When Donald fired me in May 1978, I walked out of his office in utter shock, drove down Route 46, only to realize I still had the keys to the warehouse and had to go back, marching back into the reception area with a much dignity as I could muster, dumping them on Carmela’s desk, then in a huff, turned around and walked right back out.
I was then still under the illusion I was in the right, though
I also feared Donald would have the police show up at my house to recover the keys
or to accuse me of ripping him off in the middle of the night.
Now, all these years later, I do not believe any such event
would have occurred.
But I remember riding away from the office the second time
how empty and lost I felt.
I had worked for Donald for four years and this for good or
bad gave me some sense of purpose. Without the job, I had only an apartment,
but no real identity. I had become so focused on hating Donald; I had had no
thought of anything else.
Fortunately, my meeting with John Telson earlier had set up
my new job at Wine Imports, which turned out to be a whole different experience
entirely, and a whole new set of characters that included Louie the Bottle Man,
Cowboy the Truck Loader, Cosmos the Drug addict, John Telson the alcoholic, Dan
the Supervisor, and, not least, Roger the owner’s son, and many others whose
names escape me.
Unfortunately, old habits die hard, and by the end of that
year, I managed to get myself fired from that job, too, and largely for doing
the same thing I had done with Donald.
Roger apparently had paid off the shop steward to allow the
company to violate some of the union rules, and while most of the others were
too scared to do anything but bitch, I wrote a letter to the head of the union,
Tony Pro, the man most famous for authorizing the murder of Jimmy Hoffa.
Panic ensued at the wine company as the shot steward held an
emergency meeting in the break room to find out which son of a bitch had
written the letter. Since I wasn’t yet in the union, I stood outside staring in
through the dirty glass as the sweating faces. Roger was in the room with them,
and both he and the shop steward made each man sign a form saying he had not
contacted Tony Pro.
The only one who refused to sign the form was John Telson,
nor did he rat me out, knowing perfectly well that I had.
Later, he came out to the parking lot with me.
“I always thought you were a trouble maker,” he said. “Now I
understand you’re what’s left of the 1960s.”
A few days later, Roger met me at the door to the warehouse
and told me the company would not need my services any more. Roger had clearly
spoken with Donald, and put two and two together about who wrote the letter to
Tony Pro.
He looked scared. Apparently, the shop steward had
disappeared aka Jimmy Hoffa.
This time I didn’t feel the same sense of shame as I
eventually did with Donald, I knew I had done the right thing.
The next day I applied for unemployment.
A few years later, I ran into Cowboy in Allendale, who
informed me Wine Imports had closed it doors for good, the whole gang scattered
to the wind.
John Telson had taken off for California with his wife, only
run into me on River Drive while I was jogging, telling me how his whole life
had changed, but he still considered me his friend.
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