Seeds out of the Ground

During one of their heart-to-heart sessions recently, Sharon’s mother asked Sharon if she was ever embarrassed by her rural upbringing. I thought it a strange question since Sharon has always embraced her life growing up on the farm. Anyone who knows Sharon understands that her rural heritage brings nothing but pride to her. It seemed a strange question to me until I realized that not all children share the same pride that Sharon does in being a farmer’s child. Some of them move away from their roots, physically and mentally, only to realize later that the green grass on the horizon isn’t always so emerald. Funny how sometimes in our youth we can’t wait to shed the cloak of our pedigree only to end up embracing it as we get older.

Still some folks don’t see it that way. This came to mind recently when a dear colleague of mine decided to leave town. We’d worked together in television for over 35 years before she decided to move from Minnesota to points west. I’m going to miss her a lot. She was a confidant and able translator of most things female. She helped me understand the feminine psychic and was invaluable in helping me craft female characters for my novels. Now her husband has tired of Minnesota winters and decided to pack it in. They’re going to put down roots elsewhere. I certainly wish her well and will be curious how it goes for her.

Dorm for Mass General Hospital, Boston MA

I knew another woman who left the Twin Cities a long time ago. She was born and raised in a small Minnesota town. In college she couldn’t wait to escape the confines of her college campus for a career out east in Boston. Even Saint Paul and Minneapolis were too small for her worldly ambitions. While still an East Coast ex-pat today, she now proudly claims her small town upbringing on her Facebook page, has old classmates as Facebook friends and even flew back for her 50^th high school class reunion.

Maryland Center for Public Broadcasting

The draw of ‘back home’ is strange and mysterious and yet ever present for many of us. In 1977, I was working at the Maryland Center for Public Broadcasting. It was, without a doubt, one of the premier public television stations in the country at the time. I had a great job, a nice house, wonderful friends there and a son just born. Yet I couldn’t wait to return to my Minnesota roots after an absence of five years. Go figure.

I’ve commented in past blogs on my amazement how important one’s upbringing is to so many people. While stationed at the Presidio of San Francisco I would sit around the barracks and listen to my bunk mates lament their being away from their home turf.

One missed being awaken each morning by the L train shaking him out of his bed. Another couldn’t wait to get back to the south side of Chicago just so he could hang out on his favorite street corner again. Our confederate Johnny Reb still didn’t trust Yankees even in the Golden State. He couldn’t wait to get back to Mississippi where they got things ‘right.’

Even with a great part-time job working at an art theater, easy living on base, a great MOS in journalism and adventures many a weekend in that city by the bay, I still missed my Minnesota roots. I wasn’t ready to return home just then but I knew I would once my thirst for new experiences and adventures had subsided.

Aerial view of Palm Springs, CA

Palm Springs is like a modern-day version of the fur trappers rendezvous. In Palm Springs everyone is from someplace else. I’m always taken aback when asked where I’m from and when I say Minnesota the other party may occasionally respond ‘Min-es-o-ta’ in their best Fargo imitation. I then calmly respond “No, I said Minnesota” and nothing more because it’s usually in polite company. Those are words uttered by the untraveled and uninitiated. Most of us got it a long time ago.

I’ve also referenced the interesting twists and turns of friendships in this regional melting pot in another blog entitled Like Snowflakes come and gone. Like many other resort towns such as Key West and Las Vegas a lot of the residents are transients in passing. They spend the winters away from home but like homing pigeons always leave in the spring.

For many, the siren call of our youth is a powerful magnet always calling us back home.

Hell came in Khaki and Sweat

 

Back in my day, there was a saying among the enlisted ranks. The Presidio of San Francisco was the country club of the Army and Fort Polk, Louisiana, was its orifice.

I experienced both of them. San Francisco during the summer and winter of 1964-65. Then Fort Polk during the summer of 1965. If there is a God, he was absence that summer or had a weird sense of humor.

Back then, the concept of air conditioning for army facilities was sketchy at best. The officer’s barracks and their dining quarters were air-conditioned. Some of the general offices were air-conditioned. But for the most part, any structure I lived in, worked in, drank in or studied in was window-ventilated and little else.

None of the barracks were air-conditioned. Bugs occupied the latrine at night, partying and carrying-on until they zapped themselves on the bare light bulbs. Heat enveloped the second floor during the day making it almost impossible to stay up there at night. Our barracks were surrounded on all four sides by Southern Pine forests and shifting sands. We called it hell on God’s green earth…and we meant it. It was an environment that nurtured and encouraged self-bravado. There were a lot of very lonesome guys on that base coping the best they could.

I took three showers a day and that wasn’t nearly enough. There were no stalls in the latrine so modesty went out the window. Everyone became very nonchalant about tending to their own personal needs.

There was only one town outside of the base but it was crawling with hungry horny recruits who were attending AIT (advanced infantry training). Almost all of them were destined for duty in Vietnam. We avoided them and the town like the plague. The locals hated us and we hated them. One glance at a local girl would bring her redneck boyfriend flying out of his pickup truck with clenched fists. The town was like a bus depot of lost souls. None of us spent any time there.

The closest semblance of civilization was either Lake Charles, Louisiana or Beaumont, Texas.

I spent many a weekend camping out in some hotel room in Beaumont just for the air-conditioning and television all afternoon and all night. I would wander the car lots just to stare at and fantasize about the car I was going to buy after the service. Bar-hopping wasn’t advised with my short cropped hair. Even in cowboy Texas, the locals weren’t too crazy about the military during the Vietnam era.

But like all my other bivouacs during those two years in the service, there were always colorful characters to either bright up and dampen my days.

The first lieutenant who was in charge of our Communications Office was a poodle officer. He was constantly playing politics so he could game the military system to his advantage. The dork had graduated from VMI but really didn’t want to be in the military in the first place. Fortunately he was newly married and spent as little time on base as his wife would allow. We kept hoping they would ship his sorry ass to Vietnam but it never happened. After his enlistment was up, he probably became a banker or a southern politician.

For a brief, painful period we had to endure the haughty attitude of some blue-blood from upstate New York. Apparently his parents weren’t able to keep him out of the military so he went into the Army reserves under the false assumption that he wouldn’t have to spend any time with the likes of us after basic training. He was only on base for a couple of months but his demeaning attitude toward blacks, the poor and under-educated (meaning anyone with less than an Ivy League education) made him a target for several clandestine operations against his bunk, desk and mini-MG. He didn’t really care. He hired low-life’s to do his KP and get his car repaired. Fortunately he was gone before fragging or any other radical action became part of our lexicon.

There was this portly office manager who was overly friendly to all the new recruits in the office. My gaydar wasn’t tuned in back in those days but I still managed to avoid any compromising situations around him. He once invited me to his place for the weekend but fortunately I naively declined.

I used to admire, from a distance, this black guy who used his color to get himself ahead with the black sergeants. He was always working on one scheme or another. It usually involved money or women; two prized commodities on or nearby the base.  I'm guessing he became a used car salesman after the service or something akin to that. But I’m sure he was successful at whatever he tried.

At the other end of the spectrum was a young sergeant who was hardcore RA (regular army – a lifer). He had a great career all mapped out ahead of him. He was a natural for the military. He had a wonderful rapport with his platoon and got along well with all the officers.

We knew he had met this divorcee with two kids. She worked at a bar off base and he was spending a lot of time there and at her trailer. We warned him to be careful but he just laughed at our concerns. Then one weekend, he went AWOL to spend the weekend with her. They threw his ass in the brig for a month and busted him down to private. He still had four years left on his enlistment. I couldn’t get over what he had sacrificed for that divorcee who was probably humping some new guy while he was still serving his time. Strange things happen to good people in the Army.

I had two main ways to spend my weekends at Fort Polk. I would either hop a Trailways bus to Beaumont, Texas (see above) or camp out in the Captain’s office with my good buddy from Vietnam.

My buddy (whose name I have long since forgotten) was recovering from shrapnel wounds he received in Vietnam. He had just a little time left before his discharge. And after facing death in Vietnam, he didn’t much give a rat’s derriere about taking chances in the military. We were both determined to make every moment count while we were stuck in the devil’s playground. Unlike a lot of our bunk mates, he also wanted to go back to college after the service. I don’t know whose idea it was at the beginning but we both agreed we had found a splendid way to spend those sultry weekends in Louisiana.

 Our routine went like this.

After Saturday lunch, we’d head off to the commissary to buy several six-packs of beer and snacks and perhaps something of a little more substantial nature. Then we would head back to the office.

Now the only room in our office building that was air-conditioned was the Captain’s office. If we closed the door to his office and turned the AC on low, anyone entering the front lobby would never know we were hiding back there. Since the Captains office was in back of the building, anyone walking or driving by would never know there were two inebriated celebrating GIs inside.

We would pile up the cushions off his sofa on the floor and somehow managed to waste the entire afternoon, evening and part of the next day by watching television, reading or just talking smack and filling the room with our dreams of going home and seeing our girlfriends. We were just a couple of randy soldiers full of wild dreams and impure thoughts.

I have no idea why two knuckleheads like ourselves were so brazen and foolish. But it seemed like a fun thing to do at the time. We never got caught and I expect the Captain was never the wiser. Fortunately I was transferred before our scatter-brains thought up any other ingenious pranks to pull. My friend went home to who-knows-where and I headed up to Fort Lee, Virginia. And nothing vanishes faster than a man who has done his time at Fort Polk, Louisiana.

Reflecting back on that time in my life, it’s funny how such adverse, unpleasant, sad, depressing and uncomfortable situations can bring back such silly and yet fond memories. It was just a couple of footsteps and a blink away in my life but I’ll always remember those weekends in sultry Beaumont and the coolness of the Captain’s office.

Strange as it may seem, isn’t that what memories are made of.

 

The Best Job That Never Was

I had to give my son the bad news. His perfect job wasn’t.

He’d recently graduated from Notre Dame. He was working at Arthur Anderson in Chicago. His girlfriend (soon to be wife) was living not that far away. He loved his job, all the traveling, his boss and the company itself. What was not to like?

Trying hard to straddle the line between being realistic and yet supportive, I could only remind him that while everything was great at the time, things do change. While ‘Father doesn’t always know best’, I’d been down that path before, several times. He laughed at me. We laughed at me. But my prediction did prove correct.

Not too much later, Brian’s firm imploded and he was hired on by KPMG, a company that was not even close to the culture of Arthur Anderson.

My daughter interned at the law firm her last year in law school. So it wasn’t surprising when they hired her upon graduation. She found that corporate law wasn’t what it was cracked up to be.

Two perfectly wonderful jobs that turned out not to be so wonderful.

No job is ever perfect. Even if all the stars and moon and sun are in alignment, eventually something usually happens that changes the equation.

Brian moved on to Colorado, got his masters in Entrepreneurship and found a job with a new startup called Triple Creek. He’s still there and thriving.

My daughter moved on to the capitol working in politics and found her passion; politics and the sometimes wondrous, confusing, mysterious manner in which bills are made and passed.

Now she has the most important job of her life; being Mom to Brennan and Charlotte.

Welcome to the real world, guys. No job is perfect but you can make the best of any situation.


My first job as a paperboy
On Sundays, I had my little red wagon to haul my 143 Sunday newspapers. Their weight was so great that the front axle bent every Sunday morning. And I had to untwist it before I could proceed. No wonder I can still lift small boulders with ease.

It meant getting up at 4:30am each morning, even if it was twenty below zero and delivering newspapers to my unappreciative vociferous readers. It meant getting short-changed by apartment dwellers, who moved away without paying their newspaper bills. It meant trudging back to some home when the owner couldn’t find the newspaper that hadn’t landed in exactly the same spot every day. Pulling it out of the weeds without even a thank you. It meant listening to the smart-ass district manager haranguing me because I wasn’t making his quota of new customers each month. It meant watching out for the big kids who loved to threaten me when I was ‘collecting’ and had cash on hand.

Yet despite those irritating nuisances associated with the job, it meant I was an independent businessman. I learned to save money and not spend all of it before the end of the month. To a great degree, it meant I was mostly self-supporting from 7th grade on. I got a musical education with my tiny transistor radio that I wore under my parka. All the best of the 50’s Pop music and crossover Country and Western. It was my musical window and fueled a lifelong love of music.

I never considered myself in the newspaper business. I was just a kid, willing to freeze his tush, for a shot at a savings account and the education it might buy. And despite the cold, deadbeats, high-strung district managers, and sometimes-grumpy customers, it was a great first job.

I changed. It didn’t. After high school, it was time to move on.


KTCA Television
My start in television started inauspiciously enough. They didn’t have an opening for a writer so I offered my services for free. I volunteered there for over six months with a great group of people, all of who were much older than I was. There was an atmosphere back then that was electric with interest and excitement for the business of public television. We were all part of the gradual transition from educational television to public television, a huge shift in demographics, in programming philosophy, and production techniques.

Once hired on as a producer-director, my crew and I experimented with all kinds of new production techniques. Field recordings and videotape were introduced during that period. And we marveled at the creative new ways we could tell a story on television. It was another education for me. And I got paid for learning.

Of course, over the years, management changed. My boss moved away and the atmosphere got more corporate and not as much fun. The bottom line superseded the creative aspects of the job and the staff grew stale on repetitive programming and production.

It was time to move on. Again.


Maryland Center for Public Broadcasting
Without a doubt the best boss I ever had was General Manager of the Maryland Center for Public Broadcasting back in the 70’s. He was brilliant, generous with his support in every way. He let me run my department without outside interference. He welcomed new ideas and self-motivation.

He gathered around him a wonderful group of people to work with. It was a blast for almost five glorious years.

But then, of course, over the years things gradually started to change. Eventually the GM got a job offer in Philadelphia that he couldn’t turn down. He left and with him, the creative energy that defined the place for so long. The disease was slow in coming but over time it managed to turn a top rated television station into a study in atrophy.

There were other jobs before and after those. Some good. Some not so good. I learned from each and every one of them. Life lessons I’ve taken with me in one capacity or another.

Even the Army brought with it some traveling, some adventures and misadventures, a host of colorful characters I’d love to meet again. And a few, I’d rather not.


Sharden Productions and other Associated Ventures
Sharden Productions, Inc. provided me an opportunity to be my own boss. Of course, you’re never your own boss. Every client, every customer, every potential contract is your boss/master/driver/nightmare/reward. That’s the nature of the business.

I made a couple of bucks.	I can’t complain.
I worked long hours.	I wanted to.
I had some sleepless nights.	Part of the equation.
I did some very nice work.	I take total credit for that.
It provided me an opportunity to travel.	I appreciate that.
It provided some amenities I wouldn’t have otherwise.	Ditto.

Now it’s the foundation for a gradual shift from a video production/distribution company to a publishing company.                                                Thank you Sub-S Corporation.

I guess that perfect job I never had would encompass all the best of what I did have.
Each job brought something special to my life. And my life experiences.

Imagine if they were all wrapped up into on job. The best of best. The nicest people to work with, no limit on possible earnings, no age discrimination, self-motivation as the driver, an opportunity to reconnect with some old friends, or forge relationships with new ones. Wouldn’t that be just the perfect job to have?

But wait, it is.

I’m a writer.

Who Said You Get to Be Boss

I’ve had several good bosses in my career, a couple of great ones and a few who were outstanding. They knew how to provide leadership, focus and guidance to their staff. My average was probably no better nor any worse than anybody else who has been in the work force for any length of time. Luck of the draw some would call it.

Then there were those bad bosses.

I actually think the more valuable life lessons came from the adversity they brought to my life. Their number isn’t large but I’ve learned something from each and every one of them. Mind you they weren’t doing me any favors. I just grabbed their lemons and made nectar with it.

Boss # 1

It all started in Seventh grade with my first job; a paper route. We were just a bunch of hungry young entrepreneurial seventh and eighth graders working our first real job. They said we were in the newspaper business.

I thought no, I was earning money for high school and my frequent jaunts to DQ. That’s the only reason I was willing to get up at 4:30 in the morning when it was twenty below zero and don my rubber galoshes just to get a newspaper to some old retiree who had to have on his paper by 6:00am because he had nothing else going on in his life.

Our boss was a twenty-something wise ass who drove a brand new convertible and loved to catch us at the newspaper drop for a quick lecture and hard driving sales pitch. He sounded like some gravelly-throated football coach when he spoke. He’d remind us that his next raise depended on our reaching a certain sales quota. His words fell on deaf ears.

If you’re going to try to rally the tiny troopers, know your audience. He never understood that meeting his goals wasn’t a priority when homework and being home before dark took precedence over his corporate aspirations. Our boss never understood seventh grade enticements. Hint, it wasn’t earning points for a trip to the Dells.

Lessons Learned: Treat everyone with respect, even kids. They’re people too. And some of them are smarter than you are!

Bosses # 2

The Army had a plethora of good and bad leaders, none stood out. Even the obligatory hard ass drill sergeant and sloth in olive drab were just doing their jobs. I learned early on that if you did your job and didn’t cause a problem, things would work out just fine.

Being invisible in a sea of khaki isn’t a bad thing. It gives you time for the more import-ant things in life instead of KP or guard duty.

Lessons Learned: Be a leader yourself before asking others to follow you. Lead by example. Oh, and keep your mouth shut.

Boss # 3

One of my early bosses was a station manager, a pillar in his community, a deacon in his church and a racist. His façade has been honed and tempered by his all white high school and private college that feed his misguided beliefs. He truly believed in the superiority of the white race and didn’t mince words (in private) about it. His God was not color-blind.

I was embarrassed and saddened to hear him ramble on about those people. He also wasn’t much partial to Yankees, East Coast Types, and of course, those folks out West who were just plain nuts. Women didn’t fare much better with him either.

Lessons Learned: Look beyond your small world to the larger world beyond. Don’t let religion blind you to what is fair and just.

Boss # 4

The old man, dressed in a younger man’s skin, was 25 years old. 25 going on 65. His attitude, demeanor and state of mind had calcified well beyond his physical years. He should have been a monk in medieval times. It would have suited him much better.

His idea of fairness was couched in a sanctimonious, haughty attitude that he somehow had a closer tie-in with God. He wasn’t a priest but he should have been. He thought his ticket said: ‘Heaven, non-stop.’ He misread it. In fact, he was just a minion and a puppet to the powers to be who also thought they had a straight shot up to heaven.

Lessons Learned: Open your mind to new thoughts and ideas. Your providence is much too small to help you make good value judgments. Either that or join the cloisters.

Boss # 5

Stumpy had a Napoleonic complex; loved creating his own crisis environment at every opportunity, was paranoid beyond belief and probably the most unstable person I’ve ever had to work for. I did learn to take copious notes while working for him. He loved to grill me on the tiniest of details and would pursue his questioning until he could catch me on some minor error or misstep. Then he delighted in correcting me and praising himself for his intuitive nature.

He once spent an hour and a half after work chewing me out for my shortcomings he’d documented over six months. Must have been a slow night for him at home. It was his idea of an exercise in humiliation. But I was the one feeling sorry for that pathetic excuse for a human being sitting across from me that night.

Lessons Learned: Get psychological help for your boss (or yourself) if possible. And take very good notes.

Boss # 6

Moneybags was a corporate wannabe who never quite made the grade. His idea of fairness was to make sure he always ended up on top. If I reached my financial goal for the year, he got a bonus. If I didn’t make my goal for the year, he still got his bonus.

It was win-win for him and win / lose for his associates. Hardly seemed fair. Especially when he didn’t support me in attaining my goals. I once made a huge sale the last month of our fiscal year. So he promptly upped my goal for the year by the exactly amount I had just brought in. Thus effectively erasing what would have been a substantial gain over my stated goal. His reasoning…he thought it came too easily to me, ignoring the fact that I’d been working with that client for almost a year to land the contract.

Lessons Learned: If you accept the title and take the money, do what your title entails even if you don’t like to do it. Or don’t pretend to be a boss when you’re not up to it.

But there’s a happy ending to this story.

I got fired.

There have been several turning points in my life. This was certainly one of them.

Whether it was age discrimination as I still suspect or just internal politics (another very real possibility) it was my very good fortune to be fired without explanation. It was to change my life. My wife’s response (and I’ll always love her for it) was very simple: “Good, now you can spend more time with your kids and focus on your business.”

Less than four years later, my son was accepted into Notre Dame and I had increased our net worth four fold. And I was making more money in my own business than I had at my old job. Good fortune can come in very strange packages.

Boss # 7

Being self-employed meant long hours working for myself. I was probably harder on me than any other boss I ever had. The old adage that you are your own boss is totally wrong. Everyone else is your boss. But I was lucky. I had some wonderful clients, great projects to work on, and thoroughly enjoyed working with my daughter as host of my cable series.

Lessons Learned: Attention to marketing is as important as doing the job itself. I’m learning that now as I struggle with finding the time to write new material while focusing on my own program of self-promotion.

Bosses # 8

Frick and Frack presented a good opportunity for me to gain a steady client on a yearly contract. But along with it came many challenges.

Frick was a eunuch. He was scared to death of making decisions that might offend anyone, anyplace, at any time. So he constantly played it safe. Any idea I might bring to the table was immediately shot down because it might somehow offend someone someplace.

Frack was an appendage. He thought he had all the answers but wasn’t smart enough to know any of the questions. He told me how to do my job at every opportunity he could. I had seen his work. He had nothing to talk about.

Lessons Learned: The eunuch should have grown the courage to do his job instead of relying on others to tell him how to do it. The appendage is still an anal retentive sad sack whose grasp of the world evolves around many visits to the mirror to assure himself that he was a winner. Only losers do that.

My good fortune was to get so fed up with the antics of those two bobble-heads that I quit working for them. Another turning point in my life.

A day after “What now?”  I began my new career as a writer.