Desparately Calm

Wow - this is my 300th post... Who'd have thought??? :-) ... And yet the story goes on:

I went through a "journey of introspection" in the winter of 1972... It's kind of strange to describe because I really enjoyed living in Eugene (Oregon) and wasn't the least bit unhappy. As a matter of fact, I recall feeling a deep sense of peace and well-being... But I knew things couldn't go on the way they had been going - having my life thrown into utter chaos every time my mother or sister decided to do something stupid on a whim...
Furthermore - I was sick of never having a penny to my name. Even when I was making good money as a delivery driver in Dallas all of it went to my mother and sister... It wasn't that I wanted money to spend on "things" (I'd been around my sister enough to know the folly of that)... I just wanted some control over whether there would be a roof over my head and food in the fridge at the end of the month... Somehow, that really didn't seem like a lot to ask :-)

So let me recap where I stood in the late fall of 1972:
I'd graduated from high school (at age 16) roughly 30 months earlier and hadn't done a darn thing for at least 21 months of that time. I had spent one semester in college but that got disrupted when my mother was hospitalized and almost died of cancer. (I really didn't see myself as the "college type" anyway)... And I had recently spent a few months driving a delivery truck and (in retrospect) I had been extremely good at it, but I certainly didn't feel that way at the time. (I've always been my toughest critic, and having my former boss constantly berate me didn't help matters either) ...

Aside: The sense of inadequacy probably goes back to the "Dunning-Kruger Effect". One of the findings is that people who are exceptionally good at things generally assume everyone one else is as well :-)

So the obvious conclusion was that I needed to find a job. For the first month or so I checked the classified pretty much every day but there really wasn't much available, and there were a couple of reasons for that: The first was that hundreds of thousands of people had been thrown out of work in the Seattle area during Boeing's 1971 downturn and a lot of them ended up in Eugene. And the second was that Eugene was a college town and there were thousands of students looking for part time jobs. (There was no need to hire full-time workers for unskilled positions.)

It seemed like my best long term prospect would be in a car-related field. And since sales was out of the question (wrong personality type), and becoming a mechanic required a huge investment (mechanics have to provide their own hand tools), I figured my best shot was as a car parts counterman.
So, sometime in November I decided to "pull out all the stops" and made a list of every car dealer and parts store in Eugene. Then I put on a suit and tie, and (over the period of a couple of days) I went to every one of them (about 25 total) .. It wasn't easy because I didn't have a car and it was cold out. I took the bus downtown one day, but most of the time I walked... Miles and miles...
I got the same answer almost every place I went... A lot of them seemed to feel bad for me (I must have looked pitiful) and told me that it wasn't my fault - they were having to turn away aerospace engineers with families as well. But that didn't really make me feel any better...

There was, however, one place that was looking for a parts trainee: Centennial Porsche/Audi on Centennial Loop. (I'm not sure when it closed but it's definitely not there anymore.) I got along really well with the parts manager, my fluency in German was a plus, and it was a good location - right off of Coburg Road. I could walk there in less than 1/2 hour if need be...The manager said he'd get back to me, but he never did... I knew I should call, but I was afraid to because that was my only remaining option and I really didn't want to hear that final "No"...

You know - although being a parts man at a Porsche dealership seemed like a "dream job" at the time I've often reflected on how incredibly fortunate I was that I didn't get it... Because when I finally gave up waiting for that call (after about a month) I set in motion a chain of events that changed my life forever...

And So It Went

I'm not sure exactly how to explain the 4 months I spent in Eugene. That's because nothing significant happened - and that's the main reason I left after only 4 months, but I'll get around to that eventually. So the next couple of posts will be more "odds and ends" than narrative.

First - to wrap up the story of Bernie:
 It took a while for him to make it from Dallas with the trailer, but he did eventually arrive in Eugene and he got himself a little apartment west of downtown. I vaguely recall that Karina moved in with him for a short while, but they had some kind of major falling out and that was the beginning of the end of their relationship...
Bernie got a job as a traveling piano tuner (nowadays they have electronic equipment for that but he did it mostly by ear - apparently people like that were hard to find back in the day), and one of his clients was a store called Tallman Piano in Redding, California. They offered Bernie a full time job so he moved down there, and in 1975 (after a few twists and turns) he opened his own store called Bernie's Guitar Shop. (He's been there ever since.) I visited him numerous times over the years, but I'm pretty sure Karina never saw much of him after he left Eugene... He ended up getting married in the late 1970s and afterward he didn't want to have much of anything to do with me. I guess he just wanted to put it all behind him.

BTW: Shortly after Bernie arrived in Oregon we all drove out to the coast and stopped at Devil's Churn and the top of Cape Perpetua before heading back. Yeah - I'm not even going to try and describe how incredible those two spots are. Hard to forget the first time you see them.

As I mentioned in my prior post, mom, Karina and I rented a 2 bedroom unit on the ground floor near the southwest corner of the Clairmont Apartments between Adkins Street and Coburg Road... The main thing I remember about the complex is that there was a really nice pool table in the rec room (but that's not particularly relevant). The manager was a widow named Jeanne (an absolutely wonderful woman). Her best friend Doris also lived in the complex (she was a retired school teacher who had never married). Mom got along really well with them and they all remained friends for many years. (Jeanne and Doris even attended my wedding reception, but I'm getting ahead of myself.)  We didn't have a car at the time so Jeanne took mom shopping when we needed stuff. That was a huge help. (As it turned out, mom never drove again after being hospitalized for cancer earlier that year...)

Aside: Jeanne's car was a 1965 Chevy Impala sedan (cream colored) with a 327 engine. I remember that because I did a tune-up for her once. Unfortunately I couldn't get it running quite right because it had a burnt exhaust valve on the passenger side (probably due to a stuck heat riser). Sigh... Yet another detail that got stuck in my memory despite being utterly irrelevant :-)

Mom loved Eugene more than I did. She'd spent her entire life dreaming of moving to Oregon, and Eugene (as it was in 1972) turned out to be an ideal place to be a "psychic counselor / astrologer". It was only a matter of weeks before mom (once again) had a sizable group of followers. I honestly don't remember much about them (other than a couple of them were attractive women) because I'd kind of stopped paying attention to much of anything at that point :-)

My only activity in Eugene of any significance was playing guitar in a folk mass group at St. Paul's (not far from the apartments)... The parish had a young (progressive) priest, and I met some really nice young people there but didn't form any lasting relationships... I remember that two of the guys (about my age) were studying electronics at Lane County Community College. I was quite envious of them, although it seemed like they were just a bit too "full of themselves" about it :-) Yeah - I couldn't even afford to think about school at the time.
Also, there was a girl in the folk mass group (another guitarist) I thought was really cute... I recently did some poking around on Google and it turns out she was younger than I thought she was (that explains a lot). And yes - I do remember her name (her father owned the largest car dealership in town) but it seems kind of pointless to mention it :-)

Yeah... For me, the time spent in Eugene was about trying to figure out who I was and where I belonged in the world... And that will be the topic of my next post.

Home - or Something Like it

Between moving away from Lakeshire (near St. Louis) in December of 1961 and arriving in Eugene (Oregon) in October of 1972 I lived a lot of different places. (Twenty-one addresses in three countries to be exact. But who's counting?) ... And none of them ever felt like "home". But Eugene did - and it's hard to explain exactly why. So I'll just throw out some observations and hope that (taken together) they paint the picture...

Back in 1972 Eugene was an ultra-liberal college town, with a number of "hippie" communes in the surrounding countryside. It was kind of magnet for "alternative thinkers" and "new age" types... And even thought the population was close to 100,000, it still had a "small town" feel. The majority of the residents were unpretentious, casual, laid-back and friendly - you got a smile and a greeting from almost everyone you encountered... And, whereas teenagers and young adults in most places tended to be extremely conscious of their "image" (clothes, hair, makeup), the younger crowd in Eugene didn't much seem to care. There was a de-facto "uniform" worn by both genders: bib overalls with either a plaid shirt or a sweatshirt. (You saw people dressed like that everywhere.) The girls tended to have long straight hair and very little (if any) makeup... And I actually found that to be rather sexy... (Yes - my tastes had changed significantly since my high school days.)

Aside: I've visited Eugene many times over the years, and at some point the place got overrun with pretentious douches... I think they were mostly refugees from the Bay Area who flooded north after the passage of "Prop 13" - bringing their home equity money, BMWs, bad driving habits and snobbish "hipper than thou" attitude with them. (I could go on a lengthy rant here, but I won't) ... But Oregon hasn't been the same since :-)

Then there was the climate... A quick recap: Since leaving Germany (which had a climate similar to the Willamette Valley) we spent two winters in Winnipeg where it was insanely cold, one and a half in Southern California where it was always "short sleeve weather", and two in Texas where the average high in January was almost 60°... The point being that I was looking forward to a winter that felt like winter but wasn't brutally cold. And the climate in Eugene pretty much fit the bill. In an average year the temperature might drop into the mid 20s a few times, but highs are typically somewhere in the 40s - chilly, but not that cold.

Another aside:  In a strange twist of fate, the overnight low temperature on December 8th, 1972 (less than 2 months after we got there) reached -12°F. That was (and still is) the all time record low for Eugene - and pretty darn frigid even by Winnipeg standards... Yeah - we were miserable. The baseboard heaters in our apartment weren't designed for that kind of cold and we had to stay bundled up for days... Then for weeks afterward the classifieds were full of ads for really nice cars with cracked engine blocks - like a low mileage '69 Z-28 for $800... Yeah - if I'd had any money at all :-)

Yet another aside: A lot of people would be surprised to know that every major city on the east coast gets more rain (in inches, not days) than Portland or Eugene... So when people from out of town ask me about "all that Oregon rain" I tell them: "Yes... It does rain a lot of the time here - but it's a dry rain" :-)

But none of that explains what I liked so much about the "feel" of Eugene in the winter...  I guess it was all the evergreens (I'd never lived anywhere that stayed so green in the winter), the smell of "nature" (enhanced by the earthy aroma of barkdust from the mill in Springfield), the fog, the mist ... the almost constant drizzle - and the dew that covered everything... It seemed to envelop and "embrace" you... Yeah - I know that's not everybody's "cup of tea" - but I loved it.

So, all in all, it was "bitter sweet" - being in a place where I felt so at home ... yet nothing had really changed... We were still broke - and I still couldn't find a job - or afford to go to school... And I couldn't see how that was ever going to change.

Regroup and Redeploy

I wish I could remember more about what happened when we got back from that road trip in September of 1972... I suspect it's so hazy because (as usual) I wasn't involved in the decision making process. (Just along for the ride.)

As best as I can recall, Karina and I told mom about the places we'd been and the things we'd seen, and it was quickly decided that moving to Oregon had been the right idea but (for whatever reason) the timing was wrong. Mom also determined that Eugene was where we were supposed to be - largely because of the rainbow that appeared next to our car as we were passing though :-)

So - around the start of October I got my child support payment, mom got a sizable check from aunt Vesti and we started selling everything we weren't planning on taking with us... I'm not sure exactly how long it took (maybe a couple of weeks?) but we scraped together enough money for three plane tickets and a couple of months rent once we got to Eugene... Yeah - we were "good to go".

Aside: My sister Karina made her ex-husband Bernie rent a trailer and haul all of our stuff up to Oregon with the Mazda. (He had to go through California because of the weather.) I'm not sure he really wanted to leave Texas but he was kind of "lost" at that point and didn't know what else to do... I felt kind of sorry for him :-)

Now... Many posts ago I mentioned a young orderly (Ron) at the hospital in Denton whose wife had recently died during surgery - and he spent a lot of time with my mom while she was being treated there for cancer... As it turned out, he had moved back to Portland (his home town) and when mom contacted him he volunteered to pick us up at the airport and help us get settled in.

It was early evening when our flight landed in Portland - a bit too late to drive to Eugene. So we spent the night at Ron's house in North Portland (it was supposedly a bad neighborhood, but it looked fine to us)... I think we slept late the next the morning, went out for breakfast and took our time getting on the road.

I remember the drive down to Eugene quite well. That's because Ron didn't have a car, so he borrowed his brother's 1967 Firebird 400 convertible (dark green) and let me drive it most of the way there... Now - I am not a fan of GM cars in general, but I love Firebirds - and the 67 400 vert is about as sweet as they get. (The only GM vehicle I have ever owned is a '75 Trans Am - but that is yet to come.)

And while I'm on the topic of cars I guess this is as good a place as any for this story:
A week or so later Ron borrowed his sister's 1970 Mustang so we could spend the day at the Oregon coast. It was a "plain Jane" blue coupe - no emblems or badges to indicate there was anything special about it... Then I got into a situation where I was passing some slow traffic on a two-lane road and slightly misjudged the speed of an oncoming log truck. It was too late to back off, so I floored it - and the Mustang took off like a rocket - made it with plenty of room to spare... I turned to Ron and asked what the deal was with the car and he claimed ignorance, so when we stopped for lunch I popped the hood and found myself staring at what I instantly recognized as a 300 horsepower 4-bbl 351 Cleveland V-8 (the valve covers are a dead giveaway)... I was rather surprised, because that engine was a performance upgrade for "Mach 1" models. I had no idea you could even get one in a base coupe... Ron said his sister bought the car new off the lot and didn't think there was anything special about it, so I figure somebody else must have special ordered it and backed out of the deal... (BTW: I really like 65-70 Mustangs too, but again, I've never owned one.)

Aside: I was pretty "obsessive compulsive" about cars at the time. When we were in Tyler I subscribed to both Hot Rod and Car Craft magazines and had accumulated a small reference library of magazines, books and new car brochures... The point is that I can still name the visible differences between the Windsor and Cleveland 351 engines down to the orientation of the fuel pump bolts. But I digress...

When we arrived in Eugene we found a room at an old hotel in the downtown area. I'm not 100% sure, but I think it was the "Eugene Hotel" (now a senior living facility)...
We picked up a newspaper in the lobby and as soon as we got to the room Karina went through the rental ads calling out numbers to mom (who was working the phone) while I sat there with a map and a notepad jotting down the addresses. As soon as we had a workable list we prioritized it and took off in the Firebird with Ron driving and me navigating. I'm not sure how many places we looked at, but we quickly settled on a 2 bedroom unit in the Clairmont Apartments on Adkins Street (near Coburg Road south of Beltline). It was furnished and already vacant, so we could move in the next day.

When we got back to the hotel (not much more than an hour after arriving in Eugene) we called the telco to arrange for phone service and took care of a few other odds and ends (like calling Bernie to give him the "go" signal)... Ron was stunned... He said he had never seen anybody get settled in that fast after arriving in a new town. (It was almost like a military operation.) And we were like "Yeah - we've done this before" :-)

OK. There's one more related story that I thought was kind of funny:
After Ron left we decided to call room service for dinner (that was one of our usual indulgences) and after looking over the menu I decided on the "Ragout Hogie". When I told mom what I wanted I pronounced ragout just like it's spelled: "rag-out"... Mom and Karina both started laughing (they were frequently amused by my lack of sophistication) and explained that the correct pronunciation is "rah-goo". (Yeah - I was a bit embarrassed)...
So mom called to place the order, and for some reason she had to repeat "Rah-goo Hoagie" three or four times. When she got off the phone she totally cracked up and told us that after the last repetition the woman had said: "Oh! You mean the rag-out Hoagie!". (So - apparently my pronunciation was the correct one in Eugene)... Well - I thought it was funny :-)

The next morning we took a cab to the apartment - and thus began the next chapter...

The Road to Home

Before I get to the topic at hand I wanted to address the fact that I haven't said very much about my thoughts and emotions in my most recent posts. And there are a couple of simple reasons for that:
The first is that between 1965 and 1972 I had been through the "emotional wringer" so many times there wasn't a whole lot left - I was pretty much numb... And the second is that I was trying to take a "faith based" approach to life. You know - assume that everything happens for a reason and there's no sense in stressing over it. Just "roll with the punches" and "go with the flow". So yeah - there was a lot of chaos going on around me but I never once thought about trying to change anything... "Que sera, sera" :-)

And on to the story:

It was early afternoon by the time we finished packing up and headed out of Portland on I-80N (now I-84)... I don't recall much from that day's drive. I'm sure we must have noticed the waterfalls along the Columbia River gorge but we didn't stop. And I'm almost certain we spent the night in Baker City. (Once again, it got really cold overnight.) ... Yeah - that's not very far from Portland, but the "disintegrating tire" incident had prompted us to slow down considerably :-)

The next day we continued on I-80N through Idaho and down to Ogden, Utah. But instead of continuing across Wyoming (like we'd done on our "outbound" trip) we decided to take a more direct route to Dallas, dropping down through Salt Lake City and Provo and then taking highway 6 to highway 50 through Colorado.

Aside: There's a place on highway 6 southbound where you drop down out of the hills and you suddenly find yourself in the desert surrounded by plateaus and mesas. (It's a scene right out of a "Road Runner" cartoon)... I was completely taken by surprise. I'd had no idea that sort of terrain extended that far north from Arizona... Simply amazing...

We ended up stopping for the night in Grand Junction, Colorado. I recall that it was a really nice little town, and we stayed at a much cheaper motel than usual (we were almost broke)... And (again) it was really cold out.

Another aside: I've been trying to remember what the usual sleeping arrangements were during that trip and I'm drawing a total blank. I vaguely recall that we typically got two rooms and I think my sister Karina preferred sharing a room with me rather than her ex-husband Bernie, but we may have all shared the same room (2 beds and a cot) some of the time... Obviously nothing memorable happened :-)

In the morning we awoke hoping that (with any luck) this would be the last day of the trip - and for once we were right :-) But first we had to make it through the Rockies...
Highway 50 from Grand Junction to Pueblo was a real nail biter... I don't know if they've improved it in the 40 years since but back then it was narrow and twisty with steep drop-offs and very few guard rails. Yeah - Karina was freaking out... It seemed like we climbed forever - finally crossing the continental divide at Monarch Pass (over 11,000 feet)... Amazing view - scary drive...

Sort of an aside: Nowadays you can drive your car just about anywhere and it will run properly because the engine controller monitors the amount of oxygen in the exhaust and varies the injector pulse width to maintain an ideal air/fuel ratio. So driving at high altitudes (where there is a lot less oxygen) is not a problem - the controller compensates for it...
But carburetors don't do that. They are tuned to operate at a particular elevation and as you gain altitude the engine gets progressively richer... So as we headed up into the Rockies I had to be extremely careful with the gas pedal because if I pushed on it (or backed off) too quickly the car would backfire (loudly)... Karina was already on edge - she didn't need to hear any explosions :-)

I don't remember driving down the other side of the divide. I know that when we got to Pueblo we took I-25 south to highway 87 and headed into the Texas panhandle. And I remember stopping at a restaurant in Dalhart with the intent of having dinner, but that didn't work out... As I've mentioned before, Bernie and I both had long hair and even though the restaurant was almost completely empty we couldn't get the waitress to look at us. We sat there for about 15 minutes before finally deciding we'd have better luck in Amarillo...

I think it was around Childress that we seriously started considering stopping for the night. It was late, we were dog tired, and Dallas was still 4 hours away. But we weren't sure we could find a motel we could afford and decided to push on...

We finally got to the apartment in Addison around midnight - right where the journey had started more than 2 weeks earlier (but with an additional 8000 miles on odometer and a lot less money in the bank)...

Mom was thrilled to see us. And it was good to be home :-)

Point of No Return

When Bernie and I started our job search in Portland in September of 1972 there were economic forces at work that we hadn't been aware of... The country (as a whole) was in something of a downturn that (in my opinion) was exacerbated by the wage and price freeze Nixon imposed in 1971, but the northwest had been particularly hard hit. And that was because of Boeing...

Between 1968 and 1971 the number of people employed by Boeing in the Seattle area dropped from around 100,000 to 32,700. (Much of it due to the cancellation of the SuperSonic Transport project in 1971.) In other words, almost 70,000 skilled aerospace workers had been laid off in a very short period of time... But that was just the tip of the iceberg. Almost the entire Boeing supply chain was located in the northwest as well, not to mention all the local businesses that depended on all those aerospace workers for their existence. The aggregate job loss was probably in the hundreds of thousands. It was catastrophic...

Of course, many of those who couldn't find work migrated south, so by the time Bernie, Karina and I arrived in Oregon jobs were all but impossible to find... And so it went... Bernie had once been an orderly, so we made the rounds of the local hospitals. That was usually pretty easy work to get, but there was nothing. Bernie also checked out all the music stores, and again, no luck...

I don't recall how many days we spent in the Portland area, but we did do quite a bit of exploring, and I can't help but be amazed at how much it has grown in the years since.

One day after stopping at St. Vincent hospital (no job openings) we had lunch at the Love's Barbeque (long defunct national chain) on Cedar Hills Blvd across from the Beaverton Mall (under construction at the time). That was pretty much the "outer bounds" of the Portland metro area. (I had no idea that 13 years later I'd be working a few blocks from there.) Then we headed south on 217 (a two lane rural road with stop signs) all the way to Lake Oswego, a rather tiny (albeit well-to-do) community - there wasn't a stoplight anywhere.

O.K. This is funny (or not)... One day when we were heading up Skyline Blvd I saw a "No Barking" sign... I thought that was one of the weirdest things I'd ever seen. I mean, the idea that there was a local "anti-barking" ordinance and they put up signs and everything... It took a full five minutes to dawn on me that someone had "doctored" a "No Parking" sign. (That's the funny part)... In my defense, the modification had been quite well done. You really couldn't tell :-)

We also spent some time poking around the inner southeast part of town (Buckman area - rents were cheap there) and I also recall that there were two sets of ridiculously tight curves on the locals freeways. One was at Terwilliger on I-5 south and the other at 39th on the Banfield. Fortunately, they've both since been significantly straightened (the latter one when they built the east side light rail in the early 1980s.) Yeah - the Banfield was pretty dangerous at the time...

All in all we really liked the area. We just couldn't find jobs anywhere...

And then one morning we realized we had reached the "point of  no return". We had just enough money to either drive back to Dallas or rent a cheap apartment and eat for a few days - and that was it... So we decided it was time to throw in the towel, head back home and regroup...

And Back North Again...

By the time the sun rose on the eighth day of our trip Karina had decided that heading south out of Oregon had been a huge mistake and we needed to head back up there right away.

We had just put down a deposit (and first month's rent) on a house in Escondido so Bernie called the landlord and explained the situation. Luckily, the guy agreed to tear up the lease and give us all the money back, so we swung by his office and hit the road...

Aside: It had all happened so fast that I didn't even have time to get in touch with my friends and tell them we were leaving... I had just showed up out of the blue saying I was moving back and then they never heard from me again... Until Facebook :-)

We really didn't want to drive through the center of L.A. again and since we were already on Highway 395 we decided to just head north into the Sierras. (We'd never been that way before.)
 We got as far as San Bernardino when we heard the thump and the vibration started. I pulled over and discovered that there was a huge chunk of rubber missing from one of the back tires. And upon closer inspection I realized that there were blisters and bits of rubber missing here and there on all the tires...

Another aside: There was a huge problem with the early radial tires. The manufacturers hadn't yet figured out how keep the steel belts from accumulating heat, and if a belt stayed too hot for too long the rubber would start delaminating. (Lots of people would not buy them for that reason.)... It wasn't a problem as long as you took it easy, but we didn't know about it and had driven the car more than 4,000 miles heavily loaded at some pretty high speeds. So yeah - the tires were toast.

There was a pro-rata factory warranty on the them and we made some phone calls and found a Mazda dealer in Riverside that had a set, but when we got there they claimed that (based on tread depth) the warranty would only cover something like 30% of the cost. We thought that was B.S. but we didn't really have any other options. (We needed to get back on the road). Yeah - that put a healthy dent in our finances.

 It took a couple of hours to get rolling again and by the time we reached Bishop we had no choice but to stop for the night. (It was many miles to the next town.) ... And I have to admit I instantly fell in love with the place. It was a small town (population 3,700) in a high desert valley (4100 feet) almost completely surrounded by mountains. Definitely one of the most beautiful places I've seen.... Of course, we got hold of a local newspaper and (as expected) there were no rentals or jobs... (The population hasn't really changed in the 40 years since. You pretty much have to be born there to live there.)
We spent the night at a motel out on East Line Road. I know that because we were right across from the high school football field and it was Friday night. (The lights were on and it sounded like the whole town was there.)

When we woke up the next morning the temperature was in the low 20's, and the warmest thing I'd brought with me was a sweatshirt. (No "vinter coat")... We stopped at small grocery store just north of town and I waited in the parking lot while Bernie and Karina got coffee and donuts... There had been a hard frost and everything was covered in white (almost as if it had snowed). I remember sitting there shivering in the passenger seat (Bernie was driving) waiting for the car to warm up while I listened to the (recently released) "School's Out" album by Alice Cooper on the 8-track. I couldn't figure out what was taking them so long... (It's an incredibly vivid memory.)

I figure I must have not been feeling well, because I can recall going past Mono Lake and then nothing until we were passing a bunch of vineyards that smelled really bad (natural fertilizer?)... So we must have taken highway 108 down into Sonora and across to Stockton (I apparently slept most of the way)...

We had decided on Portland because we figured that was where we stood the best chance of finding jobs. And when I started writing this post I didn't recall exactly how or when we got there because I've traveled the I-5 corridor between Sacramento and Portland more than a dozen times and it all gets muddled together... But then I dredged up a couple of memories that I'm certain are from that leg of the trip that nailed it down:

First - we were somewhere around Ashland heading downhill through a twisty section of I-5 when we came across an accident scene. It was dark and foggy, and someone had rolled a Chevy K5 Blazer in the left lane. Seeing the flashing lights and the upside down vehicle appear through the fog was totally surreal... And given that it was already night time I suspect we stopped for the night in Grants Pass again.

And the next day (around noon) we were heading north through Eugene in the rain (kind of a fine mist) when the sun came out... And a full rainbow appeared between our car and the car in the next lane... I had not know that was possible - it was one of the "trippiest" things I'd ever seen... (We took it as a sign - but that doesn't come into play until later)... And yes - I was in the passenger seat again. I must have really not been feeling well.

When we got to Portland we needed to find a place that was centrally located but reasonably priced so we ended up at a motel on SW King Avenue a couple of blocks south of Burnside (about a mile west of downtown). I no longer remember what it was called back then but now it's the "Park Lane Suites and Inn"... Yeah - I've noticed that when a someone remodels an old rundown motel they often give it a foofy sounding name with "Suites" in it :-)

And (if I'm counting correctly) I have now reached the end of the 10th day on the road - and there is still no end in sight...

 

And the Next...

I really don't remember much from day 5 of our road trip in September of 1972, so some of this is going to be "dry narrative"... My apologies :-)

We slept kind of late that morning and headed south from Grants Pass down through Medford and across Siskiyou Summit into California... I remember coming down the hill and seeing Mount Shasta for the first time. (We pulled over at the viewpoint for a better look.). I also remember Lake Shasta (we kept crossing it - seemed like it went on forever) and Redding. (It was a nice town but we didn't stay long.)
And because of our late start it was dusk by the time we reached Sacramento. (That's where I-5 ended at the time.) We didn't stop - just continued down Highway 99 through Stockton and Fresno, eventually stopping for the night in Visalia. (I recall that there were lots of interesting and unfamiliar aromas as we passed down through the central valley...)

The next morning we headed down past Bakersfield to where I-5 continued and managed to make it through the Los Angeles area without incident. When we reached Carlsbad (where mom used to work) we got off I-5 and onto Highway 101 so we could drive along the coast through La Jolla and Mission Beach and see the places we used to live...

Aside: We were just south of Carlsbad when we saw the "Ponto Beach" sign... That was the name Karina and I had accused mom of making up when we were playing "places starting with the letter 'P'" on the road from California to Texas back in December of 1969. We had teased her mercilessly about it, so the sign came as quite a shock... (We apologized the next time we talked to her...)

Then for some reason Karina decided she wanted to see Tijuana... Yeah - I was not OK with that. The "grilling" I had endured at the Canadian border was still fresh in my memory and I figured coming back from Mexico would be significantly worse... But luckily, she changed her mind as soon as the border crossing was in sight, so we turned around and headed back up I-5 and then onto 395 to Escondido.

Quick refresher: Escondido was the last place we had lived before leaving California... Karina had never really liked it there but in the interim she apparently decided it wasn't so bad after all...

We got a couple of rooms at the TravelLodge  and spent the next day checking out the job / rental situation and by late afternoon Bernie had lined up a job as a hospital orderly and we had put down a deposit on a really nice rental house next to an orange grove in the hills south of downtown. (It was owned by a church - probably left to them in someone's will.) And the cool part was that the house was vacant so we could start moving in the next day...
And since we had decided to stay I got in touch with my old band members (Gary, Bill and Mike) and we got together and hung out for a while before I called it a night.

Aside: It is now 40 years later and I still remember that "Crimson and Clover" by Tommy James and the Shondells was playing on the P.A. system at the gas station where I met up with Mike and Gary... Strange what sticks in the memory...

So in 7 days we had traveled close to 4000 miles - from Dallas - to Seattle - to Canada - to the Mexican border - and we had finally found a place to settle down... (Or so I thought...)

The Next Day

I've reached a point in the story where things start getting confusing, so I'm not sure that my recollection of the order of events is 100% accurate, but I am sure that it's pretty close - so I'm going to tell the story as best as I can remember...

We left Pasco on the morning of September 16th, 1972 headed for Vancouver, B.C... Yeah - that was a decision Karina had made during the night. I don't know if it was prompted by memories of living in Canada, or just stories of how beautiful B.C. was... Regardless, we found ourselves heading up though Yakima, Ellensburg and Snoqualmie towards the Seattle area... There was one spot along the way I remember in particular:
As you approach Ellensburg the highway suddenly drops off the high desert plateau to reveal a beautiful lush green valley (fields and orchards) down below with snow capped mountains in the distance... It's an incredible sight... Absolutely beautiful!

I don't remember much else up until we crossed the border into Canada on I-5. We had only gone a couple of miles when Karina decided it just didn't feel right so we turned around and headed back... Now, getting into Canada had been easy, but getting back into the USA - not so much... (Especially when you have long hair and tell them you only spent 5 minutes across the border.) But eventually they let us back in and we headed down I-5... After we got past the Seattle area we remembered that Snoqualmie had been a really cool place so we turned around and headed back there. But it didn't take long to discover that rentals were scarce (and outrageously expensive) and there were no jobs... So we poked around the Seattle area for a while longer and headed back south through Tacoma (there are some scary places in that town) and ended up in Centralia for the night. (It was really late when we got there...)

The next day (Sunday) we passed through Portland, gave it a cursory glance, and decided to head on down to Eugene. We got there around noon and really liked it...  So we bought a newspaper and started looking at rentals and quickly realized that apartments were a lot cheaper in Springfield. So after having lunch at the IHOP we headed out Franklin Boulevard and across the bridge, and found ourselves in a different world... Yes - whereas Eugene was a college town with a reputation for "organic / free spirit" types, Springfield was a solid blue collar mill town. And the locals did not want any college punks on their side of the river...

We only got three blocks down Main Street before a Springfield cop lit us up... (He was a tall skinny guy with a huge adam's apple - one of the goofiest dudes I've ever seen - I figure he must've become a cop because he was tired of people making fun of him.)
When I inquired as to why we had been stopped he told us that we were driving a new car with Texas plates and that made us "suspicious"... (Suspicious? A car with out of state plates near a major university at the start of the school year? Seriously???)

When he asked what we were doing there I told him we were looking for a place to rent, and that's when things "went south"... He informed us that we definitely would not like living in Springfield and then asked to see the registration. That was a problem because Bernie had (inexplicably) stashed it somewhere in his luggage instead of the glovebox. So the cop made us all get out of the car while Bernie went through his suitcases, and in the meantime he collected our IDs and got on the radio with his dispatcher (probably checking to see if there were any APBs out on us).
Bernie eventually found the registration, but by then the cop had started giving Karina the third degree because she had three pieces of ID with different names on them. (As I recall, it was her green card from when she was an infant, her Social Security card, and another piece of ID she'd gotten while she was married to Bernie.)

I'm pretty sure the cop was about to let us go when this happened:
As Karina was explaining the different names he said "You can see how I might be confused." and Karina's immediate response was "Yes... I can see how YOU might be confused"... (Yeah - it was one of those "Oh shit!" moments... I don't think she could help it - that's just how she was...)

So he went back to his patrol car and got on the radio - and we stood there on the sidewalk ... and waited ... and waited ... and waited... And eventually he came over and told us "I'm certain that there's something wrong here but I can't seem to prove it, so I guess I'll just have to let you go." (He acted as if we had gotten away with something... Very insulting...)

The traffic stop had lasted roughly 45 minutes and by that time Karina had already decided we should head for the San Diego area (where we had lived from 9/68 to 12/69). So we got back onto I-5 and stopped for the night in Grants Pass...

And thus ended "day 4" on the road...

On the Road Again

After a bit of planning and preparation Karina, Bernie and I left Dallas early one morning (I think it was Thursday, September 14, 1972) in Bernie's orange Mazda RX-2, aka "the pumpkin" (packed to the gills with our personal belongings)...  The original intent was to find a place to live in the Portland area and then fly mom out (and retrieve the rest of our stuff) once we got settled in. But Portland turned out to be only one of many stops on an 8000 mile journey that ended exactly where it started...

A bit of background: The one thing Bernie and I had in common (other than being guitarists) was that we both pretty much always did whatever my sister wanted. The road trip was her idea, and her "gut feel" was the compass that guided us along the way... And since Karina was more comfortable with me driving I ended up behind the wheel almost the entire trip...

And here goes:

I don't remember very much from the first day. I know that we headed up through Oklahoma on I-35 and onto I-70 east in Kansas. And anyone who has ever driven through the plains on the interstate knows just how boring it is. But there were a couple of "highlights":

First, Bernie had grown up in rural Tennessee and was constantly trying to convince us that "corn" and "maize" were totally different things and that all the fields alongside the road were actually maize... (Yeah - he was wrong about that.)

And the second involved another motorist in eastern Colorado... It was in an area where the interstate was still under construction and there were stretches where the westbound lanes were diverted into what would normally be the eastbound left lane. (Basically, the eastbound lanes became a two-lane highway with one lane each direction.)
So - I was heading westbound in one of those two-way stretches when I encountered a motorist coming from the other direction in my lane, and he wasn't making any effort to get back into the right lane (where he was supposed to be)... Yeah - he apparently missed all the "two-way traffic" signs and was so convinced I was going the wrong way that he decided to make a point of it by refusing to yield... So I just moved over onto to the shoulder (I didn't slow down - Karina and Bernie were freaking out - not sure why) and as we passed I saw that he was laughing and making gestures at me... What an idiot... I could tell from the expression on his wife's face that she was not OK with him playing chicken with oncoming traffic :-)
Then I checked my mirror and saw a bunch more westbound cars about 1/2 mile behind me, and I've been wondering to this day exactly how long it took him to realize that he was the one going the wrong direction... I would have loved to see the look on his face when he finally figured it out.

Aside: This is a bit of a non-sequitur, but one of the things I noticed on that first part of the trip was the complete absence of Japanese made cars. By 1972 there were quite a few Toyotas and Mazdas in the Dallas area (and the occasional Honda N600), but there didn't seen to be any at all in the plains states. As a result, the RX-2 drew quite a bit of attention at gas stations. (I talked to some of the locals and they didn't think it made sense to have such a small car in a place with constant winds and (in the winter) deep drifting snow...) But back to the story.

We stopped for supper just east of Denver, and it got much more scenic as we headed north on I-25. There was a period of time after sunset when the dark silhouette of the Rockies was framed against a deep red sky. It was quite amazing...
By the time we got to Wyoming it was pitch black and we ended up stopping for the night in Laramie (more than 1000 miles from Dallas - a heck of a day's drive)... Needless to say, there were stretches where we were going significantly faster than the 70 MPH speed limit...

Another aside: One of the neat things about the rotary engine in the RX-2 was the flat torque curve... It had a surprising amount of power and pulled hard from just above idle all the way to 8000 RPM. It cruised effortlessly at over 100 MPH... The bad thing was that the gas mileage was abysmal. We never got better than 14 MPG, even when going the speed limit. (Only slightly better than my '66 Charger.)

The next morning we continued west on I-80 across Wyoming... The area around Rock Springs was kind of neat, but I suspect they could strip mine most of the rest of state and hardly anyone would notice :-) It didn't get interesting again until we crossed into Utah and started heading down out of the Rockies (lots of twists and turns and interesting geology). Then we cut north onto I-80N (now I-84) through Ogden - and once we left the Salt Lake area (and got closer to the Idaho border) it got really boring really fast...

Crossing the border into Oregon was kind of a momentous occasion because mom had been talking about going there for as long as I could remember. (She read lots of books about the Oregon Trail as a child.) ... Then there was the time in 1961 when my family was supposed to spend Christmas at Timberline Lodge on Mt. Hood, but then my dad got transferred and we had to cancel... And now we had finally arrived...

We pulled into Pendleton around dusk and got totally freaked out. That's because Bernie and I both had long hair and tried to avoid cowboy types because they were usually assholes about us being "hippies". But Pendleton was "wall to wall" cowboys. We couldn't avoid them because they were everywhere... We ended up eating at a drive-in and everyone was staring at us so we got out of town as fast as we could :-)

BTW: It wasn't until days later that discovered we had gotten there on Friday night during the "Pendleton Roundup" (one of the largest rodeos in the world)... That definitely explained it.

Then we took a wrong turn... We headed into Hermiston intending to find a motel but didn't see anything we liked and ended up on Highway 395 heading into Washington. I was about to turn around but Karina insisted we should keep going north and we spent the night in Pasco instead...

And for those keeping score - that's about 2000 miles in 2 days...

Aftermath

I've reached a point in the story where another major change is about to occur, but first I need to do a quick recap of the summer of 1972. (Some of this has been covered before - some hasn't.)

My sister Karina started the summer married to a blind, diabetic drummer (Mike) from Ardmore, Oklahoma. That didn't last very long and she ended up back with Bernie (her prior husband from another very short marriage)... And that's who she was with at the end of August.

Also, in late spring of that year my mother (who had been hospitalized with cancer for many months) refused chemo and checked herself out of the hospital - and by the end of August she had almost fully recovered. (There was no medical explanation... It was always her opinion that hospitals are the primary cause of illness...)

Then sometime in July I sold the 1963 Fairlane (my first car) to a guy who lived at the apartment complex. The agreed price was $200 but the $50 down payment was all I ever got. (Yes - I had given him the title. Lesson learned)... Meanwhile I picked up a '61 Ford Falcon from a friend of mom's but I hardly ever drove it. Then Bernie got laid off from his regular job (at a music store) and since money was a bit tight he let me drive his new Mazda RX-2 as long as I covered the payments. (It was Karina's idea - I don't think he was thrilled about it.)

Then around the last week of August I quit my job at A-1 Plastic Supply...

Even thought I was the "sole breadwinner" there was no immediate financial crisis. I had saved quite a bit of money over the summer and I was still getting child support payments from dad. Also, aunt Vesti was sending mom a monthly check.
Still - within a couple of days I had gotten a new job mowing the lawns at our apartment complex... Yeah - it was an incredible pain in the butt. The complex was huge so by the time you got to one end it was time to start again at the other end. And there weren't any big lawns anywhere - just lots and lots of little oddly shaped bits of grass. It very time consuming... And it was (still) hotter than hell out...
Then after the first day of mowing I started noticing some shortness of breath, and it kept getting progressively worse... Of course, mom insisted I didn't have asthma (that would mean I wasn't "perfect", which she could not accept). But around mid-morning of the 4th day I ended up in the emergency room. The doctor gave me an adrenaline shot and informed me that I had severe asthma and should not be mowing lawns at all (let alone every day)...
The woman who managed the complex was livid. She kept trying to tell me I couldn't quit even after I explained that it was medically necessary... It was a very uncomfortable exchange...

Aside: The woman in question was a young, tall, "smokin hot" blonde, and was (in my opinion) a total "b-word"...  When I mentioned it to my sister her response was that the woman didn't behave any differently than a man in the same situation and I just had a problem with women in authority... After thinking it over I had to admit that there was some truth to Karina's assertion. But I still thought the woman was a "b-word" :-)

So... Both Bernie and I were both unemployed and didn't have any ties to the Dallas area... Between us we had a good chunk of change saved up, and neither of us had paid our September rent yet.... We had a new car (the RX-2) and the interstate highways at our disposal, and Karina was in the mood to go west.

Yes - it was time for a road trip...

Conclusions

I could probably write a dozen more posts on the three months I spent working at A-1 Plastic Supply in the summer of 1972 - but most of it's irrelevant... I suspect that a lot of it only stuck in my mind because at that point in my life I had no idea how many types of businesses there were and what kinds of things people did for a living. (You'd be amazed at what went on in some of those nondescript unmarked buildings.) So, I'm just going to tell a few more stories, draw the conclusions, and get on with my life :-)

First - there was the time I delivered some materials to one of those unmarked buildings in Oak Cliff, and as I walked through the door I found myself  "danger close" to a bunch of rotating gears and rollers. As I glanced about I realized that the entire room was packed with machinery and there were no covers or barriers anywhere to prevent someone from getting "chewed up" if they ventured too close... But the thing that really got to me was the extreme heat and humidity (part of the machinery was generating steam and the building wasn't well vented). There were 7 or 8 guys working there and I don't know how they survived. (I'm certain OSHA did not know the place existed.) The man who signed the invoice told it was some type of felt processing facility - definitely the harshest work environment I've encountered...

Then there was the Continental bakery. I remember it for two reasons: The first was that I got to see Twinkies being made. (That was really cool.) And the second was how slippery the floors were... I'm sure they mopped the place constantly but the air was saturated with oil vapor and there was no way to keep it off the tile. It was worse than ice :-)

Finally, there was the Morton's potato chip factory (went out of business long ago). BTW: This is another one of those stories that nobody else seems to think is funny...
The first time I made a delivery there I ended up walking along one wing of the factory and when I glanced through the windows I immediately noticed this huge piece of machinery. Now, I've always been fascinated by mechanical stuff, and this thing was a behemoth (about the size of a locomotive but twice as long). So, I ended up stopping every few steps to watch the machine at work - trying to figure out exactly what it did. Given it's size I figured it had to be producing huge quantities of something... My anticipation (and curiosity) grew with each step, and when I finally reached the end I discovered it was spitting out those itty-bitty "snack machine" bags of chips...

Now - the key to humor is the unexpected, and nothing could have possibly caught me more off guard than the sight of those tiny bags coming out of that monstrous machine. I started laughing so hard I had to lean against the wall to avoid falling down, and I was still chuckling when I reached my destination. When the guy asked me what was so funny I muttered something about "big machine - little bags of chips", but he didn't get it (just gave me a really weird look...)

Then sometime near the end of August I quit...

As I've said before, I learned a lot from William T. (the guy who ran the place). No matter what the situation he always had a solution. Often it was brilliant - other times not so much (like having me drive the truck with a missing fan blade). But he never got flustered - just made the decision and went with it... The problem was that it seemed like he was constantly criticizing me. Some of it was constructive (and I appreciated that) - but a lot of times it wasn't (like accusing me of abusing the truck)... It seemed like hardly a day went by that he didn't say something that got under my skin.

The first major issue was when he told me that some of our regular customers had been complaining about the length of my hair. (The"redneck" place was not one of them.) The thing is, during my initial job interview he had assured me that my hair would not be an problem. But now he was claiming that it was hurting business... Yeah - that was total B.S... I interacted with all our "high volume" customers almost daily and I can guarantee that none of them had an issue with my hair... But I went ahead and got it neatened up anyway...

Then near the end of August he told me that a bunch of customers were complaining about my sleeveless shirts. Now - we're not talking about plain t-shirts here (which I agree would be tacky). These were really nice (non-white) shirts that I got at Target. And the only reason I wore them was because the temperature was above 90 with high humidity every freaking day and the truck didn't have air conditioning and I was sweating my tail off... Furthermore - most of our customers' warehouse guys were wearing similar shirts. Of course, when I asked which customers were complaining he did his whole "confidentiality" tap dance, and (once again) I'm sure that he just had a problem with exposed armpits (or something) and wouldn't admit it...

So I went home that evening and sat there fuming about the whole situation (not just the shirt thing), and decided that I'd had enough... I called Jim (at home) and asked him to pass the message that I wouldn't be in the next day - or ever again... Yeah - it was a totally immature and self-centered thing to do, but that's how I rolled at that age :-)

Epilogue:
Jim and I touched bases again a few weeks later and he told me that William T. had ended up hiring his big redneck buddy (the one who used to hang out there) to replace me. And apparently the guy couldn't do nearly as many deliveries per day as I'd been doing so they had to hire a second driver to pick up the slack... And to top it off, the buddy had taken a shortcut through a residential area and failed to notice a low hanging tree limb... Totally destroyed the truck bed cover... Yeah - Jim was just as amused by that as I was :-)

I can't help but cringe when I think about the way I quit that job. Ever since then I've made a point of never leaving a job (except for the military) until I had another one lined up, and I've always done my best to depart on good terms. But the point remains that if William T. had made me feel just a little bit appreciated he would have saved himself a lot of money - and my life might have followed a much less rewarding path :-)

Places I Hated Going

I'm willing to bet that every delivery truck driver has a list of places he'd prefer not to go. That was certainly the case for me in Dallas back in the summer of 1972.

The first was Texas Instruments in Richardson. Now you'd think that a military contractor (especially during the Vietnam war) would have tight security, but not TI... They had guards at all the gates but I honestly don't know what their job was. I never saw them stop anyone going in or out and they didn't seem to have a clue where anything was... I had to make deliveries to six different locations on the campus and the only way I managed to find them was by driving around and asking random people for directions.
The other issue was finding someone to sign the paperwork... It wasn't unusual to show up at a loading dock and find it completely unmanned. Sometimes you had to sit there for 5 or 10 minutes before anyone wandered by... The insane part is that there were pallets of high tech equipment all over the place. I could've loaded up and taken off and I doubt anyone would have noticed.

I had the opposite problem at Vought Aircraft in Grand Prairie. (Another military contractor.) They made you wait outside the gate for 20 or 30 minutes while they checked your truck and verified your identity. Then they'd give you a map marked with the exact route and travel times and they told you that if you deviated you could be shot. (I'm not making that up)... And when you arrived at the destination they would not sign the invoice until they'd measured every piece of plastic with precision instruments. And (of course) they searched your truck again on the way out...  It was definitely a "schedule killing" stop...

Neiman Marcus in downtown Dallas wasn't much better (but for a different reason). Their loading dock was only big enough for two trucks and they would not sign your paperwork until a "gofer" from whatever department ordered the goods came down and removed them from the area. There was always a long line of trucks waiting to get in (and blocking traffic)... I used to schedule at least 50 minutes for that stop.

Next on my "hit list" was the DFW airport. Back in those days it was under construction and out in the middle of nowhere. (We didn't have another customer within 10 miles.) Furthermore, all the roads on the construction site were gravel and you couldn't go over 25 MPH... I had to schedule about an hour for that stop. (All that to deliver a few gallons of epoxy mastic...)
 Aside: One of my most frightening experiences was heading south on Belt Line after a stop at the airport... I was hit by a sudden squall coming from the north. The visibility dropped to almost zero and the truck was being propelled forward by a 50 MPH tailwind. I could barely see the road and was literally standing on the brake pedal and couldn't slow down... I don't know how long that went on (time almost stood still) but eventually the wind let up a bit, and then the hail started. It was so heavy I was afraid it was going to break the windshield. Luckily, I spotted an old gas station (the only building in the area) and got under cover... The whole thing lasted less than 15 minutes but it really scared the heck out of me.

Another place I preferred not to go was the warehouse where we got our rolls of plastic sheet. (Most of our suppliers delivered. They didn't)... I remember one day in August when it was over 100 degrees and I had to load 3000 lbs of the sheeting (in cardboard boxes weighing between 30 and 70 lbs) into my truck. Their dock was uncovered (exposed to the sun) and the boxes were stacked on pallets about 20 feet away. I asked if someone could please grab a forklift and move them closer to my truck but they claimed they were "too busy" (translation: they were total a**holes). And I don't even want to talk about how hot it was in the back of my truck... I managed to load it all in less than 15 minutes but I was shaky for hours afterward...

And finally, there was the "house of rednecks"... I no longer recall which business it was, but their warehouse guys would invariably give me a bunch of crap - calling me "girlie" and asking me why I wasn't wearing lipstick or a dress, etc... (Yes, my hair was a bit long - but not that long...)
The thing is, by the summer of 1972 the whole hysteria over "hippies" had passed. At that point a lot of country singers (like Kristofferson, Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings) had hair longer than mine. But apparently the bozos at "redneck central" hadn't gotten the memo... Unfortunately, they were customers so I had no choice but to take it - but I still hated going there.

The point of all these stories (except for the last one) is that a good delivery driver has to be obsessed with time. You stop, unload, get the invoice signed and go. If you manage to exchange a few pleasantries that's great, but don't spend any extra time on it because a few minutes at each stop can cost you 2 or 3 deliveries by the end of the day...

The funny thing is that I never realized (at the time) just how much I'd learned (and how good I'd gotten) in those few months working for A-1. Sigh... when it came to "self-image" problems the worst was yet to come...

Malfunctions

In the forty-plus years that I've been driving I've never had to call a tow truck for one of my personal vehicles. I attribute that to a couple of factors: The first is that my daily drivers are always well maintained and I frequently check for leaks or signs of unusual wear. The second is that I tend to notice subtle differences in how the vehicle is behaving, meaning that I can almost always detect problems before they become serious... But that was not the case with the delivery truck I drove in the summer of 1972.

The first incident was when the exhaust system fell off. Yeah - the weld broke right below the exhaust manifold... (Never seen that happen before...) The main reason I remember it (aside from how loud it was) was watching the old mechanic at the Dodge truck dealership (used to be on Commerce in West Dallas) try to fix it. They didn't have the correct down pipe in stock so he decided to fabricate one and he really wasn't very good at it... Measure, cut, weld, cuss ... measure, cut, weld, cuss. It was painful to watch... He ended up patching together bits and pieces of four different pipes. It worked, but it was ugggg-lllly.

Then one day I was in downtown Dallas when the clutch got so badly overheated that it warped and wouldn't release. I discovered the problem while approaching a red light. I couldn't get the tranny out of gear and the only way to stop the truck was to kill the engine. And then I had to restart it (in second gear) to get moving again...  (And yes - I had been telling the boss the clutch was slipping for weeks but he said to keep driving it...)
Eventually I stopped at a gas station by the expressway and called the boss to let him know what happened. While I was there the clutch cooled off a bit and I managed (with a bit of effort) to force it into third gear... Luckily, I was able to get it started that way and I limped it onto the expressway so I wouldn't have to deal with any more stoplights... I felt really bad about it because I couldn't go much over 30 MPH and traffic was really heavy (I probably caused a huge backup) but at least I got it to the repair shop without having to call a tow truck :-)

And now for the most memorable breakdown:

I was pulling away from the loading dock at the Sweetheart (now Solo) Cup manufacturing plant down on Ledbetter when there was a loud thump followed by severe vibration. Turns out that one of the blades on the engine fan had broken off. (I've never heard of that happening either - it had to be defective.) ... So I called the boss and told him that the truck was absolutely not OK to drive but he refused to pay for a tow and told me to drive it to the Dodge truck dealership (10 miles away). And that meant going right through the center of Oak Cliff.

Now - I've heard that there's been a lot of "gentrification" in Oak Cliff in the decades since (and a large Hispanic influx), but back in 1972 the core area was almost entirely black. (Think Watts or Harlem.) And tensions were particularly high at that point because earlier that summer the Dallas PD had shot and killed an unarmed 70-something year old woman and a 5 year old child in Oak Cliff in separate incidents (a couple of weeks apart), and when members of the black community tried to march peacefully into downtown Dallas they were blocked by police in full riot gear... And that's why I was somewhat apprehensive about passing through that part of town at that particular time...

I no longer recall which intersection I was at when there was another loud pop and the engine suddenly started running smooth again. At first I thought it was a good thing, but then a plume of steam appeared at the front of the truck which was a pretty clear indication that things had gone from bad to worse... Luckily, I was right next to a gas station and it only took a few seconds to pull in and kill the engine, but the damage had been done. The unbalanced fan had caused the water pump to break off and launch itself through the radiator... (So much for saving a few bucks on a tow.)

The station attendant was totally cool with me being there (much to my relief), although he was highly amused by how much trouble I was having understanding him. (We're not talking "ebonics" here. This was a local dialect that was way beyond that)... He let me call the office and it was decided that Bert (the VP) would bring me his GMC Caballero (same as a Chevy El Camino) to use for the rest of the afternoon while he took care of getting the truck towed to the dealer...

So I spent the next 50 minutes or so observing the ebb and flow of life at the corner gas station... It was kind of a "mini" mini-mart - not very big but there were racks with cigarettes and assorted food all over the place. I ended up sitting in a chair in the far corner of the room (pretty much obscured from the cash register) so not many of the customers even noticed me, but every once in a while someone would inquire about the honky and the guy would point to my broken truck and they'd all have a good laugh :-)

Then the Dallas cop sauntered in. (He didn't notice me either)... Apparently he was investigating something that had happened the prior day and - let's just say that his demeanor, language and actions were highly unprofessional. I was beyond appalled... After a minute or so he finally stopped and looked around - and you should have seen the expression on his face when he spotted me and realized I had witnessed the whole thing... He suddenly became very polite (asked if I was OK, etc) and got the heck out of there... Afterward I said something to the attendant like "What the f***? Is that how cops usually act around here???" He assured me that it was... Yeah - that was a real eye opener...

Epilogue:
Bert arrived around the same time as the tow truck, and after we transferred the remainder of my load to the Caballero I took off to make my afternoon deliveries... And for some reason people kept almost tail-ending me... I figured I must just be having "one of those days".

Then when I got back to A1 and handed Bert his keys he said "Hey, did I remember to tell you that my brake lights don't work?"... No, Bert - you didn't... That would have been really nice to know :-)

Three Ladies

I'm going to take a quick break from writing about my first real job to talk about some other events from around the same time that may not be particularly interesting but are nonetheless memorable (to me).

As I've mentioned in many prior posts, my mother was (from time to time) an astrologer and "psychic counselor", and after she got out of the hospital it didn't take long before she (once again) had something of an entourage. And among that group were three friends:

The first was a blond woman in her early 20s who had been kicked out by her wealthy husband (who was more than twice her age) apparently because she was sleeping with the pool boy, the gardener, and (I strongly suspect) her 18 year old step-son. She was quite attractive (despite being rather skinny) and had tastefully done implants (C-cup? Totally plausible on her slender frame - I didn't even realize they were fake until my sister clued me in).

The second one was a blue-eyed redhead in her mid to late 20's who was also in the process of splitting up with her husband. I don't know what the issue was, but they had been married since right after high school and had a couple of kids right away - apparently they just grew apart... As I recall, she was "full figured" but not overweight, and had a totally "wholesome girl next door" vibe going... Definitely one of the prettiest women I've seen.

The last friend was a young lady about my age with long black hair and dark eyes. She was much taller (and bigger) than me, never wore any makeup (or anything else "girlie") - and whenever she entered a room it instantly became a darker and gloomier place. (She probably would have been "goth" if there had been such a thing back then...)
Aside: For some reason my sister Karina thought I should try and strike up a relationship with the "queen of the dead" but I really couldn't figure out why... I didn't find her the slightest bit attractive and (to be honest) she scared the hell out of me...

Now... I probably would have never met these women except one weekend the blond was moving into a new apartment and my mom volunteered me to help out, together with the aforementioned female friends, the stepson and a couple of older male friends.

Aside: Those two other guys were total asshats. They referred to women using derogatory (anatomical) terms, some of which I had never heard before (or since)... I remember wondering "Is that seriously how you feel about the opposite sex??? Your lives must be really pathetic!"... Of course, the ladies were totally unaware - women in general don't seem to be very good at asshat detection... But I digress :-)

OK - I have to admit that the highlight of moving day (for me) was the 18 year-old stepson's '69 RS/SS 396 Camaro "Indy Pace Car" convertible. He was trying to sell it for $1200 (in 1972 dollars) and he let me take it for a test drive. I'm totally not into Chevys but I have to admit that thing was wicked cool. I seriously considered buying it, but (once again) there's no way I would have been able to keep it during the months that followed so it's just as well...

The rest of the morning was uneventful. Then around lunch time I found out that I had been chosen to accompany "goth girl" down to Forest Lane to assist in bringing back a bunch of KFC...
At first I thought it was a matchmaking attempt but I soon discovered that they picked me because nobody else would get into a car with little miss "death wish" :-) Yeah - four times during the trip she pulled out right in front of another vehicle... It was insane. She simply did not seem to give a crap if we got totalled...
Of course, I didn't let on how scared I was. (It's a guy thing) ... I attempted to calm my nerves by making small talk and quickly discovered that she was even worse at conversation than I was. It was a very uncomfortable trip indeed... BTW: I went horseback riding with her a couple of weeks later (I think Karina talked me into it) and it was just as awkward...

Fast forward to mid-afternoon. The blond woman and I had just carried some boxes up to her bedroom when she flopped down onto the bed and struck (what I considered to be) a highly suggestive pose... She was lying there in a skin-tight white tank top (no bra) and equally tight jeans, giving me this little smile and ... well - it sure seemed like she was trying to convey a message... So I made some noises about getting more boxes and got the heck out of there :-)

Later that afternoon I described the incident to Karina (who knew the woman rather well) and asked her what the heck that was all about... Her immediate response was "It's exactly what you think it was, and do not go there. It would be the worst mistake you ever made!"... She apparently knew something I didn't, but wouldn't elaborate. And (despite my curiosity) I never did find out (either directly or indirectly) what my sister was so concerned about...

And on to the final part of the story:

A week or two later the redhead moved into a house not far from where I lived. She apparently had enough helpers for the initial move (my presence wasn't requested), but the next day she called and asked if I could swing by because there were a few boxes that needed to be carried upstairs and her back was hurting from the prior day...

So, I headed over and took care of the boxes... And then she started talking about how when the kids left to visit their father that morning she suddenly realized that she was "all alone" for the first time in her life, and we talked about that for a while.... Then at some point she winced a bit and that got us on the subject of her back pain. And I honestly don't recall whose idea it was for me to give her a massage but shortly thereafter she was face down on the couch and I was working on her neck and shoulders...

Now - I really, really wanted to enjoy touching her but that would have been totally disrespectful given that she was the married mother of two - right? ... So I thought about cars, and sports and whatever else I could focus on to keep my mind off of that lovely red hair... And after a while I helped her up and asked if she felt better. She said "much" and gave me a little smile... And then (deja vu alert) ... she sighed and said "I am so sorry, but I just can't do this... It's too soon - you're too young - and my life is complicated enough already, etc, etc..."

Yes. It had happened again... That was almost verbatim what the divorcee in my French class had said to me roughly five months earlier when we were about to head to her apartment to "listen to music"... And once again, I absolutely did not see it coming... I mean, the thought that such a pretty woman would have even considered it was simply beyond my comprehension... But at least (given my prior experience) I was able to figure out what it all meant a lot quicker this time :-) ... I assured her that I totally understood and went on my way...

I guess there are two conclusions that can be drawn from all of this... The first is that there must have been something about me at that age that appealed to older women (lord knows what)... And the second is that I was undoubtedly the densest 18 year old male on the planet :-)

The Joys of Driving

Once upon a time I really enjoyed driving. But that was before I did it for a living... The two or three months I spent driving a delivery truck in the summer of 1972 took most of the joy out of it (and I never quite got it back).

It wasn't just because the truck was dog slow and didn't have turn signals... It was the effort required to keep a schedule while negotiating heavy traffic 6 or 7 hours a day - having to constantly adjust and readjust - trying to find the quickest route from point A to point B - the same thing day after day. It really wore me down... And it seemed like hardly a day went by that I didn't encounter an accident somewhere along my route. (Some of them fairly horrific).

BTW: I was only involved in one "incident" (an extremely minor one). Some "bubba" in a pickup truck got so engrossed in talking to his buddy (Beer? Football? Guns?) that he drifted into my lane during a turn and clipped the back corner of my truck. (There was a "quarter sized" dent in his hood - no damage to my vehicle)... I had been watching him in my mirror the whole time and he never once looked at the road. I tried to avoid it but just couldn't get over any further... I didn't stop right away because I honestly wasn't sure there had been any contact (I didn't feel a thing) and I was behind schedule. But then he flagged me down and jumped out screaming that I had run into him... When he threatened to call the police I calmly pointed out that the paint from his hood was clearly visible on the back of my truck, which meant he would almost certainly be cited for reckless driving... That took the wind out of his sails and (after saying a few more choice words) he left...

Aside: For the past 40 years I've been claiming that I've never been in a moving accident in a 4 wheel vehicle... For some reason this incident never crossed my mind. I guess I just didn't consider it to be an accident... Of course, if you really want to get technical (which I always do) the truck did have six wheels. So there! :-)

But that's not really the point of this post. This is:
Up to that point in my life I had always believed that there was no such thing as an unavoidable car accident. In other words, a truly vigilant motorist could anticipate and avoid anything that happened... But that summer I had a couple of close calls that changed my mind.

First - early one afternoon I was heading southbound on Central Expressway approaching Mockingbird Lane when a white Dodge van somehow flipped over the guardrail on the overpass and landed on the expressway in front of me. I was far enough back that I had time to brake, but if I had gotten there a few seconds earlier the van would have landed on my truck and I would have never seen it coming... Yeah - it's pretty difficult to avoid vehicles falling from the sky...

Second - I was eastbound on the LBJ Freeway approaching Central Expressway when a Buick went straight across the freeway in front of me (going about 40 MPH)  and slammed into the center divider. (The driver appeared to be unconscious the whole time)... Totally freaked me out! ... I never saw it coming, and if I'd been there a second sooner I would have hit him...
You know - I pay pretty close attention to everything going on around me when driving. And whenever I'm near an intersection I do my best to expect the unexpected. But a vehicle crossing the freeway at a right angle in between interchanges just isn't something that shows up on my "radar"... 
BTW - That one really had me puzzled... I figure the driver must have passed out on a side street and accelerated across the grass divider onto the freeway... Yeah - sometimes sh*t just happens...

Of course, there were other incidents that were not "close calls" but still stuck in my memory:

Like the accident that ended up blocking all 8 lanes of the LBJ Freeway (4 in each direction.)... I didn't see it happen (just got stuck in the backup) but as near as I can figure here's how it it unfolded:
A semi tractor was heading westbound pulling a long trailer full of gravel when its front axle fell off. (No idea how that happened - the truck looked brand new... Maybe a manufacturing defect?) ... Anyway, the trailer hit the center divider and tossed its entire load across the eastbound lanes, then flipped back over and came to a rest blocking the westbound lanes... The entire freeway was shut down all afternoon... Definitely one of the strangest accidents I've seen :-)

 Finally - I usually don't laugh when I witness an accident (especially when someone gets injured) but this was one of the dumbest things I've ever seen:
There was a woman in a blue Pinto stopped a couple of cars ahead of me in the left turn lane.  The light turned green and a semi started turning left from the opposite direction... Now, vehicles make simultaneous opposing left turns all the time - they simply pass without incident. But in mid-turn the woman in the Pinto somehow managed to run smack dab into one of the truck tires. (I mean, how could she not see it?? It was right in front of her!)
I really didn't intend to laugh, but the Pinto bounced off the truck tire like a tennis ball off a wall. It was a "Funniest Home Video" kind of thing... Then I realized that the driver's head had hit the windshield...

Aside: One of the reasons there were so many serious injuries back then is that very few people wore seat belts (something like 1 in 5). Of course, there were still a lot of cars around that weren't equipped with them (like my '63 Fairlane - they weren't required equipment at the national level until 1966 when the federal vehicle safety act took effect), but the main issue was that most people felt like belts were too "confining" (as if a ending up in a wheelchair isn't confining)... Personally, I always wore a seat belt (when available - it seemed dumb not to) but I have to admit that I only wore the shoulder belt in my '66 Charger when I was planning on driving "stupid fast". Yeah - those early shoulder belts buckled separately from the seat belt and they weren't retractable. Once you fastened them you could hardly move - pretty much sucked rocks... But I digress...

Yeah - I learned a heck of a lot about staying out of trouble in traffic driving that truck. When you have so little maneuverability you have no choice but to focus on awareness and avoidance - learning to sense when somebody is about to do something stupid...

But the main lesson learned was that at the end of the day there is just no replacement for dumb luck.

And Then There Was Jim

Wow - I can't believe how long it's taking me to turn out a post these days. Must be the new meds :-)

As I mentioned in an earlier post, when I started working at A-1 Plastic Supply in the summer of 1972, the prior delivery driver (Jim) was moving "up the chain" so for the first week of my "tenure" he was my trainer.

As I recall, Jim was thin and tall, with longish (well styled) sandy colored hair and a thin mustache. He was 21 years old and on his third marriage (to his former bosses ex-wife, a redhead in her late 20s with a daughter from that prior marriage).

Jim was into cars, but (unlike me) he had absolutely no interest in working on them. That's why he offered to sell me his '65 Mustang (red K-code GT fastback - pony interior) with a bad timing chain for $400. (I didn't buy it but I certainly wouldn't mind having it now...) I had worked on Ford v-8 engines before so I replaced the timing chain and rebuilt the carburetor on the Mustang for him, and afterward he got rid of it and bought a silver 1962 Austin Healey 3000.

 Aside: I have to admit that the Healey was a really cool car (mucho fun to ride around in) but like a lot of the British roadsters of its era it was ill-handling and kind of slow. (That's because British engine and suspension technology was stuck in the 1940's at the time.) ... Of course, it seemed fast but that was only because you were sitting so close to the ground. In reality, the 0-60 time was around 10 seconds and (according to my research) the cornering limit was something like 0.6 G's... In other words, a stock 4-door Dodge Dart with a small 2-bbl v-8 engine would have trounced it in both acceleration and handling. But clearly, the appeal of a small British roadster like the Healey has nothing to with performance and I can certainly see why a lot of people like them so much... But it's just not my thing :-) And back to the story...

For the first month or so I was at A-1 Jim worked in the warehouse (learning the inventory) and I often helped him pull orders. I was amazed at how many different types of plastic there were. The majority of our sales were polymer-based plastics (like PVC, Lexan, polyethylene, polypropylene, Delrin, Plexiglas, Teflon, Mylar etc.) in a variety of forms (mostly sheets, but also rods and tubes).

Aside: The Collins Radio facility at the Addison airport used to buy a polymer called KEL-F in two inch thick blocks  that cost $1200 per square foot. (You could get a pretty decent car for that back then.) I have no idea what they used it for and the armed guards at the door made sure I didn't find out :-) Yeah - I'm not sure exactly why they were so secretive, but given that I once saw Air Force One pulling into their hangar they probably had a good reason... But I digress a bit...

A-1 also stocked a variety of phenolics, as well as that green copper clad stuff used to make circuit boards, and a variety of laminates including that black/white/black layered sign stock engravers use to make name plates. (BTW: Did you know they make that stuff with multiple color layers? It's really cool.) ... I still remember the first time I delivered sign stock to Holsapple Engraving. I had never seen a pantograph engraver before and I was like "Aha! So that's how they do it!" But I digress again...

Despite being very different people Jim and I got along surprisingly well. Within a couple of weeks we came up with "alternate" names for a lot of  the plastics... It all started with Boltaron. That was a brand of PVC, and the name was incredibly apropriate because a 4x8 sheet of that stuff can store a lot of static electricity. (I always slapped the edge before trying to grab it to avoid the shock.) Then we  starting calling the stuff that smelled really bad "Skunkaron", and polyethylene became "polyelephant", and polypropylene became "polycracker"... Yeah - not all of the names made sense, but that was kind of the point :-)

Here are some more memories (in no particular order):

At one point Jim and I were discussing him taking college classes at night. I mentioned that I didn't intend to ever go back to college. His response was something along the lines of "I'm really glad to hear that! That's one less person I'll have to complete with after get a degree!"

Next - I probably shouldn't tell this one, but (as usual)  I will anyway:
Jim used to wear this pair of blue suede high-heeled sneakers. (OK - the heels were really wide and not that high - but they still qualified...) One day a redneck buddy of William T's ambled into in the warehouse and noticed Jim's shoes. He said (facetiously) "Boy! I wish I had me a pair of them shoes!" Without hesitating Jim responded "Well, you're just going to have to catch your own n-word then, aren't you." ... Now, ordinarily I would have been offended by the racial reference, but Jim was not at all racist and I immediately got this mental image of a big fat redneck chasing after a guy yelling "I want your sneakers!", which was actually kind of humorous... But, the funniest part was the reaction. The redneck got this weird look on his face as he tried to process Jim's remark and (a number of seconds later) when he finally "connected the dots" he started laughing uncontrollably - making these godawful noises... I was afraid he was going to have a heart attack :-)

Jim did eventually move into sales and I didn't see very much of him afterward. But I remember him taking me aside one day and saying sales was the most amazing gig he'd ever had. As he described it, he and Ivan would make a few calls in the morning and then spend the entire afternoon bar hopping. Apparently the commission on those few sales was a heck of lot more than he was making in the warehouse...

Yeah... The idea of being a salesman didn't appeal to me at all back then... And it still doesn't now :-)

More About the Coworkers (Part 1)

I guess the first person I want to say a bit more about is "Sugar Booger" (the 19 year old secretary at A-1 Plastic Supply with the incredible mistyping skills)... As near as I can recall, she was about 5' 2", extremely well built, with long (bleached) blond hair, dark eyes and amazing legs. In other words, she was totally hot... That's why I really should have been attracted to her - only I wasn't...

I guess I need to explain: The issue was that it was all so contrived. The hair, makeup and clothes - she paid so much attention to every little detail. I swear it must've taken her well over an hour to get ready in the morning... The end result was that you couldn't really see the person through the "packaging". And (for some reason) that had started to matter to me... Then there was her "dumb blond" act. The problem was that it didn't seem to be an act - and that had also started to matter to me.

Aside: Back in high school Sugar Booger would have been exactly my type. But over the years that followed I (slowly) came to realize that there is nothing more attractive than a woman who can run a brush through her hair, throw on some jeans and a shirt, and (in roughly 5 minutes) be ready to face the world. Yes - it is a very special lady who does not need the approval of total strangers to feel good about herself. (They are surprisingly few and far between.) ... But back to Sugar Booger...

She could be rather sweet at times. One day around lunchtime she came back to the warehouse to tell us she was heading down to Forest Lane (where the fast food joints were) and asked if she could bring us anything back. As it turned out Sam, Jim and I each wanted something from a different place, and as we started trying to work out a compromise Sugar Booger said "I really don't mind stopping at all three." And she did...
I mean - it made sense for her to do things like that for the boss because he signed the paychecks. But she had absolutely no reason to go that far out of her way for the guys in the warehouse other than simple thoughtfulness... Well, I guess it could have been evidence of an overwhelming need to please others due to deep-seated insecurity ... but it was still a really nice thing to do :-)

But the real "head scratcher" was her fiance:
Sugar had started working at A-1 roughly the same time as I did and word got around that she was from a really small town and had just recently moved to the big city with her high school sweetheart... So as time went by some of us (primarily Jim, Ivan and I) got to wondering exactly what kind of guy had the "right stuff" to capture her heart...
Then one day she was late to work because she had to take her car to the shop, and she mentioned that her fiance was going to be picking her up that afternoon.  So - when quitting time rolled around a few of us just "happened" to be looking out one of the side windows as he pulled into the parking lot...

When he got out of his car (a 68 Olds 442 as I recall) we were all surprised - and puzzled... Judging from the letterman's jacket and the "swagger" he had probably been the "alpha jock" at whatever high school they went to - but he looked like he had played goalie for the dart team (I'm talking seriously bad complexion)... Now - I'm not really qualified to judge whether men are good looking or not (I don't swing that way), but we were all pretty darn sure this guy was butt ugly. It was like "You have got to be kidding me!!!"

You know - If I'd had more than the slightest interested in "Sugar" I probably would have gone "obsessive compulsive" trying to figure out exactly what she saw in him and what the basis of their relationship was. (Lots of possibilities there.) But some puzzles are best left unsolved ... and she was one of them....

Misdirection

One of the things you learn very quickly as a delivery driver is to never trust the address on the invoice.

Sometimes the company name isn't quite right... Sometimes a large company will have multiple facilities and the invoice shows the wrong one... Quite often there are duplicate street names in different suburbs, or a single street might pass through multiple suburbs with duplicate numbering... Some streets need the correct east/west/north/south designation to identify the location... And even within a single zip code there could be a street, circle, place, court, avenue or boulevard with the same name.
The point is that there's a lot that can go wrong with an address - and the simplest of errors can ruin a delivery driver's whole day.

Aside: The name "King James" was a perfect example. There were a total of six variants scattered around the Dallas / Forth Worth area. We had customers in 4 of them and it wasn't unusual for the invoice to show the wrong one...

Yeah - I don't know if A-1 Plastic Supply was typical in this respect or not, but their delivery invoicing system seemed to be astonishly error prone. The salesmen (who originated the information) didn't care about anything other than their commission and it wasn't really anyone's job to check the addresses prior to delivery... (BTW: I'm sure the accountant checked them thoroughly before sending out the bills, but she wasn't involved in preparing the delivery invoices.)
But by far the most significant source of errors was "Sugar Booger" (the secretary). She had a horrible tendency to transpose numbers (or miss them by one) when she typed the invoices...

Now - I definitely didn't have time to check every address, but I knew where the regular customers were and I had quickly figured out where all the industrial and commercial areas were, so I could usually spot the blatant errors. Still, it seemed like at least once a week one would slip past me.

If the problem was a typo like "1712" instead of "1721" it wasn't too big of a deal (same block - other side of the street). That happened often enough that when an address came up "empty" my first course of action was to make a quick pass a couple of blocks up and down the street. (That usually worked.) But when the typo involved the more significant digits it became a huge problem. I'd have to try and find a phone (they didn't put payphones in industrial parks) so I could find out where I was supposed to be and ask about the relative priorities of the remaining deliveries, etc... It was a major pain in the butt :-)

There was one incident that I still remember quite clearly. It involved a new customer located just east of downtown Dallas (in an area that I was totally unfamiliar with). The invoice directed me to the 4100 block, which turned out to be a rundown residential area. After doing the usual "back and forth" thing I finally headed off to find a payphone only to discover that the customer was actually in the 1400 block... By the time I got back on route I had lost almost an hour and had to skip the rest of day's deliveries. (I was under strict orders to be back before a certain time. Overtime was not an option.)

I was still pretty pissed off when I got back to A-1 and went right to "William T" (the boss) to complain. He said that if I had a problem with Sugar Booger I needed to work it out with her, so I headed up to the front desk to try and determine exactly what her malfunction was... I explained the problem as calmly as I could (under the circumstances) and her response was to give me a big smile and say (in her thick southern accent) "Ah know Ah'm stupid... Ah cain't help it!"

Yeah, I have to admit - that caught me completely off guard... I mostly just wanted to ask her to please double check the numbers, but something about that smile made my mind go blank :-) ... So I just turned around and went back to the warehouse...

And I'm betting "William T" knew exactly how that was going to turn out when he sent me up there :-)