Monday, November 29

Brew pulled into the WorkForce Center, in the Mariner Plaza, on Highway 231, to look at the job listings on the computer.
He could look them up at home, but if he saw a listing he wanted a referral for, he would have to go in to the office to get it, so he just went there in the first place. It got him cleaned up and out of the house. Shoes shined, hair cut. Gig-line straight.

He remembered a list of Job Seeking Hints for the Mature Job Seeker he got from the state employment agency in North Carolina, when he first started writing, and was living at Laurel Cottage in Penland, with Jack Neff and Karol, him writing and Jack Neff making pots, Karol with a baby, John Neff, and Brenda pregnant with Owen.

Laurel Cottage Cottage Industries.

He wasn't making any money as a potter's helper, and needed an income to pay for the doctor and the hospital, in advance, for Brenda to get prenatal care, and Owen to be born in a hospital, so he was looking for a job.

When he would leave in the morning, on his job-search, Brenda would call to him, from the porch, "Remember No. 7. `Don't cringe and beg.'"

The state employment agency did help him find a job.

Laborer in a feldspar mine.

Nobody had black lung. It was an open-pit mine. The river ran in blue, and ran out chalk white.

They had white lung, or silicosis.

Brew lost that job for being honest.

He laid out of work to apply for a college-degree job in an adjoining county.

When his boss asked him where he'd been the day before, he said, "Out looking for a better job."

His boss said, "You'd better go look for one today, too. I don't have any work for you today."

Brew had been looking for a job ever since, or, if he had a job, expecting to lose it, for writing on the job, writing in his head, thinking more about the writing than the job he was being paid to do.

Art Brew.

Art "Home" Brew, compare art brut.

The next job Brew got he learned to make homemade beer and wine, out of grains, fruits and vegetables, canned concentrates.

I guess that's where "Home" Brew came from. He was a do-it-yourself home brewmaster, a master brewer, he was a master writer, now, an American master.

America's greatest living unpublished, or underpublished writer, perhaps the greatest unpublished, or underpublished American writer ever.

He had written 232 books without selling a word to New York or Hollywood.

He had sold a book to Ellensburg, Washington, and to Jackson, Michigan, and Larry and Hazel had helped him publish four books himself. He had mortgaged his house, with Brenda's permission, and published two books.

Brew moved to Winston-Salem to take the job in the winemaking/beermaking shop.

That job paid $375 a month, gross. Not enough for three people to live on, even with Brenda breastfeeding Owen.

Larry and Hazel "loaned" him the money to pay for the doctor and the hospital, for Owen. And to pay for the move from Penland to Winston-Salem.

Brew had to quit Homecrafts, to find a job that paid more.

He worked as an electrician's helper, industrial construction, a carpenter's helper, a press-brake operator trainee, and head porter in a department store.

When he got fired from the department store for stealing six rolls of toilet paper and a gallon of liquid floor wax, he and Brenda and Owen moved back to Florida, to Panama City, and lived in the back bedroom, Wayne's room, of Granny Brown's house in Parker.

Parker is a suburb of Panama City.

That's where Brew and Brenda lived now.

They were buying the old home place from Brenda's brothers and sister.

Brew remembered the old employment security building in Panama City, on 9th Street.

The only two jobs on the microfiche machine were oyster shucker and poultry eviscerator.

The extractive industries.

Both jobs give you carpal tunnel syndrome, or repetitive-stress injury (RSI).

Like global warming, President Bush says there's no such thing. It's in the worker's mind. The first thing he did when he became president was rescind the law that helped workers with RSI out.

Next, he made it harder for individuals to file for bankruptcy. He knew his administration was going to break some records, there, and had the banks and credit card companies, heavy campaign contributors, to protect.

Today, there was nothing on the computers that Brew had not already sent a resume in for and not heard back.

When the State of Florida privatized employment security, the same civil servants stayed on, only working for a corporation, now. Owning their own retirement, probably.

When Suent Scientific sold the factory in Atlanta where Brew worked to OFÉ, they paid their salaried employees what was in their pension account.

Brew couldn't roll it over into OFÉ's pension plan because OFÉ didn't have a pension plan. Salaried employees were on their own. He could invest his discretionary income in the stock market and own his own retirement.

(Represented employees had their pension through the union.)

Of course, six months after OFÉ bought the factory they laid Brew off, and he didn't have any discretionary income. He owned his own lack of income. He owned his own unemployment. When he finally got another job, which paid half what he had been making in Atlanta, he would own his own 50% reduction in income. At age 62, when his bargaining position would be take-it-or-leave-it.

Brew rolled the pension distribution Suent Scientific paid him into an annuity he could draw in five years, although it wouldn't be enough to retire on, it and social security both would not be enough, he didn't own enough, you see.

Meanwhile, he was looking for a job to pay for the house he and Brenda were buying.

His unemployment benefits had run out.

Brenda's unemployment benefits had run out.

Brenda had taken a job as a national 411 operator for Bell South.

Brew had applied for the same job Brenda had, and taken the test, and passed it.

He had made the site visit and seen what a national 411 operator did, he had gone to a doctor-in-the box for a urinalysis, to make sure he was not a substance-abuser.

He was waiting to hear back from the lab on the drug test.

You had to keep looking, though.

Once, in 1975, when Brew was at the point of taking a job that called for the ability to lift 100 lb dead weight from the floor to a conveyor belt, in a lawnmower factory, all day long, a new listing appeared on the microfiche machine.

Technical writer. Secret clearance, six months experience required.

Brew got the job.

It paid $9,600 a year. Twice what he had been making as a janitor in a department store.