More Jobs/Working Class Corner

     I remember taking a long walk in the woods  after successive failures to find a job.   It was a nice damp dull day easy on the eyes and really comfortable farmer jacket weather.

     You never knew what you might find on a woods walk around Greensboro NC.

     "How did this car get here?"

     If I’d had a rifle I’d have shot the rusted brown beauty just sitting there out in the woods of no road as if dropped there by a helicopter or part of a long ago bank robbery story impossible to do more than imagine.

     Seems I got a job selling cameras at the downtown camera store somewhere around then.

     Selling cameras is a lot like selling cars from what I can tell, since you deal with "trade ins.", plus there are professional camera men same as professional drivers.

      Last time I took a job selling cameras I got fired for taking a job for a few days at 3 times the day pay.   Didn’t work again for 3 weeks, so it worked out even.

      The Raleigh News and Observer wouldn’t buy Digital Nikons at 5 grand a piece at the time because the staff reporters got free film for their side projects.

      If I was to sell cars now I’d really only be interested in Fleet Sales.

      In the High School Days Camera Store Job there were cigar smoking salesmen with real personalities and all sorts of experience and guile.  There was junk in the dark all over the place and you could spend all day with a pencil eraser cleaning contacts for the batteries in Kodak Instamatics.

      There were boxes and boxes of photographs upstairs developed and printed and never to be picked up or seen long now in the landfills of America.

       Back then some of us bought it that cheap film, and Super 8 were worth the effort and money for us artists.   I tell my interns not to bother with anything but the best equipment, though I’ll use whatever I can get my hands on.   In that was I am an honest hypocrite and my interns know it.

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