes was to do a business tax return from start to finish. After it was graded, the professor told me I was the first student to do the return absolutely perfectly.

My student job was at the library. I managed a system that lent and received books across the nation's entire library system. This was done via computer, and once again, I have forgotten the system's name. I loved it. Searching the library for requested books, mailing them, and receiving and processing requests that our students made, I could have been very happy with doing that, and other library work for a living. But, alas, Berry had no Library Science program.

The academic walls were closing in. If I was going to get any value from my academic sojourn, I would have to go in one direction... accounting. Not because I loved it, but because it was easy for me and the quickest way I could make a decent living for myself and my family.

Ultimately, my two years at Berry did not result in an additional degree. They only had Bachelor's degrees, and I would have to go a while longer, taking physical education courses and other strange things to get that second Bachelor's. The result is I have over six years of college and only a Bachelor's degree in Education to show for it.

Nevertheless, I had the equivalent of a business and accounting major, and by the spring of '84, I was ready to go out and make my mark in the accounting world.

And that's when losing my work soul really began.

In the Garden of Indecision: A Jobs Interlude

 

I was lost. It was the summer of 1982. I had been let go from my second teaching job. I did not know where to turn. I did not know what to do.

We had a home in Cartersville, Georgia. Greg, my first son, was almost a year old. Although our economic circumstances were not as dire as you might think (there was family money on my wife's side), I still needed to get out and do something. Long term, I would need to work at something secure and steady.

Teaching had closed its doors to me. Technically, I could still teach, but I found it impossible to explain why I had been let go in my first two teaching jobs. There was nothing immoral or criminal in anything I had done, but I'm insecure to begin with. Under the best of circumstances, I'm not good at job interviews - this just made it infinitely worse.

We had a small flower bed in front of our house. I took a day to do yard work, including de-weeding that flower bed.

My mind was awhirl, and the manual labor allowed me to think. What was I going to do? 

And while weeding that flower bed, I had an epiphany. An epiphany that changed my life.

In all the jobs I had, specifically those after graduating from college, I had some creative outlet and hoped to have more. Whether it was the carrier's newsletter at the newspaper, writing ads at the radio station, or creating games and curricula at the schools, I always wanted to do jobs where my creative skills could shine.

But it was not working out. I had to accept the hardest fact of my life.  

If I wanted to have a secure family life, I was never going to be able to earn it through my creative side. I had to give that up and do something more practical. I needed to do something that required some technical expertise. I would have to recreate myself to be in a position that utilized some set of skills that only a limited number of people possessed.

I surrendered. I gave up receiving any creative satisfaction from work. From now on, it would be all about a paycheck.

The next step would be to obtain more specialized skills. As I'll detail in a subsequent post, that led me to Berry College.

Yes. From that epiphany on, I only earned a living through regular work that involved virtually zero creativity. It led to a steady but unspectacular career in accounting.

I continued to do creative things as my off-work hobbies, especially community theatre. I'd get fits of writing, but I've never made more than partly covering expenses.

I'd love to tell you I have no regrets. To tell you I made my decision and never looked back. But that would be a lie.

It wore on me. It wore on me hard. It was very, very hard to stay the course. But I did.  

Next up: Berry College!

Please note, that the picture above is only symbolic of a garden.  I think it's from the botanical gardens in Athens, Georgia.,

A Gifted Interlude: My Third Job in Georgia

  When last we left my rocky career path, I was working at WKRW, the radio station owned by the couple that helped found the community theatre I participated in, The Pumphouse Players.

As detailed in last week's blog, WKRW in Cartersville, this was an interesting position but not one that was financially lucrative for myself or the owners. In addition, there were some harrowing experiences within my marriage, above and beyond money considerations, that made it difficult for me to stay.

One of those was a miscarriage. Anyone who thinks that is not a significant life event - well, you're wrong. It was devasting to Retta and me. It led to anguish and depression.

I needed to get out and have something more solid we could rely on.

Retta was a special education teacher with the Bartow County Schools. She had a great rapport with her staff and administrators.  

When an opening came up for a teacher in their Gifted program, I used those connections to help me get the job. This was sometime in the early Fall of 1980. I was replacing somebody who left unexpectedly.

I was excited. I never thought I would get a chance to teach again,  And having networked connections saved me the embarrassment of cold interviews.

The position was for an itinerant teacher, traveling between several schools and teaching different groups of gifted students, ranging from Kindergarten to Eighth Grade.  

Like the first time I taught, I started out like gangbusters. They let me organize a Presidential debate and mock Electoral College convention. It crossed the whole system, and every gifted student participated. The director of the Gifted Program and Special Education Director were very impressed.  

After that, I was significantly less impressive to them. I tried, but there was no actual assigned curriculum, and I wasn't sure what I was supposed to do. So I did the best I could.

The students seemed to like me. We did a good number of games that involved thinking and strategic skills.  

In the Spring, the Special Educator Director said I wouldn't be back the next year because I didn't have the proper courses to remain certified. I don't know how they didn't know this as soon as they hired me, but c'est la vie. I told him I could get the coursework over the summer if he would give me a chance. He reluctantly agreed.

I can't remember where I got the coursework. It was not a school close by. It might have been West Georgia. I'm just not sure. It took a lot of travel, that's all I remember.

I did several things to try to make it work. I donated many children's books to their libraries, using them as books that the Gifted kids could read and take out. I'm not sure that would go over today, what with all the careful censorship and control taking place. Kids might accidentally learn slavery is terrible or something.

I created a fantasy game for the middle school students, dungeon and dragon style games for them to explore mazes and mythology and utilize their thinking and creative skills. This was interesting because I had never played Dungeons and Dragons before. It was my spin on what I thought it was like.

We created TV schedules with program descriptions, and then other classes would pick which ones they wanted to watch. Then they would refine their schedule to improve their ratings for the next time.

I did not just have them play games willy-nilly. There were points and standings, depending on how well the kids did. And that is where I got in trouble.

A parent complained, and the Gifted Program Director reamed me for it. I learned my lesson. No more competitions.

The Gifted Program Director took more rigid control over what the students did. For example, she thought it was a great idea to have kids contribute a square to a quilt, one depicting Bartow County history.   Not every kid thought this was the best idea on Earth, and I certainly had no skill. Nevertheless, I learned cross-stitch and depicted part of a county power plant.

The final straw for the Directors involved a student coming over from a different school system. He was in a gifted program at his prior school, and they put him in one of my classes. He was a behavior problem, but I gradually learned to work with him.

They decided they wanted to test him. However, they assured the parent this was for internal purposes only, and they would keep him in the program regardless of the results.

They lied. He fell short in their testing, and they decided to boot him from the program. To add to the anguish, he was black. The only black student in the county's Gifted Program.

When the parent challenged it, they wanted me to lie and say that we did not assure the parent that the child would stay in the program. I refused to lie about it.

Early in the Spring, the Special Education Director decided I would not be back for the next school year. This time, there was no talking my way out of it.

It is a point of pride that I stuck with the job for the next couple of months and did the best that I could. I hate rejection. I can't stand it when I know people don't like me. Staying there was one of the hardest things I've ever done. But I saw it through.

I had tried to be a teacher twice, and I had struck out twice. I was not going to get a third swing of the bat. It was over.

I was lost. I was depressed. I had some serious thinking to do.

I did not want to disrupt the flow of the story, but I think it important to note that we did try again after the miscarriage, and proud to have our son, Gregory Rountree Strait, born October 23, 1981.

WKRW in Cartersville: My Second Job in Georgia

 

WKRW in Cartersville.

Just one call letter away from greatness.*  And no Turkey Drop.

My time as Circulation Manager was deeply frustrating. Any creative talents I had were ignored and ridiculed.**

In a rare moment, I followed another opportunity while still employed and not being booted or being under threat of a boot. I could have rocked on at the paper for who knows how long, as long as I understood I would never be promoted or given a more creative role.

The couple that owned WKRW were Don (pictured above) and Ollene Kordecki.  Not only were they radio station owners, they were also the founders of the community theatre group, the Pumphouse Players.

Long-time readers will know of my love of community theatre. It wasn't a done deal, as many may believe. I indeed did quite a bit of theatre in high school, but I did nothing in college and during my first years out of college.

It wasn't until I tried out for Inherit the Wind as put on by The Pumphouse Players that I reengaged with theatre. Inherit the Wind was something I performed a scene of in high school drama class, and I had fallen in love with the play. I tried out hoping for one of the lead lawyer parts but got cast as the teacher on trial for teaching evolution. So here I was, this Michigander just moved south, cast in a part playing a Tennessee school teacher. Don Kordecki was in the play-acting the part of a cynical New York reporter.

The Kordecki's friendship and encouragement steered me into my lifelong passion for community theatre. Soon, I was doing lead parts, and I won the Best Actor award two years in a row, once for a comedy and once for a drama.

Their friendship led me to interview and try for a position at their radio station. And I got it! Networking is King.

Unfortunately for both of us, that position was in sales. You hear about the guy who could sell ice to an Aleutian? I was the opposite. I couldn't sell water to a drought-stricken desert dweller.

I tried. They gave me a list of clients and potential leads to additional clients. Your pay was based on commission - how much ad time your clients bought.  

I don't remember successfully adding new clients. My strongest memory is of a guy who had a large clothing store. I managed to get a lunch meeting with him, but my social studies background, where everything is couched with conditions and uncertainty, caused me to be more couched with my language rather than the glad-handing confidence a salesman exudes. I know that, in my conversation, I used the word assume. I know this because I'll never forget his response, "Do you know what it means to use the word assume? It means you are making an ASS out of U and ME!"

Yes, I know that's an old trope. But it was the first time I had heard it. Needless to say, I did not get any of their advertising dollars.

It was not all doggy downers. Don and Ollene were as kind and as supportive as they could be. And I got to write and perform ads! And they were creative! I thought I added quite a bit of zip to their commercial time using multiple voices and humor.

That part mostly went well. However, one client, a sandwich shop, responded negatively to one of my extravaganzas - "Just tell them what sandwiches we have and where we're at."  Oh, well,  Not everything is a home run.

The music format of WKRW was pop. On weekends, they would do Casey Kasem's Top 40, or a similar countdown. They were known as the WKRW (Wicker) Rocker. Clever.  

Don had a community talk show in the mornings, and occasionally he let me on as a guest to talk about politics. That's right. I was doing political talk radio before anybody else. And no, I wasn't as Progressive then as I am now, but I was still center-left.

I got to interview two politicians. One was Zell Miller, then running as a CENTER LEFT candidate for U.S. Senate, opposing Senator Herman Talmadge in the Democratic primary. The sitting Lieutenant Governor, he at the time seemed very reasonable, certainly a better alternative than the corrupt and racist Talmadge,  and we had an incredible conversion, lasting an hour.  

He lost that election but later became Governor of Georgia. He was one of the best Governors since I've been living here. He helped bring into being the Hope scholarship, one of Georgia's greatest blessings, as it helps cover a good chunk of the tuition for so many of our college attendees. Benjamin has had an advanced lever of it, called the Zell Miller Scholarship, which awards those with higher grades to cover ALL their tuition. 

Along about 2004, Zell, no longer Governor, now a U. S. Senator, took a sharp turn right and became a spitting, foaming, angry conservative. I don't know what happened.  

My second interview was with former Mississippi Governor Cliff Fitch, running for US President in the Democratic primary. Yeah, you don't remember him. Think hard. He's doing interviews with an obscure nobody in the small town of Cartersville, Georgia, the home state of the incumbent President of the United States, Jimmy Carter.

We met at a diner, I think in Woolworth's. He seemed... a little off to me. I wasn't then, nor am I now, an expert on alcohol, but there was a slight smell, and he seemed a little..off. Like Zell Miller, I got the impression he was center-left. But I was not impressed. Neither were the voters. He got 0.25% of the country's Democratic primary vote, and earned zero delegates.

But I did get to interview a presidential candidate. Huzzah!

I was earning less than minimum wage, so it was not something I could keep up. In addition, there was strain in my marriage, and I realized I needed to do something else. The Kordecki's were understanding, but they deserved someone who could make them more money.

So, once again, I found myself looking for something else. Another networking opportunity soon appeared.

I was at WKRW for less than a year.

In researching this, I found out that both Dan and Ollene have since passed away, Don in 2010 and Ollene in 2015. I was greatly saddened to read about this. They were great people, and they meant the world to me. Literally. They opened up the world of community theatre to me, which has been a blessing ever since.

* the very funny TV show, WKRP in Cincinnati.  You don't know it?  OMG, some of you are so YOUNG!

**check out the post Proof of Existence: My First Job in Georgia.

Proof of Existence: My First Job in Georgia

After losing my teaching job at Cass City, I was lost and set adrift. The odds of me ever getting another teaching job were infinitesimal. I was lousy enough at interviews. I couldn't see myself trying to rationalize why I lost my first teaching job. It was a different time. You really didn't get second chances.

I tried my hand at substitute teaching with Bridgeport - a bit of nepotism. Although I didn't mind teaching overall, I hated substituting. It played into all my weaknesses.

Not having anything else, I decided to visit a friend in Atlanta who came from Bridgeport and was a close friend in high school. He had recently broken up with someone who he had been involved with for several years, and I went down in part to console him.

By the time I got there, he had already found a new partner. Through them, I met someone who would become my own partner. Long story short, I soon found myself relocated to the South.

My first job in the South was working as a Circulation Manager for a small daily newspaper in Cartersville, Georgia. It mostly involved managing the newspaper carriers, from boys on bicycles, to redneck couples in pickups, to retirees in jeeps.

It was a rough job for a young guy who was more of a creative type than a skilled, commanding manager. Fortunately, one of the aspects of the job was to run contests and otherwise motivate the delivery staff. I came up with the newsletter you see in the picture above. It contained information about routes, new hires, contests, and more.

It also contained a fictional serial, cartoons, jokes, and whatever else I could think of. It was a  creative outlet for me in a job I was otherwise having a hard time with, and I thought, hey, maybe somebody would notice! Maybe the publisher would take notice and let me write for the paper!

Yes, it was just a hand-typed, pasted together, mimeographed mess. But it was my mess, and I was proud of it. So proud that when it came time for the Southeast Circulation Managers Convention, I proudly entered it in the Best Promotion Contest. I was so excited because there were only two entries and three awards in our paper size group! Woohoo! I was in like Flynn!

The big banquet and awards ceremony capped off the event. It came time to announce the awards for our division. The emcee announced the other entrant as first place but then made a joke to the guy as he came up, that "he was the only entrant in the division." Everyone laughed, and there was no second place. There was no acknowledgment that I had even entered. It was like I wasn't even there at all. Like I didn't exist.

It was also a place where I learned early lessons about Southern culture. 1) People had many acquaintances but fewer close friends. If they invited you to come by for supper, they were often being polite and would be surprised if you actually showed up. 2) African-Americans were more deferential in the South than up North - it was quite embarrassing to experience. 3) Whites on the lower economic rung did not respond well to yelling or arguments - they would become violent, scary quick. I got upset with an adult paper carrier one time and learned quickly to never raise my voice. 4) Most small southern towns are run by what I call the "10%" - these are important family clans with a disproportionate amount of wealth and a family name that commands respect. 5) Even though I had student taught at the heavily Southern Michigan town of Willow Run, it took me a while to get used to the accent. People would call to complain about missing a paper or other delivery complaints, and it took me a long time to figure out what they were saying. I had no idea that the word "Paper" had so many syllables.

Although I did not shine at this job and only stayed about a year, I was not let go. Instead, I left of my own volition for something else. Something I was both more suited for in some ways and less suited for in other ways.

 

Cass City Fading Blues

My first real job, beyond after-school and summer jobs, was as a teacher at Cass City High School.

Given the current talk of teacher shortages, it is hard to remember that in the late 70s, there was an oversupply of teachers. This was particularly true of social studies teachers, whom I had more than one person tell me were "A dime a dozen."

I started at the University of Michigan as Pre-Law. My dorm room faced the Law School, and I dreamed of being a lawyer someday, if not Perry Mason, at least Clarence Darrow.

Things did not go that way. I had a girlfriend whose father passed, and I was concerned about how she would pay for her schooling. I thought the School of Education would get me out earning money sooner if she needed help.

Well, it wasn't long before she broke up with me. Heartsickness and inertia kept me on the same course. I also found out how poor an advocate I was when I took college Debate and was beaten by two football players (and, yes, I know that football players can be academic achievers - however, these two did not fall into that category).  

My student teaching went well, assisting with Social Studies and US History at Willow Run High School. The town had many Southerners who had come up starting in World War II to work at the Willow Run munitions plant. Many of the students still spoke with a heavy Southern accent.

I constructed a big game around the Horatio Alger myth (that all it took to be rich was pluck and hard work). Students took on different roles and tried to improve their economic and social condition. Those already rich had plenty of advantages, and the deck was stacked against the poor. I'm not sure this game would fly today, what with the great WHITEwashing of American History that is going on.

After graduating, I tried to blanket the Michigan school systems with letters and resumes. It's not like today - each letter had to be hand-typed on my old Smith-Corona. My typing skills were poor, and my error rate was high, so this took some time.

I got a few interviews, but the primary question was always the same - "What'dya coach?"  There was a tremendous prejudice that social studies teachers needed to coach athletics to justify one's existence.

Finally, only a few weeks before the school year began, I was interviewed by Cass City. They had a position open, but not for Social Studies. It was to teach English and Speech, two subjects I had minored in. They also wanted a Debate coach. I did not explain my dismal history with Debate but bluffed my way about how good I could do.

I got the job.

I thought I had no pictures from this time, but last week, while looking for other photos, I stumbled across this album I had forgotten about that had some grotesquely faded photos from that time.

The picture above shows me at my desk. I don't remember who the student was. If you can see the board, what was written was "Intellectual Dodge Ball." That sounds like something I would try to pull off.

The student pictured above was part of our Debate Team. His name was Tim, and he was a very brilliant student.

We had little resources to pull for debate prep, mostly Newsweek and Time. This was WAY before the internet. Other schools had many more resources, like our neighboring competitor, Caro.

We made up for the lack of resources with sheer bravado and intellect. Our affirmative team had one good solid case to defend backward and forward, displaying extreme confidence. The negative team oozed Willaim Buckley's disdain level and sharpened lines of attacks against all pro cases. The topic that year? Universal health care.

The Debate team received their highest placement ever, 3rd in the state in their class division.

I believe this faded picture from days gone by is the Debate team in a prep session. I am seated near the back.

I taught 9th grade modified English. This was a class for non-college-bound students. They didn't like school, and they didn't want to be there. They represented quite a discipline challenge. I had some students sneak out a window the first week or so. Gradually, though, I developed a system of rewards that motivated them more than grades. Soon, I had students achieving more than they ever had. One student told me it was the first class she had ever gotten an A in, and she finally believed she was smart enough to achieve.  

When the school principal sat in my class in the Fall, he told me it was the best hour of teaching he'd ever seen.

By March, I was told I would not be rehired.

What happened?

I will never fully know, but consider the following -

1) Discipline was never easy for me. It was a struggle. But the Principal reviewed me a third time and said my discipline was much improved. Even so, they had no intention of reversing their decision.

2) In one of my efforts to improve discipline, I tried to get under the control of a student whose parent was on the School Board. Look, my father was my School Principal at Bridgeport. The idea of favoritism stuck in my craw. Suffice to say, even though I thought I got the student under control, he must have reached out to his father.   It wasn't until later that I found out that the student had gotten other teachers fired who dared to challenge him.

3) During the Spring of that year, the teachers of Cass City went on strike. One of the issues was hiring first-year teachers and then firing them before they got tenure in order to keep wages low.

The bottom line was that I felt defeated and scummy. My teaching career was over before it really began.

And that's the beginning of how I wound up in Georgia.

 

Getting Out of Gear

 

The summer between my Junior and Senior year of college, my third job was at Saginaw Steering Gear, a General Motors plant.

Like my previous two jobs, I think my father arranged it for me somehow. I didn't interview. The first interviews I remember was trying to secure a teaching job after I graduated from the University of Michigan. I know. Networking? Probably, on my Dad's part. White Privilege? Not sure. My Dad was definitely white, connecting with white employers. My hard work in promoting myself and seeking a job? Hell, no.

The picture above is one I found on the interwebs. I don't remember if this is the Saginaw plant from the 70s, if it looked exactly like that, but I think it is generically correct.

I remember the parking lot. It was vast. A lot of people worked there. Some in my generation assumed that they would work there, just as their fathers and/or other family members or friends did. But that proved to be elusive. The auto industry was soon in decline in our area.  

Once again, like my work at the pickle factory, it was a night shift job. I was a "floater." I filled in for different workers who were taking their vacations. This meant that every week I was doing something different. Some I did okay. Some I was awful.

Most of the jobs consisted of taking parts from one operation to another. Much of what happened was automated, and I guess we were doing what the machines could not do yet. Most of the jobs were very routine and boring.  

There was often significant downtime between cycles of the machine processes. During these significant gaps, I noticed that some workers were reading. Well, you don't have to tell me twice about finding an opportunity to read. So I brought a paperback and started to fill in the time with my first love.

That was the wrong thing to do. The supervisor called me and blessed me out for reading on the job. I can't remember whether I brought up that others were doing it. There must have been a difference between a full-time unionized employee and a college fill-in like myself.

Not everyone gets to live out a true situation comedy legendary moment. But I did.

One day they decided to let me work on a conveyor line where I was supposed to do something to these small parts that came whizzing down the line.

Within minutes it became clear I could not keep up. And, unfortunately, I could not eat what was coming down the line like Lucy did.

I rendered almost the entire plant to a standstill in less than half an hour.

It wasn't funny. It was terrifying. And it did nothing to enhance my popularity at the plant.

When the summer was over, I was again called into the supervisor's office. He told me that my career there was over and that I would never work at a General Motors plant again.

My first job, Dixie Tool, ended in a meh. My second job, Vlasic Pickles, ended with them wanting me to come back and be in management.

Sad to say, the way the Saginaw Steering Gear job ended became more the norm rather than the exception.

It's hard for me to tell for sure, but I think Saginaw Steering Gear closed, maybe in 2001? Unfortunately, I haven't been able to find clear Googled information about it.  

I did make good money there, probably four times as much per hour as I had made at the pickle factory. I made enough to buy my first car, one I could use at college to get back and forth from my student teaching assignment. It was a 1976 (or 77) Honda Civic, and it cost a whopping $3300. And yes, friends, that was a NEW car!

That's just a picture of a 1977 Honda Civic. It's something I found on the interwebs. All I remember is that it was blue. I like blue. What am  I driving today? A 2012 gray Honda Civic. I can't always get blue, I guess.

That completes my memories of my third job. But, as usual, memory is a tricky thing, and I'm sure others will not hesitate to correct me where those memories go astray.