Old Things

As if it isn't obvious by now, I am virtually unemployable. My schooling prepared me for no discernible activity in today's workplace. So many letters from potential employers and employment screening departments have indicated this much in writing. In a letter dated July 13, 2016, Bryan Boeckelmann, Manager of Recruiting and Examination for the City of Saint Louis writes: "I regret to inform you that your experience and training does not meet the Minimum Qualifications for this position." In a letter dated September 20, 2011 the Human Resources Division at Los Alamos National Laboratory "has determined that your experience and/or educational background are not the best match for this position."

I recall a brief moment after finishing the oral defense of my comprehensive examinations toward the fulfillment of my Doctorate of Philosophy in Communication at the University of Colorado, Boulder one of my advisors, Doctor Bryan Taylor, audibly shouted from inside the room that I had just exited, "What is he going to do?"

What am I going to do? Apply as I might, find brief moments of need from others as I do, I get by, just barely, but I get by. So Monday, August 29, 2016 I helped a childhood friend remove some wood lath and trim from a home built in Saint Louis in the late 1800s. In an upstairs closet where I had just removed some trim, two items shined like gems amid the rubble.

The green tinkertoy tab has been identified as coming from a Tinkertoy, Giant Engineer #155 set from Questor Education Products Co., which was produced in the 1950s. The picture, likely a yearbook photo or some other photographic memento, came from some time in the 20s through the 40s, judging by the sepia-toned patina of the photo. But if this is not natural yellowing of a photograph over time it could possibly be a much older photo. Sepia toning began in the 1880s, but the commercial availability of photographs on photographic paper for the context in which this photograph was produced was probably a 20th century advent. It would make little photographs like this the nigh-ubiquitous mementos of childhood, children, and other loved ones that would end up in so many small lockets and other collector's paraphernalia.

The image of this child came from a city home near the inner ring that defines the first stage of city development, i.e., out from the city center to the west terminating at Jefferson Avenue. Houses east of Jefferson are some of the oldest remaining structures in the city. Slowly, and piecemeal these homes are renovated, torn down, mysteriously burned and memories of what once was disappear. The photograph of this girl reflects a different demographic for the city's urban core at the time that it was taken. Most likely, her parents or grandparents were recent emigres from Germany. Her father likely worked at one of the many manufacturing businesses around the city. The Anheuser-Busch brewery is within walking distance of this home, so he may have worked there as well. Time, technology, and automation separates us from the world in which this girl lived or the world in which that Tinkertoy tab was played with. All we have now are conjecture about the fragments from the past that fall behind walls and become entombed in their own makeshift time capsules.

In essence, I just work for whatever I can get. Yesterday it was for a free lunch and the payment of a parking ticket. Finding things like this and leveraging what non-marketable skill I have for describing what I see is all I do now. Sad lot that I've become at times like this. As I've noted countless times before, I dug that hole. I dug that hole because conceiving of myself in a job depressed me like nothing else. It depressed me so much that a professor for a Business and Professional writing class I took during my undergraduate studies inserted a brochure for mental health counseling available on campus into my writing portfolio. I have no more to add to that discussion. I have to deal with a Social Security Administration that could not effectively stop payments to a dead person and is holding me accountable for their mistake 18 months later.