In May 1985, I visited my Dad in Montana. During my return trip to Nebraska a week later, I passed by the small "city" of Blankton (not its real name), in northern Wyoming. I was impressed by its location in a gorgeous New England-like valley that runs along the eastern edge of the Big Horn Mountains (this should make it easier for you to guess which town it is; but please don't write the name in a comment). The mountains are only two or three miles west of the town (or so it appears to my untrained eye), and they dominate the horizon. Immediately east of Interstate 90 is the desolate scrub-brush prairie (or so it seems) that is so common in Wyoming (and which I have actually grown to like). I thought the area would be a great place to live just for the sake of the scenery. During my visits to Montana over the next two years, I occasionally stopped at an excellent second-hand bookstore on Blankton's Main Street. I always enjoyed having that excuse to stop.
Part Two (1987)
In June 1987, after graduating from college, I moved to Hardin, Montana, to put my teaching degree to good use by tending bar for my dad. Foolishly, I only stayed for five months (I was restless and wanted to return to my home state of South Dakota). My dad moved to northeastern Wyoming about a year later, so I never had a reason to go as far west as Blankton again.
Part Three (1995)
In June 1995, I learned (by sheer chance) that a museum in Blankton was hiring a curator. I was fully qualified for it in every way, and I was very excited at the possibility of living in Blankton. After applying for the job, I read five Wyoming history books because I wanted to "know my stuff" if I was hired.
Of course, I wasn't hired.
Part Four (2007)
In August 2007, I applied for the position of Macintosh Technician with the Blankton Chronicle (not its real name). The job description, as vague as it was, seemed like nearly a perfect match of my former duties as a Macintosh Network Administrator in a school district here in western Nebraska. I found it hard to believe that a daily newspaper in a small "city" in Wyoming could afford the services of a dedicated Macintosh Technician, but that's exactly what the job description seemed to say. I rationalized that maybe the owners of the Blankton Chronicle also owned newspapers in several nearby towns and that I might be a traveling technician (which was perfectly OK by me). I didn't really believe it, but I rationalized along those lines anyway.
I mailed my resumé the same day that I had found the listing on the internet (August 3). One week later, I received a letter from the editor of the Chronicle informing me that the position had already been filled.
Huh? How could they have found a Macintosh Technician so quickly in sparsely populated Wyoming? Mac experts are almost as rare as wooly mammoths in this part of the country.
The editor concluded by saying that he would keep my resumé on hand if the job ever became available again. For some reason, I had a feeling that I would actually hear from him some day.
Part Five (2008)
"Some day" turned out to be February 21, 2008. The editor called me that day and left a message asking me if I was still interested in the job. I called him the next morning and replied as nonchalantly possible, "Yes, I am still interested." He explained that the position had opened up again when the wife of the man that he had hired last August wanted to return to their old home in Michigan. [I guess it takes all kinds to populate the planet. Right, Kathleen? ;-)]
I asked him for a few details about the job. He said that he knew very little about technology, so he couldn't tell me exactly what I would be doing; however, he assured me that it would involve "computers only." He said I would have to get the finer details from the Mac Technician (the one that I would eventually replace in a year or two, when he retired). Naturally, I brought up my salary. I told him that it would have to be pretty respectable in order for me to move to an expensive town like Blankton (it has become quite a resort community in the past twenty years, with land selling and renting at double-ultra-premium prices, even out in the "desolate" region). He assured me that the salary would definitely be more than "entry level"; but he didn't want to say anything specific unless or until I came to Blankton for a personal inspection. I said I could to do that, and he suggested that the best time for him would be Monday, March 3. He recommended that I drive up on Sunday and stay overnight (with the newspaper reimbursing me for my motel room). I couldn't argue with that.
It seemed to take forever for the date of departure to arrive. But it finally did arrive.
During the long, cold, windy (and wonderfully liberating!) drive to Blankton on March 2, I kept thinking there has to be a catch. This sounds too good to be true. I could not imagine that I wouldn't be doing some sort of newspaper work too. The problem with that scenario is the fact that I absolutely do not want to do newspaper work (ever again) because it means doing the same stuff over and over and over and over again. And the repetition would be even worse at a daily newspaper. If I had wanted that sort of work, I could have applied for several newspaper jobs already. But I haven't applied for them because I know that after the initial thrill (if any) reality would quickly set in, as it always has before, and I would suddenly realize that I will be living this Groundhog Day existence for the rest of my life. In some cases, that might not be so bad, but not if it means I have to do the same stuff -- that I never wanted to do again -- over and over and over and over again.
I arrived at 3:00 PM (my first time back in Blankton in over 20 years) and checked into the large chain motel on Main Street that the editor had recommended. I then called him, as he had requested, to let him know I was in town. He hurried to the motel to meet me. He was very friendly and outgoing (a fairly young looking age 60). He took me to the newspaper office for a quick informal look, even though it was closed for the day. We spent about five minutes there, which was just long enough to depress me.
The building was not even one-third as large as the building used by the daily newspaper here in my town in western Nebraska, even though Blankton and this town are roughly the same size, and the readership (and surrounding communities) should be roughly the same, too. Even worse, it was filled with Macs ranging in age from about 13 years old (not the majority, thankfully) to about three years old (yes, Macs just keep going and going and going, like the Energizer Bunny). I knew at least half of the computers would be running nothing newer than OS 9 (Operating System 9) -- sheesh! -- while the few newest ones would probably be running various (and probably very outdated) versions of OS X (that being the present Mac operating system). For the record, OS 9 was discontinued in about 2000. It would be an unpleasant experience going that far back in technological time as a career move. I had envisioned this scenario many times before arriving in Blankton, but had kept hoping for the best. Of course, how could I have known any of this beforehand since the editor had not seen fit to list these details in the ad or mention them to me on the phone?
The editor also finally revealed that I would be doing some layout work (probably using one of my least favorite programs, QuarkXPress) in addition to my "technical" duties. And, of course, he said there would always be tight deadlines since "this is a daily paper."
To summarize: Old computers, old operating systems, mind-numbingly repetitive layout work in a less-than-stellar environment... EXACTLY WHAT I DID NOT WANT!!
He then took me on a quick tour of Blankton, which meant nothing to me since all American towns are the same in my book. It's the people and the geographic locations that make the difference. Blankton still has a thriving main street (a rarity in this day and age), but, aside from that, it is a stereotypical American town in every other way. It has the obligatory Wal-Mart, Taco John's, Taco Bell, McDonald's, Burger King, car dealerships and a vast array of gas stations/convenience stores, etc.).
During that guided tour, I tried to remain positive about the job, thinking that it might not be as bad as it had initially looked. I had driven too far, and I had had such high hopes, that I wasn't about to give up yet, at least not out loud. I would wait to learn more from the technician on Monday.
As we were returning from our tour of the generic suburbs of Blankton, he said, "Would you like to stop for a beer? I figure it's OK to ask you that question since you say you used to be a bar tender." I replied that that would be nice. A block or two later, he parked next to a tiny cinderblock liquor store. I said, "We're stopping at a liquor store?" He replied, "No, it's a bar, but it used to be a liquor store." He said it is his regular hangout. We stepped inside the sardine-can-sized building and found that it was packed with people. Most of them were watching the University of Wyoming Cowgirls basketball team lose to Utah.** We sat down on the last two barstools in the back room. We each had two beers and visited for about an hour. He was really doing his best to talk me into taking the job by mentioning great profit sharing, etc. He said I could work for the Chronicle until retirement, which, he pointed out unnecessarily, would be in a mere 18 years. My God! Talk about finding the right words to depress and disillusion a person!!! I was still a "youngster" just ten short years ago, with women in their 20s still taking notice of me!!! ;-( Now this guy is telling me that I could, if I wanted to, have a job in a remote community (Blankton suddenly felt very remote and lonely and cold) doing the same repetitive tasks day in and day out on old technology, while rapidly advancing in age toward retirement and beyond.
After that, he dropped me off at my motel room and told me to come to the office between 8:00 and 8:30 in the morning.
I ate supper at Burger King (a couple of miles from my motel). My motel's nice restaurant was open, but it was completely empty. I didn't want to sit in there all by myself with a hostess seating me (she stood there waiting for me to come in) and a waitress grudgingly asking me "how everything is," because it's part of her job duties. After Burger King, I spent the rest of the evening in my room writing emails and checking out my usual Mac web sites. I listened to people sneezing and coughing and talking (and maybe even blinking their eyelids) through the paper-thin inner door, while nearby train whistles occasionally bleated through the paper-thin outer door. Then some rude people parked their very loud and large pickup just outside my room and let it idle for about twenty-five minutes. I angrily got up after fifteen minutes and looked out the window just in time to see them drive an even louder Harley-Davidson out of the trailer behind the pickup and pull it into the driveway of a house across the parking lot. Sigh.
In the morning, I visited with the Mac Technician. He is a nice guy (also in his 60s), although I was told there is a less pleasant side to him. I could sense that was true, but we had a nice visit. The job he was doing when I first sat down (slowly importing next week's programming content into the paper's weekly TV-guide grid) looked exactly like the assembly-line work that I was dreading, and he was doing it on the ancient OS 9 operating system. He gave me more details regarding my job and showed me a few of the haphazardly arranged collections of aging computers. Then the truth finally came out, and it confirmed what I could already see for myself as I sat there: He said, in so many words, that I would be doing mostly layout work (in QuarkXPress) with some occasional "Mac Technician" work on the side.
It was all too depressing, but I was still trying my hardest to keep an open mind because I really wanted to get away from this town here in Nebraska, and I also really liked (like) the idea of living in northern Wyoming or southeastern Montana.***
On a shallow note: When I first entered the building and was walking to the back of the large room to meet the technician, I noticed that most of the female employees of the Chronicle are perfect clones of Trinamick's infamous Wonky-Eyed Beast. Egad!! I couldn't believe my eyes! How on earth had so many of them managed to accumulate all in one place like this? It was like a scene from a science-fiction movie. I certainly wasn't looking forward to spending the last wispy vestiges of my youth (sob, sniffle) working in such an environment. Fate has made darned sure that I have had nothing but rotten luck all of my life when it comes to being in the wrong place at the wrong time with regard to women; and this was just adding major insult to major injury. Is it any wonder that I want to become a hermit?
The final straw that broke the camel's back occurred when I visited with the editor again after my visit with the technician. I'm sure he expected me to love what I saw, and he wanted me to begin negotiating my salary. But I knew he wouldn't accept what I considered to be a reasonable minimum for moving there, yet I didn't want to ask for anything less. So I remained silent, and he finally set a much lower salary than I wanted (not much more than what I am earning now at my low-level job). His salary would be considered fairly acceptable in a less expensive part of the country, but it was much too low for a region in which land not only sells, but also rents, for prices similar to what you might find in a suburb of San Francisco. It was certainly way too low for me to uproot my entire life and move to Blankton in order to take a job that I already knew I was going to hate.
The editor had been so nice to me that I didn't have the heart to tell him I was leaning toward rejecting the job offer. Oddly enough, I also still wanted to have time to think about it for a while longer because, in spite of everything, I still liked the idea of living in that area. I told him I would call him with my answer in the next day or two. I tried to keep up a positive appearance, but I know he could tell that I was very disillusioned and was apt not to accept the job (I could tell because of some of the things he said during the meeting). He reimbursed me for my motel room and gas (giving me a lot more than I thought I should get, but a friend later told me I had received the going rate). As I was preparing to leave, he said, "I thought you were going to stay another day. I was going to take you to dinner tonight." Of course, I couldn't stay another day because I had to get back to work here. Besides, I didn't want to lead him on any longer or cost him any more money. I felt guilty enough being reimbursed since I was planning to refuse the job. But it was his fault that I had driven all the way to Blankton (660-mile round trip). He could have told me all the details on the telephone, but he had chosen not to do so.
The entire drive home was beautifully sunny (but very windy once I got past the Big Horn Mountains, which seem to block the wind). I stopped frequently to take pictures with my digital camera. I felt totally free for the first time in a long, long time. Even though it is winter, and everything is brown and white, I thought the scenery was absolutely majestic, frequently unique and almost always beautiful. Several of the towns in southeastern Wyoming (after I left the interstate for the final jaunt home) are very quaint and peaceful, even if they are dying.
All the way home, I thought long and hard about accepting or rejecting the job. One minute I was determined not to take it, and the next minute I tried to convince myself how much I would like living far away in northern Wyoming, so I would rationalize that the job might be worth taking in spite of all the drawbacks. Each time, the negatives outweighed the positives, and I knew I couldn't take it.
I spent the next two days trying to drum up the courage to simultaneously let the editor down and give up my greatest opportunity (so far) to leave this town. I spent most of Wednesday morning (before going to work) trying to pick up the phone. Just as I was about ready to do so, a serious problem (caused by the stupidity of my brother) arose that needed to be fixed. By the time that was over with (which required a visit to a bank), I just had enough time to make it to work. I called the editor the next morning at 8:30 and apologized for being late and explained why. I also said I was having great difficulty because I didn't want to tell him no, yet that's what I was doing. He was very rude and unfriendly and refused to say anything to me unless it was, "Uh huh" with an angry tone in his voice. Mostly, he was completely silent and left me hanging every time I spoke. I thought that his behavior was completely immature and unprofessional for a 60-year-old man in his position of authority. It was entirely uncalled for, no matter whether I was late in making the call or not (by only half a day, technically speaking). His behavior was embarrassing for me yet also relieving because it allowed me to stop feeling sorry for him. When I said that I should probably let him get back to his work, he rudely said, "OK, see ya," and hung up without waiting for a reply.
So, had his nice act had been nothing but an act all along?
It immediately occurred to me that if he could act like that because I was backing out of a job, then he probably acts like that toward his regular employees on a regular basis. I think I may have dodged a bullet by not going to work for him.
Epilogue
Ever since the editor called me on February 21, to offer me the job, I had been looking forward to the entry that I would post here announcing my new job and my new home. That's why I concluded my previous entry with this sentence: "However, if I think I see a "perfect" job opportunity coming along, I'll take it, and then let you know." When I wrote that, I had already known about the Blankton job for a week.
Never fear. I'll keep trying. ;-)
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**The fact that Wyoming's women were losing to Utah was perfectly fine by me because they had had no business beating South Dakota State University last year for the right to play in the national championship; it was SDSU's first year as a Division I school, and, with a team consisting mostly of small-town South Dakota and Minnesota girls, they had beaten most Division I schools on their schedule that year and had almost become national champions!!!
*** I would especially like to live in Montana now, since the fascist Real ID Act has been outlawed there in no uncertain terms (Montana's legislature and especially its governor are my new heroes). Wyoming is also considering outlawing it, although I can hardly trust a state that so blindly supports Adolph Cheney, or should I call him Dick Hitler? Nebraska, much to its credit and my shock, is also considering outlawing the Real ID Act, although it is probably mostly for reasons of funding rather than for the sake of freedom. My beloved state of South Dakota, which seems to have been taken over by neocons in recent years, appears not to be rejecting it at all. I guess I will never be able to live there again.
