Occupation, or Not

part two: The Blunder Years Go To College (summer jobs)

Wyler Foods: traffic dept. accounting

This was a patronage job. My dad owned a trucking company and I got a job doing books in the transportation department of his client, Wyler Foods, following my freshman and sophomore years of college. Nine to five. Office girls. The department boss was a real jag—short guy, Joe, with a foul mouth and a limp. I resented that he made it clear that he was doing my dad a favor. I hated to think that my dad owed him. He was nice to me though, and I worked all day under the supervision of the head accountant, Lorraine, who was a nice, older Italian lady, like a very sweet aunt. She showed me the ropes, and I rocked it. I was fast and reliable, tallying the shipping account receivables against whatever the opposite of that is. I had to reconcile to the penny, or figure out why it was off. She felt sorry for me because I was a total pizza face those two summers. My face was a mess and she was convinced that I need to take zinc supplements to clear it up. To make the zinc effective, she said I needed this, that, and the other thing. In all, I took sixteen pills a day. Didn’t help. I loved the job. I think it was the adding machine, an old Olivetti with a crank that you pulled down to get the total. Peck, peck, peck, peck, crank. The keys had the perfect amount of give. I loved the feel of that machine. I rode my Schwinn, Monday through Friday, May through August. My bike’s brakes didn’t work. My Converse high tops worn to holes. Two summers. Retired.

Northbrook Park District - landscaping

Summer of my junior year, Wylers was closing, and I worked for the park district cutting grass. It was me on a crew with a few Mexican guys. Language barrier. It was fun to drive the cart, with a shift on the steering column, not the floor. I did the mowing around trees and shrubs to trim while the guys cleaned up on the riding mowers. On lunch break they would empty thermoses of something hot (it was the 70’s—I didn’t know what Mexican food entailed) onto tortillas. I had my pb and j under the shade of an old oak.

One day I was told I would be painting a chain link fence at the pool. I don’t know if I had ever painted a single thing in my life. They gave me a few gallons of metallic silver paint. I am sure it was toxic. It was meant to cover up the rust of the neglected fence. It was an extremely hot and windy day—the kind that precedes a big storm. As I brushed on the paint in grand strokes, I had no idea how much was blowing back on me. I remember going home and realizing I looked like the tin man from Wizard of Oz. Every inch of skin and and clothes, plus hair was silver. I eventually cleaned it all off with turpentine. It was lead paint. And yet I live to type. One summer. Retired.