THE LAST WORD
Evans, Larry
THE LAST WORD Larry Evans Making a Career of It On a soggy morning two winters ago, I was confronted by the wide-eyed dissatisfaction of my hungry three-year-old. Upon finding nothing in our...
...Though I haven't found a way to keep Ducky swimming in Raisin Squares, I'm on my way to meeting my career objective...
...So, putting procrastination aside, I enrolled in a free job-seekers' class to begin constructing my own made-for-TV, rags-to-resume-to-riches story...
...Apparently some recent grads the staff had gone to bat for had slightly altered their permanent records and once in the big leagues played like the Pirates...
...I fixed my eyes on the career-center entrance and never looked back...
...I don't take to gun "play" very well...
...I retreated to the job-bank computer and, while thumbing through some "red-hot" air-conditioning-repair listings, I daydreamed about what I'd really like to be saying on my resume...
...An old labor-organizing pal, noticing my funk, said he'd heard of a "disarmament" organizing job and he couldn't think of anyone more bizarrely suited for it than me...
...Lesson No...
...One block from my job-search destination my car gave up for good, this time unwilling to rekindle even a hopeful spark...
...This no doubt means be the kind of team player that a George Stein-brenner might buy...
...This is swell as long as the bank and Leslie understand that I must cut down on such distractions as mortgage payments and child care...
...While most activists my age have mastered fairly comfortable skilled jobs, affording them the space to harass Star Wars, defend our assaulted rights, protect our eroding environment, or plot the final proletarian conquest while successfully feeding and educating their children and maybe stashing away an IRA, I stayed behind in archaic steel mills making ingot molds in the broken industrial heartland...
...The teacher persisted with her helpful hints...
...He gave me a glazed but appreciative double-take, I suppose for the grand nuisance I had caused...
...As my wife Leslie whisked out the door , to face another day of Steel Valley High classroom combat, I sat brooding over my fully depreciated laid-off steelworker status and reflecting on my twenty-year string of organizing underfunded, socially conscious projects that consistently interrupted my pursuit of any lucrative career and helped send me spiraling right out of the middle class...
...When I finally reached the end of the bridge, my antagonists pulled arrogantly alongside and waved a menacing silver .38 at my car's engine and then at me...
...3: "Raise intelligent, but not impertinent, questions...
...Certainly never belch out "Bhopal" in a Union Carbide interview...
...Lesson No...
...Handguns rank high in the underprivileged portfolio of displaced Pittsburgh-ers—right up there with daily lotto plays, alcoholism, and domestic violence...
...Sure enough, in only two weeks' time, I'd become the Pennsylvania Coordinator for the Great Peace March of 1986...
...Anyway, I detoured to the turn lane and promptly stalled while the car with the .38 and the rowdies sped on, no doubt thrilled with themselves...
...My mill car's dream had long since rusted through, and it sputtered and stalled on the drenched pavement of the Mononga-hela span...
...The Clean-Up Lesson: "Don't lie on your resume...
...The staff was adamant about this one...
...The staff resume writer shook me back to reality, and I spent the rest of the day trudging through the right motions to pound out a "vita" that even my mother would be proud of...
...When I squeezed into the junior-high desk, the play button of my tape recorder depressed and Ducky's muffled rendition of "Take me out to the ballgame" momentarily filled the room...
...5: "If some slick psychology-wielding employer asks you to describe one of your weaknesses, simply answer: 'Sometimes I push others too hard-impatient to get the job done.' " Tailor-made, I thought, for my bridge classmate: "Vexed to get to class on time, I occasionally pull a gun on fellow motorists...
...I limped home in time to join an evening hoops game...
...Nothing to hang one's hardhat on any more, or keep a kid in Raisin Squares...
...2: "Develop the competitive edge...
...It was my gun-totin' buddy from the bridge...
...After filling out personal and work-history forms, I was escorted to the back of an already-in-progress lecture before some thirty other post-industrial mill hunks...
...Unemployment-line joke: Q: What do you do with your last check...
...All heads snapped back to attention except one familiar face in the second row...
...Saturday-night-special violence had feasted upon me twice as a kid, taking my father via suicide and almost killing my teen-age brother and me when a drunk and deranged aunt went on a shooting spree...
...This all-male, middle-aged class sat listening intently to a trendy twenty-five-year-old woman instructor...
...This unsteady performance prompted a display of unhappy motoring from a backed-up fellow junker whose rowdy passengers seemed to be still working on the previous night's case-and-a-half of Iron City...
...A: Buy a gun...
...The teacher rolled her eyes...
...There were many bridges to cross, and the first happened to be the Homestead Hi-Level overlooking the valley once known as the "Steel Center of the World...
...I've managed to stay in this dodge since then, participating in the U.S.-Soviet peace walk and other assorted nonprofessional undertakings...
...Career Objective: To help bring about a more just and safer world, using methods that challenge lazy imaginations and mobilize masses of people...
...Lesson No...
...Lesson No...
...Larry Evans is the editor of the Mill Hunk Herald, published in Pittsburgh...
...I rolled it to a place by the curb overlooking a once record-setting (now shut-down) blast furnace named "Dorothy," muttered some last rites, and left a plaintive note for meter-maid mercy...
...Upon finding nothing in our cupboard of serious merit for a respectable toddler breakfast, Ducky unkindly suggested that I should "go make some money and buy more Raisin Squares," a hip new cereal that beats Cap'n Crunch...
...1: "Looking for a job should be a full-time job...
Vol. 51 • December 1987 • No. 12
