Monthly Archives: October 2017

414. Day Jobs

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I  have had a lot of jobs in my life. The shortest lasted one day. I took a job as a rough carpenter, and spent a day putting blocking between rafters. I had a rough time of it. I had just spent four years indoors working in a naval hospital followed by a year in grad school, and I was out of shape by the standards of the farm boy I had once been. It was a hot summer day in California and I probably wasn’t worth my wages that day, but I would have gotten better. I had the skills for the job, but it was a physical challenge and I was up for it. Unfortunately, at the end of the day, the boss said that tomorrow I was to go to a site in Sonora to work. That was a town fifty miles away, not the state in Mexico. I realized that if I had to drive my dying car that far every day to get to work, it would cost me more in gasoline and repairs than I would make at minimum wage.

If you end the day with less money than you started, that isn’t a day job. That’s a mistake. However, when you write your first about the author for your first book or for your website, having worked at a lot of day jobs is an asset. It makes you look worldly and interesting.

Farm worker. That’s a job I didn’t get paid for at all. I started at age eleven and continued until I escaped to college.

Trim carpenter. That sounds skilled, and I am that skilled now. I wasn’t when I did the job, one summer between college terms. I was hired because the wages were so low that people who had the skills wouldn’t apply. I took the job because I was newly married and needed money to carry me through my last year of college.

Horticultural agent, peace corps. That’s a job I applied for, was accepted to, and really wanted, until Nixon did away with the deferment and I had to face my low draft number. I can’t count that one, since I never made it to India, to my eternal disappointment.

Cabinet maker. Another minimum wage job in a local shop to keep body and soul together while waiting for the Navy.

Surgical technician. Yes, really. I spent my naval career in the dental service of a naval hospital, stateside during the Viet Nam war, and happy not to be shot at. Since I was the only enlisted man with a college degree (the recruiter said, “College man? We’ll make you an officer.” Riiiiight!), I became head surgical tech. That meant standing across from the oral surgeon during about 2000 extractions of wisdom teeth.

Surgical nurse. I never count that one, because no one would believe me. The person who stands next to the doctor and hands him his instruments during an operation in the main OR is written down on the report as surgical nurse, whether they are a nurse or just have OJT. I did that maybe two hundred times while I was in the navy, usually on broken jaws, but occasionally on some pretty sophisticated maxillofacial reconstructions. Fascinating, but it didn’t make me a real nurse.

Writer. Nope, not a day job. A lifetime job, but you don’t make minimum wage.

County Red Cross Director. I earned that job. I had become a full time unpublished writer when I started as a Red Cross volunteer. I became a first aid and CPR instructor and taught hundreds of students, then became a member of the board of directors, and finally went full time for fifteen months. There weren’t a lot of applicants, since the job didn’t pay much above minimum wage. Non-profits are like that; they have to get money from donors, and it goes mostly to providing services, not cushy salaries — and that’s as it should be.

I was proud to work for the Red Cross and considered making it a career, but the bureaucracy is brutal. Besides, my first novel came out from Ballantine and I thought I was going to make a living at writing.

Stop laughing. It seemed possible in 1978. more on Wednesday

Symphony 12

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Neil woke up stiff and disoriented. The breeze from the air conditioner had finally conquered the heat of the apartment and had gone on to chill him while he slept. He was sticky and clammy with half-dried sweat.

For a minute, he did not know where he was. He was caught up in the tag end of a dream. It had not been pleasant, but he could not remember enough details to understand his discomfort, and so he couldn’t let it go. Finally he shook his head and staggered up, forcing the remnants of sleep away by action. He turned on the lights in the kitchenette, drank deeply from the tap, and looked at the clock. He had slept six hours, and he knew the rest of his night would be sleepless.

He showered, ate, and watched the ten o’clock news. It had been 106 degrees. He rubbed his gritty eyes and thought longingly of the coastal fogs of his native Oregon.

He picked up the reading textbook again, then surprised himself by throwing it against the wall in disgust. It was trash — unfit to inflict on children — and it would get no better if he read it from cover to cover. He kicked on his shoes and went out.

The night was a pleasant shock. The heat of the day had miraculously disappeared and the evening breeze was deliciously cool as it coiled about him. He crossed the parking lot, then changed his mind, and pocketed the car keys he had been carrying. The only places that would be open at this time of night were bars, and alcohol would have no part in solving any of his problems. He walked down Sylvan and turned off onto the first residential street he crossed.

The night air was perfect, and the moon was almost full. Even between the widely spaced street lights, the lawns were well visible. It was a middle class neighborhood of twenty year old houses, neatly kept. Each lawn was well clipped, the sidewalk edges were meticulously neat, and the street trees were beginning to come into maturity. There was an air of respectability and prosperity about the place; not the snobbery of the wealthy houses in his home town, nor the poverty of the barrio apartments, but a California style embodiment of the American dream. They reminded him of the neighborhood where he had grown up, and he let the half dark houses around him fade into memories of the houses and people he had known.

Even in the midst of nostalgia, Neil was trying to solve the problems that would face him in the weeks to come. He tried to remember how he had learned to read, and found that he could not remember a single textbook. Had they been as insipid as the ones he had been given today? It was hard to believe that he would not remember such books — with loathing.

All he could remember were the books he had owned and loved, read and re-read. Many of them were trash, too, but of a different kind. They were written to a formula by anonymous authors and published under a company owned pseudonym. He had not know that at the time, of course. He had even written the “author” a fan letter, and had received a form thank-you in reply. But whatever they lacked in style, skill, and grace, they had had a plot. Someone young whom Neil had liked had gone somewhere interesting and had done something exciting while overcoming dangers without the help of an adult. That was more than he could say about the stories in the reading text. more tomorrow