Working Class Corner, More, More Jobs
During my Junior year of High School in Chicago, I did have that bag boy job for three weeks, but then I broke my ankle, and there was this play, and then the Writing Program, and I guess school was my job, though it didn’t pay very much at all, and I would have starved if family hadn’t feed, clothed, and sheltered me.
Sometimes I look at it as a cruel joke that I got all my rewards and status from things I wrote, pictures I took, or performances on stage.
Of course the War was going on, and when I graduated from High School I went directly to Toronto, for even if I went directly to college in 1971, I would still be up for the Draft.
Foolishly my Canadian teachers at my scholarship summerschool in Bloomfield Hills had told me that they would put me up. They worked for the CBC, and had a summer job at Adventures in Creativity. Ron and Diane Chudley were their names.
Well I took them at their word, and hitchiked to Toronto with 150 bucks in my pocket to flee the war in Viet Nam if I had too.
Three weeks is a long visit.
In otherwords I showed up at Ron and Diana’s place in Toronto, and stayed in their apartment for three weeks doing things like buying Frank Zappa records and borrowing the record player.
They finally took me to Rochdale College and left me there.
Somehow I paid for a month of a place to live in the building, and went out selling poems I had written on the streets of Yorkville.
I remember getting extremely hungry and eating an entire box of donuts in a stairwell once.
The Rochdale newspaper printed the poem I was selling on the streets without my permission and I had a meeting with the Vice President as a consequense. He offered me a job either as a maintainece man, or as a Security Guard, and I took the Security position.
I also started another newspaper.
The Security Guard job involved a good number of fist fights, and other conflicts that ground many of my views as far as real enemies, and real threats, and I do not worry that much about people who simply say bad things about me.
A real enemy throws you out a window and says you jumped.
Some jobs are like that.