2000-10-09 - 18:12 MDT

October 9, 2000

Backtrack

It makes me laugh thinking about school. I didn't do all that well when there and dropped out after the tenth grade and went to work. I guess you could say I was an entry level dipshit, learning things the hard way and correcting my errors on the fly. But I did progress as I went. I had something that many others didn't, a work ethic taught to me by my parents.

I spent the war years working for the railroad, which enlarged my world view and honed what little skills I had. There still is in my nostrils the Platte Valley smell of train smoke, in my ears the hiss of steam, the sounds of shunted boxcars hitting and connecting with the string. Learned quite a bit about caution too.

Was in a power plant for ten years and then we returned to Denver. First job I found here didn't pan out, the company I worked for couldn't keep their quality up, just before Christmas we received our turkey and final wages. It was shortly after New Years that I found work at a defense contractors site. Personnel checked me out and had me take a short test, I was hired and sent to work on the assembly line.

A month or so later the super of the test lab came out and talked to me about my power plant background then asked me in to work for the test lab. A kid's dream of a job, getting paid to tear up, blow up, crumple up and generally destroy things. It gave me a chance to see the operation from the ground up, assembly through final test. Then the contract being fulfilled after a lag to see if more work came in, we were laid off.

While out looking for a job I finally graduated high school-- more or less -- I took the GED test and passed it nicely. Heck I knew all that I was being tested on and the extraneous stuff never was tested - the stuff that gave me such a hard time in school. Then I got a job at a big bakery washing the bread delivery trucks each afternoon. It was tight for us but we made out, supplemented with the baked goods returned as more or less day old stuff. So all we had to do was buy meat and veggies and gas.

Then I was called back to the factory and the test lab, they had another government contract. This system I became intimate with, lived, breathed and slept with it. Knew all the parameters and limits of each and every thing. And I gleefully kept doing what I did best - destroy stuff as noisily, showily as I could. The system used pyrotechnic devices including a nifty rocket. It was a broadening experience working on those things, knowing that the life and limb of service men depended on the sturdiness and efficient operation of the system. I would get sent overseas as a tech rep, do my tour, come home and with the contract being finished -- laid off again.

Each time they called me back I got them to bridge my seniority, I had eleven years seniority at the last layoff.

I sought other work, found it and didn't go back again. My last fourteen years, one was spent in tech school, the rest working in a job that I had trained for.

Each place I worked, each place I went furthered my practical education and refined my philosophies, taught me patience and diplomacy. When I finally retired, Heather managed to keep me out of the kitchen, but had me help with other things. She is not a bad boss, pretty neat and pretty and gentle, with a whim of steel. What I learned in life up to that time has been applied in a practical way to serve in the trenches with my new boss.

Don't ever look at me, point the finger and tell me to backtrack.

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