Working

When I was growing up, a carefree kid in San Antonio, Texas, I never really gave any thought to the subject of work. Certainly, I did not think of such things as one's "life's work," but even in a more local sense, work was not among my daily concerns. By that I don't mean I did no work. Like most other kids I knew, I had chores to do around the house. My parents believed everyone should contribute something to the daily maintenance of family life, and my brothers and I were expected to do the usual household chores: cleaning up after meals, washing and drying the dishes; helping with the yard, eventually taking over nearly all of the mowing and trimming. When my mother cleaned house, we all pitched in. I remember the attentive devotion I used to give to waxing the hardwood floors with an electric waxer. It had a long handle attached to an electric motor that powered two six-inch brushes spinning in opposite directions and was used first in applying the paste wax and then in buffing it to a shiny glow. I developed considerable skill in this operation, and fancied myself something of an expert. Of course, it helped that the job required the use of a machine, something that seemed to add considerable importance to the project.

In fact, most of my earliest notions of work involved tools and machines of one kind or another. I can remember watching for hours from our front windows as a crew of workmen paved our gravel street. Like any child, certainly any boy growing up in the fifties, I was fascinated by the huge and powerful machinery that removed the gravel surface and replaced it with layers of sand, and gravel, and asphalt. I watched as the graders and shovels and dump trucks prepared the surface to receive the hot acrid mixture of asphalt. My Dad told me that these men had to train for years to be able to guide their powerful machinery with such accuracy. And I watched in awe as they skillfully maneuvered the graders and front loaders and huge rollers. I was even more impressed by the skill of these men because I knew that my father possessed similar skills, and I could see his respect for their work and their ability.

My earliest associations of work were with my father, who had to rise early and "go to work" every morning. Sometimes I rode along when my mother would take him to work so that she could keep the family car at home to run errands. My father was a truck driver and worked in the motor pool at Kelly Field, one of several military bases that seemed to surround San Antonio in those years. He wore starched khakis, a sort of uniform, sometimes even including a black tie. I knew he was in something called the Civil Service, not quite the same as being in the military, but still working for the federal government. I never saw my Dad "at work," or not exactly. Once, when I was still very young, he had to drive a large water truck, a tanker, from San Antonio to Fort Worth. There had been a flood and the water supply was contaminated. My Dad gave me a ride in the truck. Later, when Dad took a second job driving for Checker Cab, he gave us all a ride in the cab. But the most impressive driving I ever saw him do was in a truck rodeo he took part in one weekend. We watched as Dad and some of his truck driver friends maneuvered their big semi-trailers around an obstacle course and parked them in very tight places. It was amazing to me then, and still is when I think about it. Dad won a prize, although not the top one.

So that was work, as far as I knew it. Something my father did, not the somewhat lesser variety that my mother did and we helped with around the house. One clear difference was that my father got paid in money for what he did at Kelley Field, but my mother worked because some kinds of work just have to be done. It didn't occur to me or my brothers that we might actually get paid for the housework we did until we went off to school and began talking to some of our new friends. Eventually, we discovered the concept of an allowance. This was hardly necessary, as my mother pointed out when we first presented our requests, since we were given whatever we required in the way of spending money, usually enough to buy lunch or at least a lunchtime drink at school. All other things were provided to us as needed. But as my brothers and I discovered that other kids always seemed to have some pocket change, we decided we needed some as well, and my mother explained that money had to be earned. So we sat down and began to consider the cash value of the chores we'd been doing all this time anyway. And then, instead of doling out our spending money as needed, my mother began giving us a set allowance, supposedly based on work performed. And I do remember times when cash was withheld because of non performance or poor performance.

Once again, as I look back on my childhood I realize what wisdom my parents possessed. My brothers and I actually begged to exchange a system under which we were given just about anything we asked for, with one under which we had to learn to budget our own meager resources and plan ahead if we wanted to buy anything special. No longer could we ask Mom and Dad to buy us something without my mother responding, "But you've got an allowance now; you can save up and buy it yourself!" And so my brothers and I began to learn about work and money. And it quickly became obvious that each of us had his own characteristic approach to work and money management. Randy was always willing to work extra to earn extra cash, and yet he seemed always to be in need of more. As quickly as he earned it, he found something to spend it on. Larry, on the other hand, was more likely to forgo present desires in order to build up his reserves. And since he soon amassed quite a hoard of cash, Randy and I were frequently in his debt. My own tendency was to save up for a while, and then spend it all on some extravagance, often with later regrets. Only as I've approached old age have I learned to restrain myself and practice the frugality of my brother Larry.

In any case, having discovered the linkage between work and money, my brothers and I set out to improve our cash reserves, especially during the long summer vacations, when we searched for work around the neighborhood, mainly mowing lawns and doing other odd jobs. My parents didn't seem to mind our working during the summers, but they did little to encourage us to seek any sort of regular employment. In fact, they refused requests for such jobs as paper routes or stocking shelves for the local grocers. I was a senior in high school before I ever held what I considered a real job, but that doesn't mean I didn't work. Every summer my brothers and I found some sort of employment. As I said, we were kept busy mowing the neighbors' lawns, and seeking out other odd jobs, painting, cleaning, etc.

One summer we found work cleaning bricks at a demolition site where an old brick mansion was being torn down. It was an early effort at recycling. We were to be paid so much per thousand of bricks cleaned and stacked. I believe it was something like $7 or $7.50, not even a penny a brick. We showed up early with our supply of water and sandwiches for lunch and some hand axes we were to use cleaning the mortar off the bricks. It was a big site, and there were teams of grown men there as well, but none with more serious intentions than my brothers and I. We worked from morning well into the evening. I think we were joined for at least a part of the day by one of our neighborhood friends. But despite all our efforts, our blistered and calloused hands, our blunted and worn axes, our stack of bricks was well short of a thousand as the end of day approached. We tried every trick we could come up with. We looked for bricks with mortar only on three surfaces, we looked for bricks from places where moisture had weakened the mortar, but such tactics were little help. When my mother came to collect us she was amused by our industry, appalled by our appearance, covered as we were in dust, and sympathetic to our plight. I think the job foreman finally agreed to accept our stack as it was and gave us about five dollars. Anyway, we divided up our earnings, a little more than a dollar a piece, and learned a valuable lesson about hard physical labor. It doesn't pay well and it wears out the body.

But for a young boy growing up in Texas, physical labor is usually your introduction to the world of work. My first regular job came one summer when I was in high school. Bob Lewis, one of my parents' friends from church, decided to start his own business building fences. His regular job was delivering mail for the U.S. Postal Service, but afternoons and weekends, especially in the summer, he worked raising fences. These were not very fancy or elaborate fences, just the chain link variety seen nearly everywhere in suburbs of that day. The job was simple, but required at least two men, or in our case a man and a boy, and could be physically demanding, particularly in hot weather. Typically, we worked a few hours at a time, taking the jobs in stages. The first stage was to measure everything and mark the positions of the fence posts. Then we dug the holes with an old-fashioned post hole digger -- two handled atop two sharp curved blades. Mr. Lewis showed me the way, and I took it form there, although at a much slower pace. He was a big man, nearly six feet and well over two hundred pounds. I was shorter, only about five eight at that time, and slightly built. But I learned to let the tool do the work, and soon was digging suitable post holes. We planted the metal posts in concrete, and then came back a day or so later to hang the fence and gates. We had a gadget to stretch the fence from post to post. As I said it was hard, hot work, but at a dollar an hour it sure beat cleaning bricks.

When I graduated from high school, my Mom suggested I might want to find an actual summer job. This was a fairly daunting task at first, since I had no leads whatsoever. But I did what most other kids would have done; I got out the newspaper and looked at the want ads. I came up with a few duds, but pretty soon I learned to recognize reasonable possibilities, and after only a few days found a position as an attendant for a dry cleaners and coin-op laundry. It was pretty far from home, out on the old Austin Highway, and at first my mother was a little worried about my working alone in the evenings, but the laundry was in a fairly up-scale shopping center, and after checking the place out she went along with it. Amazingly, I was never robbed or even hassled. I worked from around thee o'clock in the afternoon until about nine, when I closed the place up. I think it may have stayed open a little later on Fridays and Saturdays, but closed early on Sunday, about 6 PM. I remember it was a lot of hours, but I think I got one weekend day off each week. And the pay was more than a dollar an hour. I think it may have been a buck twenty-five or something like that. But I liked the work, especially since most of the time I was on my own, completely in charge, so to speak. When I arrived at work the owners were usually still there, finishing up the day's cleaning and pressing and doing the accounts. They were a fairly young couple, recently arrived in San Antonio from Chicago, and while he was trying to get a start as a small business owner, she was going to graduate school in economics and political science at St. Mary's University. I'd never met anyone so sophisticated, with their Chicago city smarts and sarcasm, and their thinly disguised contempt for the local hicks who used their coin-op laundry.

They showed me the routine. My job was to hand out the cleaning and regular laundry after hours, and make change for the coin-op machines. Basically, I was just there to keep an eye on the place. It was rarely very busy, except right after the bosses left, from about 5 PM to 6 PM. That's when a lot of the military customers who worked on the bases would come by and collect their uniforms. That part was sometimes a little confusing. All of the uniforms looked pretty much alike, so it was easy for me or the cleaning and laundry staff to get them mixed up. Of course, we used those paper numbers attached to the articles of clothing. One of my jobs was to be sure to tag the cleaning and laundry that was dropped off, and to be sure to remove all tags before giving the clothes back to the customer. The owners thought that added class to the operation. I always thought it opened the way to greater confusion. But somehow I kept everything straight. The last thing I did every evening was total out the cash receipts in the cash register, which kept a running total of all transactions. Inevitably it was off by a few cents every evening, so I used to put in whatever was needed, but never took out anything that was over. This cost me very little, but sure kept the bosses happy. I was never short.

Working in a place like that was an education in itself. I thought I might see some interesting human dramas. But, in fact, it was usually the same drama: young girls, not much older than me, arriving with bundles of dirty laundry and usually also with several children in tow, varying in age from babes in arms on up to school age. They would try to keep the kids from running off or breaking something while they sorted the laundry into several machines. Sometimes they waited around while the cloths washed and dried; sometimes they would ask me to take the clothes out and put them in the dryers for them. I usually did this free of charge, but every once in a while someone would offer to pay me for the service. I was happy for the diversion and also preferred the place as empty as possible. But when things were really slow, I was just as happy to listen to the radio or read or write. I fancied myself a budding author, so I took a lot of notes and worked on a few short stories. Sometimes some of my buddies would stop by. Most of them worked days, and so got off before I did. After work we'd head out for burgers and cokes at one of the drive-ins on the highway, or more likely I'd drive back to pick up Joy, who was already my steady girlfriend.

One of my friends, Robert, worked even later than I did. He was always finding unusual jobs, or more accurately, his Dad found them. And for a while he worked at a golf driving range. In the evenings, he would go out to the range and drive around in this caged rig that was supposed to scoop up all the golf balls. It was very similar to cutting the grass, only you were scooping up golf balls. One evening we decided to help Robert and got a little too creative with our driving and scooping and got him fired. As penance he had to help his father cook for a girl's camp on the weekend. Since I'd been part of getting him fired, he managed to talk me into being part of the cooking detail. It was one of those church camps, with a large dinning hall and lots of smaller cabins -- very rustic. At first Robert and I thought we'd hit the jackpot. We would be the only boys at an all girls camp. But Robert's father had concealed several key bits of information. We were the only boys, all right, but the girls were all much younger. The oldest were only in the early years of junior high school. In addition, they were all from an African-American Baptist Church, and in those days such girls had zero interest in a couple of geeky white boys. They took one look at us and giggled uncontrollably. They were much more intent on learning the latest dance steps. The whole weekend they played only one song over and over on their portable record player: Martha and the Vandellas singing "Heatwave."

Robert's Dad was what they sometimes call a scrounger. He was also something of a con man, which is perhaps two ways of describing the same character trait. He was a sergeant in the military; he'd been a company cook, but now he worked at the PX or Post Exchange. For this particular weekend job, he was providing a breakfast of scrambled eggs, for which he'd brought along a couple of dozen eggs. Now even I knew that he wasn't going to be able to feed several dozen young girls and their assorted counselors with what he had, but I wasn't counting on mixing the real eggs with powdered eggs. And so it went. Powdered eggs, powdered milk, and many bulk supplies from the PX fed everyone to their entire satisfaction. It wasn't exactly loaves and fishes, but Robert and I thought it was a kind of miracle. I think there were cold cuts for lunch and stew of some kind for supper, complete with biscuits and punch. Robert's Dad did most of the cooking, and we helped with the cleaning up. Actually, it wasn't so bad. I'd just bought my first guitar, and Robert and I spent hours off by ourselves learning to play a few basic chords and singing some of our favorite folk tunes.

My first experience with what I call real work came after I was in college. I was still living at home and attending the local community college. Another of our church friends, my former Sunday school teacher, offered me a job working for him at Sunbeam Appliance Service Company. Although it eventually moved out to the near north suburbs, when I first went to work there, the repair shop was a small establishment near downtown San Antonio. I say it was a real job because the pay was pretty good, and came from a bona fide company, all the way from Chicago, but also because I was introduced to the dynamics of the working life. I started in shipping and receiving and soon worked my way up to appliance repair. It was skilled work and I learned a lot about appliances as well as about the typical American workplace. I was just a kid, even though a kid who was obviously closer to the boss than anyone else who worked there, and I had to learn the ropes of working in a world of grown men (and one woman).

At first I wasn't sure how to act. There were six others in the shop, besides myself. There was Dick, the boss, college educated and in his thirties, and his much older secretary or office assistant. I don't remember what her real name was, but everyone called her Weeta. Ed, probably in his mid forties but younger both in looks and behavior, worked up front at the counter. Henry, Leonard, and Dennis worked in the back repairing the appliances. Henry was the senior man, late forties or early fifties, followed by Leonard, who was ex-military, probably in his thirties, and Dennis, who was only a few years out of high school and not much older than me. Not long after I went to work there, Henry was transferred to another somewhat smaller shop, where he was to become a manager, like Dick. Perhaps that's why I was brought on, eventually to replace Henry.

The repairmen clearly saw themselves as the top of the shop hierarchy, with the exception of Dick, of course, and they teased everyone else. Weeta responded by being sarcastic and distant, holding herself above the fray. She usually stayed in a small office that she shared with Dick. Ed could also retreat to the front of the store, where he worked behind a long counter. The rest of the store was a rather pathetic display of recent as well as vintage Sunbeam appliances. Since the main business of the shop was appliance repair, no one seemed to take much interest in the sales displays. The shop appeared to me to be utter chaos. All along one wall was a workbench with spaces for each repairman. Since the repairmen tended to specialize, the most frequently used spare parts for their special appliances were arranged around them. Henry worked on mixers and toasters, Leonard worked on irons, and Dennis worked on shavers. But, in fact, there was no strict division of labor, and over time everyone was supposed to learn how to repair the full line of appliances, present and past. The rest of the space was devoted to rows of metal shelving loaded with spare parts. In one small corner was the shipping and receiving area, where I was given the responsibility of opening the packages of parts and appliances sent in for repair, as well as packing and shipping repaired appliances back to their owners or to other repair shops.

In time I was trusted with more responsible work, including actual appliance repair, which I much preferred to working in the front of the shop. Watching the counter was alternately boring or stressful, since some customers were not very happy with their Sunbeam appliances, especially if they were bringing them back to the shop a second time, after our failed attempt to make a repair. Working in the repair shop, on the other hand, was both fun and rewarding, as I learned how to restore broken appliances back to working order. First I learned to repair irons. These were relatively simple in those days, and most often the problem was a bad cord, which was easily replaced, or a faulty heating element in the base. In the latter case, except for older models, we simply replaced products under warranty or sold the customer a new iron. For some rather early models, we still had replacement parts, and customers frequently preferred to keep these older, sturdier, and much heavier appliances. But we could see that a trend toward replacing rather than repairing was underway.

When I had mastered the art of repairing irons, I moved on to electric frying pans, toasters, shavers, and eventually to mixers. Frying pans were pretty much like irons, unless the cord was bad, either they worked or they didn't. But we also offered a refinishing process, especially for the aluminum fry pans, that was a fairly dirty and unpleasant job. First you removed all the encrusted grease from the pan's surface with a powerful solvent, then you had to use a grinding wheel to put a new surface on the pan. Of course you also ended up spraying a fine aluminum dust all over yourself. For this job you were supposed to wear a mask and goggles. Although on one occasion, I forgot to put the goggles on while I was applying the solvent and ended up splashing a bit of it in my right eye. Dick rushed me to an ophthalmologist's office, where they washed my eye out and declared me a very lucky young man. The eye's surface was a little scarred, but there was no danger to my vision. In any case, that may have been the last time I was asked to refinish an electric frying pan.

Sunbeam toasters were the best on the market, especially the radiant control models, the T-20s and T-35s. Sometimes we had to replace a heating element, but usually all that was necessary was an adjustment to the thermostat. For that we used loaf after loaf of the cheapest white bread we could get. But there was no other way to ensure the setting was right, since the entire mechanism was based on the heat that radiated off the surface of the properly toasted bread. When someone was repairing toasters, the entire shop filled with aroma of toast, either burnt or well done. And since no one really enjoyed the smell of burnt toast, there would be a lot of inquiries about how many toasters needed repair and how much longer the stench of burning toast was going to be filling the shop.

Shavers presented a somewhat greater challenge, since you had to work on small electric motors. There were also many different models for the repairman to master, with lots of different parts and mechanisms, but most were simply little motors with a spinning armature and gears connecting to the mechanism that moved the blades. Over the years Sunbeam's shavers went from a single blade that passed back and forth beneath the surface of the shaver's metal screen, to more advanced multiple blade models, and then eventually to multiple head and multiple blade models. The first thing you had to do was clean the shaver. Some of them were pretty filthy, with whiskers encrusted not only around the blades and screens, but even inside the shaver's plastic housing. The only effective way to clean them was with a cleaning solvent and a high pressure air hose. There was something very satisfying in blowing away all the built up whiskers and grime. Then you would strip the shaver down, removing the head and blades, and see if it would run at all. Sometimes a good cleaning was all that was needed. We always took off the housing and cleaned the insides and the motor, then checked the carbon brushes and commutator for wear. Generally a little cleaning and some replacement blades were all that was required to get the shaver back in proper working order. But occasionally we needed to replace a worn head and blades, and sometimes also give the motor a bit of an overhaul, replacing worn brushes and cleaning the commutator with a bit of fine emory cloth.

In time I was deemed sufficiently skilled to work even on the Sunbeam Mixmaster, the most complicated appliance we repaired. The Mixmaster was one of Sunbeam's earliest home appliances, with a heritage that reached back to the old Chicago Flexible Shaft Company, makers of horse trimming and sheep shearing machinery, something we still repaired in considerable numbers. Mixers required knowledge of motors, gears, and both electrical and mechanical parts. Like many other Sunbeam appliances in the sixties, the Mixmaster had not changed its basic design since its introduction as a model M4A early in the 1930s, but the parts varied considerably over the years, as the appearance became more streamlined and the attachments increased in number. The complications were a great challenge. Sometimes the motor failed to work; sometimes the gears were stripped; sometimes both. Yet the mechanism was once again both simple and efficient. In fact, I was so attracted to these appliances that I bought the best in the line, an M12 in highly polished chrome with stainless steel mixing bowls, for my bride to be. I also salvaged an old 1930s model, cream colored with green glass mixing bowls and a juicer attachment. Having learned to work on Mixmasters, I felt I had myself become a master appliance repairman.

But all of this took time. Over the two years I worked at Sunbeam, of course I grew in maturity and experience. But at first I wasn't sure how to behave in this new environment. Almost immediately I became the object of a lot of teasing some of it relating to my perceived incompetence and frequent displays of ignorance as the new guy, but also a fair amount of sly and off-color comments regarding my adolescent innocence in matters concerning the opposite sex. There were several large girlie calendars hanging in the shop, almost a parody of such places, and the repairmen would entertain themselves by telling the most outrageous dirty stories or asking me my opinion of the physical attributes of one of the young women on display, a new example every month. Of course, I realized that much of the banter was for my benefit, but Ed, the guy who worked the counter, would often blush profusely when he chanced to overhear some of these stories or off-color comments. And I soon realized that I wasn't the only one on the receiving end of the teasing.

One of their favorite routines was for Ed to alert them when an attractive woman came to pick something up. Then Dennis or Leonard or Henry would find some excuse to go up front and check her out. The system was pretty refined by the time I arrived. Ed would come back to pick up the appliance and would say, "Fox." Then there would be a scramble to see who could get into position to go to the front of the store. Obviously not all three of them could come bursting in at once. Ed seemed to get an enormous kick out of seeing them stumble over each other trying to be first through the door. Sometimes he would yell "Fox" when some older woman came in, and there would be much groaning and complaining to Ed that he was obviously not the best judge of "foxiness." It didn't take me long to realize that this was all a very practiced form of amusement. They knew better than to trust Ed, but even so they didn't want to miss out on the opportunity to ogle some pretty young woman.

Having caught onto the ritual, one day when Dennis's wife came by to see him, a young woman who very definitely qualified for the "Fox" alert, I stuck my head through the door from the front of the shop and said, "Fox." The three guys looked up and Dennis bolted for the door. I caught just a glimpse of the look on his face as he saw that it was his wife. Later he sat me down and explained very seriously that a guy just doesn't do that sort of thing to another guy. "It's not funny," he explained, "and some guys would take real offense at such behavior." He meant it as a warning, but there was also a hint of respect for what I'd done. I'd gotten back at him for some of the pranks he and the others had played on me. But that wasn't the end of it. Dennis kept working on me for a while longer. Until one day when I had a hammer in my hand and slammed it down on the work bench within inches of his hand. He looked up at me and said coolly, "Sorry, Pal, I didn't mean to get under your skin." Then he laughed and said for a minute there I thought you were trying to hit me with that hammer. And I said, "For a minute there I thought I was too, but I guess my aim was a little off." He did a quick double-take and said "That's not funny." Then we both laughed. After that we were much more on an equal footing.

Over time I became pretty close friends with all of the guys except Henry. He was both too distant in age, and left too soon for me to get to know him. I worked there for about two years, quitting when I got married and moved away to Austin. Weeta quit early in my tenure, and Dennis eventually got a job working for a finance company, where he could wear white shirts and keep his hands clean. I think he liked working for Sunbeam, but he could probably see that it was a dead-end job. Even by the time I went to work there, they were phasing out true appliance repair and instead introducing the policy of cheap replacements. Sturdy metal products were replaced with lighter plastic ones, and by the time I left only the older out of date products were still being repaired. One benefit of working in an appliance repair shop was learning which ones were worth buying. Before I got married I bought all of the best Sunbeam products, some of them are still working after nearly forty years. But nothing can compare to my Sunbeam T-35 radiant control toaster, with the automatic cradle that lowers the bread when you place it in the slot and then lifts it when it's toasted. It's more a work of art than an appliance, an object of beauty and mechanical efficiency that we continue to use every day.

Working at Sunbeam taught me many enduring lessons of the workplace. My first observation was that it was a lot like high school, or almost any other social group. There is always a fairly distinct pecking order. The boss, of course, is what one of my more recent colleagues calls the unpecked pecker. He (or she) can get away with things that no one else could get by with, simply because there's no one in the immediate work environment to challenge him. On the other hand, when the boss makes the mistake of crossing that often invisible line between bosses and workers, makes a joke at someone's expense, or says something inappropriate, he loses both status and respect. Bosses just cannot be pals in the workplace. Among the guys, someone will be the natural leader. When I first arrived at Sunbeam it was Henry. He was the senior man, knew the most about repairing the appliances, and carried himself like someone who had earned and expected respect. Not that he didn't joke around with everyone. After all, he wasn't the boss. At the other end of the pecking order is the butt of most of the humor. For a time, I was afraid this was going to be me, but after a period of testing, I was more or less welcomed into the group. Then I began to realize that the usual targets for snide comments and shop humor were either Leonard or Ed.

Leonard was one of those guys who defines himself as an expert, and not just with regard to the business at hand, in this case appliance repair. He was always the guy with inside knowledge of just about any topic of conversation, from women to sports cars. Later I would recognize the type in Cliff Clavin, the mailman on Cheers. He was also the first one of the guys in the shop to more or less take me under his wing. In fact, he was actually very helpful in explaining how things worked, what was expected of me, etc. He was the one who took it on himself to show me the ropes, and I was very grateful for his help. But as time passed I began to perceive that he might have another motive than passing on wisdom from his own vast store of knowledge. He was trying to move up the pecking order and establish himself as one of the senior guys. He therefore enjoyed my looking up to him and going to him for advice. At the time I thought this was a little strange, since it seemed to me that the pecking order ought to reflect the relative seniority of the guys, and Leonard was clearly senior to Dennis, both in age and in tenure at Sunbeam. But Dennis had really established himself in the shop, and Henry had obviously taken Dennis under his wing. So somehow Dennis had move up and passed Leonard.

This didn't come to me right away, but in time I realized that Leonard was always going to be the low man in the shop pecking order while Henry and Dennis were around. And even after Henry left, Leonard remained the butt of most of the jokes and shop humor. For example, Henry and Dennis gave everyone nicknames. Me they called Sport, a fairly typical but still somewhat amiable way of establishing my greenness. That's what Hud (Paul Newman) calls his nephew Lonnie (Brandon De Wilde) in the movie based on Larry McMurtry's novel. Leonard, on the other hand, Dennis would frequently refer to as Stinky. Now it was true that this was supposed to be a direct reference to the fact that Leonard smoked a pipe, and Henry and Dennis (and even Ed) were constantly objecting to the smell of his tobacco. Henry and Dennis, as well as Dick and Weeta, also smoked, but cigarettes, which were more socially acceptable, at least to themselves. Those of us who didn't smoke, Ed and I, were never asked our opinion. In those days smoking in the workplace was not only acceptable, it was more or less the norm. But it was not just Leonard's tobacco. Leonard himself was not the most particular man in matters related to personal hygiene. For days in a row, he seemed to wear the same dirty white t-shirts under his shop jacket, and he did in fact smell bad most of the time. His body odor and his tobacco seemed to combine to create a kind of olfactory aura the followed him around the shop. I know he didn't like being called Stinky, and yet he never seemed to take the hint and clean himself up.

Ed was an outcast of a different kind. It didn't take me long to figure out his problem. At first Ed was very cool toward me. I wondered if he thought Dick might be bringing me on board to replace him. In Ed's opinion, I was not exactly appliance repairman material, but as a college kid, I might make a pretty good front man. But as I spent time helping out on the counter, Ed began to lower his guard, and eventually we became good friends. His tastes were certainly different from the other guys in the shop. Ed's great passion was classical music. His only close friend was a young man who shared that interest. When he tested my knowledge of the classical repertoire, he was not impressed. But he was pleased to see that I was at least apologetic about my ignorance, and he began to educate me. In fact, I learned a lot about classical music and classical recordings, as well as high fidelity equipment, from my conversations with Ed. I also learned more about his personal life. He lived at home with his mother, who kept close tabs on him, despite the fact he was forty years old. But Ed was also dependant in other ways as well. He didn't drive, and so depended on San Antonio's less than adequate public transportation. And his inadequate income from Sunbeam was not really sufficient to support his taste for classical music and the opera. He seemed to spend a great deal of money on recordings and attending live performances with his friend Larry. But he appeared fairly happy, or at any rate contented with his life.

It should be clear that Ed and the guys in the shop had little in common. He considered them barbarians and philistines, and they saw him as prissy and "a regular old maid," as one of them put it. Of course, I was warned that he might make a pass at me, but even then I could see that was ridiculous. Ed was far too private and too well mannered to acknowledge any of this, but I sensed the tension between him and the other guys. Things seemed to improve after Henry left, but the distance remained. On the other hand, Ed became a sort of big brother to me and two high school students Dick hired from the church to work part-time and during the summers. We seemed to feel quite comfortable whether working up front with Ed or back in the shop. Looking back on these dynamics, I can also recognize some elements of social class in the workplace hierarchy. Dick was college educated, and thus distanced from the repairmen, none of whom had a college degree. Ed had not gone to college either, but he was well educated in the arts and his tastes were more those of the upper rather than the working class. My high-school buddies and I were socially not far removed from the working class of the repairmen, but we were bound for college and for a different life than appliance repair. This was just a stop on the way to something else. That also proved to be true for Dennis, who went back to school and got a white collar job, as they used to say. When I visited him at his new office, he seemed to be a different person, no longer loud and brash, but almost reserved and a little ashamed of our shared past when he got his hands dirty working on home appliances.

Again, looking back on it, I can see that I learned nearly all the rules of the workplace while working at Sunbeam Appliance Repair Company in San Antonio, Texas. Sometimes the social dynamics may seem to be a little subtler in my current office, the relationships among my colleagues and coworkers a little more fluid perhaps. But most of the lessons I learned at Sunbeam still apply, the pecking order, the office "leaders," the "butts" of the jokes. As I said, it's an awful lot like high school, more even than most of us would want to admit. It seems we'll always have the nerds and the bullies and the geeks to contend with. And no matter how hard we may try, very few of us ever really seem to grow up and become adults anymore. I don't think it was always that way, but I'm no longer sure.

© 2005 by Michael L. Hall