I had no trouble finding a job in retail. I was hired to manage a kiosk in the Gulfgate Mall for Frontier Fruit and Nut Company. We sold ready to eat dried fruits and nuts as a snack item people could eat in the store. Working by myself, I brought the store to within a few dollars of the company quota for the first time in the history of the kiosk.
I finally found a crew to work the store with me, but one I had to let go because he couldn’t return from lunch in the half hour we gave him. As soon as there were two other people working with me, my quota was doubled. I taught them my tricks and techniques for sales, mostly how to catch the attention of passers by because the food sold itself once people looked at it. I took applications from a large number of people. No one gave it the effort that I did.
One of my tricks was to put a honey dipped, sun dried date on the scoop and present it to the oldest woman in the hall, saying, “Hay gorgeous, do you want a date?” It always made a sale. I just couldn’t get my employees to try. My most productive one became hostile because she perceived things in a racial way, being a black woman in Houston, Texas, and decided I had singled her out for being black. Little did she know I had singled her out for being good at the job. Before I could clarify it with her I was hired away at a shoe store for Genesco Shoes in the San Jacinto Mall in Baytown, Texas.
I worked for a black lady as her assistant manager in the Jarmin store. The job lasted through the end of 1982, then the company moved me to Beaumont, Texas to work in one of their Flag Brothers stores. My wife was now pregnant with our daughter, and she was miserable all summer. The economy in Beaumont is very much tied to the oil industry. When the country goes into a recession, oil is depressed. When the oil business is in a bust, Beaumont is dirt poor. The oil depression caused sales in the Flag Brothers store to drop so low the company was thinking of closing it for lost revenue. So that summer of 1983 in Beaumont, I was unemployed with a pregnant wife.
I sold Kirby vacuum cleaners and picked up scrap metal along the highway, mostly aluminum cans. It wasn’t easy making rent. But I did. When my daughter was due on September 4th, my wife had not yet shown signs of immanent delivery. On September 16th, the Ob/Gyn resident in John Sealy Hospital in Galveston, Texas had Bertha admitted to force labor with a pitosin drip. Bertha had the IV in her arm for seven whole days, in agony the whole time from forced labor. But the baby was not yet ready to come. Finally, on the afternoon of the 23rd, Bertha began to dilate. If we had medical insurance, Deborah would have been taken by Caesarian section at least five days earlier. But non-paying customers don’t get surgical procedures unless it is life threatening.
It was four o’clock in the evening when the nurses suggested I dress in scrubs to help my wife with the delivery. My mother-in-law demanded to take my place in the delivery room. She had already monopolized the visiting time before delivery, and she had been telling my wife that I left and wouldn’t stay for the baby’s birth. I had already slept the night in the waiting room. I told her it was my place to be there for Bertha when the baby was born and so I shall be. My mother-in-law was livid. Her lies to my wife would all become apparent if I were to be there. She dressed in scrubs herself and told me I couldn’t go in there or “there’ll be hell on this floor.” I leaned forward and very quietly but firmly stated, “So be it.”
I would always be willing to give her her way in matters of no import. But when she would supplant my place beside my wife as our child was born, I had to stand up to her and put down my foot. I heard no more of it from her. The battle lost, my mother-in-law looked for other ways of tearing apart our marriage.
Deborah was born late in the night of September 23rd, 1983. I had just turned 25 the previous month. Deborah weighed a little less than nine pounds and was healthy in all respects but one, her neck had not finished forming in the womb. She was precious to me from the start. The first time she sunk her little hands into my beard and refused to let go, I was smitten for life.
To be continued….
Ol’ Fuzzy is not employable and was denied for disability benefits. The only thing I have is the blogs. But I don’t qualify for ads on the blogs until September. If you like the scribbles I post, please help me keep it going. You can leave me a gratuity by dropping a buck or two in Ol' Fuzzy's Tip Jar. This is a PayPal account I opened on Wednesday, April 5, 2017.
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