Stuck in the middle...again

Have you read this book “Boom” by Tom Brokaw? It’s about reflections of the sixties. So, I got to thinking about growing up in blue-collar South Plainfield, New Jersey. Our house was on the tracks down by Boro Park where we played all our summer ballgames and the sewer system emptied into the toxic trickle we called a stream eating through our green, summer grass. As you’ve probably heard from your grandfather… life was simpler then. Crayons came only in primary colors and we hadn’t officially been told that cigarettes did anything to you except make you look cool, like you were hangin’ out with James Dean, Bogie or Robert Mitchum. Boys had pompadours and girls wore girdles. Most of us escaped our high school years without any serious criminal blemishes on our “permanent” record…and it was off to college we went. Little did we know the world was going to explode…and us along with it. Much later we heard about some of the neighborhood guys who didn’t make it, ending things too early. Why them and not us?

It's 1963 and I remember sitting in English 101 my first week in what felt like the 13th grade at my new school. This guy Dr. Schwartz kicked off class by rattling off a list of books asking if we had read them. It seemed like every one of my classmates raised their hands and kept them up as the good Dr. eyeballed the room. I could feel him checking me out every once in a while to see if I was ever going to raise my hand. I shrunk in my chair asking myself; how could I possibly pass a class like this, starting off so far behind? This could only mean one thing. I heard the crinkling of South Plainfield Shop-Rite shopping bags in my future. Unlike the academic pass I took in High School, I was actually going to have to do some work if I planned on getting through college. Damn.
It wasn’t but a couple of days later I got introduced to the group “bull” session soon called “rap” sessions. We started talking about things like Civil Rights…Viet Nam, politics, religion and social issues. Before you knew it, my friends and I were reading Conrad, Melville, Nabokov, James Baldwin, Dostoevsky, Zola and Faulkner, investigating C.O.R.E., the SCLC and SNCC among others. Made the impossible Dr. Schwartz happy as hell. We had some great arguments…and he called that class? I looked forward to his “rap” session each week. Whatever the issue…we were curious and our conversations were serious. And then we jumped into the middle of the fray joining demonstrations, voter sign-up drives, marches etc. All the while, there was the musical backdrop of our revolution as we inhaled Folk music and Rock & Roll. We had all the righteous indignation our ignorance allowed…but we were serious and above all…we were involved.

Eventually, reality set in. Our hair was too long for mom and, of course, dad wanted us to pay rent. We needed to buy some of that $.40 a gallon gas for the wreck we had in the driveway. So, we sucked it up, cut the hair, bought some work clothes and hit the pavement until we landed a job. Bought a car and got married. Whew, that was fast.

And so, we found ourselves at the beginning of a career. I began by remembering maybe the only good advice my father ever gave me: “keep your mouth shut and learn something before you start handing out advice and opinions…nobody cares what you think!” So, I shut up and stalked the three most successful managers …Tom Kocaj, Roy Badgley and Frank Ziegler. I determined this by researching whose department had the biggest budget and who seemed to get the most important assignments. They called me kid and teased me pretty hard until the shop steward threw a snit and shut down one of our key departments costing the company more than $100K/hour…when they were unable to sway him politically I was able to get him to see the error of his ways after a night at the Travelodge Bar and about a 55 gallon drum of scotch that he brought home with him in his bladder. The next morning he marched into Badgley’s office and announced…”I worked it out with Wyckoff, so we’re back to work”. Well, I was driving for daylight from then on and continued to be the quiet guy in the corner of the office offering opinions only when asked…things worked out pretty good. Roy taught me how to dress, Tom showed me how to run the manufacturing floor and Frank showed me the tricks of getting the most out of the budget. I was their point man with the Union. I had a mortgage to pay…a kid to raise…and a career to manage. But I was there to learn. It was no different for most of my buddies. We were serious about taking care of our business. No video games…no drunken brawls…no fantasy baseball leagues…we had families to protect and our eye was firmly on the prize. We still had some fun but were careful never to hit the ball out of bounds.

So, I guess…as we struggle to fill our staffing assignments and find people for the jobs our clients offer…as we suffer the self-righteousness of students turning down internships because they expect twice as much hourly pay as the real world offers and their parents embrace their “rights”…and adults turn down jobs and employment opportunities preferring to remain unemployed rather than subordinate themselves to an early morning schedule or someone else’s rules…I remain confused.

You see, I also know that there are CEO’s earning 700 times their average employee, boosting their stock price by shearing their rosters…people who have given their lives for their work and their company only to be shown the door…as these executives somehow remain guilt-free riding in private jets and earning those eight figure salaries plus bonuses…and I find myself caught in the middle. Seems to me we need to fix both extremes and thank God we’ve got the middle class who somehow holds onto traditional American values…a belief in God, family, honest work and the importance of passing down to our children…how to grow up to be men and women of good character. God Bless the hard working, sane people of our country who continue to have pride…pride in themselves and in their work. Now if we can just find a President who believes in all of us…all of us who make America….well, America.