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.

Snow White and the Seven Seekers

There was nothing to keep me back in Minnesota. I had the world to explore. So a magazine ad that promised work in Europe was all it took for me to pack my bags and sprout wings. One week after graduation I was on an Icelandic Air prop to Paris. The

adventure had begun.

When I got to Belgium, I found the job center and marched into their sparse quarters. One hundred and seventy five dollars had guaranteed me all the thrills of living abroad. The promise was a job working in a hotel in Amsterdam. (sex, drugs, and rock & roll). But reality only offered a job in a laundry in Danmark (soap suds, hot towels, and boredom instead)

Being the world traveler that I wasn’t, I asked “Where is Denmark?”

They said to “just head north until you run into the Baltic Sea, cross it and you’re in Danmark. Your job is in a small town laundry eight train stops out of central station, Copenhagen.”

Undismayed, I took their job offer and a train ticket for ports north.

My first night was spent in some unnamed hostel in central Brussels wondering what I had gotten myself into. My ubiquitous bravado had disappeared with the smelly sheets and strangers snoring in my ears. My fellow travelers in that dorm room were all the usual suspects; teens and twenty-something’s. Our common bond was a lust for travel and taste for adventure. But no one told me about communal living.

The next day I met Snow White.

Around the breakfast table that morning were three wandering Jews from Israel (their description, not mine), a couple of Australians (no surprise there), a ruddy-faced kid from Scotland and myself. And the girl.

I don’t recall a lot of details about her. She was blond, I think. She was beautiful, that I remember. And she had on this white turtleneck sweater that she filled out quite well. Recollections of our collective conversation that morning became a blur. But I do remember being quite taken back by her casual comment that she was a puppeteer, she was from Canada and she was never going back home again. She certainly made an impact on me, not so much for her beautiful facial features or swelling sweater, but rather her confidence of purpose.

Snow White had left someplace Canada and wasn’t going back home again. She was going to travel Europe and find work as a puppeteer (I never knew there was such a job). And yet even as she talked about her vague plans, I couldn’t help but believe that even if she didn’t find work as a wooden doll manipulator, she would find satisfaction in living abroad, and loving her dream. She was poised, confident, and ready to take on the world. I was just looking for Danmark.

My first and only roommate had arrived at the laundry only days before me. Animal was a chain-smoking college dropout who somehow managed to snag a basement apartment of some random house nearby. He offered me a corner cot and a burner on his hot plate. It was a tolerable living arrangement since he spent most of his off-work hours at a local bar and I could read in a smoke-free environment if only for a little while. He disappear-ed for parts unknown after a couple of weeks and I was left in that dumpy basement sans toilet, sink, and shower.

A genuinely nice person was Maria. She was a young married woman who worked alongside me at the laundry. She only spoke Danish and Spanish. I only spoke English and barely discernable Spanish. She became my link to all the gossip, trauma, and drama that was going among the laundry staff. Being forced to speak only in Spanish was a wonderful exercise for me in sign language, perfecting a broad smile, and a keen ear for Danish-Spanish-English dialect. We got along famously.

A more worldly companion was a guy from Canada. I can’t remember his name. His first words of advice were: “Always have a Canadian patch on your backpack and say you’re Canadian.” Back in ’67 the Vietnam War was in full swing and Europeans didn’t much like Americans. I took his advice and remained Canadian until I boarded my flight home months later.

I don’t remember a lot about him other than the fact that he was living with a Danish family in a huge house by the sea, he could use their car whenever he wanted, he worked at the family factory, and they had a daughter who liked him. A lot. Jealous, me? My eyes were green whenever we were together.

He and I took a train to Berlin one weekend and got off in East Berlin by accident. Luckily no one stopped us as I strolled down the boulevard taking pictures of military installations.

Another time we spent a weekend with two university women who lived on the coast. We rode around in their mopeds, went to their University classes, drank too much beer, and listened to the Bee Gees (an Australian group) singing about ‘Massachusetts’ over and over again. I remember being utterly amazed at the juxtaposition of our respective cultures, attitudes, and varied interests all melding together in harmony with that one song.

I was invited back for a weekend alone but declined. Probably for the best. I think she would have taken me ‘around the world’ and I had only gotten as far as Danmark thus far. Another metaphor.

Tina was another lost soul much like myself. She provided the intellectual stimulation that neither broken Danish nor a library card had been able to fill. At that point in my tenure in Europe, I had read every book in the English language section of the Copen-hagen branch library. Yet it wasn’t enough to dispel the growing loneliness I was feeling inside.

I can’t remember how I first meet Tina. I think she was a nanny or housekeeper in some neighboring village. She was originally from Tucson and how she ended up in a village outside of Copenhagen, I have no idea. I’d go over to her place at night and we’d end up talking half the night. Cheap wine or beer, whatever was around, fueled our rambling essays on life back in the states, the drama of family issues, and the simple joy of com-panionship between two strangers, each lost in their own issues, in some Scandinavian village half a world away from our own.

Tina eventually made it back to Tucson long after I had left Europe. We wrote to each other for a couple of months. Each of her letters was full of sadness and angst. I think after awhile it got to be too much for the both of us and we quit writing. I still have her letters. No idea why I kept them?

I do hope Tina found what she was looking for and some semblance of happiness in her life. She so deserved it.

The laundry work was growing intolerable. Food was sketchy and I think I was getting malnourished. And my loneliness kept growing. One morning nature jump-kicked my indecision about staying or leaving. I stepped outside and found six inches of freshly fallen snow on the ground. Shocked at the harbinger of Minnesota trailing me all the way there, I asked a friend if it snowed a lot in Danmark. He laughed and I quit my job and stuck out my thumb. The south coast of France seemed appealing. Snow free, I was told, and bare breasts besides.

After I left Danmark and began hitchhiking South, I kept thinking about that hostel back in Brussels and all my wonderful memories of that place. Even hanging out at a gypsy camp outside of Paris didn’t quell my desire to get back there again to try to recapture those first initial tastes of wanderlust alongside Snow White.

I finally made it back to that hostel in Brussels and learned one of life’s most valuable lessons. You can never go back again. Foolishly, I had thought I could recapture some of those wonderful feelings I had the first time around. But the staff had moved on, a new collection of wanderers was different from my Jews and Australians and Scotsman. And, of course, she wasn’t there either. The love of my life for one day at the hostel and the source of so many midnight fantasies had vanished forever.

I realized then that you can’t go back and recapture something as vapid and nebulous as feelings and emotions emitted in one brief moment in your life. Those feelings are like

children of another time and place who have grown up, matured, and are now gone forever

But I’ll remember Snow White, if only in my imagination, and what it was like sitting across from her for that one brief morning in some forgotten hostel in faraway Belgium. She was my dream fantasy, a woman idealized and yet only attainable as an imaginary poster on my basement wall next to Farah.

But who knows, somewhere in the world, there could still be a very lucky puppet.

My Lost Years

Where am I going? What am I doing?

I have no idea or at best just a vague idea of the road ahead.

I’m certain of a couple of things with this new gig of mine. My chances of being

unearthed or discovered as a writer are next to nil. So I’ll do it myself and

enjoy or suffer the consequences thereafter.

And why at this age do I think I can become a writer? I have absolutely no idea other

than the fact that I thought I could live abroad, own my own business, invest in real estate, do a century, an ultra, a marathon or two. And eventually I did empty that bucket list.

So I guess this is the same sort of thing. I think I can…therefore I can.

Perhaps this is my vision quest; an iconic seeking of life’s truths even at my age. One that started out simply enough years ago.

My first novel, Apache Death Wind, was written 45 years ago. Upon review, it provided the encouragement that perhaps there was something to this storytelling route I’d chosen. The novel showed me that I could write an engaging story with interesting characters.

Debris, my second attempt at vernacular exploration, was a soap opera full of desert characters whose lives became intertwined in Palm Springs behind the glitter of that desert resort community.

Follow the Cobbler took me around the world with a mysterious and fascinating woman, Katherine. She’s still an enigma and an anomaly that I’m trying to understand for the next two novels in that trilogy.

Love in the A Shau surprised and even shocked me when it became a cathartic exper-ience that unleashed a plethora of emotions from my past; many of which I was able to transpose onto my characters, enough that it evoked quite an emotional reaction from my sample readers.

So the material is there; now what?

In order to gain traction in the marketplace, I’ve got to begin this long and arduous task

of selling myself as an author and promoting my works. I’ve got to create an image or brand of myself; who I really am and what I want people to know about me. Struggling writer, husband, father, grandfather (Papa), traveler, and seeker of life’s truths.

Quite a departure from the real me that would much rather hide in my office and just write. But I don’t just want a collection of my stories to lie dormant and then be thrown away when the kids are purging my life’s collection of stuff after I’m gone.

So I find I must venture out into the real and sometime scary world called ‘this is who I am and this is what I do’ – always adding the caveat ‘and I hope you like it.’

It should prove to be an interesting (and I’m guessing) challenging endeavor. First finish

a microsite for ‘Love in the A Shau’ complete with a synopsis of the storyline, several sample chapters, a book trailer, and finally a place to order copies on e-book and soft cover format. Hopefully viral marketing will feed on itself and generate interest.

Then a separate Facebook page for ‘Love in the A Shau’ where folks can post their own comments, reminisces, and reflections back on the 60s and Vietnam.

Finally a series of blogs on this Facebook page to help me purge these thoughts, ideas, and reflections that have been swirling around in the recess of my mind for so very long.

The rumination for these blogs was first initiated as a series of musings that I shared with a couple of friends over the past six months. Insights and remembrances of past and present experiences that somehow scratched away at the scar tissue on my collective memory and implanted a fresh perspective of this new and sometimes scary world called writing.

It’s actually reconnected me with a couple of old friends (who knew?). And while some of those connections remain tenuous at best, they still have the ability to poke through the fog of my past and bring back some warm and wonderful memories.

Which brings up my lost years; that period between graduating in May of 1961 from Cretin High School until my marriage in July of 1971. Unlike most of my fellow graduates who went off to college for four years, started their careers and families, and lived happily ever after, I took a more circuitous route to life.

My lost years encompassed ten years of searching, finding, losing, and (by micrometers) growing and maturing. It was a trial and error period in career-building, travel, love found and lost, friendships collected, and most everything else that ten years of life have to offer a seeker such as myself.

It was one big would have, could have, should have….and to a small degree, actually did.

So now at the point in my life when most other folks my age have collected their chips and said it’s time to relax and enjoy the fruit of their life-long labors, I find myself striving to prove that I can actually become a writer of many different genres. It’s as if this writing thing has become an elixir for my lost years and a culmination of a lifetime of wondering if I ever could do it?’

But in the end all that really matters is that I gave it a shot. I DID write four novels. I did write four screenplays. I did write several plays. I did write several children’s stories, and I have written many treatments still in their infancy.

Love in the A Shau will be self-published shortly. Apache Death Wind will follow after that. The rest is yet unrecorded history.

Oh, shoot, I think I can feel another bucket list filling up again.