A Workingman In His Prime
Jul. 19th, 2013 03:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dedalus_1947I heard Lead Belly and Blind Lemon
On the street where I was born, and
Muddy Waters singing, “I’m A Rolling Stone”.
I went home and read my Christmas Humphreys’ book on Zen,
Curiosity Killed the Cat,
Kerouac’s Dharma Bums, and On the Road.
What’s my line?
I’m happy cleaning windows!
Well, I’ll take my time,
I’ll see you when my love grows.
Baby, don’t let it slide.
I’m a workingman in my prime,
Cleaning windows!
(Cleaning Windows: Van Morrison – 1982)
I happened across my professional resume the other day while I was cleaning out some old files at home. It was actually a pretty impressive document. Three pages listing 36 years of teaching and administrative experiences, with a handsome number of publishing and consulting credits thrown in as well. This vitae would be very useful if I were looking for a job as a principal, teacher, or educational consultant, but it didn’t give a completely accurate picture of my entire employment history. Throughout my college, Air Force, and post-graduate years, I never considered becoming a teacher, and certainly never planned on becoming a middle school principal. Fantasies of a life as a lawyer, newspaper reporter, or foreign diplomat danced through my head in those days. But my life didn’t turn out that way. In fact, since 1975, my educational career path has been pretty predictable in it trajectory. So what about those undocumented years? What did I do, and where did I work during those blank spots in my employment record? I wonder if any of my attitudes and prejudices about work, manual labor, sales, and workplace comradeship were formed in those early years that are no longer reflected in my work resume?
I think I was 10 or 11 when the idea of getting a job entered my head. It came from hearing my dad talking nostalgically about his first work experiences. As the eldest child in his family, he started working with his father, my abuelito, distributing the Spanish-language newspaper, La Opiñion, throughout East and central Los Angeles in the 1930’s. During high school he worked at a recording studio and record shop of some kind, during which time he started his own record collection of swing and jazz music. He described these experiences as maturing and character building events that taught him responsibility and dependability. He never emphasized the freedom an earned wage gave him. Instead, he stressed the pride he felt giving his paycheck to his mother and helping to contribute to the family’s general economic welfare. I really started badgering my parents of my desire to get a job when I learned that my Uncle Charlie had started delivering newspapers to earn extra money. Charlie was the youngest brother in my dad’s family, and I remember accompanying him once on his bike route, when he went collecting his monthly subscriptions. He seemed so mature and world-wise as he amiably bantered with his customers, wrote out a receipt, and carefully placed the money he received into a canvas moneybag. Not withstanding that he was 5 years older than me, I wanted to be just like him. While I believe my father was inclined to give me an opportunity to get a paper route, my mom was firmly against the idea of a job. She was convinced that my father’s family placed too great a value on working over education. As far as she was concerned, my job was to excel at school and not worry about contributing to the family budget, or making extra money for myself. That changed in the summer of 1963.
It was near the end of my first year at St. Bernard High School that my father overheard a conversation at the neighborhood barbershop. The owner of a Thrift Bakery nearby was complaining to the barber about his son, who was no longer interested in working as a stock and box boy at the store. He bemoaned the fact that young people didn’t appreciate the value of work, and how annoying it was to search for good employees. Over my mother’s objections, my dad told me about this conversation and the opportunity to find a summer job. The following morning, I introduced myself to Mr. Farkas at the store and starting working that same evening as a stock boy.
I think my life-long aversion to manual labor stemmed from that thrift store experience. I quickly discovered that I couldn’t stay focused with boringly repetitious and strenuous actions, and I found it painful to be pleasant when customers were rude or belligerent. While learning the tricks of stocking and bagging were intriguing at first, and getting paid was satisfying, those novel emotions soon faded with the reality of long, tedious hours, and little mental stimulation. I must have been telegraphing my growing indifference to this job of stocking bakery goods, and bagging them for old ladies and men who didn’t drive, because I was replaced a few weeks after John F. Kennedy’s assassination in Dallas. I remember getting home from school on the Friday afternoon he was shot, feeling very listless and depressed. The prospect of leaving the security and warmth of my family, who were grouped around the TV set watching events unfold that evening, to stock bread, baked goods, and groceries was too much for me, and I called in sick. I was fired a few weeks later. That first employment experience converted me to my mother’s philosophy that high school students should dedicate themselves to being full time students with healthy side interests. I made the Honor Roll each year, and expanded my list of extra-curricular activities to include soccer as a junior and senior, and joining the school newspaper my final year. I didn’t seriously entertain the notion of work again until a new set of priorities developed during my freshman year in college in 1967.
During my years in high school, I had been satisfied in accepting a minimal allowance from my mom and dad whenever I needed money to go out with friends on Fridays, and a rare Saturday date with a girl. That changed at UCLA. Suddenly friends and fellow classmates had social lives, money, and jobs. College meant lots of flexible time and a strong imperative to be independent, socially active, and self-reliant. All my friends had part-time jobs: Wayne worked at the Loyola University library, Greg worked at an ice cream parlor, and Jim worked downtown. I was still somewhat reticent about working during the school year, but a long winter break offered a great compromise. I visited the UCLA Placement Center in October, and by the end of the month I had interviewed at Sears and Roebuck and was scheduled to work at their Santa Monica store on Colorado Avenue for the holidays. While retail sales wasn’t as boring and repetitive as grocery work, part-timers had very limited opportunities at Sears. Commissioned employees hogged all the high-priced, exciting merchandise, and the seasonal help was relegated to filling in for regular employees, and ringing up the humdrum sales. Every now and then I would meet an interesting co-worker or make a big sale, but retail was too much of a cutthroat business to give me any satisfaction. By the end of Christmas vacation I saw the wisdom of having a part-time job – but only one that was more challenging and paid better than minimum wage.
Thinking back on those years after high school, and how many of my uncles and aunts, and even teachers, waxed nostalgically over what a pivotal role high school played in their lives, I’m struck dumb. High school – really? There must have been a major generational gap in our thinking, because high school never had a transformational effect on me. I feel as if I barely survived high school. The first two years at St. Bernard High School were isolating and emotionally painful, and intellectual growth and stimulation only occurred in my English and Literature classes, and with the faculty sponsor of the school newspaper. College was the major crossroad in my life. The university experience opened the door to academic and intellectual growth and excitement, lifelong friendships, and my initiation into the true World of Work. I suppose that’s why I really wanted to write this personal essay about my earliest work experiences. It wasn’t so much to recall Charlie’s paper route, the Thrift Bakery, or Sears and Roebuck – it was to remember how much I enjoyed working as a part-time operator at ADT during my years in college. It’s the job that comes to mind whenever I hear Van Morrison’s song, Cleaning Windows. ADT was an acronym for American District Telegraph Company, the foremost burglar and fire alarm Company in the United States.
With the advent of summer vacation, my friends and I were seriously looking for better jobs at the end of our freshman year in college. We were desperately in need of cash to supplement our tuition and book costs, and for spending money. We had worked for minimum wages in short-term positions in department stores, ice cream parlors, and university libraries, and were now looking for a better paying summer job that we could convert into regular, part-time employment. We had applied at the U.S. Post Office, but so had half of the male student population of our respective colleges. Our best bet seemed to be our high school friend, Jim. He already worked at ADT Alarm Company. When he described his work to us, it sounded grown-up, and it paid well. What could be more important than monitoring fire and burglar alarms, and protecting life and property? After hounding Jim for weeks about employment opportunities there, he told us that ADT was accepting summer applicants. We applied and were quickly hired. That summer, the four of us, working on different shifts, were employed at ADT. Greg worked there for one year, Wayne for 2 or 3, and I stayed, off and on, for 9 years, from 1967 to 1976. Jim made a career of ADT, working there 44 years, and retiring in April of 2010. Even Jim’s younger brother, John, would eventually join us at ADT for a year or so after two tours of duty in Vietnam. My time at ADT included some of the best parts of my life. It was the first job that REALLY mattered. At the time I dismissed it as part-time work, a way of earning money on my journey to a real profession. But I actually learned more about life, conflict, and real people in that confined work place, than in all 5½ years at UCLA as an undergraduate and graduate student. I learned from military veterans who were always curious about what I was studying in college. I worked with, and learned from, men and women of different ages, ethnicities, and educational levels. These were people I’d never experienced before. At ADT, I earned a fine wage, met interesting people, and felt competent at performing an important job. My only regret is that I never communicated my thanks to ADT, and the men and women who taught me so much, before the operation evolved, changed, and eventually disappeared from the form I knew in the 1960’s and 70’s.
ADT was an essential “downtown” job, far away from the pastoral setting of family, home, and school. The ADT office and operational center was housed in the old Western Union building that was once located on Flower Street, between Wilshire Blvd, and 7th Street. From there, one could easily walk to the Original Pantry Café on Figueroa for lunch or dinner, or explore the California Club and Central Library on Flower. I soon learned however, that many of the adult alarm operators and guards preferred hanging out at the Figer 8, a dive bar just around the corner at Figueroa and 7th, which has also been torn down. ADT’s burglar alarms and fire supervision was a 24-hour operation, with three working shifts. My first summer there, Jim and I worked different days on the Swing shift, from 4 pm to midnight, while Wayne and Greg worked Graveyard, from midnight to 8:00 am (strangely, that schedule worked for them). Except for the Day shift, which only comprised 4 or 5 workers, Swing and Graveyard operations required 7 to 9 operators, and a supervisor and radio dispatcher who assigned and monitored armed station guards to trouble-calls and alarms. Operators like my friends and I were primarily responsible for electronically monitoring the fire and security alarms of businesses and premises on two types of silent burglar alarm systems: Direct Wire (DX) and Circuit burglar alarms (CBA). My job was to operate a section of a bank of DX alarm boxes mounted on the length of the wall of a large office. Each box represented a store, which on closing sent an electronic impulse that triggered a beeping signal with flashing lights indicating that the alarm system at the store was active and ready for monitoring. A flip of two toggle switches on my end would silence the lights and sounds and arm the security system. It sounded very orderly, but beginning at about 4:30 pm, and lasting for 3 to 4 hours, the sedate office setting would explode into a cacophony of noises, sounds, and frantic activity. The blinking red and white lights, beeping DX alarms, clattering CBA registers, ringing telephones, and the shouts of men calling out numbers, names, and instructions quickly built up in volume and energy during those hours. In the midst of this scene, with operators scurrying about in measured rhythm with this structured pandemonium, I began working at ADT.
It was only after that first summer, when I was retained to work a regular 16-hour weekend Swing schedule during the school year, that I finally learned enough of the skills, vocabulary, and responsibilities necessary for the job. Working on Saturdays and Sundays, I finally relaxed enough to begin observing the men and women around me. At first they treated me with mild curiosity as they advised me about the procedures I was trying to perfect. But since I was now a regular, and one of very few college students, they spoke more freely to and around me, even allowing me to ask stupid questions. All the guards, and many of the male operators were military veterans from WWII, Korea, and Vietnam. Many had transitioned from the armed forces into the security field hoping to become policemen or sheriff deputies. For the most part these were mature men and women with families and children, and this was their full time employment. At first it was strange hearing tales of medical crisis, matrimonial conflicts, and financial woes from young and middle-aged men and women. This was the late night talk and early morning gossip that occurred in the adult world I was seeing for the first time. I was re-introduced to the phenomenon my father once practiced of men working two jobs. Many WWII vets like Mr. Riley, the father of Jim and John, worked full time at the Gas Company down the street, and then 4 hours each night at ADT as a service operator like me. In another vein, where I was uncomfortable questioning my father about his youthful WWII experiences, I could endlessly quiz Steve Grabowski, a former guard who had been assigned to the office operation, about his time in Great Britain, serving as a tail gunner in a bomber airplane flying over France and Germany. The adult women I worked with at ADT were nothing like the young coeds I was meeting and interacting with in college. Many were African American women with children, and heads of single-parent households. They were smart, responsible, and hardworking, but when I asked why they hadn’t pursued a college education, they just scoffed at my fanciful notions and shook their heads. They couldn’t afford such foolishness, they said. I’m embarrassed to admit now, but at the time I found myself assuming a very aloof and superior distance from these men and women. I was not like them, I assured myself, laboring away as high school educated guards and alarm operators. I was a professional-in-progress – a college student, exploring all the possible intellectual avenues ahead of me. Whenever they asked me what I intended to do with my college education, I’d say I planned on becoming a lawyer, a diplomat, or a college professor. But I suspect that they knew that our lives rarely turn out as we plan, especially since the Vietnam War was escalating in the late 60’s, and my draft lottery number was too low to exclude me from being called up when my college deferment ended.
Those weekend hours worked ideally for me throughout my college days. Alarm activity was always slow on weekends, so work was easy, and the schedule gave me plenty of time to study at school, hang out with friends during the week, and go out on Friday night dates. I was always offered 40-hour work assignments during my quarter breaks, so my salary helped cover most of the costs of my tuition and books, and still contributed to the family finances. Soon my brother and sisters were following my example and finding college jobs as they began attending UCLA. Arthur found work at a pet hospital/hotel, then later as a late-night office custodian, and Gracie worked at a nearby ice cream parlor. Stella, however, found the best job as a theatre attendant at the Centinela Drive-in, in Culver City. Even though she complained that she rarely had time to watch any of the movies, and the pay was bad, my task of picking her up after work allowed me to occasionally go early enough to catch the last movie of the night for free. Everything was going along smoothly in my life until I finally received my Notice of Induction letter from President Nixon on the eve of my graduation from UCLA in 1970. The draft and the Vietnam War changed the course of my life after graduation; but that is a tale for another time. For now, I’m just happy recalling those lost years on my resume – the years I worked at ADT. They reminded me of Van Morrison’s song when he joyfully recalled his youthful days, as a workingman, in his prime, cleaning windows.
On the street where I was born, and
Muddy Waters singing, “I’m A Rolling Stone”.
I went home and read my Christmas Humphreys’ book on Zen,
Curiosity Killed the Cat,
Kerouac’s Dharma Bums, and On the Road.
What’s my line?
I’m happy cleaning windows!
Well, I’ll take my time,
I’ll see you when my love grows.
Baby, don’t let it slide.
I’m a workingman in my prime,
Cleaning windows!
(Cleaning Windows: Van Morrison – 1982)
I happened across my professional resume the other day while I was cleaning out some old files at home. It was actually a pretty impressive document. Three pages listing 36 years of teaching and administrative experiences, with a handsome number of publishing and consulting credits thrown in as well. This vitae would be very useful if I were looking for a job as a principal, teacher, or educational consultant, but it didn’t give a completely accurate picture of my entire employment history. Throughout my college, Air Force, and post-graduate years, I never considered becoming a teacher, and certainly never planned on becoming a middle school principal. Fantasies of a life as a lawyer, newspaper reporter, or foreign diplomat danced through my head in those days. But my life didn’t turn out that way. In fact, since 1975, my educational career path has been pretty predictable in it trajectory. So what about those undocumented years? What did I do, and where did I work during those blank spots in my employment record? I wonder if any of my attitudes and prejudices about work, manual labor, sales, and workplace comradeship were formed in those early years that are no longer reflected in my work resume?
I think I was 10 or 11 when the idea of getting a job entered my head. It came from hearing my dad talking nostalgically about his first work experiences. As the eldest child in his family, he started working with his father, my abuelito, distributing the Spanish-language newspaper, La Opiñion, throughout East and central Los Angeles in the 1930’s. During high school he worked at a recording studio and record shop of some kind, during which time he started his own record collection of swing and jazz music. He described these experiences as maturing and character building events that taught him responsibility and dependability. He never emphasized the freedom an earned wage gave him. Instead, he stressed the pride he felt giving his paycheck to his mother and helping to contribute to the family’s general economic welfare. I really started badgering my parents of my desire to get a job when I learned that my Uncle Charlie had started delivering newspapers to earn extra money. Charlie was the youngest brother in my dad’s family, and I remember accompanying him once on his bike route, when he went collecting his monthly subscriptions. He seemed so mature and world-wise as he amiably bantered with his customers, wrote out a receipt, and carefully placed the money he received into a canvas moneybag. Not withstanding that he was 5 years older than me, I wanted to be just like him. While I believe my father was inclined to give me an opportunity to get a paper route, my mom was firmly against the idea of a job. She was convinced that my father’s family placed too great a value on working over education. As far as she was concerned, my job was to excel at school and not worry about contributing to the family budget, or making extra money for myself. That changed in the summer of 1963.
It was near the end of my first year at St. Bernard High School that my father overheard a conversation at the neighborhood barbershop. The owner of a Thrift Bakery nearby was complaining to the barber about his son, who was no longer interested in working as a stock and box boy at the store. He bemoaned the fact that young people didn’t appreciate the value of work, and how annoying it was to search for good employees. Over my mother’s objections, my dad told me about this conversation and the opportunity to find a summer job. The following morning, I introduced myself to Mr. Farkas at the store and starting working that same evening as a stock boy.
I think my life-long aversion to manual labor stemmed from that thrift store experience. I quickly discovered that I couldn’t stay focused with boringly repetitious and strenuous actions, and I found it painful to be pleasant when customers were rude or belligerent. While learning the tricks of stocking and bagging were intriguing at first, and getting paid was satisfying, those novel emotions soon faded with the reality of long, tedious hours, and little mental stimulation. I must have been telegraphing my growing indifference to this job of stocking bakery goods, and bagging them for old ladies and men who didn’t drive, because I was replaced a few weeks after John F. Kennedy’s assassination in Dallas. I remember getting home from school on the Friday afternoon he was shot, feeling very listless and depressed. The prospect of leaving the security and warmth of my family, who were grouped around the TV set watching events unfold that evening, to stock bread, baked goods, and groceries was too much for me, and I called in sick. I was fired a few weeks later. That first employment experience converted me to my mother’s philosophy that high school students should dedicate themselves to being full time students with healthy side interests. I made the Honor Roll each year, and expanded my list of extra-curricular activities to include soccer as a junior and senior, and joining the school newspaper my final year. I didn’t seriously entertain the notion of work again until a new set of priorities developed during my freshman year in college in 1967.
During my years in high school, I had been satisfied in accepting a minimal allowance from my mom and dad whenever I needed money to go out with friends on Fridays, and a rare Saturday date with a girl. That changed at UCLA. Suddenly friends and fellow classmates had social lives, money, and jobs. College meant lots of flexible time and a strong imperative to be independent, socially active, and self-reliant. All my friends had part-time jobs: Wayne worked at the Loyola University library, Greg worked at an ice cream parlor, and Jim worked downtown. I was still somewhat reticent about working during the school year, but a long winter break offered a great compromise. I visited the UCLA Placement Center in October, and by the end of the month I had interviewed at Sears and Roebuck and was scheduled to work at their Santa Monica store on Colorado Avenue for the holidays. While retail sales wasn’t as boring and repetitive as grocery work, part-timers had very limited opportunities at Sears. Commissioned employees hogged all the high-priced, exciting merchandise, and the seasonal help was relegated to filling in for regular employees, and ringing up the humdrum sales. Every now and then I would meet an interesting co-worker or make a big sale, but retail was too much of a cutthroat business to give me any satisfaction. By the end of Christmas vacation I saw the wisdom of having a part-time job – but only one that was more challenging and paid better than minimum wage.
Thinking back on those years after high school, and how many of my uncles and aunts, and even teachers, waxed nostalgically over what a pivotal role high school played in their lives, I’m struck dumb. High school – really? There must have been a major generational gap in our thinking, because high school never had a transformational effect on me. I feel as if I barely survived high school. The first two years at St. Bernard High School were isolating and emotionally painful, and intellectual growth and stimulation only occurred in my English and Literature classes, and with the faculty sponsor of the school newspaper. College was the major crossroad in my life. The university experience opened the door to academic and intellectual growth and excitement, lifelong friendships, and my initiation into the true World of Work. I suppose that’s why I really wanted to write this personal essay about my earliest work experiences. It wasn’t so much to recall Charlie’s paper route, the Thrift Bakery, or Sears and Roebuck – it was to remember how much I enjoyed working as a part-time operator at ADT during my years in college. It’s the job that comes to mind whenever I hear Van Morrison’s song, Cleaning Windows. ADT was an acronym for American District Telegraph Company, the foremost burglar and fire alarm Company in the United States.
With the advent of summer vacation, my friends and I were seriously looking for better jobs at the end of our freshman year in college. We were desperately in need of cash to supplement our tuition and book costs, and for spending money. We had worked for minimum wages in short-term positions in department stores, ice cream parlors, and university libraries, and were now looking for a better paying summer job that we could convert into regular, part-time employment. We had applied at the U.S. Post Office, but so had half of the male student population of our respective colleges. Our best bet seemed to be our high school friend, Jim. He already worked at ADT Alarm Company. When he described his work to us, it sounded grown-up, and it paid well. What could be more important than monitoring fire and burglar alarms, and protecting life and property? After hounding Jim for weeks about employment opportunities there, he told us that ADT was accepting summer applicants. We applied and were quickly hired. That summer, the four of us, working on different shifts, were employed at ADT. Greg worked there for one year, Wayne for 2 or 3, and I stayed, off and on, for 9 years, from 1967 to 1976. Jim made a career of ADT, working there 44 years, and retiring in April of 2010. Even Jim’s younger brother, John, would eventually join us at ADT for a year or so after two tours of duty in Vietnam. My time at ADT included some of the best parts of my life. It was the first job that REALLY mattered. At the time I dismissed it as part-time work, a way of earning money on my journey to a real profession. But I actually learned more about life, conflict, and real people in that confined work place, than in all 5½ years at UCLA as an undergraduate and graduate student. I learned from military veterans who were always curious about what I was studying in college. I worked with, and learned from, men and women of different ages, ethnicities, and educational levels. These were people I’d never experienced before. At ADT, I earned a fine wage, met interesting people, and felt competent at performing an important job. My only regret is that I never communicated my thanks to ADT, and the men and women who taught me so much, before the operation evolved, changed, and eventually disappeared from the form I knew in the 1960’s and 70’s.
ADT was an essential “downtown” job, far away from the pastoral setting of family, home, and school. The ADT office and operational center was housed in the old Western Union building that was once located on Flower Street, between Wilshire Blvd, and 7th Street. From there, one could easily walk to the Original Pantry Café on Figueroa for lunch or dinner, or explore the California Club and Central Library on Flower. I soon learned however, that many of the adult alarm operators and guards preferred hanging out at the Figer 8, a dive bar just around the corner at Figueroa and 7th, which has also been torn down. ADT’s burglar alarms and fire supervision was a 24-hour operation, with three working shifts. My first summer there, Jim and I worked different days on the Swing shift, from 4 pm to midnight, while Wayne and Greg worked Graveyard, from midnight to 8:00 am (strangely, that schedule worked for them). Except for the Day shift, which only comprised 4 or 5 workers, Swing and Graveyard operations required 7 to 9 operators, and a supervisor and radio dispatcher who assigned and monitored armed station guards to trouble-calls and alarms. Operators like my friends and I were primarily responsible for electronically monitoring the fire and security alarms of businesses and premises on two types of silent burglar alarm systems: Direct Wire (DX) and Circuit burglar alarms (CBA). My job was to operate a section of a bank of DX alarm boxes mounted on the length of the wall of a large office. Each box represented a store, which on closing sent an electronic impulse that triggered a beeping signal with flashing lights indicating that the alarm system at the store was active and ready for monitoring. A flip of two toggle switches on my end would silence the lights and sounds and arm the security system. It sounded very orderly, but beginning at about 4:30 pm, and lasting for 3 to 4 hours, the sedate office setting would explode into a cacophony of noises, sounds, and frantic activity. The blinking red and white lights, beeping DX alarms, clattering CBA registers, ringing telephones, and the shouts of men calling out numbers, names, and instructions quickly built up in volume and energy during those hours. In the midst of this scene, with operators scurrying about in measured rhythm with this structured pandemonium, I began working at ADT.
It was only after that first summer, when I was retained to work a regular 16-hour weekend Swing schedule during the school year, that I finally learned enough of the skills, vocabulary, and responsibilities necessary for the job. Working on Saturdays and Sundays, I finally relaxed enough to begin observing the men and women around me. At first they treated me with mild curiosity as they advised me about the procedures I was trying to perfect. But since I was now a regular, and one of very few college students, they spoke more freely to and around me, even allowing me to ask stupid questions. All the guards, and many of the male operators were military veterans from WWII, Korea, and Vietnam. Many had transitioned from the armed forces into the security field hoping to become policemen or sheriff deputies. For the most part these were mature men and women with families and children, and this was their full time employment. At first it was strange hearing tales of medical crisis, matrimonial conflicts, and financial woes from young and middle-aged men and women. This was the late night talk and early morning gossip that occurred in the adult world I was seeing for the first time. I was re-introduced to the phenomenon my father once practiced of men working two jobs. Many WWII vets like Mr. Riley, the father of Jim and John, worked full time at the Gas Company down the street, and then 4 hours each night at ADT as a service operator like me. In another vein, where I was uncomfortable questioning my father about his youthful WWII experiences, I could endlessly quiz Steve Grabowski, a former guard who had been assigned to the office operation, about his time in Great Britain, serving as a tail gunner in a bomber airplane flying over France and Germany. The adult women I worked with at ADT were nothing like the young coeds I was meeting and interacting with in college. Many were African American women with children, and heads of single-parent households. They were smart, responsible, and hardworking, but when I asked why they hadn’t pursued a college education, they just scoffed at my fanciful notions and shook their heads. They couldn’t afford such foolishness, they said. I’m embarrassed to admit now, but at the time I found myself assuming a very aloof and superior distance from these men and women. I was not like them, I assured myself, laboring away as high school educated guards and alarm operators. I was a professional-in-progress – a college student, exploring all the possible intellectual avenues ahead of me. Whenever they asked me what I intended to do with my college education, I’d say I planned on becoming a lawyer, a diplomat, or a college professor. But I suspect that they knew that our lives rarely turn out as we plan, especially since the Vietnam War was escalating in the late 60’s, and my draft lottery number was too low to exclude me from being called up when my college deferment ended.
Those weekend hours worked ideally for me throughout my college days. Alarm activity was always slow on weekends, so work was easy, and the schedule gave me plenty of time to study at school, hang out with friends during the week, and go out on Friday night dates. I was always offered 40-hour work assignments during my quarter breaks, so my salary helped cover most of the costs of my tuition and books, and still contributed to the family finances. Soon my brother and sisters were following my example and finding college jobs as they began attending UCLA. Arthur found work at a pet hospital/hotel, then later as a late-night office custodian, and Gracie worked at a nearby ice cream parlor. Stella, however, found the best job as a theatre attendant at the Centinela Drive-in, in Culver City. Even though she complained that she rarely had time to watch any of the movies, and the pay was bad, my task of picking her up after work allowed me to occasionally go early enough to catch the last movie of the night for free. Everything was going along smoothly in my life until I finally received my Notice of Induction letter from President Nixon on the eve of my graduation from UCLA in 1970. The draft and the Vietnam War changed the course of my life after graduation; but that is a tale for another time. For now, I’m just happy recalling those lost years on my resume – the years I worked at ADT. They reminded me of Van Morrison’s song when he joyfully recalled his youthful days, as a workingman, in his prime, cleaning windows.
