Old Folks's landlord worked for the maintenance
department at Wake Forest University as a welder.
He told Old Folks they
needed an electrician's helper.
Old Folks had been trained as an electronics
technician, which is not the same as an electrician, but had worked in an installation
squadron where running conduit, pulling wires, and terminating them to a power source
was part of the job.
The maintenance superintendent, though, was leery of
Old Folks's education.
He had a bachelor's degree and three years of graduate
work in anthropology.
If a better job came along Old Folks would take it,
and leave him in the lurch.
Also, while he, the superintendent, was not intimidated
by Old Folks's education, a maintenance supervisor might be. He might not take orders
well.
He might not work well with others. He might put on airs.
It's
not against the law to refuse to hire someone because they're overqualified for the
job. It's not even considered bad form to tell them to their face they made wrong
life-choices, and will pay for them until their dying day. Who told them to go to
graduate school? What are they-a smart-ass?
* * *
It was a shame, because Old Folks really wanted to get that job.
He'd liked to have worked as a maintenance man at a university where Dr. Maya Angelou
is a Lifetime Professor of American Studies, holding an endowed chair (the Reynolds
Chair). It's true, her doctorate is honorary, not earned, but that makes it all the
more valuable, to her: she had to do it the hard way, overcoming huge odds, lots
of race prejudice against her, the hostility of less successful poets, activists,
performers, and friends of Oprah Winfrey. Her Inaugural Poem and line of greeting
cards for the Hallmark Mosaic Collection speak for themselves.
Who don't
like Maya? Pearl Bailey? She's just jealous she didn't get a greeting card contract.
* * *
Old Folks gave himself the Oxditch Chair, by analogy with Gordon Willey's
Bowditch Chair, at Harvard. When the ox is in the ditch one rolls up his sleeve and
gets to work.
Old Folks called himself a Professor of Cracker Studies, without
portfolio, at Gulf Coast Community College.
When Gulf Coast threw him out,
as an interloper, he moved the chair to the Bay County Public Library, where they
had a rental computer with an inkjet printer for public use he could use.
He also gave himself a Disappearing, or Retreating Artist Award, by analogy with
Emerging Artist. The prize was the glass stopper out of a Worcestershire sauce bottle.
You used it to keep the liver fluke carneira from swimming up your urethra
when you pissed in the Amazon River, or the Panama Canal, Old Folks got them confused.
Fermez la bouche!