MAS at 22

   

Mike, me, Kevin, Bill E., Anthony - at MAS 2010

  Tomorrow is the 22^nd anniversary of my first day on the job at MAS. The blog last week about my grandmother getting the job at the flower shop in Buffalo merely because she was Canadian got me to thinking about how most jobs are actually obtained. And I've concluded that we are offered a jobs based on qualifications, who you know, and just plain dumb luck, with qualifications coming in third, if you think about it hard enough.

      After Amanda started kindergarten, I was looking for a lab-related job with flexible hours such that I could be home when the girls got out of school in the afternoons. For months there were no leads. MAS had an ad in the paper, and I sent my resume, but heard nothing from the company.

      One day the phone rang and I ran to answer. It was someone from the church we attended. My heart sank when I heard her voice – I was thinking, “I'm looking for a job! Why is the church calling?” But the woman was not only someone from church, but someone who had worked for a few months in the lab my ex had been at when we first moved to Georgia. And the ex was at church one Christmas Eve, and they saw each other, and we were introduced. And since then she and I would say hi when we happened to cross paths at church. And one time I mentioned I was looking for a job at a lab.

      That was why she called on the phone! She was at that time working at MAS and thought I should reapply for the position that was available, and she would tell them to look at the resume and give me an interview! They were having a tough time finding qualified candidates.

      So, after a rough start – the interview was scheduled during the March snowstorm of 1993 – school was closed, and I packed up the girls, and we attempted to drive to MAS. After a couple of miles I turned around and went back home. I called and asked to reschedule, and the receptionist said that no one was expecting me to show up that day – heck! A couple of the folks who were going to interview me were not even there!

      But finally I was able to meet with everyone, and things, at least to me, looked very promising. The hours were flexible enough – part-time that might work into full time. A few weeks went by without hearing back from MAS, and I was beginning to lose all confidence in myself – why did they not want me?

      And then the call came, and my first day was April 15^th, 1993. Part-time lasted, I think, all of one week – and then I was full time but still with flexible hours, usually 5am to 2 or 3pm depending on what Sarah or Amanda had going on after school on any given day, such as piano lessons.

      When I started at MAS, Amanda was in kindergarten and Sarah was in third grade. Today Amanda has a husband, a Masters degree in music pedagogy and a piano studio. Sarah has a husband, a Masters in library science and two children – one of whom will be in kindergarten this August. I will always be grateful to MAS for giving me the opportunity to spend the kind of time I wanted with my daughters.

      It was not too many years ago that I heard a different version of my being hired at MAS. Here is a paragraph written in 2009 for my story-a-day letters -

Last Thursday our department was sitting around the conference table, and Mike was giving the new guy a brief history of each of us. When he got to me, I added, "today, April 15th, just happens to be the 17th anniversary of the day I started work here at MAS." Bill E., sitting next to me at the lab meeting, said, "I'm the one who interviewed her, and she was not my first choice. I offered the job to another woman who had some asbestos experience. Denise didn't have any. But the first woman refused to take the obligatory drug test in order to get hired. So Denise was offered the job by default. Maybe drugs was the reason the first candidate was so effervescent."

     You could say that I was hired at MAS because of my qualifications; and you could say it was due to a case of who you know - very clearly illustrated here with the woman I knew from church who my ex knew from another lab. But when it comes right down to it, dang – it really and truly was just dumb luck, pure and simple.

104 20150414 MAS at 22

Mike at 56

Mike at Hermanos 2015

      Today, April 13^th, is Mike's birthday! He does not seem any older, and then again, he seems to have aged a whole bunch since hanging around with me! Oh well.

Looking good for the hunt! 2010

Emceeing at Storytelling

      What story or memory can I write down for Mike's birthday? There's the one about the time Mittens brought a live rodent into the house which took up residence for the next few months. I'll save that for another day. Or the time his truck would not start – that's the story I always have ready to tell should an event be short of tellers some evening. There is the year we were at the company Christmas party and had neglected to discuss ahead of time the designated driver, and we each got a separate ride home that night. Of course, there was Mike's fiftieth birthday where we had a big party at the house – his sisters came from Alabama and Florida – and there were oysters and kegs of beer and the oysters were gone long before the beer – a week later, Mike was still trying valiantly to empty the kegs, but alas, we sacrificed some to the backyard.

where's the beer?

      One thing that stands out most of all about Mike is how supportive he has been with my pursuit of storytelling. In fact he has dived in and has become a gifted teller himself! Mike often talks of Brantley, Alabama, and he paints a picture such that we can see Main Street and the shelves in the hardware store, and the human touch he puts on all the people in town – making us want to know more!

      And he is so danged cute! I can post info on facebook about upcoming storytelling events, and I can be clever, full of puns, poetic, sometimes bordering on shocking – just to get folks' attention – and the post gets no attention at all. BUT if I post just one picture of Mike – usually any picture of him with a glass of beer at any bar – I swear, people start clicking the like button, and it continues for days!

I'm the luckiest woman in the world!

Cheers!

      So I blatantly use pictures of Mike now to promote my postings.

He is one of the Good Guys – romantic, strong, generous, funny, smart,....and cute.

Our first anniversary 2010

103 20150413 Mike and 56

Gomez Philosophy

      Not too long after we moved to the old farm house on Zimmerman – we got a pair of kittens from a litter that neighbors back in Valley Circle Lane had weaned. They were half Persian, and we were only going to get one, but somehow we got a brother and sister. Gomez was black with some white markings on paws and face. Morticia was grey with white fur in the same places as Gomez. Of course, they were named after the main characters on the tv show The Addams Family.

       Morticia was only with us a few months – both cats were indoor/outdoor, and one day Tish did not come back. I heard years and years later that my brothers had found her at the time dead, probably hit by a car, in the gully across from the school which was not that far away.

      But Gomez was with us for ten years. We never had a cat before, not really any pets at all – a turtle that Eric can tell you about who only lived a couple of days, and a dog named Duke and a dog named Buster who did not stay long either because they did not get along with us children and were subsequently given away. So with our lack of experience, Gomez had us thinking he was a normal cat.

      He hunted and brought home birds and mice, sometimes eating them, sometimes leaving parts by the back door. There was a hole in the basement window where the old dryer vent used to be, and Gomez would come and go through that hole – sometimes bringing friends with him.

      One morning I got up and started walking down the stairs in the dark. On the landing, I could hear a commotion, and when my eyes got used to the dark, I was shocked to see a wounded rabbit and Gomez on the landing with me, ignoring me, and glaring at each other!

      When Gomez was hungry, he meowed. He meowed incessantly until he got fed. This is the part that we thought was normal - and it was not until Gomez was long gone and we had all grown up and had other cats of our own and my folks had other cats, that we discovered other cats do meow, but they don't do it non-stop.

      The cat Mike and I have now, Mittens, will cry once to let you know she is on the bed, or perhaps she thinks it is time for us to wake up, or she wants to go out, or maybe she is hungry – but she cries once, and when she knows we have heard her, she stops. Gomez did not do that – when he was hungry he meowed and continued - especially if he knew you had heard him.

      Sunday mornings, Gomez would sit outside our closed bedroom doors and start to cry. Each of us would pretend to be asleep, hoping someone else would wake up and go feed him. No one wanted to get up. And so the meowing continued. Our doors had louvers in them – after a while, Gomez would meow and then strum his paws over the wood louvers. If he was not strumming on my door, I could see his shadow in the morning sun coming through the louvers strumming on Clark's closed bedroom door. I think it was Clark who usually caved first on those mornings – he would be mad, but he would not make any noise himself in the off-chance that everyone else really was still sleeping and not just lying there faking it.

      Well, once we fed Gomez, he would eat everything in the bowl so fast that he often chucked it all back up again. And we did not know any better – just thought that all cats did that!

      So on school days, I was the first one home from school – my folks were both at work. Gomez would meow and meow insistently for food. He was such a pest! He did not appreciate that I did not use the bathroom at school at all all day, and I really needed my first few minutes at home to have some peace in the bathroom. So the noise continued. Finally I would feed him, and the house would be quiet for a while.

It was not too much longer that my brothers would arrive home from school, and it was about this time that the tell-tale sound of Gomez making heaving noises could be heard. I would stop what I was doing to figure out what room of the house the cat was upchucking in and make a mental note to find it and clean it up before Mom got home.

      One day I heard the cat heaving, and I thought it was coming from the basement. Clark and Eric had been going up and down the stairs - so I figured they would take care of the upchuck in their travels. And I forgot about it. About a half an hour later, I was walking down the stairs to the basement, when I saw the pile on one of the steps! I turned around and stomped my feet back up the stairs – yelling the whole time “how can you two walk past this cat puke and ignore it over and over again?”

      I went to the kitchen to get some paper towels, “why is it okay to walk past cat puke and think that it is okay to just let someone else clean it up instead of you?”

      Returning to the step and bending over to clean up the mess, “are you really going to pretend that you have not seen this, or even heard it happen, and just walk right by it over and over again? Because you aren't fooling me into thinking you did not know it was here!”

Both brothers were staring at me as I finished cleaning up the cat puke and I made one more rant, “why didn't you take care of this yourself?” One brother calmly responded, “we both know that you will make a lot of noise, and then you will clean it up.”

      You have to admit, it is a pretty good deal! Most of the time, having to hear all that noise is a small price to pay to have someone else do the chore!

      Over the course of my long work history, the Gomez upchuck story has come to my mind many times – I make a lot of noise, but I'm pitching the fit while doing the work that I'm complaining that someone else should have been doing! One co-worker even asked me one time if I could eliminate the noise and just do what everyone knows I'm going to do anyway!

      And I have also come to realize that I am the one being petty in cases like this (especially in light of the Sunday morning Gomez antics mentioned above, that I usually don't include when talking about the puke on the stairs after school story!) So nowadays, I tend to be a little quieter about it – but every once in a while Mike asks if something or other is bothering me, usually in the workplace, and I'll say, “No, it's just cat puke.”

102 20150412 Cat Puke 

Rats of Words

     Until recently, Mike and I shared the same office at the lab. Our desks were back to back, and often when we were trying to talk to each other, our necks stretched so we could see over the top of our monitors. And our co-workers thought that was so cute! How wonderful that we spent every minute of every day together without trying to tear out each other's throats. Yeah – well, we'll just go with that rather than spoil everyone's idyllic illusion.

Mike in the office he shared with me

     Anyway, one day Mike was typing an email, and he asked me how to spell separate. My brain went to automatic, and instead of spelling it for him, I said, “separate is a rat of a word to spell.” Mike said, “do you know how to spell it or not?” I repeated, “separate is a rat of a word to spell – get it?” Yeah, then he got it. “Did your teachers not give you little tricks like that to help you spell certain words?” Not any that he had remembered all these years later.

     Well!

     The principal is my pal.

     We all want a piece of the pie.

     Do not mar your grammar with poor speech.

     Connecticut is connect I cut, which makes no sense at all, but you don't forget it!

     I guess those are all the ones I remember.

     At the beginning of this year, Mike moved to his own private office in another corner of the building - a place that better reflects his status in the company – no more looking over each other's monitor by day. I don't know who will help him now with his rats of words to spell!

101 20150411 Rats of Words

Jumping out of a Plane

     

At Seneca Falls 1976

 In the early '70's there was a television show on its first run called All in the Family. In one episode, the main character, Archie Bunker, was turning 50 and his family wanted to celebrate. But Archie was grouchy and wanted nothing to do with celebrating. When his wife and daughter asked him why, he said that accepting 50 is to accept that he is old. I was in college at the time, and my parents were in their early 40's – so I agreed with Archie, 50 was old. Archie said that there were things in his life he had not done yet, and now he might never do them – he said he had never ridden a horse!

      For some reason, that scene has always stuck with me. I think it is because I remember sitting on a horse at my neighbor's house across the street when I was only four years old – it was a memory I just took for granted. And yet here was Archie – talking about what we call these days a bucket list – and he thought he had missed his chance to ride a horse.

I made a vow then to do the things I wanted to do before I got old. One item on my list was to go skydiving, just once, just to say that I did.

      A few years went by. I graduated college in 1975 – Canisius College go Griffs! A Jesuit institution of higher learning in Buffalo, New York. Receiving a bachelor of arts degree in biology, I decided that instead of more schooling, I would take my diploma and see what was out there in the working world for me – for a while. The job market was poor and I am terrible at selling myself. There had to be a lab or someplace out there who would want a great employee like me to hire!

            I scored high enough on a civil service exam that I had to be offered the job that the test was for – health inspector! The people in charge told me I did NOT want to be a health inspector – it would involve going to people's homes in questionable parts of town and probably irritating them. Yeah, it sounded scary. They drove all the way out to North Boston one day to make sure I had signed off on the papers in the correct places so that it was all legal that I was declining the health inspector job.

          Finally, after five months of looking around, my grandmother mentioned a place within walking distance of her home that looked like it might be a lab. I checked it out, walked in, and found the guts to tell the two owners of the agar factory to hire me. They said their employees don't require a four year degree. I said they could pay me the same as the others. They were worried I would get bored and leave – I said I wasn't doing anything else with my time right then – please give me something to do. And so I was hired.

      There are many stories I could tell about the agar factory, and I do from time to time. There are things one learns in the workplace that are not in textbooks or taught in school. For the most part I was happy to have something to do everyday, someplace to go. But the work was indeed a bit mindless, not what I went to school to do, and the pay was not enough to help me save for graduate studies which is where I figured I should be going if there was nothing else out there for me at my present educational level.

      That next summer, many of my college friends came back to town from all the places they had flown off to after graduation – medical school, dental school, graduate school. We hung out just like old times – had a lot of fun.

      But at the end of the summer, they all left town again – back to their respective schools. They left me there all alone – their geography and their studies were leaving me ever more behind.

      Not only was I in a mind-numbing job, but clearly I had made the wrong choice in entering the workforce instead of continuing my education and I saw no way out, at least not in the immediate future.

      One of my friends had not yet returned to his school in Chicago. Mike H., easily the smartest person I have ever met, was doing his graduate studies in quantum physics. His next semester was not beginning until mid-September. And in the midst of my late August feeling sorry for myself state, Mike called on the phone and asked if I would like to do anything.

      I said yes, I would like to go skydiving.

      Mike thought that was a great idea, and he offered to get some info about it. A couple of days later Mike called again and said that the nearest place for us to jump out of a plane would be Seneca Falls – a drive of about two hours east of Buffalo – Seneca Falls is the home of the first Women's Rights Convention in 1848! And it was where, in 1976, we were going to do our one time skydiving so that when we turn 50 we can say – well at least we jumped out of a plane!

       Mike said we would have to take a class which lasts most of the day before we could get to the skydive – a Sunday would be best. That next Sunday morning, very very early before my parents even woke up, I left a note saying I would be hanging out with Mike that day. We picked up a third person – the brother, Rick R.,  of a dear college classmate of ours.

      And we were gone. Points east. To Seneca Falls. What was this going to be like?

      We arrived and found the skydiving school. There were about 10 folks wanting to take the class and jump out of a plane that day. I don't remember too much about the hours we spent training except that we had to jump from a platform to the cement floor – about 3 feet down – and that was the equivalent of the impact we would be feeling when we landed after the jump. Not too bad.

       And we had to learn all about parachutes – mostly the ripcord pulling part, not the packing. Once you pull the ripcord and the parachute opens, you are supposed to look at the parachute to see if it is okay. If there is something wrong, there were moves you could make to try and straighten it out. But if you looked up and saw a Mae West, a cord pinching the middle of the chute such that it looks like two bulbous Mae West breasts, well, you are probably a goner – the chute will not help you land safely, and there's not much that can be done to get the two breasts to become one parachute. After this many years, Mae West is hard to forget!

      The training about the deployment of the parachutes was not really necessary for our jumps that day – but would be useful should we decide to pursue skydiving as a hobby. For our one-time jump, the parachutes were packed for us, and the ripcords were going to be hooked onto the plane! We did not have to pull the cords ourselves, they would be pulled by the plane once we jumped – a guaranteed successful deployment of each chute! Oh my gosh, could it get any easier?

      Finally the time came for us to put on the suits and helmets and the parachutes. We loaded onto a small plane, and the plane began to move; it rolled down the runway. It got to the end of the runway. And then it stalled!

The trainers told us not to worry about anything! They would get the plane started, re-do the runway, and then we'll be in the air.

That oh-oh voice inside me said, “Uh, don't you think this is your cue to get off? Really? The plane breaks down at the end of the runway and you still think it will be okay to fly in?” The suggestion to get off the plane was a really good one, but I stayed on as did everyone else.

      Eventually the plane got started, went down the runway again and this time became airborne – of course it did, how else could it kill everyone on board?

      We circled the area of the skydiving school. Maybe the plane would be okay after all. We got to the prime area for us to jump. One at a time someone would go to the open door. The cord was hooked to a place on the floor of the plane – the person was told to jump and the person did! Then the next person went to the door – hooked, was told to jump, and out the person went. Everyone jumped, including Mike and Rick. I was the only one left. I got to the door, hooked, was told to jump – and I yelled “Nooooooooo!” It was too frightening! – so far down! – how could anyone sane just jump? The plane by then was just past the prime landing space. The instructors said the pilot would circle around again and I would have to jump the next time. They were not going to push me – I had to do it on my own. And if I did not do it the next time, I would have to ride with them as they went a lot higher so the instructors could have a jump too – and then I'd have to ride back to land with the pilot. I said that I understood. As we circled, I was getting airsick – I knew I wanted to jump rather than stay on the plane – they yelled “Jump” I yelled back “Noooooooo!” but I tilted forward, hoping gravity would pull me out.

And it did!

      Free fall for about a half a second – a very terrifying half a second – and then my parachute opened. I looked up, no Mae West – the chute had deployed correctly. I looked around. The weather was perfect. I was sailing slowly – slower than a ferris wheel. Floating down, safely, no roller coaster adrenaline rush, So peaceful drifting – the world so beautiful in every direction!

      The guys and I drove back home ecstatic that we had accomplished something that we had said we would do someday. The next day I told my parents all about it. They were upset at first but then they couldn't wait to tell everyone what their daughter did on Sunday.

A few days later Mike went back to school in Chicago.

      I decided that I would work extra hours at the agar factory, earning as much money as I could in as short a time as possible. By November I could have my college loans paid off.

And then I could tilt out of the plane again – float freely and look around to see what else was out there for me. And I did, and I have.

100 20150410 Skydive

Zimmerman

 

Wood from the barn

    Where Heinrich Road – the road that our first house was on – met Zimmerman, there was an old farm with quite a few acres, barns of different sizes, and a house that had been built early in the century. The farmer had passed away, and his widow sold the property to a local housing developer in 1965 – the year I was in sixth grade. My parents had been looking for a larger place to live that would be in their price range. Mom knew the developer since he was a client at the law office – and she and Dad talked with him about selling them the house!

      We moved in that summer – and this is the place we refer to as Zimmerman whenever we are talking about the old homestead. While I have many memories about the house on Heinrich, my brothers, being slightly younger, remember Zimmerman more as home.

      The house came with, I think, three quarters of an acre. There was one two-story barn that we used as a garage. (Dad, years later started to make an apartment out of the second floor of the garage, jokingly telling his mother-in-law it would be her living quarters someday – actually it would have been quite nice – pine-board floors and everything!) There was a smaller barn next to the garage that the boys used as a clubhouse – no electricity and only a small window at the top – so it was dark inside – but a functional clubhouse nonetheless. We also had a small white chicken coop with pine floor. Just beyond our property were the other barns from the old farm, including one gigantic barn right next to the road which everyone, understandably, thought was ours.

Mom painted the imprinted designs

      We explored all the outbuildings. There had been yard sales before the property sold, but we still found a few neat things. Sometimes we played in the different barns – without any accidents, fortunately. And as we got older and the buildings began to fall apart, we took artsy pictures of them. The developer, as fate would have it, never did anything with his property!

      The yard which belonged to us had apple trees, pear trees, a couple of cherry trees, a row of hemlocks to the left of the house, maples by the road in front, elderberry bushes out behind the clubhouse, raspberry bushes beneath the cherry trees, and a grapevine near the basement door. There was an artesian well in the back, mere feet away from the septic tank.

      One year the big cherry tree had tons of black cherries ripening – and then just before they would have been ready to pick, birds descended one morning just before dawn, and all the cherries were gone by daybreak! There was never again a crop quite like that one, but always the birds got what did appear.

      Another year the raspberries were incredibly plentiful – I was able to pick quite a few quarts of them, and I even froze some preserves. But that was the only season – after that there were pitifully few raspberries, and the birds got those too.

      The grapevine did very well, however, and for many years we picked huge deep purple grapes and made jam – and then suddenly one year, there were no blossoms, and later the vine died – we think some critter must have gotten at the roots somehow.

      We always knew when the elderberries were about ripe – the birds would poop purple on the cars.

      The apples were of different varieties and I think there were seven trees – the trees were great for climbing, but the apples were mostly buggy, and we did not know how to treat them to keep away the worms and caterpillars – besides, the birds would have gotten the results anyhow!

      The pear trees were similar with the bugs, although there was one kind of pear tree near the house which yielded huge fruit some of which could be eaten and were quite good – but if we neglected the pears, and they fell to the ground, they would ferment as they rotted and there was a hint of alcohol in the air! I remember one time a Jehovah's Witness came to the door, and as she was leaving, she asked if she could pick one of the pears! (It was not because they smelled like alcohol, I don't think) I told her sure, and she picked a nice big one with her white-gloved hand – it embarrassed me to think the pear might not have been as wonderful as she was expecting.

      As different and as much fun as the outside of our house was on Zimmerman, it was the inside that made my brothers and me into who we are today.

99 20150409 Zimmerman

Flower Shop Canadian

      When my grandparents, Dolly and Clark, got married in 1925, they moved from Canada to Buffalo. There were more jobs available in Buffalo at that time than in their home towns, and the pay was better too.

      And they both found jobs right away. Dolly saw a florist shop with a help wanted sign – and she went in, applied, and was hired! She told me that she liked that job very much. Dolly enjoyed almost every job she ever had.

      At the florist shop, there were just the owner and Dolly. After a few months there, the owner asked Dolly one day if she knew why he had hired her over all the other applicants for the job?

       Dolly answered with what she thought was the obvious – she had been the most qualified?

      The flower store owner chuckled and said that everyone who applied for the job was qualified! He had to find a reason to hire one of the candidates over all of the others. Something that stood out.

      “You are Canadian,” the florist said, “And my wife is Canadian. I like my wife. So I figured that I like Canadians, and that is what made you a better applicant than all of the others. I hired you because you are Canadian.”

      I guess in today's world the flower shop owner would get into trouble for vocalizing something like that. But what surprised my grandmother at the time was the admission that it was not her qualifications that got her the job, but rather some dumb luck and a guy who happened to like his Canadian wife.

      There are many life lessons you don't learn about in school, but rather you find them out as you experience them firsthand. Things that should make sense turn out to be both completely arbitrary and simply realistic. Sometimes you get a job because you are the best candidate for the position, yet more often you land a job because of who you know; and then other times it is just dumb luck that you are picked over somebody else. And that's just how it is –

      Work at the flower shop did not continue after Dolly had her first child and stayed home to take care of him. More children followed. And she soon learned that parenting too is successful sometimes if you know what you are doing, and other times it is successful because of who you know, and yet it's the times when plain dumb luck saves the day, and you wonder if you have really ever been qualified for anything at all!

98 20150409 The Flower Shop Canadian