How Did We Come to This? Chapter 3: Greased Skids and Death

3

Greased Skids and Death

Administration of The All Things Deposited Division had been a close group of people. At the time Ross Rollins was nearing retirement, The Kid was still the junior member after 14 years.  Ross Rollins was vice president and division manager. He had five section managers reporting to him, Smokey Stover, Amy Tubman, Freda Fireplace, Teah Plucker and Dina Gass, who managed Wire Send and Bend. In the last couple years though, the Wire Send and Bend group had been suddenly moved out of All Things Deposited to Numbing Numbers Division.

It was starting.

Next came the splitting of the division into two smaller divisions and the pushing aside of Teah.  Not long after this, Freda Fireplace died. (She was only in her late fifties at the time, but was a heavy smoker and died of lung cancer.).  She was replaced by another long-term Unit Manager and chain smoking partner, Daisy Amuzapark.

Then Amy Tubman decided she needed to be free, free at last and retired. A thirty-something named Dudley Doeswhat replaced her. The others in administration were The Old Goat and Viney Thorn. Viney was something called Yak-yakings Coordinator and also The Old Goat’s assistant. The Old Goat had had another assistant named Madonna Honda for several years, who was a contracted agent, not an employee, but Madonna had left to pursue her second job as a Cleric.

You know what they say about whom you know.

It must have been something of the who-you-know magic, because The Old Goat was always mystified about guys like Dudley Doeswhat and now such people jumped over everyone else with such ease. The Old Goat didn’t dislike Dudley. Dudley at least was a worker, but The Old Goat never understood why he was chosen for better things rather than himself.  Dudley had graduated from university with a degree in Food Services. I mean, Food Services? He worked in the cafeteria at We Are Independent Trust, but then somehow landed a job working as a proof operator in the Spittin’ Out Data Division.  Next thing you knew, he’s moving here and there, much like Flip, magically moving steadily up, while The Old Goat was being kept where The Old Goat was. And now Dudley suddenly comes back to All Things Deposited as a Section Manager, two levels higher than The Old Goat. 

The Old Goat came to We Are Independent Trust as The Kid, age of thirty-nine. Fifteen years later at 54, was The Old Goat considered too old for glory?

Meanwhile, Penn Letterer finally does retire fully and reorganization occurs at the top. Cuddy Bear is named the new Chairman, and he will oversee the financial future of WAIT right into the ground a decade hence and be the voice out in the world. Hobart Wazza Goodguy is named President and will be in charge of internal operations.  Gil Ferret becomes Senior Manager of We Got Your Back and Wallet Division and another old buddy of Cuddy Bear’s, Gabe Guitar, is named Senior Manager over Numbing Numbers.

And finally Ross retires. It is expected that Smokey Stover will be named the new Vice-President of All Things Deposited by Jim Herring, the new Senior Manager of Info Machine Processing, the Department All Things Deposited Division was then in. Ross had been grooming Smoky as his successor for twenty years. Then came rumors that Jim Herring isn’t going to be the one to make that decision. It will be made higher up, which means by Cuddy Bear really. Cuddy’s selection for the new head of All Things Deposited is Flip Wineberry, who has just turned 33 years of age.

Not long after this Jim Herring also chooses to retire and Gil Ferret is also given responsibility for Info Machine Processing.

This seals Smokey Stover’s fate.  Everyone knows he will go no higher.

Now Smoky had “come out of the closet” in the past year and he and his wife went separate ways as he moved in with his lover. Did that have anything to do with his not getting the position he had long dreamed of? That is an unanswered question. It did answer some questions about Smoky and his wife. They had married out of high school and they had two children twenty years apart. Smoky always attended various bank social functions alone, never bringing his wife. The Old Goat met his wife eventually and she had a problem that led one believe it could have been a marriage of convenience.

 (Smoky himself died a few years later of cancer. He had been Freda Fireplace’s longtime puffing partner. He was about 55 when he died.)

As Smoky faded in his career, Dudley’s power was growing. He was actually starting to get assignments that normally would have gone to The Old Goat. Flip just didn’t seem to know what to do with The Old Goat it seemed.  Meanwhile, older Unit Managers in All Things Deposited began to disappear into early retirement. Their backups weren’t necessarily replacing them either for most were replaced by outsiders. In some cases their units disappeared with them. Some like Mulie Ragingbull, left in a cloud of bitterness, which included the disappearance of all her computer files.

The clear replacement for Mulie was a woman named Mello Yellow. Mello knew everything about the unit, was great at handling people and as nice a person you could meet. But Flip hired a young woman out of Numbing Numbers named Rapunzel. Rapunzel knew nothing about the Unit she now headed, absolutely nothing. She was the manager, but in reality Mello was running everything. Mello just didn’t get the salary or title. It was a mystery why Rapunzel was there. She was an accountant with a CPA for gosh sake. Why would she want a job managing this little paper shuffling Unit? Rapunzel did eventually leave the bank.

Next Viney Thorn had her 55 birthday and suddenly decided on early retirement, and she was gone and not replaced.

Then in January, Flip calls The Old Goat to his office and introduces him to Ernest Healthstriver, another young man on the fast track at the bank at that time.  Healthstriver had replaced Flip as head of Sales Uplifting and Ernest was in trouble. The Silly Pilly Program was being rolled out and it was the big buzz word at the bank, the number one priority, and Ernest was having his butt chewed off because he had no way of providing the data needed or of getting needed information out of the old referral system that was to be joined with the Silly Pilly Program. Flip had met with Cuddy Bear and Hobart Wazza Goodguy and they all said The Old Goat was the perfect fit to save Ernest from corporate death.

How was The Old Goat a perfect fit? The Old Goat knew nothing about Sales Uplifting issues or about the Silly Pilly Program. The Old Goat wasn’t a systems guy. The Old Goat had created a cost system in Excel, something of a feat actually, but they needed someone to create an Access Database and tap into a dBase System. The Old Goat had never heard of either.  But there was some comments that Flip made that told the The Old Goat he better take this job or The Old Goat might be leaving right behind Viney Thorn.

There was another little catch.  The Old Goat was only going to work for Ernest Healthstriver short-term, about 18 months, and then The Old Goat was going to be transferred to Numbing Numbers. Flip had worked out that deal with Yard Perimeter, the new Division Manager of Numbing Numbers.  (And The Old Goat had never wanted to end up in the Numbing Numbers area after The Old Goat began working for Ross.)

But off The Old Goat went.  Packed his desk contents and moved them to a new desk in a new office in the headquarters downtown. A much nicer office, actually, wood trimmed with windows overlooking the street and another big window overlooking the lobby. Still, The Old Goat lay in bed at night convinced they were “greasing the skids”, that The Old Goat was being set-up to fail and to be forced out the door.

But The Old Goat fooled them all.

Sound of One Tree Clapping in the Theater of Time

What is that, I wondered as I saw this picture for the first time?

I had seen nothing there along the creek when I took it. I was just snapping a bit of icy shore line and the geese beyond.

I noticed "Golden Boy" standing there when I uploaded from camera to computer.

Was it a sculpture?

We have here in my state a renowned sculptor named Charles Parks. It is an apt name for many of his works adorn our public parks around here.

It would not be unusual at all when walking about from here to there to come across one of his pieces.

But I never saw one done in gold or shiny brass.

The subject appears to be holding something. At first I thought of a Native American holding a bow. Then I thought it might be a fisherman, a real living, breathing fisherman, but would he be in such a gaudy suit? Not likely, but a monument to fishermen would not be inappropriate along the Brandywine; however, this seemed a strangely isolated spot to put it.

Maybe I was having an angelic vision? Gee, I hope it wasn't the Angel of Death.

You know we are the only creatures who consider the Angel of Death. Whatever other animals are lurking in nests and burrows about me in this woods aren't thinking about death. They don't consider time either. For those animals it is just now, this moment. God invented time just for us. I think we were made to be aware of the shortness of our earthly life. Some people may say they only live for the now, but I don't believe them. We all ponder beyond now.

It is just for us, as I say, because where animals are always in the present, God and the Angels are in Eternity where there is no time and it is always only now, and we people are in betwixt wondering about tomorrow.

See that split in the trail. I am wondering which direction to go. I am going to go left. I don't know what is down to the left, but I went right last time here and I know what is that way. Something else I know. I am alone on this trail. No one is with me and as it is, no one else is walking this woods this morning. It gets me thinking about being alone.

Just the other night, I was walking by myself

And I was talking to myself

And thus I lost my way.

I was alone and it began to rain.

I was alone and down it came.

I could hear the howling of a mourning dog.

I stood in the rain

And I searched throughout my brain

Until everything became clear.

That is the beginning of a poem I wrote when I was just turned 16. It was called, "When I Was Alone". I wrote parodies and funny poems as a kid, but I wrote a lot on the subjects of death, age and loneliness. 

Maybe I was in a lonely state of mind when I wrote it.

I stood wet and red,

Shoe-deep in a mud bed,

And I thought the thoughts.

There I was alone, with no one to call.

There I was alone, with no one to hold.

It was somehow those things were gone

That belonged to me.

It can’t go on.

My family had moved from my hometown to a house in the country when I was fifteen. I had to leave my few good friends behind and now I was in a new school. My grandfather, who had always been closer to me than my actual dad, had died just before I turned sixteen. 

Now here I was doing what I have done so much throughout my life, walking alone in lonely places, making decisions on how to go deeper into further away. Now I choose the right path in the photo above and step into what seems a haunted world of twisted branches and vines.

There’s a darkness in my sky

And the sun’s nowhere in flight.

It might rain all day

And I may rain all night.

I shouted out very loud

For it not to go away.

DON’T!

I looked back up to the sky,

And of course, it had turned gray,

And at the end of that day

I went back home

Alone.

When I was by myself,

Sitting with the dust of the window shelf,

I decided nowhere on Earth

Was there a crowded place for me.

The thing is, that last part is not altogether true. the part where it says, "And at the end of that day/

I went back home/ Alone."

I have never went back home alone. Well, I need to clarify, I most certainly have come home alone just as I will come home alone from this walk alone, but I won't come back to a home where I live alone.

And now I think those thoughts that other animals don't think and I contemplate time and loneliness.

You see, I have never lived alone; never in my seventy years. When I was born I lived briefly with my parents and then with my parents and my maternal grandparents. When my daddy went to war, I continued to lived with my mom and her parents. When he came home I lived with my parents, mostly my mother for dad was away a lot. Then with my parents and my grandparents again. Then with my parents. Then my grandfather died and I lived with my parents and my grandmother. Then when I turned age 20 I married and I have lived with my wife, and sometimes also with our children, for the last fifty years.

Seventy is a long time in human years.

And I always came home to a house where someone else lived and I have never lived alone.

I wonder what that is like?

I wonder if someday I will know?

Whatever animals are in their hide-y-holes as I climb this trail, they may be peeking out at me to see if I am a risk or perhaps a source of food, but they are not hiding there thinking about being alone.

I am thinking about it because it is a possibility. Becoming alone is a reality of growing old. It has to cross your mind. The sign in the picture is right. Every life is on a path to a dead end.

When you have a lifelong partner it is a matter who gets there first. 


My wife and I are nearly the same age. I was 20 and she 19 when we married, the difference between us being a matter of months. She being female, the advantage is hers. Women generally outlast we men. 

She has never lived alone either. She lived with her parents from birth until her mother died when she was 17, then she lived with her father and grandmother. At 19 she married me and now we are being redundant, she and I living together for these 50 years.


Despite the odds, it would probably be better if she went first. I think I would handle the loneliness better. Ideally we will both live to be 100 and crumble to dust together.


That sign that appears to glow in the picture on the left says, "Closed". I don't know why that trail is closed. I assume it may have been altered by time and weather and made useless or risky.

So a path to my left is a dead end and the path straight ahead is closed. I could be foolish, for I tend to be a curious cat, and go down the closed path to see why. I decide not to be foolish. I go down the trail on my right.




TO BE CONTINUED...


















Note: I mentioned Charles Parks. Here are a few of the sculptures of his that grace some of the parks hereabout that I have photographed over the years.

How Did We Come to This? Chapter 1: Casting the Characters

Once upon a time I promised I would tell what happened to The Old Goat at We Are Independent Trust, so having read since of others’ travails it is time to tell this tale.  I have to go back to the beginning, because it has the making of a movie or soap opera in how the characters came together in that same place that last September.  I will write this in installments.  If that was good enough for Stephen King's "Green Mile", it's good enough for me.

Back yon, when The Kid was on the cusp of forty and his transformation into The Old Goat, there was a staid institution called We Are Independent Trust Company, which for brevity sake we will often refer to as WAIT. It had been founded in ye olden days to accommodate the exploding fortunes of the kerBoom Family so dominate in that region in that time.

By The Kid and The Old Goat’s era, three-quarters century later, WAIT had made the Top Twenty on the Cashbox Hot One Hundred List, which gave it some gravitas in certain circles, but as a commercial bank it was simply stuck on stodgy. WAIT was but a quiet country conservative clod plodding along. It was as steady and exciting as a rock stuck in mud and so was its stock, which neither went up or down. WAIT was about as dynamic as a frog crocking on a lily pad. Well, perhaps it wasn’t quite that energetic. Income was dependable, but modest, totally an automatic function of the spread between rates. The Fed said, “Listen up toadies, today’s prime rate is what we now say”. WAIT’s Loan Officers would nod their heads, add a few basis points to that and put their feet back up on the desk and wait. WAIT in those days was not just a name; it was a business stratagem.

Then a-sudden there was the need for a new Bank President, as the old chief lifted a putter with a firm grip, declared this was his future and retired. The Board blinded by the sunlight reflecting from the golf club and dazed by the whole idea of change hired a dynamic gentleman named Benny Terrific from a financial establishment in Philadelphia. Thus a new morning dawned and from its first rays on We Are Independent Trust became a player in the financial whirlwinds of the eighties and nineties.

Around that time there was a young, pretty and ambitious file clerk named Lydia Metermaid, who took a flyer when the job of Assistant to the President was openly posted. Despite the ho-ho-ho derision of those who considered themselves her betters, being more educated and more experienced, and her own low station as folder filer, she applied and found favor in the eyes of Benny Terrific and got the job. There has remained much jealous gossip and snide rumor about this amazing career leap ever since.

In that same pivotal year, WAIT hired an accountant by the name of Cuddy Bear to head the Financial Division. Cuddy Bear reorganized the Division and some Financial Analyst jobs were created and advertised in newspapers far and wide.

The Kid had recently suffered nunification (a term which you will not understand and it is too long to explain and will be a subject another time, so to keep things simple, The Kid was unemployed) and was searching these very same newspapers daily seeking a job. Seeing an ad for Financial Analyst, and thinking he knew enough to fake…I mean fill the bill, he sent off his resume and much to his surprised was called to interview.

 The Kid interviewed, but the interviewing manager said Financial Analyst did not seem the proper position given The Kid’s background. But all hope was not dashed upon these rocks of reality. There was another position, a brand new job that no one really quite knew what it was or how it worked, but whatever it was The Kid seemed perfectly suited. That interviewing manager took him to meet Ross Rollins, Vice-President of the All Things Deposited Division.

There was an immediate feeling of synergy between Ross and The Kid. As a result, The Kid was hired for this strange new job that no one understood called Project Manager.

Best job The Old Goat was ever to have in his life. As he morphed in the next two decades from The Kid to The Old Goat he was to understand how his love of that job contained the seeds to his own version of Greek Tragedy. Like a December-May marriage the ultimate end is clear at the start, but one’s commitment to the relationship closes one’s eyes to that and they sometimes cling to what is when it would be in their best interest to let go and move elsewhere. But The Kid liked the job and he liked Ross so much he turned down opportunities to go elsewhere within WAIT. He ignored lessons he had learned years ago. Most of all he ignored the age gap between himself and Ross.

Over the years as The Kid morphed into the Old Goat, his duties and responsibilities expanded and he had a great variety of interesting things to do beside oversee mere projects. He introduced new concepts in employee-employer relationships based on a management fad called Quality Circles. (This was the day of the great anything Japanese Management Style must be God inspired.) Oh, he altered some of these concept, did some things the masterminds of management said you could never do, but in the end the program worked. As a result The Kid was contacted by the American Institute of Banking (AIB) to design an educational program in employee involvement programs, which he did.

He created and edited the divisional newsletter, introduced a training program called "Lunchtime Videos", even coordinated the move of operations from the downtown headquarters to a brand spanking new Operations Center in a suburban corporate mall.

He initiated and created an innovative cost system in his division based not on units, but on activities. He had been annoyed WAIT had no real costing system, and was told costing systems weren’t suitable for banking functions, so he invented his own. He had never heard of what he was putting together, but in his mind he thought it would work, so he created it using Excel and then introduced it and it worked. (Several years later WAIT paid big bucks to an outside consulting firm to install what? Why this innovative new system called Activity-Based Costing of course.)

He introduced and promoted (actually fought tooth and nail for) PCs as a tool. The Titans of Technology laughed and told The Kid PCs might be fine for home use, but were impractical for business, that the mainframe would ever be king of banking information manipulation. Uh huh, and The Kid became one of the very first in WAIT to have a PC on his desk. He introduced and promoted image technology. And now years after The Kid became a project manager, a job no one knew how it should be done, The Old Goat was a recognized pioneer of project management in banking as the industry as a whole became interested in the concept; he was even asked to speak on Project Management at a BAI productivity conference in New Orleans.

The Kid/Old Goat’s efforts brought him grade level promotions and eventually he was made an Officer of the Bank.

There is another important character we need to introduce at this time.

WAIT began an Intern program. This was made up of fresh-faced college graduates looking for the fast track. The first such group contained ten such people, mostly white males.  They would go to each area of the bank for training over the course of one year. They were paid a low salary for their time with no guarantee of a job at the end.

The training of these Bigwigs-in-Waiting in his Division fell to The Kid. He designed the training and supervised it. He wrote a guidebook for their use and even developed a final exam that they had to take at the end. He and all the other divisional managers had to rate each Intern after the program (this was required by Human Resources).

Within that group was a brash young man named Flip Wineberry. The Kid found him aptly named, he was flip, disruptive and inattentive. He would come late to meetings and then have the gull to hold everyone up while he made phone calls. He received the worst rating of all from the divisional managers. He also scored the lowest on the final exam.

After the end of the training two Interns were hired, one of whom was Flip Wineberry.

About the same time that this initial group of Interns was winding down their training, changes were made to the Marketing Division. Benny Terrific never really liked Marketing as it was constituted when he arrived, so he reorganized it. At that time Marketing was part of the Administration Department. It had a division manager, named Jack Inboxx, who was forced to the outbox. Benny named a new Marketing Division Manager -- one Lydia Metermaid.  Soon most of the Marketing Staff packed up their poster paint and  story boards and left the bank in protest, for what could a former file clerk like Lydia possibly know about Marketing, and soon more speculative and snide rumors were circulating.

Since Benny, who was now not only President, but had also been crowned Chairman of tAll he Surveyed, needed a new Assistant to replace Lydia, he turned around three times, put a hand over his eyes and plunged the dart of fate into (you guessed it) Flip Wineberry.

At about this time a new committee was created sponsored by then Vice-President of All Branches and Vaults, Hobart Wazza Goodguy. This committee was necessitated by that fleeing mob of Marketing people who resigned when Lydia was named their manager.  It had the charter to oversee advertising, design new products and services and give guidance to Marketing during the chaos of change. The Kid/Old Goat was named Chairman of this New Product Committee, a seat he warmed for the next ten years.

And now our play is set with the necessary characters needed for its end some years yet down the road. 

Photo is still from the 1927 German film, Metropolis.

Now What? Looking Ahead.

Well, another year has come. What is ahead? Adding another digit on time will mean I'll be 70 this year. It is a nice round number, rolls off the tongue much easier than all those sixty-somethings, 67, 68, 69. 69 is one of those numbers that always brings a secret smirk. I'll be happy to reach 70. Wasn't that a lifetime limit once? (Some say even Biblical: Psalm 90:10a "The days of our years are threescore years and ten.") I know as a child somebody 70 was a real old person at the end of their alloted three score and ten.

I don't see that gray-beard on the bridge as my old man look, but as my rugged Ernest Hemingway look. Ernest never made it to 70. Didn't make 69 either. He pulled a trigger at 63 and messed up his walls something awful.

So what am I planning for the year ahead. It certainly isn't the Hemingway solution, I don't even own a shotgun.

We never quite know for sure the what and when of our final solution, do we?  Therefore, it isn't worth fretting; however, I thought mine was to be flocked to death by geese on the first day of this new year.

Off for my morning walk, January 1, just after dawn, I parked at Alapocas lot Number 2. As I got out of the car a small V of geese came over the adjoining golf course to my left. They corrected their coordinates as I exited my car to fly directly above. I don't like geese flying overhead, not with the reputation loosey-gooseys have.

Nothing happened, they soon disappeared, but then another little gaggle came across the fairways straight on my course, and then another and another. Little patrols of feathered formations each flying exactly overhead as I walked down the hill from the lot. It was as if I was ground control.

Then the clear blue sky cleared of all birds-on-the-wing for the short time it took me to almost reach the underpass on the street. Suddenly there was a commotion like you never heard. It shook the earth this grand honking cacophony. I turned in the direction of this sound of geese honking in full throat, many geese.

Over the hill they came, this tremendous swarm like some invading air force. I thought the birds had revolted, that Alfred Hitchcock's profile would appear on the wall of the underpass and I would disappear as bloody pulp beneath beating wings and pecking beaks. It really was an awesome and noisome sight.

(I counted and there are over 300 geese in my photo and I didn't even capture the rear guard.)

Then the  geese broke off into groups and went flitting here and yon. All coming back after a big New Year's Eve gathering, I suppose, a bit tipsy, a bit confused as to how to start the year.

So where does one, goose or man, begin a new year? I'll just start where I left off the last year.

I will take my usual early morning walks on my non-work days. I did so today and the rest of the photos accompanying this diatribe were taken on the new trail I tried. (I mean a new trail to me. The trail itself was as old as dirt; in fact was dirt. So, since I am also as old as dirt the trail and I had common ground and got along famously.)

This time I crossed the Rubicon, the Brandywine Creek anyway, to the other half of Brandywine Creek State Park. I have never walked that portion. I decided let's give her a go, me lad.

I remembered to tuck my cell phone in my pocket for the first time, too. It just occurred to me that I never tell anyone which park I am headed off to walk. What if something did happen or I got lost? No one would know where to begin looking for me and I knew no one would even suspect I headed to this particular place.

Anyway, we all know I am going to go on trudging down some woodland trail alone, that's just my nature, but isn't new news.

I don't think I have any new news actually.

Wife, working, walking, writing are pretty much the four big Ws of me life.

Wife will be a nice round number this year as well, fifty years married. I don't foresee any changes there.

Work, well, work I must.

Just where do I intend to go in my writing going forth?

For one thing, I want to get back to doing entries in my "Night Writing in the Morning Light" Blog, which I haven't yet, and continue adding to "Nitewrit's Own Harmony", which I have.

I wrote a post covering Jesus' reading of Isaiah and being accused of blasphemy as a result and almost getting thrown over a cliff;  my little examination of "Jesus Is Rejected in Nazareth", mostly from Luke 4:16-30. It is an adventure story.

As for "Drinking With Elder Men", I collected related posts from last year into several books. There are seven of them.

A Writer Walks and Writes of Walking (Rambling thoughts as I went ambling)
Bends of the Brandywine: Adventures of The Kid as a Kid (A kind of autobiography)
Lava from the Lair (Some of my past published essays and commentary)
Life, Death and the Lonely Art (Title pretty much describes the subject matter.)
Modern Inconveniences: Living with Frankenstein (My struggled with today's technology)
Pretzels for Lunch (My Life in Philadelphia)
This Old Man (Everything else)

If someone has an interest in reading these narratives, here is what you do. Once in my blog, go to the right hand side and down to the title, "Keepsakes:  Related Post Subjects" This is an index (Labels if you prefer). The books are listed first. Simply click on a book and its chapters will pop up. Click on the chapter you wish to read.

I will be doing the same thing with whatever I manage to produce in this The Year of Our Lord 2011.

There will surely be another volume of rambling stream-of-consciousness thoughts illustrated by photos from my hikes. I can't help myself; its what I do.

I have no title for it yet, perhaps the "Frigid Photographer".

No, that won't work for the whole year. In a few month it will warm up, the trees will bud and next thing you know I will be happily sauntering about in just T-shirt and shorts; not even sox.

So perhaps the "Naked Photographer"?

Of course, that would be deceptive, but "Near-Naked Photographer", I don't know? Still, when I look at the list of my "Most Popular Posts" or my stats, there were two essays I did last year that rank at or near the top.

"Mirror Mirror on the Wall Don't You Show Then What you Saw" and "There Is Nudity In This Post" both spoke of or hinted at nakedness and my readership spiked up when both appeared. Now I know what draws the public curiosity, so "Naked Photographer" might be just the thing to draw an audience.

There has already been The Naked Cook","The Naked Archeologist" and "The Naked Cowboy" and they all wear clothes. Well, the Naked Cowboy isn't exactly dressed, but even he wears tighty-whities and hides behind a guitar.  Maybe I could employ the common tease from the 1950s men's magazines. I could peek out from behind a bush and the reader can imagine what they wish.

The other grouping I have decided to do I have called "Contankery Road", and that first post of this year, "So New Year's Begins-2011", would qualify to be in it.

"Contankery Road", that's the working title anyway. It may change by 2012. It may change by tomorrow. It has changed a couple times already. I had it, "Contankery Row", but then decided "Road" worked better. I've also considered "Down the Cantankery Road". Cantankerous means bad tempered, uncooperative and argumentative, as in "a crusty, cantankerous old man".

This was kind of a cantankerous old trail I was on this morning. I came to this fallen sapling across the trail early on and fully expected a limbo band to pop out from behind a tree.

"Yo, ho, don't you know?
Yo gotta get down; gotta get low!"

Did I bend over backward and go under?

Are you crazy? Didn't you read the first paragraph. I'm almost 70, for Pete's sake! No, I stepped over it.

Now we return you to "Cantankery Road". I started out calling it plain "Curmudgeonry", but  a curmudgeon is a bad tempered and surly person. I don't feel I am really very surly.

I am not bad tempered or uncooperative or argumentative for that matter. That is why I am still unsatisfied with that title. I may not be either a curmudgeon or a cantankerous old foggy.

I am really a pretty even-tempered dude who doesn't much dislike anyone.

But "Even-Tempered Road", where's the excitement in that?

Maybe if I described what kind of content this collection will contain someone would have a better title suggestion. There won't be any prize for coming up with one though.

I will be writing about certain issues of the times where I have questions. Now I don't want anyone to get confused. I don't do political, don't like politics, don't like politicians and won't indulge in polemics with anyone.

After all, you're wrong, I'm right, and that's the end of it, you twit!

That's how political arguments always end, isn't it?

Anyway, back to the non-political statement on the floor that sounds a little political. I want to write about issues that might sound political, but they won't be because I am interested in knowing what's what, not pleasing somebody's agenda, even my own, if I have one.

Today there is a mother-lode of talking heads and loud-mouths in the Media telling us what to think. This side says that and that side says this and consequently nobody says much of anything helpful. So I have questions — about everything - I'm going to ask my questions. Who knows, someone may have an answer.

But I won't argue with you. You want to argue, find somebody else. There are plenty of political rant Blogs out there in the cyber world with people who would love to take you on or may agree with you and embrace you.

What kind of questions?

How about questions about the law that will soon go into effect banning the incandescent lightbulb? Will the CFLs really save energy? Will they create "Green Jobs"? Are they safe to use? What about all that mercury? Is there all that much mercury?

How about questions about electric cars? Will they really save all that energy? Will they create "Green Jobs"? How far can you drive? How do you refuel; that is, recharge? How long does a recharge take? Will these really do away with carbon fuels? Are they practical?

How about the recent report on improved employment. Is the report looking at prunes and seeing plums? Is the fact first-time unemployment claims peaked in October 2010 really meaningful? Is the fact first-time unemployment claims decreased in December really meaningful? Has the unemployment picture been altered forever?

You know, little trivial matters like those.

We'll see how it goes.

It may be difficult for me because some of those questions touch on controversy. I may express an opinion that another doesn't like and I don't like to be disliked. If you had been paying attention, you will remember I actually started two previous posts off exactly the same way ("On My Fences" and "Lost in Transition"):

"Perhaps the biggest handicap in life is wanting everyone to like you. It fences you in and is a hard rail to climb over. It isn't logical and it borders on insanity.  It's a syndrome. It is self-suffocation.

"And along the line The Kid caught this disease."

I had intended to explain that quote in a later chapter of The Kid's life, but somehow never got around to it.

And unless you are particular;y dense, I'm sure you figured out The Kid is just the youthful personification of this Old Goat. Despite learning very young that if people are going to dislike you it isn't going to matter what you say, I did catch that want-everyone-to-like-me disease.

What else will I scribble about?

Speaking of The Kid, I will certainly continue with his life as he graduates high school and moves into adulthood, gets married, goes to work and all that good stuff.

I may write more about some of the eateries The Little Woman and I go to, assuming we can afford to eat out in 2011.

And I will certainly continue to write of the absurdities of living as they happen.

I hope some Gentle Readers will be there in that distant Blogospeare.

Hmm, the trail is getting a bit spooky looking. I will have to do a post on just what I got myself into down these overgrown lanes.

So a New Year's Begins - 2011

Well, another New Year's begins.

In a moment of inspired (ha! Incipit.) television, they dropped Snooki, Sloppi, Slutti, whatever her name is, inside a ball for the ten-second count down to midnight. Despite plunging from the fearful height of about six feet, she survived. As entertainment it didn't.

2011 doesn't seem much improved over 2010 today for the staging of that particular stunt and all the other forced hoopla of New Year's Eve. Perhaps it would have been a small splash in the right direction if they had dropped her in the ocean and watched her float out to sea. A new year without Snooki and the whole "South Jersey" cast would be cause for celebration.

In case you haven't sensed it, I am very over the whole New Year's thing. The photograph was taken at midnight in the early 1970s. The Little Woman and I would spend the period just after Christmas in the Poconos. We and a group of friends would chip in to rent a cabin (more a lodge, really, since it had ten bedrooms) and spend a week having fun sledding and skating and enjoying each other's company. It would culminate on New Year's Eve and after New Year's Day we would all return to our normal worlds. Most of those in the gang were Social Workers or spouses of Social Workers. Mostly these people were long time friends of The Little Woman or friends of these friends.

Those were good New Year's celebrations because they were really celebrations of friendships.

But New Year's for New Year's sake seems very empty and artificial to me. I'm not sure that lighting up the sky with fireworks while millions of people get lit up on alcohol is really a new beginning.

For me, the real New Year and the real sense of refreshing one's hopes and goals has always come in September.  No specific day in September, just the time around Labor Day. I would guess many people in this country get that same feeling. It isn't hard to understand why, although I imagine for some it is a month of melancholy instead, those who grieve the end to summer.

School started in September. At least it traditionally did until more recent years, when those we call educators and I call failures, dictated an earlier start, as if that would do anything less than extend the time they had to demonstrate their inability to teach. But that is a subject for more serious postings.

My parents sent me to Kindergarten at age four. Therefore and forward, my next thirteen years began in September. Actually this September as a new beginning really didn't end with high school graduation. Two years after that I was married in September and so for coming up 50 years we were always celebrating that in September.

Then when I was twenty-two I went to evening college. I went to three colleges over the next 20 years (all in evening class) and although I did an occasional summer session, the school year still began in September.

I was hired at The Bank, my longest continuing employer, in September 1980, and since you were evaluated and received any raise in salary on your yearly anniversary, September remained the marker of a new year for me. After a time the date was further marked by ceremony. After so many years you received a service pin, a handshake and usually a cake, another marker of an era ending and new one beginning. At least for 21 years, after that I was forced to retire, also in September, which at the moment it happened felt a bit as if time had ended.

Yet time goes on and although there is no more school years starting nor anymore hire-day anniversaries in September it still remains the real New Year for me. Even if my wedding anniversary didn't fall in that month, this would still be so just out of habit.        

Buildings I have Worked In -- As Best As I Can Show

Today I was reminded of places I have worked in my adult life. It got me thinking about all the buildings I have worked in and I decided to just do a post on them.

We didn't have digital cameras over all those years, so many of the places I worked I never took a photo of and some of them have ceased to exist.  So I supplemented my own photos as best I could with pictures taken off the internet. Even here, some places can't be found and some have been torn down and several have turned to other things. But here is my work journey through buildings as well as I can put it together.

I count as my first adult job the one I had with Proctor & Gamble in the fall of 1959. It is represented by the first photo at the top of this post. That is the Pottstown Train Station of the Reading Railroad Line. I didn't actually work in that building, although I was to ride trains from that station to jobs in Philadelphia for a couple years.

What happened on my first job was I worked the streets out of a van. It had a big Mr. Clean on the side and we walked about the towns hanging sample bottles on doorknobs.

In November I got my first permanent job. This was with the Atlantic Refining Company (later Atlantic Richfield or ARCo).

I began as a clerk in Sales Accounting on the sixteenth floor of the twenty-one story headquarters. It was at 260 South Broad Street in Philadelphia.

The building is still there, but ARCo is no more.

I worked most of my nearly ten years in that building at different positions in different departments on different floors. There was a brief period when I worked as a Traffic Manager at the loading docks in the heart of the refining yard of South Philly.

The headquarters building smelled much better.

I was a free-lance writer for a while after I left ARCo, but in that period I also took a part time evening job at the Philadelphia Gum Co. in Havertown.

I began as a Wad Slinger and worked my way up to Bubblegum Welder.

I came home every night covered with powder sugar.

Philadelphia Gum made various products. They had bite-sized pieces (which I was cutting as a welder), bozuka-type gun and they also made packets containing trading cards. On the left is a series of "Dark Shadow" cards they did about the time I was there. On the right is a much, much older baseball card.

When I finally went back to a full time job it was as a Circulation Manager for North American Publishing.  They were located on the Northwest corner of 13th and Cherry Street in Philadelphia.

I have no photo of the place and wasn't able to find one. I tried Google Maps and discovered the Philadelphia Convention Center sits atop the location where it was, so it is gone now.

I do have a picture I took of the magazines I managed.

When I left the publisher in the early part of 1970 I went to work for Lincoln Bank. It was the new kid in town and very innovative. I began work in the operations center somewhere up 38th Street in West Philadelphia. I would walk from my University City apartment, through Powelton Village to our site, which was beneath a parking lot.

I am not positive, but I think the above picture on the right is of the site as it looks today. You can't tell from the photo, but looking down from above on Google Maps you can see cars do park on the roof.

The bank then moved its operations from West Philly to a site on Sansom Street near 13th. Would you believe it? We were under another parking lot, this time a garage. Here we were in the basement with some of the biggest roaches I ever hope to see.

I left that bank when they lied to me (another story).  Lincoln Bank no longer exists, it was gobbled up by a bigger bank decades ago and the bank that gobbled it up was gobbled up by a bigger bank and so on until I couldn't tell you all the gobblers anymore.

Now I went to North Philly, rode the Frankford El to Tioga and then walked down to Tulip Street to my Office Manager/Cost Accounting position with Olson Brothers, Inc. They were an egg-breaker. They're gone, too.

I am not absolutely certain, but I think this was the site where they were as it looks on Google Maps today.

When Olson's closed after I had been there only one year, I ended up on Weccacoe Avenue in South Philly working for Welded Tube Co. of America, largest of their kind in the day, but also no longer in existence.

It may not look it in these google map pictures, but that office was very futuristic looking at the time.

On the left is a photo I took of our lobby at the time. The man standing there was my friend, Victor. This was on his birthday.


On the right is me at my desk. I was the Assistant Controller.






Here I am a year or so later at my other desk. I was still Assistant Controller, but I had added being the Systems Manager to my title, so I alternated offices. I had also shaved my beard.

I don't know who, if anyone, owns the factory now. The area looks a bit disheveled these days. The long building running back into the distance from the offices was the plant. We made structural steel tubing in there.

But in 1978, because of the economic situation in the steel business, the owner decided to close down the Philadelphia operations, which was the headquarters and main plant, and move to Chicago.

The Little Woman and I, just having our first child, did not want to move to Chicago, although the company offered me a good amount of money to do so. Instead I ended up here.

Actually this seems to be a new headquarters built on the site of the one I was in at Mercy Catholic Medical Center in Darby. I came on as Budget Director.

Although my office was in the headquarters building, I spent time in the other buildings of the Center, which wasn't all that centered.

I had to spend sometime in Fitzgerald Mercy Hospital, which is also where one of my children had died some years earlier and where my second daughter to live would be taken to Neo Natal ICU to keep her alive.

I would also travel into our other hospital in Philadelphia. It was called Misericordia at that time, but when I was pulling this photo off Google maps I see it has changed its name to Mercy Philadelphia Hospital.

It looks pretty much the same.

After two years I left the Medical Center (another story for another time) and became an Operations, Methods and Project Manager in Deposit Services and Data Preparation for a large bank in Delaware.
That didn't mean I didn't have different jobs or always work in the same building. I became first an Operations Officer, then a Retail Banking Officer, then a Financial Officer and when I was finally pushed out 21 years later, I was a Marketing Officer and a Senior Marketing Information Database Administrator.

When I began there I had an office on the mezzanine of the Monchanin Building on Tenth Street.

A couple years later we moved to the new headquarters, which was a high rise built within the shell of the old post office and simply called The Center.


Here are the different buildings I worked in for the bank thereafter:

In 1988 they opened a new operations center called The Plaza. Here on the left I am preparing to move all my stuff out of my Wilmington Office to my new office in the New Castle Corporate Commons and on the right, a few years, pounds and less hair later, in my Plaza office.

In the mid-nineties I bounced around a lot, leaving the Plaza to return to The Center.

That is part of The Plaza on the left and the front of The Center on the right.

Then to an office high up in the Pei Building.

And finally, before I was forced into retirement, an office in the new Plaza in downtown Wilmington next to the YMCA.

Now after I left that bank, I signed on with a temp agency. Where did they send me for a job?

Why with that bank, of course.

The job was located in this windowless building, though. The Bank had some operations in the Brooks Armored Car Money Room.

The temp jobs were not very steady, so I got a part time job with a printing company called Mercantile Press. I was the assistant accountant.

I was there about a year and a quarter, then due to cost reductions was let go. I next had a job as Office Administrator for the Juvenile Diabetes research Foundation.

The irony of this job was I was back in the Monchanin Building where I had had my first office in Wilmington. Now I was on the twelfth floor, which back in that day had been the executive offices of the Chairman and other high officers of the bank.

The building was now called The Community Services Building.

I didn't find this job a good fit and left after a short time. I decided I wanted a different type of work, something more physical, with less stress where I wouldn't take worry or work home with me. I found it as a stock person at Chico's, a ladies fashion boutique in Greenville.

That job lasted 4 1/4 years and then I was hired away to another store and another stock position.

This job is in the new wing of the large Christiana Mall. How long will it last? Who knows? Will I go to another building someday to work? To tell the truth, I hope not. I hope this is my last stop in the work-a-day world.

Time will tell.