Sometimes, when a big part of your life ends in a disaster and before you can say, “O, woe is me,” something else comes along and starts you in an entirely different direction. Sort of like the saying about a door hitting you in the backside as it closes while a ray of sunshine comes in the window. That recently happened to me, Jonathan D. Grant III.
I stared working part time at the Bytes and Pixels electronic store when I was in my first year in college. My parents agreed they would pay for four years at Wordsworth College, a private school in Northern Indiana, but I would have to work part time to get acquainted with the business world.
My father and grandfather, mechanical engineers, owned a profitable machine company. When grandfather died, my father sold the company to a larger company for a goodly amount. Now Mom and Pop survive very well on their investments. They live in their homes here and there doing this and that and leave me, my brother and sister pretty much to ourselves.
During my sophomore year Dr. Isaac Samuelson shuffled into my life. I say shuffled because that was his usual gait, head down, thoughts up somewhere. Dr. Samuelson, as I knew him in those days, taught courses in math and philosophy. Other students talked fondly of ‘Old Ike’ and since Mathematics was a required course for me. I decided I might be able to slide though his Basic Math class.
As it turned out, I could not slide through his class and that was a good thing. He was a formidable teacher. In appearance he had unruly black hair graying at the temples, sleepy eyes, well dressed (thanks to the good taste of his third wife) but always rumpled by mid-morning. Coatless in the classroom, tie loose, sleeves turned up, he threw strings of numbers on the board then tuned, his soft brown eyes hunting for someone who was not paying attention. “Grant, what’s the next step?”
How rude, interrupting my thought of the girl I met at the party last night wondering if I should pursue her, but then I was daydreaming because he lost me at 4X plus 5Y over 10Z minus something equals something else and so on. Numbers are not my thing. Without the cash register at B&P to figure totals, taxes and change due, the store would go broke or make a big profit, depending on the direction of my error.
To his credit, Dr. Samuelson did not bully students. Instead of grilling me about why I was so stupid he said, “If any of you are having trouble keeping up you can come to office for extra help. I did indeed need help — lots of help at that time. By midterm that semester, I was not only in danger of failing math but, because of mediocre performance in my other classes, I would lose my parent’s support. Out of desperation, I made an appointment with Dr. Samuelson.
His office was in the administration building at one end of the long hallway that ran the length of the second floor. The dark woodwork and the smell of the floor wax and the oil used for mopping made that long walk seem like the prisoner’s last before the gas chamber. His office, small with one window looking toward the brick prison-like gym added to the feeling of doom. Piles of books and papers covered most surfaces except for a rickety swivel chair behind the desk and an uncomfortable wooden chair in front of it. He motioned to the chair so I sat down and began by explaining my situation, adding that I very much wanted to do well in math and would do what was required. Instead of yawning at this oft-told tale, he smiled and looked sympathetic and said, “So you’re here willing to learn and apply yourself. If you’re serious I’m sure we can improve your grade.”
To tell the truth, I wasn’t all that serious about doing what it would take but I needed the grade so for the next six weeks i went over and over formulas, solved for the elusive Xs, Ys and Zs. I wrestled numbers around to balance the two sides of equal signs. I actually began to enjoy the challenge in the work that Ike, as I began to call him, gave me. By the end of the semester I knew enough to pass the final with a generous B grade given partly for extra credit, Ike said. With that my grade point average came up enough to keep me afloat in the eyes of my parents and the college.
Ike also became a mentor for me for the rest of my college years and beyond. He seemed to respect and like me and I was certainly impressed by anyone who could make math interesting and I developed affection for him and his firm but gentle coaching.
He helped me with some of the papers I wrote for my literature classes and suggested I get involved with the school paper that came out bi-weekly. In my sophomore year I wrote some articles and helped with editing and layout and in the following two years, by default and lack of interest among the other student staff members, I became the editor.
I didn’t have a lot of time for extracurricular activities but I liked to go to dances and student productions of plays and musicals. Sometimes I went with my apartment mates and sometimes with a date. The girls were fun but none lasted more than a few dates. Then one day during my senior year Brenda Livingston came into the store. Bytes and Pixels was about the size of a large grocery store, filled mostly with computer equipment in the front section and television sets many of which lined the walls and were turned on so customers would see the fantastic pictures and be enticed to buy. We also carried a wide assortment of audio and video discs arranged in aisles in the middle of the store. At the back of the store was a small selection of audio equipment.
Usually the fulltime clerks had pecking-order rights to young attractive female customers but they happened to busy with other customers that afternoon so I walked over to her as she perused the CDs
“Can I help you find something to go with your awesome personality?” I asked. She giggled and said that she was looking for CD players.
“I don’t know anything about these things, she admitted, “and I don’t want to learn. I just want something with a good sound to play my CDs, something for our apartment.”
She looked like a student so I showed her some players and speakers that I thought would be in her price range.
“Will this be loud enough to play at parties?” she asked.
“If you turn this system up you won’t be able to hear the neighbors pounding on the walls.”
“Okay, that’s what I want.”
I lined up the boxes with the equipment at the checkout counter and she paid for them. She looked at them with a pout and then looked at me. “Do you deliver and install them?”
I should say here something about hers looks: hair, shoulder length blonde with highlights; eyes, blue with violet eyeliner; lips, pale rose lipstick with a mischievous smile; figure, nice; legs below her shorts – maybe a little thick but quite acceptable. In other words, I would gladly deliver and install the system to spend more time with her.
I went to her apartment with the boxes after work. Brenda and her two apartment mates gathered around chattering while I set up the system, handing me components and bringing me a cold soda. When everything was set up we sat around listening to pop music and getting acquainted. All three girts were sophomores and planned to be elementary school teachers.
After that I saw Brenda regularly. We went to school dances,, to concerts, and to parties. She often came to the store to buy CDs, usually along with her girlfriends who also made purchases. We began to refer to this group as our profit margin girls.
Brenda and her apartment mates, Allie and Mindy, liked to dance and gossip. They often threw loud, crowded parties at their apartment and went to similar affairs organized by their many friends. They knew and commented on most of the people who circulated in these festivities.
“Oh, Ginny, your new top goes so well with your eyes and Mary, your outfit is so well coordinated!” But then they looked at the guys with Ginny and Mary and wrinkled their collective nose. “Oh, well, they’re men.” “Don’t tell me she’s with him tonight. She was all over his best friend last week.”
Of course I had to attend these parties which proved to be a wealth of information for the “People” section of the paper: “Last weekend our star quarterback danced all evening with a sophomore business major.” and “Coeds are fluttering their lashes over the new German instructor.” However, mostly I was having a good time and that caused Ike to comment that I was being an investigative reporter instead of a good editor who would cut all that gossip.
One day Brenda and I ran into Ike at the student union. I introduced them and later she commented on his clothes and told me “I don’t know what you see in him, he’s slovenly and always looks grouchy.” Later Ike told me, “She’ll dump you.”
“Why do you say that? I asked.
“Because she’s not a serious person and you are. She’s trying to make you into something you’re not. When you’re not what she expects, she’ll dump you.”
Well, I had to admit that Brenda didn’t like my clothes. “Too preppy,” she said. At the time that she was commenting on my perfectly acceptable ensemble, she was wearing had on a short skirt over tights with one white leg and the other violet with images of white cats. Her lipstick was purple; she had three rings in each ear, and her blonde hair had just been colored – no dark roots.
For my clothes, I usually wore polo shirts, chino slacks and loafers. It wasn’t long though until I had running shoes, faded jeans and tee shirts with messages.
Next it was my hair: “John, you have lovely brown hair. It would look so much better long over your ears and ruffled instead of short with a part that looks like you were hit with a hatchet.”
So I let my hair grow.
“You’re still the same,” Ike said. “Clothes don’t change the man. You’re still a serious person and she’s not. She’ll dump you.”
About this time, Ike encouraged me to revise a paper I wrote for a class and try to get it published. The paper compared modern literature to classical. It was a typical student paper but Ike thought it had promise and helped me beef it up.
Ike often submitted articles to The Adams County Pen, a local literary magazine. It attracted articles and poetry from writers and poets in the area. The quality and distribution had improved under the current editor, Harry Jackson.. Ike wrote and submitted to the Pen philosophical articles about science subjects like dark matter, about the negative effects of superstitions from religion to UFOs on society, and about the harmful effects of political parties. I say submitted because the editor, Harry Jackson, usually refused to print them in spite of Ike’s sitting in the Pen office and arguing his position.
Ike suggested that I submit my article to the Pen. Since our school paper was printed by the journal which meant I worked with the staff at the Pen twice a month they might be able to make editorial suggestions and print the article. Penny Whetstone, the copy editor made a bunch of suggestions about the article. She was a quiet, shy woman in her mid-thirties with tight lips and short brown hair. She wasn’t timid about making changes which she sometimes said, “Looks like Ike’s work here and he’ll be in to argue about my comments.” So, with my original combined with Ike’s and Penny’s help, the Pen published my first and, so far only, masterpiece.
After I graduated without honors but with a degree in Classical Literature, I went to work fulltime at B&P not because I considered it a career but I liked it well enough and I was too lazy to look for anything else, especially for something involving classical literature. Besides, my relationship with Brenda was getting serious so the job would let me stay close to her. My parents met her on one of their rare trips to town and decided she had a nice personality although a bit flashy. They had no other comment which was a sign of they hadn’t rejected her, not that mattered much. Even Ike had given up his prediction that my destination was the trash heap of rejected lovers.
Ike and I often had lunch at the Dark Horse restaurant near the campus and B&P. I began to learn more about him. He had a dismal outlook on life but he was always entertaining. He had opinions on everything from marriage to the decline of civilization – and how those two were related. He was on his third marriage; his current wife being the first non-Jew. His parents expected him to marry a Jew even though they were non-observant and they were still alive when he married his first wife. She divorced him because he didn’t want to raise their two daughters to be religious. He hadn’t been raised to believe in the supernatural and he didn’t want his daughters to do so either. His parents had died by the time he married again but he still felt them watching even though he didn’t believe in an afterlife. They divorced because of money and sex: she overindulged in both but not with him. He married the current wife because they liked each other, although he didn’t say that in so many words. She had good taste in clothes and dressed him appropriately but by mid-morning he usually looked rumpled and casually put together. Once I had a big exam coming up in a Literature class so I said I needed plenty of prayers to get me a passing grade. Ike replied that it didn’t do any good to pray because there was no god to hear, but if I needed to pray, I’d better pray in Hebrew or God wouldn’t understand. Probably an old joke but it said a lot about Ike’s beliefs. He claimed to be solidly based in the world of the five senses but there seemed to be something else about him. He had no use for religion but he never put down people’s beliefs.
After a year I was promoted to Assistant Manager at Bytes and Pixels so Brenda and I started talking about getting married, buying a house in town and raising a family. The manager wanted to make District Manger soon so we had hope that our star was on the ascendant and we would have a manager salary and along with income from the trust fund from Grandfather, available next year when I turned twenty-five, we would be in an admirable tax bracket.
Brenda was getting anxious to move on with our plans. She was in her senior year and the class work cut into party time. She was down to one ring in each ear, her clothes were simple slacks and sweatshirts and, most telling of all roots in her hair were showing more. She complained that in my new position I was back to the preppy look and long hours at work meant I had less time to spend with her. “You’re getting to be more like Samuelson only better dressed,” she moaned.
Our business was doing well; people had been upgrading their computers every few years and buying the latest television models. The future looked rosy but then came the recession. Our store was one of more than fifty that might close statewide. Our big box electronics store paled in comparison to the big crates that sold everything. I had hoped our store would be spared but I got a notice that the axe had fallen and the local Bytes and Pixels staff added to the unemployment rate.
When I told Brenda what happened she reacted in a big way. “Now we can’t get married! What about our plans? What are you going to do? How are you going to support us? You don’t know anything but selling electronics. What good is a stupid degree in Classical Literature?”
“Just shut up a minute!” I yelled. I have a salesman’s touch. I can sell anything as long as I know more about it than the customer. I won’t be making an Assistant Manager salary but along with your income from teaching we’ll be fine.”
This touched off an even bigger bomb: “Teach! I’m not going to teach! I don’t want to be around kids all day. Is that why you got fired? You thought you’d make me be the bread winner so you could sit around reading your stupid classical literature and talk to Samuelson about your stupid books.”
“That’s it. I’m out of here. Call me when you unscramble your brain.‘
She didn’t call me and I didn’t call her. Apparently Ike was right. I was not the guy Brenda thought I was, but then I certainly didn’t see Brenda as a girl who went to college to get a husband to support her. The grand illusions of my life had suddenly become a pile of rubble. One day an archeologist would pore through ruins and wonder what great catastrophe caused the fall of an empire to rival Rome.
I sat at the Dark Horse one morning, sipping coffee, reading the want ads, and watching Melinda’s bottom wiggle as she moved from table to table, taking breakfast orders and handing out fried heart attacks.
“Thus the young unemployed graduate contemplates his next move.”
I turned to see Ike shuffling up to my table.
“Hi, Ike,” I said. “What brings you out so early?”
“I’ve been to the Pen to talk about an article I submitted. They got fussy about my sentence structure again. I had to teach them basic grammar.”
“You tangled with Harry again?‘ The staff hated to see Ike coming because they knew he would insist on some convoluted opinion in his article or criticize someone else’s work.
“No, with that young copy editor, Penny what’s-her-name. Didn’t you know Harry left?”
“Harry’s gone? Gone where”
“No one knows. Jealous husband, gamboling debts, anyone’s guess.”
“What will the Pen do without Harry?” I asked.
“Saunders has plenty of money, he’ll work it out,” Ike responded Marvin Saunders published several investment newsletters and self-help books. Some said he put out the Pen to show that he was not all about making money. He was a friend of my parents and they got together when they were in town. My father told me that Saunders’ investments took a hit in the recession and he was looking for ways to cut back.
“I hear Saunders is feeling the pinch from the recession. Do you think he’ll keep the Pen going?
“Oh, yes. It makes him look like an intellectual, not just the greedy capitalist he is.”
“I suppose Ester has taken over until they get a new editor,” I said.
“Ester is a ‘Certified Executive Secretary’, she always ran the operations.”
“That won’t last long. Penny and Ester barely get along. Penny may be a mousy type but she won’t take orders from a mere secretary. She’s a decent copy editor and it would be a shame to lose her.”
“Then you go down and save them,” Ike said.
“Right,” I said. “I’m so well qualified.”
“Actually, I was putting you on but now that I think about it – why not? Harry owned a failing bookstore when Saunders hired him. Old Marvin goes for cheap not experience. You have a degree in literature, you were editor of the college paper which was printed by the Pen, the two women like you, and you can look to the editorial board for advice – and I’ll be there to back you up..
The idea was ridiculous, of course. Saunders, the publisher, might be a friend of my parents; but that wouldn’t help when it came to making an important business decision like this.
“Well, if I got the job – big if – I could stay around here and Brenda and I . . ..”
“I told you, she was not right for you and she’d dump you. Give it up”
“Thus says a man on his third wife.”
“It’s the Voice of Experience you’re hearing. Take heed”
I thought about the position for a while, then I put on my positive thinking persona and headed for the office of the Adams County Pen.
“I want the cops on him. I want him dragged back here so I can fire him. I don’t have time for this.”
Marvin Saunders paced around the office and ranted to Ester, Penny and the world. Ester sat at her desk next to the door, Penny hid out in her copy editor’s office and the world ignored the mighty publisher. “Does anybody here know anything about getting this issue out?” He asked. No response from Ester or Penny.
“Maybe I can be of assistance,” I said, as I walked through the door, playing the role of the suave and debonair hero to the rescue.
“Grant, what do you want? I’m in the middle of a crisis here.”
“You need an editor and I’m here to apply for the job.
“Editor! What do you know about anything but TVs and girls?” he asked. Well of course it takes the suaveness and debonairness out of the scene when your parents give that kind of reference to your prospective employer.
“I happen to have quite a bit of experience in publishing,” I told him. “I was the editor of the Wordsworth College paper for two years and worked closely with Miss Spain and the Pen’s printers to get it out fifteen times a year.”
He blinked at me and I could see his brain processing girls, televisions, Ester Spain, the school paper, and cheap labor.
“The job doesn’t pay much but I know you’re looking for work and you’ll have an income from the investments your grandfather left you. You can have the job, at least until I find someone who is actually qualified. Ester and Jenny can show you where we are with this issue.”
I knew that “finding someone” meant someone as cheap as me so unless I made an absolute mess of things I could keep the job.
So, Ladies, where are we with this issue?” I asked after Saunders had left with the parting words of good cheer: “Don’t screw up.”
“If you’d like to step into the editor’s office,” Ester said, “I’ll show you the layout.”
“Penny, I’d like you in on this too. Let’s all step into my office.” I wanted to make clear from the beginning that were we a team and that this was now my office.
“Penny has finished the proofing and layout. I imagine you’ll want to look it over and when ready, I’ll send it to the printer.”
“Okay, I’ll give it a look. Anything else?”
“I expect you’ll want to wear a suit or sport coat to the office. Penny and I always feel more comfortable in professional ensemble.”
I looked down at my chinos and polo shirt and said, “Ah, yes, always the professional.” Another critique of my attire. “Anything else I should know?”
“Some of the contributors like to come in to discuss their pieces. I try to screen them but some are quite insistent.”
“Anyone in particular?” I asked, knowing full well who her prime screen crasher was.
“Well, of course, there’s Mr. Samuelsson for one.”
“Yes, of course we have Mr. Samuelson.”
So here I was: the door at Bytes and Pixels had slammed shut and now the sun shone brightly in the window of the Adams County Pen. Brightly, at least, until I had to deal with the not-so-timid copy editor, the “Certified Executive Secretary”, and the quite insistent Mr. Samuelson – but that’s another story.