chances and choices

I was 21 and I needed a job..

Miriam and I had been married a couple of years, Arline had been born about a year later. I was a going to college, really floundering in college, changing majors often and not really knowing what I was suited for or how to get there.

But I liked to work.

Twenty and a few years earlier, near the end of the great depression my father had been in the same position. He had gone to the same town (where our church had a small college) and had planned on taking classes.

The college owned a prune orchard and my father was given the job of assembling the wooden boxes the fruit was shipped in. It was piece work, and in a day or so my father was making more money than the president of the college.

When that job was finished he found another. The money he had earned at the college was a line of credit against tuition and I am sure he felt more inclined to work than study.

So mom went to college. She loved it. She got top grades and she had found her place. Then my father decided to move back to Idaho, and SWISH, they were gone and mom’s dreams of a college eduction went with them.

So I looked for a job.

I talked to the best carpenter in town. Yes, he would be needing help soon. I talked to the owners of the best floor covering store in the area. Yes, they had a big floor tile (this was asphalt tile still) job and I had a bit of experience with floor tile, so they might use me.

One morning at 7 the floor guys called and asked me to be ready by 7:30. I left with them and 15 minutes later the carpenter called. I became a floor covering installer, rather than a carpenter because of 15 minutes.

I know people who carefully and methodically pick a career. They take tests and they evaluate, but often we get into a line of work just on just as flimsy a pretext as I did that day way back when.

That choice has never really struck me as being a bad one, but it did change my whole life.

Tomorrow: Otto, one of the partners I worked for.