Unsettled Epilogue B: 1976

The year before I wrote those lines about our house on the hill, during the second semester of my sophomore year, one of my professors (Mrs. Harris) kept me after class and asked me if I had ever considered changing my major from a "youth work" track to education. “I’ve had you in three classes, Tom, and I think you’d make a fine high school teacher.” [It was Mrs. Harris who taught my freshman speech class, the one in which I gave the persuasive speech entitled “Why You Should Build Your Own House.”] At first, I was merely flattered by Mrs. Harris’ kind words, but a couple weeks later she asked if I had given any more thought to her suggestion, and I had. By my twentieth birthday in April, it was official; I was on track to become an English teacher. (I also took as many classes as possible in speech, journalism, creative writing, and dramatic production, and all of them were classes I eventually taught.)

The ironic thing about this change in my major was that, until that time in my life, I was never very strong in English. In fact, if my high school teachers had been involved, they would have told Mrs. Harris. “Are you sure about this? The boy is a terrible speller [as readers of these chapters know]; he gets nervous about giving speeches in public; and he’s a slow reader. [All of these facts are still true. My slow reading is because I read aloud in my head as if to another person adding voices to dialogue, etc. The concept of “speed reading” is completely beyond my mental guard-rail. If I try too read fast, the words sound like a 45 RPM record spinning at 77 and my comprehension flies off the road faster than a mixed-metaphor in a blender. Consequently, my pages turn at the rate of conversation. It’s a pleasant walk not a run. The good news is I remember what I see along the way.]

In spite of these and other weaknesses, Mrs. Harris said I had a knack at communicating ideas in ways that made them easier to understand and remember. The fact that I had overcome some early struggles in my subject matter, according to her, would make me an even better teacher. People to whom school comes easily sometimes cannot relate to the full range of students in their classroom. Made sense to me, and more importantly, it seemed to make sense to hundreds of students through the decades [not “all” mind you but “hundreds” among the many hundreds is a safe assumption]. It was in spring of 1976 that I changed majors and chose between these two roads, and as Robert Frost said, “that has made all the difference.”

I came home at the end of my sophomore year and found work right away as a care-taker at the New Baltimore cemetery. More about that job can be read in a forthcoming series called “Earning Your Keep and Then Some.” I really liked that job and would have kept it all summer, but something much better came along, and in order to pay for college I had to take it.

When my sister Kathy and her husband Jack came home, he began looking for a job. As you recall, Kathy was due to have her first child in late June. They began living in the basement with us just a couple weeks before my niece Aimee was born. We boys moved our mattresses from our make-shift room up to the corner bedroom where Paul had spent much of his winter and spring. By then the lack up heat was not an issue, and Dad had gotten the bathroom in working order. Sheetrock was now on the walls, but there were still no doors or curtains to close, which didn't matter to us three boys.

Before taking her teaching job down south, my sister had taught for one year in Michigan and the father of one of her former students was in charge of human resources at the Ford Vinyl plant in Mt. Clemens, Michigan. (The plant no longer exists—mostly because there is almost no vinyl used in car seats and interior “headliner” anymore, but it was a huge plant about ten-minutes from our house.)

Because Jack already had is college degree he was interviewed for a “white collar” job at a different plant, a job he held for over thirty years. Paul and I rode in on Jack’s coat-tails so to speak. We were hired as “summer replacement” along with a dozen other college students. We were supposed to work only three months (since exceeding 90 calendar days introduced many UAW issues). Paul’s and my official title was: “multi-colored printer operator.” Come late August, I went back to school and Paul stayed on right past those 90 days. In fact, he stayed on for over thirty years and still works there even as I type these words.

On June 25th, which also happened to be my brother Dave's birthday, my niece Aimee was born. Two weeks later was the biggest 4th of July celebration in our nation's history. It was our national Bicentennial, but Aimee's birth was the highlight of our summer. I was working seven-days-a week with a couple 12-hour shifts thrown in for good measure, and I don't remember much else about that summer. Jack and Kathy got an apartment a few miles away. Their place had a pool so between that and our new niece, we boys were there as often as possible. We did go on a short camping trip in August. Dad bought a used pop-up trailer for $400, an old Apache; it was a true upgrade from the tent we'd used for over a decade. (The picture below was taken on that trip.)

Two note-worthy things happened in the fall of 1976, which was the start of my Junior Year. First, Dave and I drove the old Ford Country Squire station wagon back to school by ourselves. That's the old station wagon there. That photo was taken on that camping trip (based on the 1976 bicentennial plate), which would make Jimmy 8-years-old.
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The old car had over 140,000 miles on it and was on its last legs. In fact, just a year and three months before it had literally lost a wheel while making that same trip except headed north. Dad told us to do whatever it took to get that car to South Carolina and then sell it as is to whoever would give us a hundred bucks for it.

While climbing one of the long mountain roads in the Smokey Mountains of Tennessee, the engine overheated. Steam was spewing in a plume from under the hood. We stopped at the crest of the highway, found an empty pop bottle and proceeded to pour semi-clear water from a roadside puddle into the radiator one bottle at a time. It took several bottles of water, and lots of steam, but the radiator was eventually full again, and we headed on our way.
A few days after arriving on campus, Dave and I went shopping at a nearby mall where some Mexicans (I say that only as a fact with no other insinuations) saw the “For Sale” sign in our window, and paid us $100 in cash on the spot. We pulled the title from the glove box and signed it over so fast that as we walked back to campus we realized that we had forgotten to take off the license plates. The next day (being Sunday) we called home. Dad was glad we sold the car but not happy about the plates, but we assured him that surely these fine upstanding citizens would get a proper plate.

Two months later, we happened to see the old family car two lanes over in traffic—you guessed it: it still had our plates. I have a feeling that car had those plates until it died, but as far as I know it was involved in no illegal activities—at least nothing that was discovered by law enforcement.

The other thing that happened in the fall of 1976, was much more related to the house.

I mentioned that Jack and Paul worked at Ford. Well, in the fall of 1976, Ford got picked as a target for a big UAW labor strike. I could say a lot about unions and strikes and the mess Michigan is in because “labor” went way beyond the tipping point that free markets could bear, but I won’t. I only mention the strike because it led to a “hidden blessing” for my father. While he and Mom did not have the money to pay Paul and Jack for their time during those weeks of the strike, he did offer them free meals in exchange for work.

Paul had been paying “board” during the two years since he had not been in college. Kathy and Jack had lived in the basement with us for only a few weeks. During the strike they slept at the apartment, but Jack, Kathy, and little Aimee spent their days at Mom and Dad’s. The spending those days together was wonderful for Mom. Just one year before, she had been at a low-point in life, feeling lost in the woods, missing us kids--especially her only daughter who had moved down south. For Mom and Kathy both, sharing the duties that come with a ten-week-old baby was the best thing about the strike.

Dad took the blessing another way. It was during the strike that he, Paul, and Jack bricked the outside of the house and built the chimney on the inside. Just as they were finishing up the work, and just as Dad put the chimney to work by heating the house with wood, the strike was over, and things went back to normal for everyone. But make no mistake, had Ford not gone on strike in 1976, it would have been another year before the masonry of the house was done, and the house would not have looked like this at our second Christmas there.

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