No Place to Go

I still wake up 5:30. Some internal clock chimes, or beeps, or buzzes. Now, I can ignore it and roll over. It takes a while to drift; consumed by wondering what happened, while I sink slowly back to sleep. How did I end up here? Sometimes, it seems like I got on the wrong bus and got off in somebody else’s life. Retired, in central Ohio, lost, set adrift, no anchors or attachments, untethered.

As a child I was imprisoned by time and space. Time to eat, bed time, time to go to church, don’t leave the block, don’t cross the street, don’t go near the the river. Boxed in at every turn. Chained to an apartment on a block in a small western city. A city with thousands of fascinating alleys and sidewalks, winding their way through town, terminating in wild, unknown places. Adventures waited. An abandoned house, only feet from the Portneuf River. All I had to do was turn left at the corner, cross the bridge, take a hard right, two shorts blocks, and it was there in all it’s glorious ruin. Two or three blocks from our house stood a wall of sandbags right out of The Guns of Iwo Jima. It had been designed to hold back the surge of the spring melt, but it could have been part of an elaborate system of defenses and fortifications protecting the world from an evil menace, television was filled with them. But I wasn’t allowed to go that far.

I couldn’t wait to go to school. Freedom, liberty, emancipation. I had to get away from the restraints of family.

For my sins, I was sentenced to 13 years of education. Every year, new regulations, dress codes, enforced silence. Some teachers were so nice, fresh, smiling, recently released from the academic rigor of college. Others were mean, bitter veterans of educational despotism. But they all had demands, don’t chew gum, no talking, do your homework, study for tests, attendance and punctuality. It was a totalitarian construction with a tyrannical regime rooted in discipline. Somehow the seat of power always rested in a small office, right by the entrance. You were subjected to the stifling officiousness with your first step into the brick building.

A crushing weight pressed down constantly, the threat of retribution, the promise of sanctioned violence, the crushing weight of rules, and the gradual stripping of individuality, molding the precious me into part of the anonymous us. Ten years was my limit. A siren song of employment called from outside the windows. A sanctioned way to trade my time for cash, and the autonomy provided by capitol.

Dropping out, I took an equivalency test. A short cut to “graduate.” Uneducated, with no skills or prospects. But, I was free, and mostly intact. And the world was waiting for me. The world took the measure of my ability and was not impressed.

There were few jobs for a person with no employment history, limited education and lacking verifiable abilities. It was impossible to break free. Every step I took deepened the rut I trudged through.

Eventually, I landed a job, as a construction laborer. There was the possibility of an apprenticeship. A chance to learn a trade, an exciting opportunity to do the same thing everyday for the rest of my life. I lasted as long as I could, it might have been Ten years, maybe a few more, maybe less. I don’t remember the years, But I remember the days, and I can’t forget the minutes. Stuck in the bitter cold, freezing, or roasting in the heat and humidity. Hating the sweat, and the work, the hard work, the demands of employment, the pointless pursuit of enough money to survive. There had to be something better.

An evening shift at a liquor store, popped up. It had no future, but it didn’t have much of a present, either. I loved the people, they became my friends, they wandered in and would buy a quart of beer, or a bottle of wine, vodka, schnapps, maybe a pack of cigarettes, and tell me about their day. It was a litany of the troubles of life. A job that sucked the joy out of existence, a wife who didn’t understand the toils of earning a living, a husband who spent all his free time fishing, hunting, or womanizing. Kids and pets and mortgages, car loans, tuition payments, groceries, and utility bills. They shared tales of life circling the basin, and washing out in the drain.

We suffered together, through the injustices, the indiscriminate afflictions, the constant barrage of trouble faced by the working class. I was one with the boozers, winos, rummies, the lonely, the dispossessed. There were nights when it was more than I could take. I would sneak into the beer cooler and smoke a joint to ease the pain. I had to split, I had to get out of there.

Five states away seemed sufficient.

There was a stint at a screen printing plant, a short time in an embroidery department, night stock at a supermarket, and I just questioned the point, the purpose. I drifted between jobs, and got older, and it became more difficult to find organizations willing to hire an aging, incompetent vagrant.

Someone offered me a job as a warehouse supervisor (they called it a distribution center manager). They were kind, but chose poorly. I had never worked in a warehouse, had only rudimentary math skills, and was terrible at filing and organization, the three pillars of successful warehouse management. I suffered for all my deficiencies. For 25 years, I toiled against my handicaps, correcting the mistakes I couldn’t bury, learning through a process of painful necessity, trying my best to invent alternate ways to supervise a small warehouse. None of them worked and I conformed. Mark that one up as another loss.

Every job worked the same routine, show up, clock in, perform tasks, meet deadlines, conform, behave. Obey! It almost suffocated me. I couldn’t wait for the freedom of retirement. There had to be more.

Now, I’m retired. Stranded someplace on the other side of usefulness, left watching the rat race, but I’m not allowed to participate. Not that I was ever really a participant, at least not a competitor. I watch. And I wonder, is this all there is? Years to get here, and now what? Damned if I know. But, I have reached the point where I can’t pretend I’m crazy and run off in the night anymore.

There’s a moral in here, somewhere, I’m not sure I want to know what it is.

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