Labor Day, Labour Day- Part 3

The next three months is really a series of stories, but I will try to make it brief. I decided that since we had an agent, since I was finished graduate school (for all practical purposes), and since I longed to live at least near a city again, that I should totally move out of Morgantown. In reality I had few possessions. Paul Puckett (not Gary Plucket) was our agent, an extremely successful country performer in Fairfax, Virginia. We played our (long term) gig at a Greek restaurant in Fairfax. The owner's girlfriend wanted us to play "Peg in my Heart" which, of course, we didn't know. We played a folky bluegrass combination with some pop song thrown in- all three part harmony - of course. The owner was not not pleased. When Paul arrived, we had been fired and were packing up. He talked the owner into at least having us finish out set and getting paid for it.

We sat in George's kitchen in Fairfax, Virginia. George was Jack's (our guitar player) cousin. George was a local contractor and was committed to helping us get another gig. He called many of his connections and we called clubs and bars all over Northern Virginia. An ex-client of his, Mrs. Mallick, expressed interest. George warned us. "You have to be really careful with this woman. She is charming but she can really rip you off." We were warned. She booked us for one night at the Cedar Knoll Inn on George Washington Parkway for dinner. .. One night in the dining room for $100 plus tips. We played our gig- a lovely high class restaurant near Mount Vernon, Virginia. She said she wanted to hire us, long term. Jack went back with his cousin. Karen and I spent the night in a back room of the dinner theater. Karen was freaked out by the place, but I felt fine. Eventually Jack and Karen decided to go back to Morgantown to "regroup" and join me later. They never did. I worked every possible job at Cedar Knoll Inn- waiter, gardener, bartender, short order cook and dinner theater manager. I was a slave in this never never land, where the owner kept the visas of maybe 20 workers from Guatemala and India. Every evening I would play for 2 or 3 hours after I waited on tables. I was well liked but never paid. I lived in the international dormitory above the restaurant. I finally left after the notorious owner skipped town when promising to pay me at the same time. It is a long story, which I will tell at some other time. But Mrs. Mallick sent me my money, which I received the day before I was to appear in court.

I performed at the newly opened Holiday Inn during cocktail hour on a regular basis, then waited on tables after the gig. I was a substitute teacher in Alexandria, Virginia teaching music and art (as a substitute). I worked at the "Coffee House" a coffee emporium in Alexandria. I sang on a regular basis at the Warehouse, a pub in Alexandria. And finally I landed a CETA job in Alexandria teaching Adult GED preparation. My class was mostly African American and we had our classroom in the Practical Arts room (back room) at George Washington High School. My schedule was ideal. I taught from 1 PM to 5 PM, earned enough for a single man in a one bedroom apartment and my student were eager to learn. The curriculum was Algebra, US History and a smattering of Science and Social Studies from High School. We graduated about seven students our first year, a great success.

I had a girlfriend at that time. She loved organic gardening and French intensive method and so on. We were going to move to Athens, Georgia- not too far from our family but close to a cousin and the oasis of liberalism in Georgia. After many conversations we chose to live in Sacramento, California. In the winter of 1978 we thought of living in Sacramento. In reality, after driving across country and meeting my Aunt and Uncle, we decided to stay in the San Francisco Bay Area, more specifically Berkeley. Mary Ellen got a job in San Francisco in June. " I can't believe how cold it is there." In Berkeley I did not know what she was talking about. I got a job with Nona interviewing children about their experiences with fire. This job, a wonderful job, lasted about two years.

The grants were spent and I looked to San Francisco for work. I worked demeaning temporary jobs-I worked for Jim Scott, painting houses on high ladders. Jim never paid me. Jim, Jim, are you there? PAY ME!!! $800. Can I mention Xerox? I had the most demeaning idiot boss at a Xerox shop in San Francisco. All the rest is lost. I found a temporary home at the University of San Francisco in the Business and Finance Department- a family... Hi! Joan. Even though the pay was low, I loved working in this strange paper laden office in the Accounts Payable Department. I even uncovered an employee (friend) who was embezzling money.

I transfered across the park, University of California, San Francisco, Department of Biochemistry, Purchasing Office. It was a good salary and I worked myself up from delivering packages to paying bills (big deal!). I worked at UCSF for about 5 and loved many things about it. I loved the intellectual atmosphere. I loved rubbing elbows with the professors, some of whom became friends. I loved going to Asilomar for retreats and listening to workshops in Biochemistry that were always just a little over my head. I love the congenial office atmosphere and "Crazy Bill" from Santa Cruz. Nevertheless, I was almost fired by my boss, who introduced me to cocaine, because (in my humble opinion) I came close to uncovering his embezzlement of funds from the taxpayers. (by the way, his name was John Glennon . Do not hold it against him. He has served several years in prison (I think). Accept the last two sentences only as hear say.

My future wife wanted me to work as something more than a "clerk". We both had a B.A. in Sociology. But she had gone another year to get both a nursing degree and a Masters in Nursing. She agreed to work while I got my teaching credential. I graduated from San Francisco State and the next year worked at DeAnza High School in Richmond, California. Actually, I worked for the next ten years in first the Richmond Unified School District, then in the West Contra Costa Unified School District. I found a family of teachers and students who were mostly wonderful and the tough ones were not as tough as they played. All children, but some bad children. I worked at DeAnza, then at Delta Continuation School, then at Middle College High School. Each place could be a wonderful book in itself. I loved my teaching job at Middle College so much but by my third year we had moved 60 miles to the north and I got tired of the commute.

To keep my promise, I will end shortly. I have been teaching at Analy High School in Sebastopol for about eight years. I will leave my journal of those experiences in another entry.

Labor Day, Labour Day- Part 2

My high school life was unlike most people. Our family were fairly strict Catholics. My dad went into a Catholic seminary just when most young men were enlisting for World War II. His brother became a priest. Both were in the seminary together at St. Joseph's in Princeton, New Jersey. My mom was quietly but profoundly religious. She had two sisters who were in the convent. When I was maybe 11 years old I said that I was considering being a priest. It started me on the road at age 13 years in a seminary, away from home until my last year of college at age 22. You can see my photo below at age 13 on the seminary grounds at Princeton. I bring this up in this context, only to say that as part of my training we worked maybe 10 to 15 hours a week in various capacities: cleaning toilets and bathrooms, classrooms, out doors, supervisory positions, driving, editing our school newspaper, or year book and so on. The jobs were really too numerous to list at this point. But summers until my sophomore year of college were always at home. And at home I would always find a summer job.

After graduating from high school I was hired at J.B. Van Scivers, moving furniture. Van Scivers, on City Line Avenue was the premier Furniture store on the Philadelphia Main Line. It was the same year that my father had a heart attack. He was in his mid-forties. (He is still alive and in full position of his faculties but a little weak at the age of 87.) It was good hard work with lots of heavy lifting and paid well. We (my partner Bob and I- both students) were fairly well paid for 40 hours a week and time and a half for overtime. At the time I made roughly $200 per week and negotiated with my mom to keep $10 of that with the rest going to the family.

The following summer the seminary decided to move our class, just twelve of us into the major seminary at Northampton Pennsylvania to paint classrooms. It was a fairly thankless and certainly lacked monetary compensation. I alternated between feeling used and deserted and enjoying the isolation, the space and the free time.

When September rolled around, our class began its one year novitiate at the old major seminary and now priests' retirement home at St. Vincent's in Philadelphia. The year itself was without formal classes and included many kinds of work. But the work might take up 12 to 20 hours on the average in any week. I would wash old men at St. Joseph's Home, teach guitar to girls at Saint Joseph Gonzaga Home, visit sick people, general clean up, wait on tables, keep the grounds tidy.

The following year our "mother house" moved the college seminary out of Princeton into a residence in Niagara Falls, New York. We attended Niagara University. And the following summer myself and one of my classmates were sent to Emmitsburg. Maryland to run a summer youth program. We organized picnics, barbecues, baseball games, field trips, workshops, game days, etc.; anything that would keep the youth (ages 6 to 17) occupied and out of trouble for two and a half months. We enjoyed some great perks too. I remember a helicopter tour around the Gettysburg battlefield. I remember wonderful sunny afternoons sipping beers with assistants and friends around a pool. Most of them were lovely young women, but that is a story for another blog.

The following summer I graduated from Niagara University, now having left the seminary and my mother dying in the same weeks. I had been accepted to West Virginia University Graduate Program in Sociology, had met a wonderful young woman, Beverly, while volunteering at a local crisis call center. I spent the lazy beautiful summer continuing to volunteer and then making almost no money drawing pictures of Niagara Falls for tourists.

The first year in Morgantown I worked with two other graduate assistants for an educational sociologist. She taught introductory sociology to three classes of 400 students each. We led small groups and monitored them and did general trouble shooting in the vast logistics that comes in classes of that size. We also helped compile and grade massive 200 question multiple choice exams. I was the SPSS geek also and daily went to the computer center to tweak then turn in the data that some of the professors were playing with. I received $200 per month for my labors (or $2000 for the entire school year). Also I attended graduate school tuition free. It seemed like a lot of money at that time. I paid my rent of $50 per month for a lovely house with my two friends. I spent about $100 per month on food and other expenses and managed to save about $50 per month from it all. With that saved money ($1200) I financed the following summer in Europe. It was 1972. I was 23 years old. The trip was a life changing experience. (another blog)

The next year I garnered an ideal graduate assistantship working for two anthropologists. I shared a room with Dr. Paterson and she provided me with a personal corner and wall where I stuck my "Nixon Count-down Calendar", 1461 little squares that would eventually block out the entire face of Richard M. Nixon. I cannot actually say what I did for these two professors but I remember it as an easier and more relaxed work than my previous year. As I saw my money drying up because of the end of the school year, a friend told me about a job at the Regional Research Institute. During the same year I started singing and performing with a friend in a band and soon there were three of us. We called ourselves "Full Circle" and we played and sang a variety of folk and pop songs. Our band actually found an agent willing to book us in the Washington, D.C. area. I left my job of two weeks at the Regional Research Institute to pursue fame and fortune in Washington, D.C.- more specifically Fairfax, Virginia. My friend responsible for getting me hired at the RRI asked her boss what he thought about her new hire leaving so soon. He said, "That's what you get for hiring a second year graduate student."

With my 1300 punch cards (I hoped that it was my future thesis.) we left with the band to the Washington, D.C. area. At this logical turing point, I must end part 2. This monster blog only started as a regular entry. I promise to try to wrap it up in part three.

Labor Day, Labour Day

Cris Coursey of our local rag, the Santa Rosa Press Democrat, inspired this blog. He is the best writer in the paper and of course he is leaving his job within the month of September.

Labor Day is a holiday that is celebrated only in the United States. The rest of the world celebrates May Day. I will let my readers uncover the paranoid history of why this is so.

This blog is a personal recollection of my work history, beginning at the age of nine in the newspaper business. The Yeadon Times was sent to practically every household in the borough of Yeadon. Nevertheless, the owner, editor, publisher gave me a job of going door to door to collect the subscription fee: $1.00 per year. If a "subscriber" said "no", I was to cross out the name from a list. Door after door people would say, " I thought the paper was free." "Nobody ever collected money before." For each dollar I collected, I received a commission of 10%. (Ten cents for the math challenged among you.)

As a child my parents handed their children no money- no money at all. "Mom, I need..." Her reply from Spring to Fall was: Get out the lawn mower" - a funky push mower. In winter, "Shovel snow." So it went. Between the ages of nine and thirteen I spent my weekends and summer pursuing the often fruitless occupation of knocking on doors, where nobody answered or gave a curt "No!" to my query. One summer I did get a job of cleaning Mrs. Pohl's garden. One day a week she would give me a dollar for about six hours of garden work. The other alternative was pushing a cart of groceries home at the mercy of the generosity of the shopper. A quarter was the usual tip. A dollar was never seen. There were a group of particularly feeble old ladies who tipped a nickel- once identified - to be avoided at all costs.

My first real (summer) job, at thirteen, was really two jobs. In the morning (7 AM) I would walk to the Yeadon Swim Club and clean toilets, locker room floors and general clean up of the pool area. It lasted from 7 AM to 11 AM. I had a break until 4 PM when I started at Don's Restaurant as dishwasher. I will always remember sexy Shelly, teasing the pre-pubescent boy that I was. Shelly had a Ford convertible, a boy friend and went to San Francisco for vacation. All of these things idealized her in my boy eyes. Despite her heavy make up, she glowed with life. She loved me- or so she would say, when she pinch my cheeks. This little boy smelled of the meat fat and cooking oil when he left at 9:45 PM to continue his other job. It took exactly 15 minutes to run from Don's Restaurant to the Yeadon Swim Club. That was evening clean-up time. Pick up trash, sweep the decks, move chairs back, etc. The next summer I secured a position at the swim club, sweeping the miniature golf course. It still paid the same, $1.00 per hour but the distance from the toilets made it feel like a promotion.

There is a run down red brick building at 63rd (Cobbs Creek Parkway) and Walnut in Philadelphia. In the 1920's it was the most fashionable hotel in the city. When I arrived it catered to the senior citizen. It retained much of the snobbery of its earlier days. The occupants were not patients, but guests. The restaurant where I worked maintained the venire of a real restaurant- a menu, even specials of the day. I was a bus-boy. I received my education in cheating at pinochle there. I was only one of two white waiters and the other was a thief. The remaining bus-boys came from that west Philadelphia neighborhood. One of my "aha" moments was when one of the bus-boys asked how I got to work all the way from Yeadon. I said that I hitch-hiked. They chuckled. "We could never do that."

My Junior year in high school I sorted mail at the US Post Office, Thirtieth Street, Philadelphia. We would arrive at 7 PM and stay for a minimum of four hours and sometimes all night depending on the amount of work to be done. The work was deadly dull: sorting one box of mail after another into little cubbies, according to zip code. Working the commercial mail was the best because I could peek into the magazines- especially the Playboys. The pay was good - perhaps $3.75 an hour.

To be continued...