Note: A part of this True Story has to go untold for now because a small part of the story involves a person that hasn’t given me permission to tell it. So I will start the story a tad bit after the part I can’t write about. I can add it later if I get the permissions I need.
It was 1965, I was living in Indianapolis after my four-year stint in the US Marine Corps. I originally went to work for Stewart Warner testing Volkswagen gas-fired heaters on an assembly line. These little heaters fit under the seat of a Volkswagen Beetle and had a tendency to blow up if they weren’t set up perfectly. My job was to make sure they worked correctly. I was earning $2.50 an hour (which, believe it or not, was good money at the time). I liked the work but hated the politics of the Union employees. I did my job well and was always ahead of the people who packed up the heaters after I verified them. They wanted me to slow down. The claim was that working too fast would eventually make us run out of work. That didn’t make sense to me. Anyway, they harassed me so much that I asked for a voluntary layoff and went looking for another job. I found a job right away running an OptiCheck machine for Green and Company. I was working under a Seventh Day Adventist named Zachariah who, for some silly reason, gave me the nickname of Zeek. That job lasted just two months because my previous application to work for Eli Lily was accepted. To Indianapolis residences, this was the company everyone wanted to work for. It offered great wages, benefits, and long-term stability. I remember my start date was on the first of the month and I lasted exactly one month. When I started work, I noticed right away that nobody ever left Eli Lily. They worked on the production lines until they died or retired and it was a dead-end job unless you had a college degree in pharmaceuticals or chemistry. I wanted to get a college education and that wasn’t going to happen there. I went to college part time in the Marines while in California, where college was free at the time. Soon after I started my Eli Lily job the Vietnam Veterans Education Bill was signed. Wow, what a break that was! Perfect timing you could say, right? If I moved to California I could get the college education I wanted and the government would pay me extra free money to live on. I gave my boss my two weeks notice that very day. A few days later, I was called into the office and offered a raise if I agreed to stay. They couldn’t believe anyone would quit. There were four white-haired and balding old men at the table. I didn’t want to end up like them. I wanted to get an education and eventually own the company I worked for and I explained that to them. My family thought I was crazy to quit Eli Lily but not me. I left for California on the first of the next month, after working for Lily for just 30 days. I left with $20 in my pocket. I hitchhiked all the way to California. I took no clothes, just my hat and my guitar. It took me two weeks to reach Los Angeles.
The first day in LA, I applied for admission to the Los Angeles City College. They helped with the paperwork needed to get my government money. I used the college’s address since I didn’t have one yet. They said they would give me the checks as they came in. Now, all I had to do was survive for two months without money or a place to sleep. I slept in the bus station that evening and for several weeks after that. I started knocking on doors asking to cut grass, clean out garages, wash cars, basically anything for food money. I found work the very first day and every day after that. Eventually, I met a Mexican fellow who hired me to cut his grass and take care of his house while he was on vacation. He let me use his address and recommended me for a warehouse job at RCA Records. I got the job at RCA working nights. I bought some new cloths and rented a small one-bedroom apartment in a rundown tenement building. I had a job that I liked, a place to live, I was doing well in college, and living my dream. I was going to get an education and become somebody! Not bad for a poor, white trash street kid, huh?
I made friends at work and in my building while working at night and going to college full-time during the day. Money was not a problem since I had my job and my monthly check from the Vietnam Education Bill. As you know by now, I swore off alcohol when I was eight because I came from a family of alcoholics and was afraid to take that first drink. I just knew that if I did I would become a hopeless alcoholic. One day, I found one of my building’s residents lying in the hallway, next to his apartment with his apartment keys in his hand. I lived a few doors down. I stooped down and realized that he was very, very drunk. It was a struggle but I finally got him into his apartment. I stayed with him for an hour or so until he woke up. He had a coffee pot so I brewed each of us a cup and we sat there talking and getting to know each other. Over the next week or so I found out his story and we became friends. Every night, he got drunk but when he was sober he turned into an intelligent, gregarious, and quite funny human being. He told me he used to have a wonderful, understanding wife and two lovely young daughters. He had a business degree from Berkeley and was, before they fired him, the West Coast Regional Manager for French’s Mustard and was pulling down over $100,000 a year with his bonuses. They supplied him with a company car, travel allowance, and expense accounts.
He was, evidently, a great salesman and had all the things I always dreamed of having (except I wanted to own my own business). One da,y he got into a bad accident and it was his fault. He had been drinking and they took away his driver’s license. When I could, I would drive him to the bar and pick him up but I couldn’t continue that. I felt like I was an enabler. I had tried to get him to go to Alcoholics Anonymous many times but he refuses to go. One day, I asked him why he drank, when did it start, and why did his wife leave him?
He said he met his wife just before graduating from Berkeley and married her after graduation. He was working as a short-order cook at a really nice restaurant and, believe it or not, he said it was the best job he ever had. He was really good at it and it was the happiest time of his life. His father had owned a small restaurant when he was in high school. He worked with his father as the short-order cook. It seemed strange to me for someone to have a Berkeley degree and was satisfied to work as a short-order cook. He told me his wife, pregnant with their child, insisted that he apply for a better, higher-paying job. Reluctantly, he acquiesced and applied at several big companies. He was hired as a Manager for French’s Mustard. At first, he fit right in and he did so well they kept promoting him over and over. He was forced to travel a lot and he was alone a lot. His drinking picked up and he blamed it on the loneliness. They had their second little girl while he was on the road and he was away from home for weeks at a time. His drinking began to get out of hand and before long he was full-blown alcoholic. When he was fired for showing up drunk at an important French’s Mustard sales presentation, it was the last straw for his wife. She took the two little girls and she left him. What a sad, sad story! This turns out to be a story about a well-qualified, educated man who was happy at having no ambition who was destroyed because he tried to prove that he had ambition! Isn’t that ironic?
Now, I came up with a possible solution to help him out of his dilemma. At LA City College, one of my classmates worked at a Denny’s restaurant. I asked him to help my new friend get a job as a short-order cook there and, believe it or not, he did! The only requirement would be that he go to AA and attend all the AA meetings. It turned out, by chance, that the manager of Denny’s was a recovering alcoholic. I felt like I had been able to save someone like my social worker, the young doctor, and the policeman had saved me as a child. If it worked, I would be a hero to someone for the first time. My friend went to AA meetings religiously and I even took him once in a while. If my family members had AA to go to when I was young they might have beaten the disease and I might have avoided the orphanage. Think about that for a minute… My life might have been so much better if AA existed in Indianapolis in 1948.
I left Los Angeles for San Francisco two years later and before I left I went to see my old friend at Denny’s one last time. He had stayed in the AA program, was able to win his wife and children back, and got his driver’s license back. I was so happy for him. I really was his hero and he told me so, more than once. I was proud of him and it felt good to be a hero to someone. It had been 6 months since I had been to Denny’s to see my friend I found that it had burned up in a fire and was being rebuilt with the insurance money. The outside was fine but the kitchen had been destroyed. The manager was there and what he told me broke my heart. I guess my friend had fallen off the wagon, unbeknownst to the manager, on the one day a week the manager was off work. My friend came in drunk and accidentally spilled scalding hot grease all over his chest, arms and lower body. In thrashing around in pain, he knocked over something and started the fire that burned up the kitchen. I found out that my friend had third degree burns over 60% of his body, his wife left him, and he was still an alcoholic! I couldn’t believe it. I felt so bad because I blamed myself. I was no longer a hero. I was the cause of my friend’s situation. If I hadn’t interfered he would not be injured. What a let-down. I wasn’t going to give up though trying to help others or trying to be a hero to someone. I was still young and I figured I had my whole life ahead of me.
Note: I’ve told this story to my daughters, my family and friends probably too many times. I try to add some words of wisdom afterwards like:
–The best laid plans of mice and men sometimes go astray!
–That goes to show you, all that ends well, often backfires on you!
–The road to hell is paved with good intentions!
–Nothing ventured, nothing gained!
–You can’t fix stupid.
–We all probably want to be a hero to someone.
–Never give up doing the best you can at everything you do.
–The only person you ever have to prove anything to is the person looking back at you in the mirror. That person knows everything about you and if everyday of your life that person approves of your efforts that you put forth the day before, then you are a Hero! Strive to be better today than the day before. Go forth and prosper!
Roy Lee Barrett
Click to go to the next True Story,
“Some Good Times I had at the Orphanage”
Roy Lee Unchained 