Back to my story....

In my own life I'm still comptemplating resigning my job, and relocating so I can escape this town and environment/people that seem intent on destroying me. I don't have a specific destination or another job to go to after this one. Hell this is one of the best jobs I've ever had. In Jan 2007 , I'd have been here 6 years (part time) That the longest I've worked for anybody. I had a retirement plan for this job but the company I work for ( A/C Nielsen),stopped making (froze) retirement contributions throughout the company. I've been with the country just long enough to earn what little money Nielsen placed for me there, and the company still has a 401 k plan.

Mostly I wanted to help my people ...whomever.. Its not often you get a job, where you can "make a sort of statement", a job that was offered to me ,a sort of "Passing the Baton". I hoped to set an example for my people, to say If I can do this, maybe so can you. It took me a L.O.N.G time just to get to this place, and I traveled down many roads in employment land. Just 10 years ago I was a veteran Job hopper, now I'm 44 years old and still not making much money. I don't own property, I'm not married, don't have any kids, not alot of academics, but I'm proud of the fact that I found a decent job, and I have a work history I can be sort of proud of if that ain't saying much.

My Job highlights; I worked a nearly a year full time for the California Conservation Corps, for $3.35 an hour back in 1982. The C.C.C was advertised has "Hard work", "Low pay" and Miserable conditions. It entailed moving into one of the various C.C.C. centers around the State of California. Back then I think there were 28 centers, where we lived and worked. Some of our pay went for "Room and Board". We had 3 meals a days, started work at 6.00 am in the morning with physical exercise. The Day ended officially at 5.00 pm, and this went on 5 days a week. We Ended a a several week "boot camp" we had to pass before we could endure all those luxuries.

I guess this was one of the high point in my career life. It was a great, fun experience, but lots of hard physical work (like lifting boulders, the worse). The people I met there i'll never forget although I'm not in contact with them now, there was Shirley Schroder, Myra McCracken, Sean Weatherton, Peter Lewis, Virgina Clarke, Richard Rodriguez,Linda potts, Shirley and Virginia Ott, Bryan Bishton, a bunch of other names I can't remember. In the C.C.C I was stationed in Montague,Calif, in Siskiyou County, California.

Mt.Shasta was about 30 miles down the road. In the Corps, I worked alot in the outdoors, learned to chop wood real good, learned to work in the snow, dug alot of trails, cut alot of bush, planted a few trees, Did Weather observations, got laid "Norwegian woods" style ( and blew it), builded fences. I even went to Africa, through Operation Crossroads Africa at Princeton University, and I met alot of people I'll never forget at the CCC. I left the C.C.C after only 11 months. I had came back from Africa, most of my friends had gone, some had been promoted...but I was stuck with a bunch of newbies, on a difficult work assignment, I asked to be re-assigned instead they showed me the door,I took it guess I was tired of being dogged around. Guess I should have stayed in Africa.