This is going to prove a very interesting week at work. As it happens, I’m going for a week’s “appreciation” [I ride out to jobs with the linemen], with the men who pound the boards. Fr’instance to day I was with Bill Marsinko. Average guy, he works the area right in the waterfront. We got into several factories & terminals, and dock areas that would be off limits to me otherwise. And do they know where to eat! I like that—you go in, you pay 3 dollars and you get dinner. And you had a choice—beef, potatoes & carrots or pork, potatoes, and carrots. Ah, it was home-cooked. The view was to me as fantastic as the food. Right over the docks, with fishing boats & seagulls & packing plants, & Polish seamen jumping port. Seriously, it was a storybook scene, such things I rarely see.
And Bill was moving about the right speed for Xmas. Quite a colorful character, nonetheless because he’s been serving this area about 7 years. Better him than me. I imagine it is difficult to become bored in the boondocks, if for no other reason [than the constantly changing] scenery. The humanity is really bottom-rung. [Sorry, got to cut out an ethnic sentence here.] I saw only white trash and Indians in the vicinity. Bill says there is another Xmas banquet (Chinese smorg) tomorrow. Who knows, I may luck out again. When I look back on my four weeks with the company I realize how good they’ve been to me. Better than the years at the {Montana] lumber mills, that’s no lie.
RofR and I got to arguing over the books again. I maintain if I am to do the books, the work must be made as pleasant as possible. He maintains the one exclusive summer of work equates to everything. But the numbers show—we both put in the same number of years. He put in more cash, but I put in more hours. He worked in more isolation, but I worked in more menial jobs. All that ended in 1978 for him, in 1979 for me. That he put in one more summer doesn’t click for me, I was one up anyway. But these books are ongoing, he wats to as it were, “inherit” my workable & efficient system, simply copy my guitdelines for a while & thereby prove my complain illegitimate. We’ll see.
[Author’s note 2017: the last paragraph refers to how I kept accurate books on all our expenditures and profits over the years since we got out of college. Remember, we were still kids in 1981. He felt the books did not reflect reality, and my complaint was that my hours of keeping the books straight counted as real time. He said it was easy and he could do the same in minutes a week. Like all partnerships, yes, we argued, but I’ve said many a time, the idea is to find somebody you can argue with and not stomp out. Like guitar players.
I missed the university boat, now over 24 and no degree was a career killer in 1981. I didn’t graduate until the next decade, far too late. If you were not degreed and past entry level management by age 28, you were statistically doomed. That explains the adjective “anticlimactic” in the next passage. “RofR” may be a term that was not in place until later, but it is the same person.
Also, the original is laced with ethnic jokes, which were not politically incorrect at that time. I had to remove them, seriously. But that is no victory to you Libtards, the jokes are in the originals, and I mean it when I say “you people”. There is no concept more disgusting than taxing a working man to fuel your personal guilt trips.]
He [RofR] got me a priceless book, quite a deal for $13.00. I needed it & he sprung for it. Great, he’s impressed by the [new] job. But even he admits it’s anticlimactic. I’ve been (in his words) a victim of plain bad luck. Suppose I became president tomorrow—the damage has been done.
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