Fork in the Road: Five

Our fantasy tour down the corporate highway ended in precipitous dismissal and found me unemployed at age fifty, and greatly encumbered with "things."

In the real world, I chose the fork that led to the sixth-grade classroom.  Other than having completed a four-year degree in philosophy and possessing a willingness to give it a shot, I had virtually no preparation for dealing with eleven- and twelve-year old kids.  Thus it was that without doubt I learned a great deal more than did my students.

I took to teaching like a fledgling to the air.  That is to say, there was some hopping along the ground and some flopping in flight before a comfort level was achieved.  But this was my metier, and I came to love my work.  The salary was almost forty percent less than what I had been earning in my factory job. Even so, we were able to buy a new car, albeit a Valiant was certainly entry-level transportation.

At the end of my third year the trustee presented me with a new contract for the following year.  I requested more money than he offered.  He asserted that the offer was quite generous, and though they loved my work, no more money would be forthcoming.  I delayed the signing of the contract and started looking for another position.  I was offered a job in a community forty miles distant at a  salary $100 greater than I had been offered.  That was $100 more for the year.  I signed the contract and wrote a letter of resignation which I hand-delivered to my trustee.  He was floored.  "Well," he said, "we bring new teachers into the fold and groom them into quality employees, then they leave for more money."

Mr. T came to my classroom two days later with a new contract, the amount offered was yet another $100 more than what I had signed for.  "I have already signed with another school district," I reminded him.  

"Not a problem," he replied.  "So long as one resigns a couple of weeks before the school year starts everything is perfectly fine.  People do it all the time."

Another fork in the road.  Do I break my agreement with someone I don't know and accept more money from someone I do?  Do I honor my signature?

Fork in the Road: Four

The fork taken when the Kaiser was loaded and headed east took us in reality back to the Midwest.  The child had just turned two, and Jeanie was seven months pregnant.  (The expression "we are pregnant" was decades in the future.  Some expressions can stay in the future.)

I am so easily distracted.  Were that not so, I might have become a writer.

Two principal orders of business pressed in upon us.  One, I needed employment to provide a means of livelihood for the family; and two, we needed a place to live.  Camping with the parents should never last longer than would a visit during a vacation.  So I started looking for work.

I interviewed with Marhoefer.  They were looking for a young man for the office, with, as they put it "opportunity to move up the corporate ladder."  Pete Marhoefer was all business, but considerate, and  he listened as well as he spoke.  He showed me the entire operation, and of course concluded with the saw, "We use every part of the pig but the squeal."

Chrysler was seeking a management trainee, young, recent college graduate.  I qualified on both counts and was offered the job.  I was also offered a job teaching sixth grade in a small community fifteen miles to the west.  The road wyes, and

I accepted the position at Chrysler and we started at once looking for a house in New Castle.  We found a very nice little home less than three miles from the office.  The rent was a rather steep, I thought, $225 per month.  But the six hundred dollar starting salary was nearly one hundred more than I had been making on the West Coast.  We would manage quite nicely, and there was that promising "opportunity for advancement."

Of course a member of Chrysler management couldn't be driving a Kaiser, so right away we found ourselves with a car payment.  The Dodge Polara was a step up from the more affordable Plymouth Belvedere, but I was in management, you see.




And so our lives progressed for the next few years.  There was always one more thing we "had to have" and it was always important that we choose a "step up," for I was climbing the corporate ladder.  The mandatory new car every two years, as well as a second car became standard features of living.  During the sixties and  early seventies, the New Castle plant was rapidly growing, production facilities were increased in size and employees were added.  As I was in management, I imagined that I was an important cog in the development of this manufacturing facility.  The new home we had constructed southwest of town on the Big Blue River stretched the budget, but I was still upward mobile!

Then came the Carter Years.  Inflation soared, gasoline was increasingly difficult to obtain due to the oil embargoes, and the expense of doing so was outrageous.  The automotive industry was headed down a steep slope.  Chrysler, along with everyone else, was switching over to front-wheel drive vehicles.  Between the mid-seventies and 1985, employment at the New Castle plant plummeted from 3000 workers to fewer than 600.*  Management was not immune to these cuts.  My job with the company was eliminated in 1984.  I was out the door on June 30.  Five days later, unemployed and in debt up to my eyeballs, I observed my fiftieth birthday.  And wondered.

*New Castle Plant is a Flagship for Henry County, indianahistory.org

Fork in the Road: 3.2

Jeanie and I examined the situation from every angle we could imagine.  Youngsters.

We decided we would move to the area in any event, and that in all likelihood I would take the job. We wrapped up our business in Seattle, packed our possessions into the Kaiser and a two-wheel utility trailer  we bought from our landlord.  The three-hundred mile journey across the Cascades and into the Okanogan was without incident.  It was a lovely trip with scenic marvels all along the way.




We sailed into town just at sundown on  a Friday evening in late July.  It was a bit hot, and the motel did not have air conditioning.  The baby was fussy, we were tired, and above all we wondered what we were doing in this place where we knew not a soul and had only the letter we had received a week earlier.

Saturday, we contacted the board secretary.  We were taken to the parsonage.  We visited the church.  We met half-dozen "leading citizens."  Services, we were told, were at ten in the morning.  Clearly it was assumed we were the new pastors.

How do I finish this story of my life in the remaining half-page?  Did I mention that I was not a preacher?  I was, though, raised in a parsonage and thought I had some idea of how a church worked.  I had not the slightest clue.  However, I did believe that the people and their needs, spiritual, physical, and intellectual were the first concern of a minister.  I made it a point to tend to those needs first.  The rest of the job flowed from that.

At the end of our eighth year, the board offered me a sabbatical year at half-salary if I wished to pursue further training at seminary.  Though we now had three children and a fourth on the way, we believed that by careful management and a bit of part-time work we could make it.  So to the Midwest for a year in seminary!  Coincidentally, it was a year in which we could spend some limited amount of time with our parents before returning to the Northwest.

The following June, we returned to the little parsonage on the river and to the duties and responsibilities of guiding the flock.  The congregation grew.  We established a new congregation in a village a few miles distant with a core  group of missionary-minded young couples.  A young man from my alma mater was selected to lead this budding work.

The completion of our fiftieth year in this pastorate coincided with the celebration of my seventy-fifth birthday.  This was the Sunday on which I announced our retirement.

We still live in this beautiful valley, beside the sparkling river.  We enjoy very much watching our grandchildren grow and establish their own homes.  And we have some great grandchildren, too!

This is the second of the fantasy lives I have reported in this "Forks" series.  I like to think, rightly or not, that I could have been successful in this endeavor.  Notice, too, that I was not a widower at any point in this fantasy life.  Other than the possibility that that might have been reality, I do not regret having chosen the other branch of the road.

Fork in the Road: Three

In the previous episode we noted our protagonist choosing the pathway that led to college rather than taking the fork that led to immediate employment with a promise of a bright and lucrative future.

I drew a little chart before I started writing these episodes, vignettes, whatever one chooses to call them.  The  map contains fully a dozen Ys.  I think I need to be selective, lest I bore you to tears.  Thus I will skip over the various forks I encountered in pursuing a college education, and there were many.  Suffice it to say that after seven years, a wedding which united me with the young lady of whom I was enamored, and the birth of a daughter, I completed the baccalaureate degree which I pursued.

Then one day, almost before the ink on the diploma had dried, I got a letter from the secretary of the board of a community church in a small town in Central Washington State.  Like the phone call I received right after graduating high school, this missive purported to be a firm job offer.  The pastor of the congregation had moved on, and while they had an interim pastor they were looking for a young man, a go-getter who would provide the spiritual guidance  and perform all the other chores that a pastor performs.  This is a full-time job, and it pays an adequate salary to provide for your family.

Now how did that happen?  I was not a theology student, nor a graduate in Christian ministries, and I had no intention of ever pursuing a seminary degree.  My mother, in fact, was the only person who had ever suggested the ministry to me as a possible career.

Well, here's how that happened.  I majored in philosophy and had taken some courses in biblical literature along the way.  My major professor had been approached by this congregation seeking his recommendation for a young man to take over the pastoral responsibilities in their community.  He recommended me, and here I stood, once again, stunned.

Suffice it to say that my wife had never entertained the notion of being a preacher's wife, no more had I considered being a preacher.  We had traveled through Central Washington on our way west, but neither of us had ever been in the town from which the offer came.   Population, 3800.  Climate, temperate, semi-arid.  In the back of our minds we were always entertaining the notion of moving back to the Midwest to be near our families.  Central Washington was still over 2000 miles from home, and nearly 300 miles from the friends we had accumulated around the Sound.

I drafted a carefully worded letter, thanking the board for their consideration.  I would be happy, I said, to visit the community to get acquainted with the people.  I will give careful and prayerful consideration to your offer.

Next installment will take you into the life we found in the ministry. 

Fork in the Road: Two

High school graduation ceremonies were held in Civic Center auditorium on June 11.  About five days later I received a telephone call from a local accounting firm.  They tendered a flat-out job offer.  I had not sought such a position.  I was stunned.  "Why me?'  "We talked to your senior math teacher and explained to him that we wanted a talented math student, one willing to learn our system and who was not necessarily college material.  We don't want a college graduate.  We will teach you our methods, and you will be an earning member of society.  You can start tomorrow!"

I told the caller I would need to think about it.  I would let him know.  I was told not to take too long. They would hold the position open for me until Friday.  Now how does one react to that?

 Y.  Left fork, or right?

What a flattering offer.  The money from the start was more than I had ever dreamed I could earn.  Old Mr. B had such confidence in my ability, and the company such confidence in Mr. B's integrity, that it was a sealed deal before I even knew there was a deal.

I started immediately.  I spent day after unending day putting little numerals in little squares.  Number three pencils and thin-line pens became my stock in trade.  Mathematics is exciting, which is why Mr. B perceived me as an enthusiastic learner.  Little numerals in little squares are not exciting.  In fact, the level of boredom accelerated faster than my ability to spend the money I was taking home.

I started "clubbing."  Yes, I was too young to enter a bar, but there were places.  I found them.  I started fooling with women  I could never take home to mother.  The drinking soon accelerated from weekend nights to a bottle on the nightstand and a snort now and then, then...

Soon I was no longer able to see the little numerals well enough to place them in the little boxes.  In less than six years, that is to say before I was twenty-four years of age, my emotional health was a wreck, my physical health was well on the way to total disrepair, and I was unemployed.

Actually, my first thought was, Thanks, Mr. B, and since you think I'm not college material, I've just decided I will go to college, so there!  Then I called the company and advised them that I was not interested in the offer.

My little fantasy journey down the "wrong" fork is fraught with several difficulties, but it is fantasy.  I would truly be bored to tears in such a job, but the wine, women, and song is a highly unlikely outcome even in the face of such ennui.  I have an addictive personality, hence I stay away from known addictants (spell check says that's not a word;  I respectfully disagree).

I have always believed that I chose the "right" fork in that road, notwithstanding Mr. B was a bit put off by my cavalier response to his attempt to help me along life's highway.

Fork in the Road: One

Here we are starting a series which I will call "Forks in the Road."  It is not a commercial for some steakhouse.  We will explore some of the possible outcomes had our protagonist taken different roads in his journey through life.  I have struggled a bit with the decision first person or third.  Third person would be a thin disguise, and moreover, I would have to choose an alias for myself.  On the other hand, first person seems a bit self-serving, and I have done a lot of that on this blog.

Fork One

The lad is offered a choice, along with parental bribery to tilt the playing field in the desired parental direction.  As he starts along the road to secondary education, the fork to the left offers public schooling, to the right lies parochial education.  Always a people-pleaser, the boy chooses the path associated with the bribe.  Thus the next several years of his education are in a parochial school environment.  Then as he approaches his senior year, the youngster rears up on his hind legs and asserts that he is transferring to the public school.

Which is what happens, and the boy graduates from the public high school; that is, the road taken years earlier converges with the road not taken, and the end result is the same.  Sometimes a road forks, the branches enclosing a deep dark woods which remains unexplored except for the view of the roadside scenery along the route chosen, then flows back into itself on the other side of the woods.  C'est la vie.


At the fork above, take a right, stop by and visit us.  Or swing on around to the left to Illinois, Missouri, Kansas and Colorado, and beyond, or wheresoever your whim may demand.  That's my wheel standing there waiting to take me to the house.