Having recently begun writing my book about the . . . er . . . good times at the phone company, I find I have already run into a problem. (Besides discovering a proclivity for writing in the passive voice too much.) I remember when I left the company on my last day, carrying my little cardboard box with its meager contents to the elevator for the parking garage; I was happy. Glad to get the fuck out of there. Now, a little over ten years later, after nurturing all those happy thoughts--not unlike the ones you carry concerning "happy days" at high school, when the truth was it was years of tedium combined with injustices and petty annoyances (P.E. is so-ooo stupid) --I find, upon a little digging, that most of my time at the phone company was unpleasant.
I suppose, like life, when you're at work the happiness is in the fleeting moments. Otherwise, nobody really likes having to sell half of their waking hours to a soul-less corporation and then take orders from someone whose authority seemed to have come from some inscrutable, random process having more to do with politics and ass-licking than any real qualifications for "managing" subordinates. Yeah, the phone company likes the word subordinates. Don't get me started. They also, when referring to a mistake during a safety review, call that a deviation. When the union once tried to refer to dangerous neighborhoods as "red zones," the company started calling them "awareness zones." See what I mean? Drives you nuts.
Without any other clues, I decided to begin the book by dredging up stories in a more or less chronological order. That has its pitfalls, I'm discovering. In a random universe (such as ours) chronological order is actually chaos, and some other kind of imposed order might make more sense.
But it's a place to start. The problem is that in re-remembering the succession of events of my career, I find myself remembering a lot of unpleasant things--things about which one might reasonably say they would "never want to through that again." Yet, here I am.
But it's not so bad, I guess. Yet still bad enough so that if I am to continue, I may have to come up with a good reason to write this book--a purpose, you might say, to help me maintain my momentum. I don't want readers to cringe, but truth is a worthy pursuit in writing, if it's not boring.
Monday, May 13, 2019
Saturday, May 11, 2019
It's November Somewhere
At last I can say I am working on a book. Surprisingly, perhaps, it is not the one about Laslo and the strange goings-on at the Busy Bee Cafe. Maybe later. This is about the phone company. What happened is I stumbled across two books written by ex-employees, and in the way this sometimes happens, I thought to myself, shit I can do that.
Turns out it's not quite that easy, but it seems to be going along OK. At least I can say I'm writing at a rate that would have me winning NaNoWriMo, so there's that. I know it's only May . . .
At the moment, even though I am throwing down words, I still am not quite sure what I want to do with this. One thing I don't want the book to do is to devolve into a rambling mess of "funny" phone company stories--you know, the ones with cockroaches in the phones, or with crazy drunk employees violating safety practices, stuff like that. The problem is sometimes it requires too much setup to tell these stories, as I have found--strange as it may seem--the general public does not know how the phone company works and therefore why some of my stories are so brilliantly pithy and ironic or whatever.
OK, well, what I am really trying to say is, I don't want the book to appeal only to other people who have worked at the phone company, full of the types of stories that we used to tell each other in the morning while we prepared to get in our trucks and go to work. Those were mostly lies anyway. So we're left with stories that might be meaningful to what the military would call the non-cognizant agent. Stories like cockroaches in phones, and crazy drunk employees violating safety practices.
Seriously, what I am trying to understand since I retired is how during my entire career the technology and methods evolved and changed faster and faster until it almost overtook me. Which is also called, getting old, I guess, but I can't help but think it didn't used to be like this. At least, so much. When I was pretty new to the company, I saw old guys retiring and it seemed like they pretty much did the same work their entire careers. With me, things kept changing--of course I changed along with them, but in the end, it quit being fun.
And, as always, there is the thing about writing that I always encounter. It is that my "writer's voice" is much better when I'm blogging than when I'm sitting down seriously trying to write. I really need to get past this. Perhaps I should stop being so serious. I mean, my entire life, being serious has never really served me that well. I'm not sure what that says about me, or about the world.
Turns out it's not quite that easy, but it seems to be going along OK. At least I can say I'm writing at a rate that would have me winning NaNoWriMo, so there's that. I know it's only May . . .
At the moment, even though I am throwing down words, I still am not quite sure what I want to do with this. One thing I don't want the book to do is to devolve into a rambling mess of "funny" phone company stories--you know, the ones with cockroaches in the phones, or with crazy drunk employees violating safety practices, stuff like that. The problem is sometimes it requires too much setup to tell these stories, as I have found--strange as it may seem--the general public does not know how the phone company works and therefore why some of my stories are so brilliantly pithy and ironic or whatever.
OK, well, what I am really trying to say is, I don't want the book to appeal only to other people who have worked at the phone company, full of the types of stories that we used to tell each other in the morning while we prepared to get in our trucks and go to work. Those were mostly lies anyway. So we're left with stories that might be meaningful to what the military would call the non-cognizant agent. Stories like cockroaches in phones, and crazy drunk employees violating safety practices.
Seriously, what I am trying to understand since I retired is how during my entire career the technology and methods evolved and changed faster and faster until it almost overtook me. Which is also called, getting old, I guess, but I can't help but think it didn't used to be like this. At least, so much. When I was pretty new to the company, I saw old guys retiring and it seemed like they pretty much did the same work their entire careers. With me, things kept changing--of course I changed along with them, but in the end, it quit being fun.
And, as always, there is the thing about writing that I always encounter. It is that my "writer's voice" is much better when I'm blogging than when I'm sitting down seriously trying to write. I really need to get past this. Perhaps I should stop being so serious. I mean, my entire life, being serious has never really served me that well. I'm not sure what that says about me, or about the world.
Monday, April 1, 2019
The Last Open Road
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| Middle of nowhere, somewhere north-east of LA |
It was an unplanned trip. I got a call from the property management company in Chico to tell me they found a renter and I could get out of my lease, so I moved a May trip up to March to expedite the process. Then I got an email as we were driving out of Arizona: the guy backed out. Don't repeat don't drive to Chico. I did anyway, so now I'm out and if they find a new tenant to take the lease over, the place is ready and they can just let me know what they did. Apartment leases suck. I signed this 25 page document and only now am I finding out what all is in it. It's all bad . . .
Now that I'm really in Arizona, and have my drivers license and car tag and everything, it is my fervent hope that I can start working on my book. I have two ideas now. All is well. Except I'm not feeling all that ambitious. In my defense, the last few months have been insane and I'm tired.
Still plugging away, though.
Note: Arizona does not require a front license plate, so now my white Ford has a big, basically useless, black plastic rectangle screwed down smack in the middle of the body work in the front of it. (No, I wouldn't call it a bumper. It's just sort of a front area that you can fix if it gets crushed by a bird or a Fiat 500 or something.) I took the plate mount off to reveal three ragged holes where the screws had been attached, so I just shook my head and put the mount back on. Googled it. It's a thing, apparently. There are solutions, all of them either expensive or time consuming, laid out in excruciating detail by the Internet's obsessive/compulsive car community. I looked on Amazon for white duct tape and I'm really kind of amazed that there is no such thing. Home Depot has little white plastic snap on buttons I could use to cover the holes if I am willing to drill them out to a larger size and render them (the holes) useless for anything else. Surewhynot.
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| Rush hour somewhere to the south of Edwards Air Force Base |
Thursday, March 14, 2019
A Non-Food Article That Ends in a Review of a Restaurant That is No Longer in Business
The trouble is, sometimes I don't feel all that spiritual about food. For more or less a month I have been sort of thinking about what I could write about that could go inside a food magazine. I get nada. I don't know anything about cooking: stirring browned hamburger into the Kraft macaroni and cheese is getting sort of cutting-edge frisky. (Wow. Tastes like a little cheeseburger in each bite!) And I'm no restaurant critic; usually, I'm just tickled pink if I don't get food poisoning. If the coffee's bad, and it sadly sometimes is, I easily revert to outdoor camping standards and ask only that there are no little sticks floating around in it, or a dead fly.
To me, I'm afraid, there is seldom such thing as a memorable meal, and if it is, it usually has more to do with something that happened coincidentally at the same time as the meal, like a space station part landing in the chocolate mousse, or Uncle Ray falling off of his folding chair. What we ate, what it tasted like, what kind of presentation, that sort of thing, I'm afraid I seldom commit to long-term memory.
OK, I do remember the spaghetti races my sister and I had at the table at my Grandpa's house when we were little kids. Who can make their strand of spaghetti slide into their mouth the fastest? It was a process enhanced by a grownup twisting your ear, as I recall. In that case, I remember the food was spaghetti. I also remember the zucchini cake, even though I don't want to.
Perhaps the most memorable thing about those meals was actually just before the meal: Grandpa would pick up the salt and pepper shakers--little ceramic figurines made to look like a comical Italian married couple--and move them around and make them talk, like puppets, to each other in Italian. We always laughed at that, and the grownups laughed a little louder, and the grownups who also understood Italian laughed the loudest, until Grandma would playfully slap Grandpa and tell him to stop that.
Which brings me to the incident at Italian Gardens, sadly closed for business now, (how long?) in downtown Kansas City. One summer afternoon five or six of us wandered in off the sidewalk looking pretty hot and bedraggled, hardly dressed for eating out, loud, and hungry for something sweet. It was slow, and as the owner himself came to seat us, I said, jokingly, that he would probably want to put us far back in a dark corner because of the way we looked. He laughed, patted me on the shoulder and insisted on seating us at a table right in the front window.
That was cheesecake. It was very good.
To me, I'm afraid, there is seldom such thing as a memorable meal, and if it is, it usually has more to do with something that happened coincidentally at the same time as the meal, like a space station part landing in the chocolate mousse, or Uncle Ray falling off of his folding chair. What we ate, what it tasted like, what kind of presentation, that sort of thing, I'm afraid I seldom commit to long-term memory.
OK, I do remember the spaghetti races my sister and I had at the table at my Grandpa's house when we were little kids. Who can make their strand of spaghetti slide into their mouth the fastest? It was a process enhanced by a grownup twisting your ear, as I recall. In that case, I remember the food was spaghetti. I also remember the zucchini cake, even though I don't want to.
Perhaps the most memorable thing about those meals was actually just before the meal: Grandpa would pick up the salt and pepper shakers--little ceramic figurines made to look like a comical Italian married couple--and move them around and make them talk, like puppets, to each other in Italian. We always laughed at that, and the grownups laughed a little louder, and the grownups who also understood Italian laughed the loudest, until Grandma would playfully slap Grandpa and tell him to stop that.
Which brings me to the incident at Italian Gardens, sadly closed for business now, (how long?) in downtown Kansas City. One summer afternoon five or six of us wandered in off the sidewalk looking pretty hot and bedraggled, hardly dressed for eating out, loud, and hungry for something sweet. It was slow, and as the owner himself came to seat us, I said, jokingly, that he would probably want to put us far back in a dark corner because of the way we looked. He laughed, patted me on the shoulder and insisted on seating us at a table right in the front window.
That was cheesecake. It was very good.
Tuesday, January 1, 2019
Yeah Yeah Once Again . . .
If I'm going to pretend I have and maintain a blog, then I should probably post something here on the first day of 2019. Right? So here we go.
Let me begin by saying 2018 was a long damn year. I spent most of it living where I didn't want to be--in the River Market section of downtown Kansas City, Missouri. Not that it's a bad place. It's just that I wasn't a "good fit," as they say, just before they fire you. After that stint, I moved to California, where I am right at the moment, and right after that I decided I didn't really care for the situation here.
It was an honest mistake. It's a college town, so it's fairly interesting compared to the typical central valley agricultural town in northern California, but it's also just another agricultural town. It's also a little too small to be truly convenient. As I say, it's convenient enough, as long as you don't need anything. Turns out that it is often necessary to drive to either Redding (70 miles away) or Sacramento (85 miles away) if you want anything that the typical understocked Target or K-Mart doesn't have to offer. Or health care. 'Nother story. Add to all that a general, across the board increased cost of everything, including taxes, and other than that not a lot going on, and there you have it in a nutshell.
Over Thanksgiving I met a woman in Tucson, Arizona. I know that has a certain ominous ring, but she's actually wonderful. I'm just going with the flow.
Happy new year.
Let me begin by saying 2018 was a long damn year. I spent most of it living where I didn't want to be--in the River Market section of downtown Kansas City, Missouri. Not that it's a bad place. It's just that I wasn't a "good fit," as they say, just before they fire you. After that stint, I moved to California, where I am right at the moment, and right after that I decided I didn't really care for the situation here.
It was an honest mistake. It's a college town, so it's fairly interesting compared to the typical central valley agricultural town in northern California, but it's also just another agricultural town. It's also a little too small to be truly convenient. As I say, it's convenient enough, as long as you don't need anything. Turns out that it is often necessary to drive to either Redding (70 miles away) or Sacramento (85 miles away) if you want anything that the typical understocked Target or K-Mart doesn't have to offer. Or health care. 'Nother story. Add to all that a general, across the board increased cost of everything, including taxes, and other than that not a lot going on, and there you have it in a nutshell.
Over Thanksgiving I met a woman in Tucson, Arizona. I know that has a certain ominous ring, but she's actually wonderful. I'm just going with the flow.
Happy new year.
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| I went to Seattle over Christmas. |
Monday, November 5, 2018
20 Questions, and Their Answers
As Paula suggested, I copied and pasted the twenty questions that she posted, and I answered all of them, right here!
Begin the Paste:
what’s the most dangerous situation you have ever been in?
Probably involved driving, whether I was aware of it or not. Too many to catalog. I can think of a handful of incidents where I lived through them only because of my own reflexive actions--dangerous because in these situations, things unfolded so fast that I felt like big doses of luck were necessary, which is always dangerous since luck comes and goes as it will.
• what’s your favorite culture?
California Hippy c. 1968. Based only on how I always felt comfortable around its adherents, even though I never felt like I really fit in.
• what do you dislike about your own culture?
Ridiculous technological bullshit that actually makes things more difficult instead of easier, or that seems to rub the wrong way against normal human nature. Specifically, the "call-tree" such as the ones you encounter when calling almost any large company or utility, nowadays, and all attempts by corporations to replace human beings with computers.
• your favorite type of travel?
Driving. Road trips.
• do you feel understood?
Generally, with the exception of a few people and dogs/cats. Once, I was pretty sure this squirrel had my number.
• how do you feel about your body?
As I age, I realize why humanity has chosen to fantasize about an afterlife without bodies.
• what is your favorite film?
That's just too difficult to answer.
• are you adventurous with food?
No, except when making French toast, where I sometimes throw in extra nutmeg and vanilla.
• have you ever hated a place and wanted to come home?
Yes. I lived in Oklahoma City for two years.
• are you bothered about others seeing you naked?
I don't remember. Kidding! Not much, unless, you know, I wake up walking down Main Street.
• Are you a good loser?
I don't remember. Again! Kidding! I'd say, yes, because I've had so much practice. OK, no. But I'm getting better at it as I came to realize that it happens much more often than I fool myself into thinking.
• what was the favorite time of your life?
When I was in college and brain was wide awake and I had lots of comrades, and then the years I was married, raising my kid when things were busy, yet simple at the same time so that I was always pretty sure I was doing what I was supposed to be doing and, in both cases, was very happy!
• Do you have a close family connection?
Not really.
• can you speak another language?
– No.
• will Trump be in for another term?
Good question.
• what are your thoughts on English people?
They don't always write proper English, but I can usually tell what they mean. (Do you know how many times I had to delete the "u" in "favourite" so far, while fixing this paste??) Seriously I only actually knew one English person really well, and she was a beautiful, kind, empathetic, and strong person, so I'll go with that angle.
• was life better without mobile phones?
There are so many things about the cell phone culture that are annoying, it's tempting to say, yes. But we are now more connected-- so we are safer? More efficient? Happier? -- though it seems like life was a little better when we weren't so damned connected all the time.
• what has been the biggest change in your life?
Lately, it has been the death of my wife and my becoming suddenly alone for the first time since the 80s. Before that, it was retirement, which is taking a remarkably long time for me to process as well.
• is climate change real?
Duh, is the correct response. Why is this a question?
• why do you like answering questions?
Usually no one cares what I think, and here, there is no one to interrupt me.
Begin the Paste:
what’s the most dangerous situation you have ever been in?
Probably involved driving, whether I was aware of it or not. Too many to catalog. I can think of a handful of incidents where I lived through them only because of my own reflexive actions--dangerous because in these situations, things unfolded so fast that I felt like big doses of luck were necessary, which is always dangerous since luck comes and goes as it will.
• what’s your favorite culture?
California Hippy c. 1968. Based only on how I always felt comfortable around its adherents, even though I never felt like I really fit in.
• what do you dislike about your own culture?
Ridiculous technological bullshit that actually makes things more difficult instead of easier, or that seems to rub the wrong way against normal human nature. Specifically, the "call-tree" such as the ones you encounter when calling almost any large company or utility, nowadays, and all attempts by corporations to replace human beings with computers.
• your favorite type of travel?
Driving. Road trips.
• do you feel understood?
Generally, with the exception of a few people and dogs/cats. Once, I was pretty sure this squirrel had my number.
• how do you feel about your body?
As I age, I realize why humanity has chosen to fantasize about an afterlife without bodies.
• what is your favorite film?
That's just too difficult to answer.
• are you adventurous with food?
No, except when making French toast, where I sometimes throw in extra nutmeg and vanilla.
• have you ever hated a place and wanted to come home?
Yes. I lived in Oklahoma City for two years.
• are you bothered about others seeing you naked?
I don't remember. Kidding! Not much, unless, you know, I wake up walking down Main Street.
• Are you a good loser?
I don't remember. Again! Kidding! I'd say, yes, because I've had so much practice. OK, no. But I'm getting better at it as I came to realize that it happens much more often than I fool myself into thinking.
• what was the favorite time of your life?
When I was in college and brain was wide awake and I had lots of comrades, and then the years I was married, raising my kid when things were busy, yet simple at the same time so that I was always pretty sure I was doing what I was supposed to be doing and, in both cases, was very happy!
• Do you have a close family connection?
Not really.
• can you speak another language?
– No.
• will Trump be in for another term?
Good question.
• what are your thoughts on English people?
They don't always write proper English, but I can usually tell what they mean. (Do you know how many times I had to delete the "u" in "favourite" so far, while fixing this paste??) Seriously I only actually knew one English person really well, and she was a beautiful, kind, empathetic, and strong person, so I'll go with that angle.
• was life better without mobile phones?
There are so many things about the cell phone culture that are annoying, it's tempting to say, yes. But we are now more connected-- so we are safer? More efficient? Happier? -- though it seems like life was a little better when we weren't so damned connected all the time.
• what has been the biggest change in your life?
Lately, it has been the death of my wife and my becoming suddenly alone for the first time since the 80s. Before that, it was retirement, which is taking a remarkably long time for me to process as well.
• is climate change real?
Duh, is the correct response. Why is this a question?
• why do you like answering questions?
Usually no one cares what I think, and here, there is no one to interrupt me.
Friday, October 12, 2018
Santa Cruz
I went to Santa Cruz this week, and stayed a couple days. I want to live there, but I don't have a million dollars.
Here is a picture I took of a friend's old '49 GMC fire truck. He lives in the mountains just north of Santa Cruz, partly in a small two room house he built, and partly in a school bus that is parked right up against the house, which serves as his living room.
Here is a picture I took of a friend's old '49 GMC fire truck. He lives in the mountains just north of Santa Cruz, partly in a small two room house he built, and partly in a school bus that is parked right up against the house, which serves as his living room.
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| 1949 GMC fire truck |
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