The last time I was unemployed was 32 years ago nearly to the day. I’d arrived in Boston on the Friday morning after Thanksgiving 1980. This was just two and a half weeks post shotgun inspired, express exit from Texas and a visit with my folks in Western Pennsylvania.
My buddy Craig, from high school, picked me up at the Trailways bus station in downtown Boston. I’d called him the previous day, on Thanksgiving, to see if I could take him up on his long standing invitation to visit and, by the way, ‘can I crash at your place until I find a job?’!
Incredibly, (damn, I’m a lucky thing!) he was actually AT school over Thanksgiving vaca and ‘sure you can stay with me. When are you planning to come to Boston?’
‘Em, in about 14 hours. My bus is due in to South Station at 8 AM.’
Unphased and undaunted, Craig was there to pick me up. He took me back to his MIT frat house for a brunch of leftover turkey and trimmings.
When he said ‘frat,’ when he told me he was in a frat, I was a bit freaked and ready to hit up the YWCA for lodgings. You see, the frat houses at my alma mater were infamous for their Animal House-ish (but nowhere near as sweet or tame), horrendous, serial abusive behavior towards female guests at their parties.
One of the first things I was told, by a fellow music major who overheard me being invited to a Sigma Chi party, ‘don’t ever go to frat parties or, if you do, be sure to go in a group of friends and stick with them the whole time. Don’t ever let them get you alone.’
‘Why?’
It was great sport to get the womenfolk, especially freshman, roilingly drunk and rape them -- sometimes in front of an audience of frat brothers and sometimes the ‘brothers’ joined in the ‘fun.’
At the time, I suspected this was urban legend but then it happened to a couple of my chums. I steered well clear of frat row.
Craig quickly and thoroughly dispelled my fears and well founded prejudice. You see, Epsilon Theta was and still is a coed fraternity. To my initial arched eyebrow response, he explained that this was more of a ‘living group,’ a house where a lot of like minded souls dwelled.
Okey dokey then.
And the place WAS different. I’d occasionally go to the big Saturday night dinners with alumni and other guests. After supper there’d be Dungeons and Dragons, chess and, my total fav, LEGOS! While I was making reproductions of Piet Mondrian’s Broadway Boogie Woogie, my playmates were creating fully functioning models of the Space Shuttle Enterprise. Oh yes they were.
We were, between showing off our respective creations and starting on new ones, studying each other like intriguing alien species. This beat all hell out of sitting on the Jenny at 2 AM swigging cheap ass beer with a bunch of folk who made fun of me because I knew what photosynthesis was and could use the word accumulate in a sentence.
You know, just for example and all.
So, I'm unemployed for the first time in a zillion years. What now?
My buddy Craig, from high school, picked me up at the Trailways bus station in downtown Boston. I’d called him the previous day, on Thanksgiving, to see if I could take him up on his long standing invitation to visit and, by the way, ‘can I crash at your place until I find a job?’!
Incredibly, (damn, I’m a lucky thing!) he was actually AT school over Thanksgiving vaca and ‘sure you can stay with me. When are you planning to come to Boston?’
‘Em, in about 14 hours. My bus is due in to South Station at 8 AM.’
Unphased and undaunted, Craig was there to pick me up. He took me back to his MIT frat house for a brunch of leftover turkey and trimmings.
When he said ‘frat,’ when he told me he was in a frat, I was a bit freaked and ready to hit up the YWCA for lodgings. You see, the frat houses at my alma mater were infamous for their Animal House-ish (but nowhere near as sweet or tame), horrendous, serial abusive behavior towards female guests at their parties.
‘Why?’
It was great sport to get the womenfolk, especially freshman, roilingly drunk and rape them -- sometimes in front of an audience of frat brothers and sometimes the ‘brothers’ joined in the ‘fun.’
At the time, I suspected this was urban legend but then it happened to a couple of my chums. I steered well clear of frat row.
Craig quickly and thoroughly dispelled my fears and well founded prejudice. You see, Epsilon Theta was and still is a coed fraternity. To my initial arched eyebrow response, he explained that this was more of a ‘living group,’ a house where a lot of like minded souls dwelled.
Okey dokey then.
And the place WAS different. I’d occasionally go to the big Saturday night dinners with alumni and other guests. After supper there’d be Dungeons and Dragons, chess and, my total fav, LEGOS! While I was making reproductions of Piet Mondrian’s Broadway Boogie Woogie, my playmates were creating fully functioning models of the Space Shuttle Enterprise. Oh yes they were.
We were, between showing off our respective creations and starting on new ones, studying each other like intriguing alien species. This beat all hell out of sitting on the Jenny at 2 AM swigging cheap ass beer with a bunch of folk who made fun of me because I knew what photosynthesis was and could use the word accumulate in a sentence.
You know, just for example and all.
So, I'm unemployed for the first time in a zillion years. What now?
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