A tale of two jobs

On Tuesday, following President Barack H. Obama’s oath and after I’d grown tired of all the bloviating by the TV commentators, I still had the TV on and the sound muted but was reading some stuff online when the phone rang.

It was Wal-Mart. Did I want to come in for an interview for a job the next day? “It’s a cart-pushing job,” the woman said. I said I’d come in at 10 a.m. I can’t be picky because I’m unemployed, and being jobless is not fun.

So I went out to a local pizza buffet and was sitting and reading (and chowing down) when ELO’s “Telephone Line” began to play on my iPhone. I picked up the phone, and it was a bureau chief for my former employer, a daily newspaper, saying that if I wanted to cover the arrival of some World War II airplanes at the Venice, Fla., airport, I could. I had proposed the story after seeing an ad in the newspaper, and here was something meaty: a great assignment for Wednesday afternoon, doing what I love: journalism. (OK, plus seeing some historic airplanes and talking to veterans who made the world safe for freedom and democracy.)

I got all dressed up for the Wal-Mart interview and an accident on I-75 almost made me late. Like a good worker, I called in and told them what I knew, warning I might be late. As it turned out, I was less than five minutes late.

The interview was a few questions about whether I knew how to work with others and would I do the job. Well, heck, I’ve been working for 30 years now, from being a postal laborer to being a newspaper copy editor. I answered the questions, assured the interviewer that I was available for any time and any day of the week, and was told I’d hear back for the next part of the interview.

It hurts to be treated like a child and toyed with like this. I consider no work to be beneath me, but I guess companies are worried that college graduates and people who are neat and well-spoken might be the first to bolt for better jobs if an opportunity comes along, and so it’s OK to treat them shabbily.

I drove home, changed clothes, downed some lunch and then headed to the Venice airport to await the arrival of the planes. After I got there, I was in my element, interviewing people and taking notes, shooting pictures and trading military experiences. Seeing the B-17, B-24 and P-51 is always an awesome experience, but it’s those men who flew them — or aboard them — who have so much to offer. I wish I could have included all their stories in my report. Airplanes are just metal and glass, but those men are the heroes and I salute them.

Then I went back to my former newspaper, where my former co-workers were thrilled to see me. I settled in at a desk, got signed into the system, and turned my notes and interviews into a story that was in the paper on Jan. 23, 2009. A professional from the paper had gone out on Thursday to take photos, and did her usual great job. I’m a word man who can basically hold a camera and press a button, but I defer to the pros whenever I can.

After I finished the story, I talked with my former co-workers and bosses, then left to go home while they finished the next day’s paper. Things are so sad in the news business right now, and it hurts to see the news media suffering. Stories like those of the veterans — who fought to prevent a few dictators from deciding how the world should be and how people should live their lives — are fading and need to be saved for the next generation. And those in the service today have stories that must be told, too.

If I have to work at Wal-Mart, and never land a real job in the news media again, well, that’s the way it will be. But at least I know that for a time, I was a part of something that kept the old stories and the heroes in the public eye.

The first hybrid car I ever saw

The Detroit Auto Show got lots of coverage, though the big story wasn’t the new driving machines but whether the big U.S. carmakers will still be around for 2010’s show.

Another big story is speculation about hybrid cars, plug-in hybrid cars and electric cars. Toyota’s Prius is no longer alone in the hybrid arena, and more cars are on the way that don’t rely totally on a gasoline engine for motive power.

Back in 2001, the Prius was a curiosity, and I remember my first sight of and ride in one.

I was a member of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) – yes, there were men who were members – and I attended a meeting in Palm Beach County, Fla., at the main library with my friends and mentors (mentioned earlier in this blog). The speaker was a political science professor from my alma mater, Florida Atlantic University, on the future of the oil industry.

He was young, brilliant and well-spoken, and he gave a good talk. He ended by noting that he had recently acquired a Toyota Prius hybrid. Well, even though almost all of the members of the club were long past the age of running sprints, there was a race to the doors at the back of the room to see this amazing car.

It was the first-generation Prius, but the idea of an engine that shut off and the use of battery power for low-speed driving was exciting for those concerned about the environment and the troubles in the Middle East. (Mind you, this was that summer of 2001, before 9/11).

Everyone got a ride, and the professor showed off the displays and controls, and then he popped the hood so we could look at the engine.

“If I had known this was going to turn into show-and-tell,” he said, tongue-in-cheek, “I wouldn’t have said anything about the car.”

In reality, battery-powered cars were pretty common in the early years of the 20^th century (see The Complete National Geographic of those years, which had ads for them), and in my reading of The New Yorker magazine from the 1920s, there was talk about how traffic in Manhattan was getting to be too much, what with all the pollution, and its writers asked why cars couldn’t run on batteries when stopped or at low speeds so the engines could be shut off, thus limiting pollution.

Even in 2001, the Prius seemed to be overkill. Oil was cheap, gas was relatively low, and the car seemed to be aimed at those who were really on the fringes, those “the world will end soon if you don’t do it our way” types.

Well, here we are in 2009. Gas and oil prices have soared and crashed, the economy soared and crashed, and hybrids appear to be here to stay.

True, Toyota is having to offer rebates to move them, but that’s because people are wary of spending any money when they’re worried that their employer will be announcing “Opportunity 2009: Changing the Way We Work” (read: mass layoffs). Until then, the current car seems to be doing the job, even if the engine’s on all the time.

Pushing the cardboard

Like most kids, I had played board games like “Trouble” and the ever-popular “Monopoly,” as well as “Scrabble,” but there was this one game that was really weird but still fun.

It was called “Facts in Five,” and it was part of a genre called “Bookshelf Games.”

See this Wikipedia site for more information, including the cover that has just brought back some pretty awesome memories.

Here’s another site with more on 3M’s bookshelf games.

I saw many of them when I was a teenager in the mid-1970s, and I think someone bought “Facts in Five” for me for a birthday.  

The Queens Center mall on Queens Boulevard in New York City was about halfway between my house in Elmhurst and Newtown High School, also in Elmhurst, and I’d often stop there on the way to school or on the way home. My school was on split sessions due to overcrowding, and the juniors and seniors went to school from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., and thus the mall was open when I was going to school. (Sophomores went from 7 a.m. to 1 p.m., I think. As for freshmen, they went to an offsite building called the annex that was near the old World’s Fair.)

So I’d go to Queens Center, and visit Brentano’s on the lower level to check out the books and the table that held all the cool games. One was called “Luftwaffe,” and I finally bought it, took it home, and played it solo because no one else I knew wanted to learn the rules. That was my first Avalon Hill game.

“Luftwaffe” was tons of fun, though it really wasn’t designed for solo play. Not having a lot of money, I didn’t buy another such game until I was in the Marines and found a store that sold games, and that’s where I saw “Squad Leader.” It looked interesting, so I bought it and took it back to the barracks. I read the rules, learned how to play it and only played that game solo. Believe it or not, I still have the original box with the old wooden-backed boards and all the components.

While in the service, I bought other games, including “Air War,” “Panzer Blitz” and others. I still have “Air War,” which I bought in Australia, but “Panzer Blitz” is long gone.

After I left the Marines in mid-1982, I learned that there were expansions to “Squad Leader” available and found a store that had “Cross of Iron,” “Crescendo of Doom” and “GI: Anvil of Victory.” Yes, I still have those original boxes, and all the boards, too. I played them solo and had a great time until I got a job and moved out of my parents’ house.

I found a store that stocked Avalon Hill and other games and bought games like “Air Cav.” I think I bought some games from Avalon Hill and Victory Games by mail, including “Panzergruppe Guderian,” “Hitler’s War,” “Pacific War” and “Terrible Swift Sword.” The only one I still have is the first one; I think I threw out the last three when I moved from Lake Worth in 2001. I regret that now.

Every so often, I’d get into games again, then other things would demand my attention. In a future post, I’ll list the games I still have, and in a further post, I’ll describe my move into “Advanced Squad Leader,” and the thrill of finding another person to play the games with.