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While in college, I worked for a department of the County during my summer and Christmas breaks.  

In the summer of 1977, I resumed work on the same projects on which I had worked the previous two summers and one Christmas break.  At the same time, a person whom I will here name Assphalt was promoted from dump truck driver to supervisor of all summer hires.  No one knew why Assphalt had been promoted to an executive position.  He was a foul-smelling, partly toothless, shambling hulk, an evening drunkard who took his morning hangovers out on the people he supervised.  Both of his hands were missing fingers; and, I believe, his skull was missing part of its brain.  

  On June 13th, I arrived at the yard at about 7:20am, for 7:30 clock-in.  That clock-in time had been standard for the survey crew for as long as my father, and his father before him, had worked there.  As the others members of the survey crew had not yet arrived, I was sitting on a bench outside the building (a bench that, according to certain gossip, had been named for my father).  Assphalt suddenly loomed over me:  he was a large man of formidable stature, and somewhat frightening.  He asked me if I was a summer hire, to which I repled in the affirmative.  He then asked me why I had not clocked in at 7am, and, as I tried to explain that my clock-in was 7:30, he unleashed a spate of profanity at me, told me I would be formally reprimanded, and that I had better show up at 7am tomorrow . . . if I knew what was good for me.

    I was so shaken up by that, and so sure that some change had been made that I had not been told about, that I went upstairs to the Chief Surveyor's office where he, and my immediate supervisor, were sipping coffee.  Both of them had known me since I had been adopted; and both and known my father (with whom they had worked closely, for years) and my grandfather who, though deceased for eight years, still commanded quite a bit of respect among those who had known him.  I apologized for clocking in late and assured them it would not happen again.  The Chief Surveyor asked what time I clocked in and when I answered 7:20, he said, "That was ten minutes early, not late."  I then told him what Assphalt had told me.  The Chief Supervisor became visibly incensed, assured me that I had not clocked in late, and told me that summer hires on the survey crew kept different hours than the other summer hires.  He then told me that I was not required to be here at 7am; and that, having never clocked in late during my seasons with the County, to continue on as before.

      The survey crew's station wagon was equipped with a two-way radio, by which we could be cintacted by any other similarly equipped vehicle, or by the management office, or the dispatcher's office.  One of the customs of the survey crew was to stop at some breakfast serving restaurant for thirty to forty-five minutes (on the clock).  We stopped for breakfast, and the other members of the survey crew began to ask me about my encounter with Assphalt---whom they thought of with the utmost contempt.  

       After breakfast, we proceeded to the job site, which was in a remote rural road on the other side of the county, so we had some distance to travel.  While we were on the road, we heard the County Engineer's secretary on the radio, asking for a reply from Assphalt.  She very rarely every spoke on the radio, so this certainly caught our attention.  When Assphalt answered, she informed him that he was expected for a meeting in the Chief Surveyor's office . . . with the Chief Surveyor (my supervisor's supervisor) and with Mr. Coddington, my father.  A brief but uncomfortable pause followed; and every county employee with a radio on that frequency was probably listening in.  Assphalt answered that he had several appointments for that afternoon; the Engineer's secretary informed him that those appointments had been cancelled, and he was to show up at the administrative building in the main yard at 2pm.  "And please be on time," she said sarcastically, before signing off.

     That evening, at home, during supper, my father informed me that Assphalt now had a much clearer understanding of my particular work schedule, and that he would not be communicating with me in any way without either the Chief Surveyor's permission or my father's.  And, for the remainder of the summer, I continued to arrive and clock in at 7:20am.

However, this was not my only grievance against Assphalt; but what I must say next I can only allege, I cannot prove.  Over the course of the summer, he caused damaged to someone whom I held in the highest regard by providing that person with both marijuana, booze, and low-grade but addictive pain killers.  This person worked the night shift with the trash crew, so we only saw each other in passing; but we were friends, and by the end of the summer my friend was so stoned that he hardly knew me when our paths crossed.

My college, at that time, scheduled its Christmas Holiday break to occur just prior to Thanksgiving, with classes to resume on January 3rd,  When I returned home for the holidays, I went back to work for the County---but in a much different capacity.  The state had mandated that all County Departments must inventory their equipment and tools, and that a separate inventory sheet must be kept on every item.  This was a formed to be uniformly typed.  Because I had a proven typing speed of 65+ wom, and had once even reached 90wpm, I was tasked with typing the inventory sheets based upon reports sent in from the various departments and crews of the Engineer's Office, in the main office (instead of working on the roads in the cold of Winter, as I had the previous year); and being able to dress in business casual rather than overalls and clodhoppers.  The joker in the assignment was that the inventory must be finished by December 30, 1977.  The frank estimation from the auditors was that this was an impossible task, and I learned (some months later) that several of the office staff felt that it could not be accomplished.  I typed relentlessly.  I drank cups of instant soup to keep me going (mushroom, and french onion, mostly).  Spoiler alert:  I finished the final inventory sheet on Thursday, December 29th, 1977. 

    Just before I had returned home from the break, Assphalt was caught in some kind of activity, allegedly, and was demoted from director of summer hiring (which was an odd position to hold in Autumn, because no summer hire programs existed; my employment was an exception simply because my father had heard they needed a fast typist and he remembered my scores in high school typing class).  The Engineer's chief assistants had been negotiating with Assphalt, and he managed to arrange for an in-person meeting, in order to plead his case for restoration; the meeting was scheduled for 2-3pm.

    Part of my duty was to relieve the front desk receptionist between 1 and 2pm daily, for her lunch hour, so that the phones and front door were always covered.  On the day of Assphalt's meeting, he showed up a few minutes after 1pm, and asked if I would give the chief assistants the message that he had an unavoidable medicale appointment, and would not be able to attend, but that he would be very grateful and happy to reschedule.  I was alone with him in the reception room, and no one overheard the conversation.  I scribbled down the information on the "missed call" notepad while he watched, and placed it on the post from which they would take it when they returned from lunch.  I do not think he remembered me, but he thanked me profusely in his rather crude and uncouth way, profanity still included.  He turned his back, and I watched him exit through the glass doors and get on to the elevator.  I immediately thought of my friend, my addicted friend who, by that time, had increased his usage to far more noxious drugs.  I then tore the "missed call" note into so many small pieces not even a colony of ants would have been able to assemble them.  When the time for the meeting had expired, a letter was issued to Assphalt, explaining that his employment was to be terminated, but he could take the option of early retirement.  To the best of my knowledge, he neither appealed the decision nor attempted to prove that he had, in good faith, attempted to reschedule.

In the summer of 1983, when I was then two years past graduation, and working as Senior Assistant Manager of a financial office, the most profitable in our District Manager's string of fourteen offices, I read Assphalt's obituary in the morning newspaper, as I attempted to swallow my mother's scrambled eggs.  My father later learned that Assphalt had suffered a massive and unsurvivable heart attack.  As my father said, "Even his own heart attacked him."

My friend who became drug addicted never fully recovered.  Although he is still alive, his health is severely compromised.

Starward