My Redacted Life: Chapter Four (Cont._4)

To this day, I can’t say who caused the snafu that they uncovered at work next day. Almost everyone received some blame. I didn’t, for I had nothing to do with it. As I’ve reported, we had a total of 17 projects due in less than two months, and I had finished two of the smaller ones with no problems.

It seems the staff had assembled a complete plan for one of the cities involved and had taken the first bound copy to Tom for review. I can imagine the head drafter placing the document on the desk of his boss like a second lieutenant placing his first set of battle plans before the commanding general.

He walked back into the drafting room with a slight swagger. He sat astride his drafting stool and took up a Leroy Lettering Pen. This was a small ink pen held in a device that rested comfortably in one’s hand. Two metal inserts fit into a ruler into which letters had been formed. By positioning the front insert, or scribe, one could guide the ink pen into the form of letters, numbers and symbols. The rear insert, or tail piece, kept the lettering horizontal. It was an invention spawned in Hell.

But that is how you added verbiage to ink drawings in that era. Different rulers allowed for different fonts and sizes. And of course, what you saw as you touched the ink to film or paper was what you got. It could be anything from precise lettering to a glob of India ink spreading across your drawing. At this moment, the drafter carefully wiped its nib on a tissue, relaxed his shoulders and leaned forward to place the pen in its guide.

It never reached it.

As his hand descended, there came a volley of oaths from Tom’s office so loud and clear that I imagined those in the building across the street could hear it. They ended with a call for the head drafter to “Get in here.”

There was no problem it seemed, with the drafting. It was clear, fine, and precise. He was one of the best drafters I have ever known. There was nothing wrong with the maps at all as for as the quality and workmanship was concerned. They were works of art.

The problem was, they were for the wrong city.

And some of the printed pages were in backwards.

This presented a high degree of concern. Tom expressed it in clear terms. The drafter blamed his assistant. She blamed the drafter. Then the drafter blamed the printer and the photographer at the blueprint company. Somehow in the melee, word of this got back them and they were swearing that they would never do work for the company again. Tom and Jim even had words.

I tried to make myself as small as possible, a trait I had picked up in the Navy and one at which I excelled.

The furor raged for another day while they took corrective action. The intensity lowered more from exhaustion that from satisfaction, and I completed another of the simpler documents. Three down and 14 to go. After proofing it at least 20 times, I presented copies to Jim and Tom. Tom flipped through his in an abrupt manner, snorted, and said, “Thanks.” I fled as he rose and started toward Jim’s office.

I was sitting at my desk grappling with the fact that I was about to run out of the “easy” reports when Jim appeared in the room asked if they could see me for a moment.

Oh hell, this was it. Somebody’s head had to fall and it would be mine. The money saved from my salary for a month would just about pay for the cost it would take to fix the recent problem. Oh well, easy come, easy go.

We went into Tom’s office and he motioned for me to take a visitor’s chair. Jim took the other. Tom took a deep breath and said, “How long have you been with us now, nearly a month?

I just nodded. He could fire me, but I wasn’t going to help.

“He picked up the three reports I had assembled and waved them at me. “In that time,” he said, “you are the only one who has completed a goddam thing.”

I relaxed a bit. Jim looked out the window.

Tom pointed to a report cover. “And these are the first things produced from scratch that I didn’t end up doing myself.”

Maybe they weren’t going to fire me after all. I relaxed even more as Tom nodded to Jim, who turned to me and said, “What we would like to know is if you would be willing to take over all production in the drafting room and see if by some miracle, we might get these projects done on time and done properly. You would be totally in charge.”

I couldn’t speak, But Tom did. “It will mean a hundred dollar a month raise immediately, more if things work out.

I said yes, of course. I would to anything to help the company.

But, I thought, this wasn’t going to go over well.

Designed by the Dark One, 
manufactured by his minions,
and avoided by the faint of heart.

Thoughts Day Three: January 3, 2018

It’s been cold where I live for the last several days, not Minnesota cold, but Arkansas cold. It’s caused me to think. My eyes teared at times.

We’ve spent the cold weather in a 100-year-old farmhouse, for reasons associated with the care of a dependent mother-in-law. The house, her childhood home for a time, was heated for the first 85 years or so by wood heaters. Insulation didn’t exist, nor did underpinning. Double-paned window rattled as the winter winds, and frost, swept through them. One can only wonder.

For those who might worry about us—yeah, there might be a few—don’t. We had the place insulated and, at least partially, sealed-in years ago. A nephew, now a highly successful business owner, and I installed central heat and air, and, worrier that I am, left a large gas heater in place for emergencies. We’re fine.

But what about those who aren’t? Do we owe them anything? Some of my friends now say we don’t. I respectfully disagree. My beliefs, training, and education have convinced me that America will never be greater than the poorest town in the Arkansas Delta. We can talk about the need for the “takers” to fend for themselves and not depend upon the “doers.” But, I’ve never heard of a cold, shivering, hungry, three-year-old demanding that she or he be allowed to “take.” They’re just cold and hungry.

Abraham Maslow would, I think, tell us that once that child was warm and fed, it might progress, mentally and physically, toward a state of being a “doer.” Until then, it will only dwell upon being safe. Wait a few years, give it a gun, and see what happens. What? Oh yes, I forgot.

Excuse me. I’m listening to this as I write and I had to stop for a moment. It is breathtakingly beautiful, and deserves full attention.

Where was I? Oh, on safety, comfort, and self-reliance. I just thought of one the best quotes I’ve read in the last ten years ago. Many folks, especially the writers of editorials in our statewide newspaper, love to quote H.L. Mencken. He was, at various times, a newspaper reporter, linguist, editor, magazine publisher, gadfly, author of books, and chronicler of American life. Raised in an upper middle-class family, he was also a cruel and cynical racist and anti-Semite who supported Germany’s role in World War One and once wrote a comedy piece about the actual hanging of an African-American man. It is still published, to the delight, I fear, of some Americans.

He could also write just about better than anyone else ever did. His most famous utterances fill pages. His works bear reading for their literary brilliance more that their content, although any one of us can use them, much like the Bible, to harvest much that nourishes our embedded prejudices.

My quote? Oh, it is not by Mencken but about Mencken. Alister Cook, in a preface to a collection of Mencken’s works wrote that, “Everything Mencken wrote was from a warm place and on a full stomach.”

I’ve done much in my life that good people would classify as vile and vituperative. I admit to it and spend a good deal of my time now trying to atone. I think, though, I’ve done some things right. I served my country, unlike the Current Occupant. I obtained two college degrees, one while working two part-time jobs while attending school full time, and one by working a full-time job while attending school part time. I’ve been employed or in school since I was eleven years old. I’ve been married to the same woman for over 44 years. I’ve never served jail time nor overspent my income. I think I can best describe my standing among my peers as “a semi-knowledgeable, but harmless old fool.”

Once, I was verbally chastised for telling a friend that I paid my taxes willingly for I believed, as did Oliver Wendell Holmes, that “they buy us civilization.” Do we lose our civility when we allow ourselves to despise paying them for the common good, or as the Galilean might put it, “to feed our sheep?” I’m, for one, afraid we might. We’ll see.

I entered the professional world with no experience, a general degree from a state-supported institution, and with the much-despised image of a Vietnam Veteran. Truth is, though, I started ten rungs up the ladder from an African-American brother or a white sister, either a Harvard Graduate with impeccable credentials, who might have started at the same time.

I was a white male from Northern-European ancestry, you see, the sociological equivalent of beginning from a warm place on a full stomach.

Taker?

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