Take my jobs....please!

NASA's 747 bearing the Space Shuttle back to Cape Canaveral. One of the author's jobs was guarding the aircraft out at Edwards AFB.

I told my students in a professional development class I’m teaching that I am eminently qualified to teach them how to get a job, since I’ve had so many. In my folkie phase, I was intrigued by album liner notes that said that singer Dave Van Ronk had a variety of jobs before he made it in the music biz, including “eye-dot painter in a Mickey Mouse factory.”

I loved the idea of him toiling by day giving eyesight to Mickey figurines, then singing about injustice in Greenwich Village by night. I never had a job that esoteric, although that was probably just public relations bullshit, but I had some weird ones.

My dad didn’t allow us to have jobs in high school. Since his formal education ended after the 8^th grade because he had to work to help support his family, he believed that school should be only job of kids.

He became an engineer thanks to his Air Force training and technical school, the last of the engineers without a four-year degree. I’d like to say we kids appreciated his ban on after-school jobs, but when I was on my own at 17 without any work experience, I can’t say that I did.

Jack in the Box and McDonald's wouldn’t give me a job in fast food because I had no experience, but I could sew, so I ended up in a Simi Valley sweatshop making god-awful polyester clothing for women.

I had recently returned from living in Spain, and my Spanish was pretty good, so when the bosses found that out, they started asking me to translate for the Hispanic staff, who made up most of the factory.

I got wise and said I wanted to be paid for my services, so they went back to drawing pictures and talking too loud, like that was going to help comprehension.

I knew the owners were cheap, because after I quit, the hospital kept dunning me for the tetanus shot I got when I ran a sewing machine needle through my finger at 4,000 rpms, and had to pull it out with a pair of pliers. That’s workman’s comp, man! I refused to pay.

By the way, getting a needle all the way through your finger and nail happens to just about everyone who runs an industrial machine. The Spanish-speaking ladies women gathered around me smiling, saying, "You are a woman now."

Teledyne Industries made guidance systems for the F-14 Tomcat, another unskilled job the author held.

On my checkered resume: I sewed custom-made cowboy shirts (sort of a low-glitz Nudie the Rodeo Tailor), manufactured and sold a pink, gooey cleaner called Like Magic, made diodes for Litton microwave ovens, guidance systems for the F-14 Tomcat, sorted ball bearings, was a cashier and assistant manager in a hardware store, sold tickets for People Express airlines, and, for a few miserable days, was an orderly in a convalescent hospital.

Back then, unskilled, minimum-wage jobs were a dime a dozen. If you didn’t like a job (like emptying bedpans), you simply quit.

Then I began my brilliant career in retail at Wherehouse Records as a store manager, then a district manager.

When I first came to the Antelope Valley in 1985, there was not a lot of opportunity here, so I became a PBX board operator at an answering service. In search of more money, I got my guard card and carried a .38 out at Edwards Air Force Base, at one post guarding the 747 that flies the Space Shuttle back to Cape Canaveral.

After that came an eight-year stint managing Waldenbooks, and when I quit to go to Antelope Valley College full-time, I had four part-time jobs at one time: cafeteria worker, teacher’s assistant, tutor, and library page.

I became the textbook buyer at AVC, then got the job at the Antelope Valley Press, where I stayed for 10 years while I finished my education.

So, whenever I get discouraged with the life of a "Freeway Flyer" adjunct English professor, spending hours commuting to Victorville, Burbank and Downtown L.A., I remember that 11pm to 6am shift on the flightline at Edwards, watching the sun rise over the desert after an ungodly boring night carrying a gun, and think: "It could be a lot worse."