I Was Fired Three Times! Disasters? (partial)

by Lee Gomer

I’m one of the few people who will admit that they have been fired three times; and, having grown up in the Depression, I considered a job more precious than anyone these days can imagine.

Growing up, my brother and I never ever let an opportunity to make money escape us. We delivered papers, we sold magazine subscriptions, Rose Bud Salve, garden seeds, and medicine bottles. In those days, the druggist filled liquid prescriptions in bottles with markings along the side that showed the amount to be taken. We’d dig through the junkyard for them, wash them, and sell them to the druggist for a penny apiece. We even sold whiskey bottles to the bootlegger. So, you can see that losing a job was a horrible disaster.

In 1937, at age 20, in Wichita, Kansas, I had quit my job at Miller’s Waffle Shop where I had worked for about a year for my meals, spending five and a half hours a day on the job, and going to business college as well. For this I was fed like a dog. Whatever hadn’t sold well was my meal. I have never since eaten beef heart, tongue, or chicken croquets. To heap humiliation onto injustice, the cooks required me to grind up the makings for chicken croquets, consisting of all the fatty, slimy, and almost inedible scraps of the chicken.

I had completed a year of business college, and had worn out my clothes (two pairs of second-hand pants, donated by my brother-in-law, and two shirts), and had to quit college. The new job at Droll’s English Grill was full-time, ten hours a day, and paid $14 a week. And I’m not exaggerating when I say: that was a great, great salary. With meals free, it compared favorably with many office jobs, where pay was as low as $60 a month.

I had worked for about three months, and bought some clothes, and figured that I had found a home, when disaster struck. One evening I was in charge of the dish-washing crew and not experienced enough for the job. The dish-washing machine kept throwing a chained balancing-weight, so that I was getting behind. The guy drying glasses was spending too much time on each glass; he was new, and the whole crew was in over their heads. Shouts kept coming down from the restaurant: “Glasses!” “Plates!” “Silverware!” and we couldn’t keep up. Everything went wrong. I threw a tray of glasses on the dumbwaiter, and a tray of creamers on top of it, closed the door, hit the button, and all Hell broke loose. The creamer tray apparently slid forward, caught on the edge, and sprayed creamers throughout the basement.

It was a nightmare, and the longest evening I’ve ever spent. At the end of the shift, Mrs. Garvey, the restaurant manager, came down and fired the entire crew. She probably walked out on the street, called for dishwashers who wanted work, and had a new crew in five minutes.

I was so devastated that I was actually sick to my stomach. I couldn’t believe that this had happened to me. My dream of a good job was down the drain. So, I went back to work at Miller’s Waffle Shop and back to business college to graduate.

Disaster No. 2: Upon graduation, I applied for every job opportunity presented to the college. But, there were twenty or thirty others who also applied, and I realized after a while that this jayhawker rube had little chance of landing a job, and I had to make some money in addition to the $2.50 a week that was being paid to me at Miller’s.

* I don't think I finished transcribing this one in full before. I'll check the hard copies soon and update this piece.

Dogdog

by Lee Gomer

-

She’s just Dogdog!

Not a Yorkie, or Terrier

Well, she is half Terrier and half Apso-something

But really she’s just a mongrel Dogdog.

-

She’s a little ball of fuzz with four short legs,

An underslung jaw that shows her lower teeth,

And always-wagging tail, floppy ears,

And brown eyes that worship you!

-

I think there are three kinds of dog.

A trained dog that supports the master,

A trained dog that shows how smart the master is,

And dogdog, whose job it is just to love someone.

-

She’s not particularly choosy about her love.

She’ll love anyone.

Anyone with a tasty morsel not healthful for her,

Or a lap, a pat on the head, a scratch behind the ear!

-

On a morning walk, her legs are just a little too short.

She’ll look up for understanding,

Sometimes raise a painful paw (pleading).

It gets her a little rest.

-

Would she save my life if I were in danger?

Would she give her life to save mine?

I doubt she would, she wouldn’t know how.

But she sure as Hell would if she knew how!

-

‘Cause she’s my dogdog!

Dearest Grale

June 11, 1998

I’m really hurting for you. I know somewhat how you feel. I know that I can’t fully feel your hurt. But, I’m probably the one in the entire family who can come close. I have had some bad times.

Throughout your entire time on this job, I have been so proud of you, and I still am. You contributed something. You helped many people who really needed help, and for that you were humiliated by an apparently inadequately-qualified person in a position they never should have held.

From what Mother tells me, you handled it like a champ!!

That took poise and guts, and I am proud of you for that, too. I know that there is no way that anyone can just fix this for you. I wish to God I could help in some way. I can’t. You must do that for yourself, and I know you can!

We love you, and we’re pulling for you.

Dad

When You Find Your True Love

by Lee Gomer

December 2000

It was Saturday night, 9:00 p.m. Gloria and I were sitting in the living room, enthralled by Perry Como and his “Some Enchanted Evening.”

As that perfect voice enchanted our evening, made the air throb with feeling, as his voice rang through the room, fairly shaking the walls, our minds turned back in time. And as he sang that wonderful line, “When you find your true love,” . . .

I was standing beside a bicycle, Gloria in my arms, our lips bruisingly together, finding our true love. That’s where my mind fled to, I’m only assuming Gloria’s did. We were new together. We had been very formal, hardly touching until then.

We had just had an evening of tennis, finding each other, riding Gloria home on her bicycle, and stopping along the way to kiss. There along the side of the road on Palm Avenue, I found my true love!

Did we live happily ever after? No, that only happens in fairy tales. But we’ve had a good life for 58 years.

We’ve had some tragedies and triumphs, failures and successes, heartaches and happiness. And we’ve had our share of arguments. Arguments where the object of both was to say the most damaging remarks, remarks that would absolutely and certainly destroy the other. Deliver a barb that would really kill the spirit. But somehow the underlying love that still endures comes back to life in just a matter of minutes; and I feel so bad, so sorry for having cast those horrible, unnecessary, foolish barbs, that I begin to think of how I can heal the wounds they may have inflicted. (I can only hope that she felt the same after each crucifixion.)

There is so much to learn about a true love. Though it cannot be explained, somehow two people with few mutual interests, brought up in two entirely different lifestyles, accustomed to entirely different eating, treating, believing, or living can somehow move together and become a household.

And now, after 58 years, we have grown old together. Throughout the relationship, much patience has been necessary and has been exercised. So much patience. And now that we’ve aged, our feelings grow so much closer to the surface, tolerance grows thinner, and more patience is necessary than before – and patience is not an attribute of old age. But somehow that tried-and-true true love comes to the rescue.

Let us place a tape of “Some Enchanted Evening” on the player. Let’s drift back again to that magic moment. Let’s live it all again!

Erika

by Lee Gomer

Her name was Erika (pronounced Eh-ree’-ka), my mother. It seems to be the “thing” for young people to be ashamed of, or to ridicule, their parents. It was not that way for me. I had no dad to grow up with; he died shortly before my ninth birthday. But I was proud of, and took pride in, my mother. I was never ashamed of her – that is one of the things that I don’t have to look back on with shame, as some adults surely must.

She was an almost unschooled (three grades) Swedish immigrant, who spoke in broken English, when she wasn’t speaking Swedish. She wiped a tear from her eye when her beloved John died, not openly crying though her heart was so broken that she never considered another man, though she was a very hale and hearty middle-age. And she lived for more than thirty years after his death. To her, there was no man who lived, nor had there ever been any man, the equal of John! But somehow she couldn’t cry. Why so many mid-westerners were that way I’ll never understand. Remember Mrs. Joad in “The Grapes of Wrath?” Standing before her son who had just returned from seven years in prison, and hesitantly shaking his hand. You could see her whole being straining to hug him. That was how my mother was – how my whole family was.

My pride in her increased, later, when the facts about Ruby’s death came to light. Ruby was a sister born six years before me. At six months of age, she had come down with diphtheria. Dr. Blake attended her. He was new in town, just beginning his practice. She died of the diphtheria.

Many years later, Mother talked about the day with me. She said she could never forget the other children coming home from school that day, singing “There’ll Be a Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight.” And she had to tell them Ruby died.

She said that Dr. Blake had admitted that he must have given Ruby too strong a treatment. He was so sorry.

Dr. Blake was new in Marquette, just beginning to get established, and the only doctor in town. Can you imagine what this probably unnecessary death could mean in a little town of 800 if it were made public knowledge? Mother never revealed it to the town! She seemed reluctant to tell me. How she could keep it to herself, I’ll never understand. But she did. She was a loving mother (she rocked me, that last of her eight children, till my feet almost dragged on the floor); so how she must have suffered in silence losing Ruby. A religious woman, she must have many times asked her God: “Why?”

Dr. Blake was the doctor who delivered Orville, two years after Ruby, and he delivered me. He served our family, and the whole town of Marquette, as its only doctor, until his death many years later. And he served very well.

Mother's Faith

by Lee Gomer

August 2000

It was a Sunday evening and quitting time at Miller’s Waffle Shop, and I was almost sick with worry about what I had to do. I had been back at this restaurant for a couple of months, working five to five-and-a-half hours a day for my meals. I had lost my paying job at Droll’s English Grill and had come back here to work for meals only in order to finish business college.

Somehow, I seemed to sense that Mom was having trouble sending the two dollars a week that I needed for room rent and extras. Room rent was $1.50 a week at a flea-trap hotel. I had to do something! My hopes of getting anything from the Greek bastard who owned the place seemed an impossibility, but I had to try.

I was such a beaten, scared hick that facing this Greek was beyond any fear that I can now imagine. But I had to do it! It was my only salvation. Jobs were at a premium. Actually, you couldn’t buy a job if you had money to spend on one. No one today can imagine how things were back then in 1938. The black dishwasher with whom I worked made $1.00 a day, and on occasion had hired me to fill in for him in order to get one day off. That’s how scarce jobs were.

I timidly approached the Greek, and so humbly presented my case. I don’t want to do it, I suggested, but I have no choice. I either must make some money, or I must quit the job, quit school, and go back home. I can’t get any more help from home. Greed shone from his eyes, and almost hatred. (How could a ragged little shrimp like this approach him for money?) I could almost see the brain turning this over. (Is this smelly little beggar giving me a snow job? Does he think I can’t replace him in five minutes, right from off the street?) And he could. But then he no doubt realized that I worked my ass off throughout my shift. I was so damned afraid of not keeping a job that I put up with anything and everything! I know he realized he’d have a had time replacing a worker like me.

“How much do you have to have?” He glared as he asked.

I almost said two dollars, the same as I had been getting from home. But I had suffered the tortures of Hell to bring myself to this point, so I shot for the stars. “I have to have $2.50!” He hesitated, and I thought, Oh, God! Why didn’t I just say $1.75? That would cover room and 25 cents extra!

He agreed!

I raced to my room, wrote a letter to Mom telling her I didn’t need any money from her, and went out and mailed it. I’d have money next Saturday, when my rent was due.

Mom always sent the money on Thursday so I’d get it on Saturday. I know it seems unbelievable today, but if a Saturday had come and I hadn’t had my rent money available, I would never have asked for an extension. I would have packed up and moved out.

The next time I was home, Mom told me that the week I’ve told about came, and on Wednesday she had no way of raising any money. There were no chickens to sell, no milk money available. No money was available in any way. She said, “I was so worried! But I went to bed and said my prayers. The next day your letter came.”

She also told me that on another Wednesday that she had never told me about, the same situation had arisen. No money in sight. No way to raise any money. She had done the same: gone to bed and said her prayers. The next day, a man came to the door and paid her for some pasture rental that she had long ago given up receiving.

I think many times how fortunate it would be to have such faith. Mom lived through some terrible times. Widowed at 50 with Orville and me, 11 and 9, to raise. Never having even written a check. Two debt-ridden farms and a blacksmith shop to handle. She had managed somehow. Her faith somehow helped her through!

The Yokel

by Lee Gomer

Things seemed at last to be working out. It had been a long haul for Lee *, but now everything seemed to be coming together.

He sat at his desk, looking out the window of the Crystal Sugar Plant in the small town of River City, beginning to feel at home. Well, not quite yet, but beginning to see where maybe pretty soon he would feel a part of the office force.

It had been a long six months since leaving home, back in Kansas, riding the freight to Sacramento, a long stay with his sister’s family, jobless, forever looking, hopelessly trying to find a niche in this depression-crippled economy of 1938. And then, after so many months, a call to take an exam at Crystal Sugar in Stockton. Weathering the terrible stress of a typing and shorthand test, and a ridiculously simple intelligence test; waiting with hope and hopelessness, fear and yearning, dread of not being chosen and equal dread of being chosen. Then getting the call. A job! A job!

He had been driven to River City by his brother-in-law, and settled into a room in a family home; settled in the only restaurant in town for meals, and he was set for work.

Steve, the bookkeeper, had been very helpful getting him started on the job. Teaching him the bookkeeping machine, a complicated contraption with a yard-wide carriage, with clamps to hold payrolls, individual pay records, and checks for one typing operation.

Malcomb, the chief clerk, had been equally friendly, and helpful. Malcomb had offered his car for Lee to drive to the Agriculture Office to pick up farm workers’ time-cards; seemingly as a gesture to help him feel more at home in the office.

Lee had been called into the office of the Agriculture Specialist to take long, rambling, complicated notes about sugar beet production procedures. All this in shorthand, and he had transcribed and typed it satisfactorily. He felt proud of his work. He was using his recently-acquired business college education and becoming part of the business world.

Yeah, it wasn’t quite here yet, but Lee felt that in the not-too-distant future he would really become a part of this life. He could hardly imagine it after such a long and disheartening wait. But he let himself believe it could be possible.

Steve stopped at the corner of his desk and laid a small object on it. Lee saw it was the core of an adding machine tape. The small wooden spool with a hole in the center, around which the adding machine tape had been wrapped.

“Will you store this away for me, please?” Steve said. “Just put it on the shelf over there on the wall.”

Lee picked it up and looked at it. “Where do you want it?”

“Oh, take that ladder and put it up on the top shelf, out of the way.” Steve motioned toward a high bank of shelves against the wall.

Lee rolled the anchored ladder over to a handy spot, climbed up and started to put the core in a bare spot.

“No. No. Not there.” Steve motioned with his hand. “Over to the right a little.”

Lee climbed down and moved the ladder to the designated spot, climbed up and again placed it where Steve pointed, and climbed down. But Steve didn’t seem to be satisfied, and indicated another location.

As Lee again climbed the ladder, trying desperately to please, he asked, “What do we save these for?”

“Oh, these? They are used as assholes for hobby horses!” Steve said, and his voice broke slightly, possibly from triumph, or was it regret?

Lee heard a sound from Malcomb he couldn’t interpret, as his world came crashing down. As he stepped down the rungs of the ladder, his whole being was screaming silently, “Dumb Kansas yokel! Dumb Kansas yokel! Rube! Hayseed! Chump! How could you ever being to believe that you belonged here!?”

As he reached the floor, he tried desperately to smile at Steve, but knew his frozen-faced grimace was horrible to look at. His face was so stiff he knew he wasn’t making it work. A gargoyle trying to appear a good loser; a poor sport too far gone to ever be convincing.

He returned to his desk, picked up a paper, and wondered why he had done so. He turned to the bookkeeping machine, but there was nothing to feed into it. He looked out the window at the view that, a few moments earlier, had appeared so welcome and inviting. It was a cold, late winter day outside. He was just an outsider who had somehow been misplaced into an office of strangers. He didn’t belong, and he never would belong. He was a Kansas Dust Bowl refugee who belonged at a dishwashing machine, not at a bookkeeping machine.

Of course, he survived. Gradually, so very gradually, the embarrassment lessened, faded, almost disappeared. But not quite. He could never disclose this experience to family or friends for many, many years. It was just too horrible to admit to.

His career was not with Crystal Sugar. Not because of the debacle with the hobby horse. He just didn’t work out with the devilish bookkeeping machine, and was laid off at the end of the sugar beet season.

In later years, he often looked back in wonder at how devastating the experience had been, and couldn’t understand it. It was simply a practical joke. One that he was sure the perpetrators regretted having been involved in, and mainly because of his poor acceptance of it. But in later years, he could not relive the times and be the person he was then. It was as impossible for him to understand how he could have been so gullible as it was how he could have acted so churlishly about the joke. He was no longer the battered, desperate twenty-one-year-old. He was an entirely different person.

He didn’t make a commitment of any kind. He made no promise to himself. But, throughout his long life (he lived well into his eighties) his consciousness never once entertained the idea of perpetrating a practical joke that had any possibility of being embarrassing to the victim; it just may be too cruel to an unsuspecting yokel.

* Although Gramps wrote this in the guise of a fiction piece -- in third person and using the transparent pseudonym "Roy" for the main character -- it's a story that actually happened to him that many of us remember him telling. I've therefore taken the liberty of altering Roy's name throughout.