Flashback Friday

Shocking.  Positively shocking.  Why, it looks like that young man with the '80's porno mustache has urinated on the pool table.  Absolutely revolting.  Why, I'm getting the vapors just thinking about it.

The sleight of hand, as it were,  isn't quite as shocking as it may seem.  The reason I like this picture isn't because I am showing off for fellow staff members my ability to be crude without actually being crude.  It isn't because someone, not me, just spilled something on the Mary Davis Home pool table.  No, it's because this picture is somewhat rich with ephemera of which i was part of in my early career at MDH.  But first, let me paint in the months between graduation from Denver and my eventual hiring in G-Burg.

Jeff, I may not get every factoid correct and will want to be reminded if i stray from the absolute truth.

Once studies were over from grad school in Denver I beat cheeks home having had my fill of studies, classrooms, and wanted a bit of play time at home with family and friends.  I drove practically non-stop and if memory serves, met Phil heading to work in Muscatine.  Back in those days stopping for overnight accommodations were not only a luxury, but needless.  Since sleep deprivation is part of school anyway, why not utilize the skill on long 14 hour drives?  I got home mid-morning and I remember Marj had some kind of function going on with local ladies.  Doris Kingry was one of them and as I slipped in the back door she was in the kitchen and made such a fuss that she insisted on fixing breakfast for me.  French Toast.  One of my breakfast favorites.  Bored yet?

Much of our time during the summer revolved around Blackie's Hi-Way Tap, and it was there that I got my first lead for a job.  It was actually one of Blackie's sons who was in construction.  Its not like he had his own company but I got the impression he was just hired as a one man team to do some electrical work at the Burlington Mall.  He asked if I wanted to help him, and so I began a short-lived career digging ditches for light standards.  It was good enough work and I didn't mind it at all.  He was OK to be with and it got me out of classrooms.  But it didn't last long, and Ed on the farm needed me, so there I went.  I had a Master's in Philosophy/Theology and I was moving from digging ditches to baling hay, shelling corn, stringing barbed wire and tearing out crops with the cultivator.  But you didn't hear me complain.

Summer became Fall and I knew my time as a student/bum was just about over.  Over in Galesburg they had an employment agency called Snelling & Snelling and one day I visited them.  They, in turn sent me over to see some guy named John Reed who did the hiring.   I tried to be as impressive as possible and gave good responses, I thought, to the questions.  How can you really respond to questions regarding an occupation you have no experience in?  I did stumble on the application when I wrote Counsellor rather than Counselor, and he called me on it.  John left shortly after I was hired, and he seemed to me to be a man of limited humor and limitless ambition.  Oh, and yes, I had to pay Snelling around $700 to get a $6000 per year job.

Anyway, like I said, they called later and I was hired to be a Counselor.  Haven't misspelled it since.   My starting date:  October 31.  Halloween.  Second shift.  I walked in and the kids were back in their dorms,  so I had a chance to be introduced to the staff and what my job was going to entail.  Not too long after they brought the kids out, boys and girls, and sat them at the tables which had a pumpkin on it.  They then handed them real knives to start carving, and my thoughts ran from straight out running to finding myself a knife for self-defense.  But it was fine, and fun.  The kids were runaways, petty theifs and kids with no where else to go.  The nurderers, bad seeds and chronic miscreants came later. The next day I met the boss, a guy by the name of Randy Storm, and it was the start of a wonderful career.  He was OK, more than OK.  He rubber stamped my hiring as a Counselor and ended up hiring me for 2 other jobs in the same building.

Oh, I almost forgot.  The ephemera.  The pool table lasted quite a while and suffered other indignities other than that spill, I'm sure.  We played after staffings and then we'd head out to the bars.  The chalk board to the left of me, and the tables and chairs behind me..I remember them like I'm still there.  The small square hole in the wall was where the phone was.  Eventually the kids would get harder and start using the pool balls and cues for weapons, so the table went.  The chairs at the tables were used also in various attacks on other kids or staff.  The window directly to my back was used several times by kids to escape.  Back in those days if you wanted to leave, you had your opportunities.  We had only two staff members so when one would take a tray to someone locked up in the hallways, kids could just kick the screens and leave.  I got along with most of the kids, I respected them and they, in turn, respected me.  Other counselors wouldn't have that touch and ended getting hit by cue balls, fire extinguisher tossed at 'em, and such.  Me?  I only got punched once in the stomach by a kid barely 4 feet tall.  Picked him up and gently tossed in the isolation room down the hall.

And just to prevent someone from flagging this site as pornographic, the item sticking out of my jeans is my finger.  I have small fingers but size 14 feet. Do the math.

Back to those tables and chairs again.  This was where the kids congregated during recreation periods.  I recall a couple of girls went back tot he far wall with their radio and cassettes and played this album over and over.  One of the tunes was kinda catchy and it ended up being 2 Out of 3 Ain't Bad by Meat Loaf and my love of his music was born.

We worked all shifts back in those days and if another staff member didn't come to relieve you, then you were stuck.  Had to have 2 staff around, although sometimes this was relaxed a bit during 3rd shift.  I remember working alone several times.  But ordinarily you had another staff, always a member of the  opposite sex. I worked with an awful lot of great staff members through the years.  Too many really to mention here.  One was Rose Medina who is still working for Knox County as a Probation Officer.  She and I worked together a lot and as I have mentioned before, she was fantastic to work with an be around.  Easily to to get a laugh and the giggles.  On 3rds, we'd be playing cards or a board game and easily fill an ash tray with our disgusting cigs.   We played at those tables and sit in those chairs.  Long ago.  Man,  where did the time go?  I miss working with Rose.  I miss Rose.

Those tables saw lots of counseling sessions, changing how a kid thinks and providing options.  Most counseling was done in the wings out of earshot of others, but once in a while when all the other kids were back in the dorm we'd bring our clients out to these tables and chairs.  We ate here with the kids, played games here with them and it was here we folded the clothes on 3rd shifts.  It was a time of new careers and an old way of doing things.   Soon State guidelines would encroach, some for the better, some for the worse, and the first casualty would be casualness.  We would soon be getting stricter with the kids, less recreation time, tougher kids, too.  Our area of accepting kids would grow from a few counties up to around 21.  Our shifts would expand from 2 staff up to 6 and sometimes higher during the day.  We would always stay a county entity but with state subsidy and their rules.  Oh, and the pay would increase substantially, too.      

So there you have it.  My last summer before work and adulthood encroached upon my youth and care-free sensibilities.  I would remain at MDH another 27 years, as a Counselor, Supervisor and Program Coordinator.  There would be countless kids and staff members along the way, some impressive, others, not so much.  The kids would eventually get harder, along with the staff and rules.  I'm glad I was there at the beginning, when all things seemed possible.  Like rehabilitation.  Like staff members thinking they could change lives.  Like staying young would last forever.