Seventh Day
Wed 02-09-1994:
My 'seventh day' chronologically began on March 7, 1986. However in terms of life epochs March 7, 1988 marks a more radical turning point. That was my retirement date, and perhaps as big a change--in lifestyle, circumstances, outlook, general satisfaction-- as any of my life. It was Liberation Day, when I got free from from a frustrating and onerous office routine and general existence and moved into a wide and ample life of pleasure, meaning and general joy!!
In the Sixth Day brief mention was made of some of the burden of those last years at EPA. They had actually hired me to set up the docket; I was a professional, and I did a professional job for them: a high standard docket, operated efficiently and economically in accordance with all the legal and other requirements. I found it quite rewarding to do this constructive job, using the skills I had developed in my previous three years at the other agency.
Had I been 'career oriented' and 'ambitious' like so many of our estimable civil servants, I could probably in time have easily developed an office with a dozen clerks, which would have made me a much bigger man (grade-wise and salary-wise) than I became. Thank God I had no real desire for such a 'career'. If truth be known, I had virtually worked myself out of a job by the time I had been there perhaps three years. (All this is an expression of my firm conviction that if they were so minded, and especially if they were appropriately rewarded, 1000 civil servants could easily do the work at present done by 10,000!)
By 1981 I had trained Gordon McLeod to do whatever needed to be done. In addition to him one or two low level clerks could have operated the docket about as well as it was actually done---without my presence! In fact I had not been there six months when I began to sense the shape of the future, and I had offered to take the law library in addition to the docket (See Sixth Day). That was not to be, so the last 7 years at EPA I was underemployed.
If I had it to do over again, I do believe I might have looked for better employment--that no doubt would have been the more honorable course. However by this time I was 55, an age at which new jobs are not so easy to find. Another extenuating circumstance is that I had come to Washington to major on the church--employment was not my primary consideration. Unfortunately neither the church nor the job worked out for me as well as I might have liked. But we got along. I was un-ambitious, and at an office Christmas party (one of the few times that Gordon and I had anything to do with the office to which we belonged) I announced my intention of remaining 'for the duration'. And that I did--but often wondered if it wasn't a mistake!
It was just about the beginning of my 7th decade that Gordon left me, and the job immediately became grimmer. It was not really hard, but a bit more demanding, and I had been badly spoiled with a very excellent assistant; thereafter I did the work. Some time before I finished, my boss,
Yamada told me that one of the docket customers had reported that I was surly, and I had to confess that it was probably true. I believe that Yamada understood something of my circumstances: he knew that they had exploited me, and left me there without a thought as to my personal needs or capabilities. He gave me a promotion near the end!
My job at EPA was undemanding, but distasteful and onerous. The whole scene had become distasteful-the traffic, the rush; the air especially was slowly (maybe not so slowly) destroying my lungs. I seriously considered trying to get a valid medical excuse for early retirement. A Filipino doctor at the Waterside Mall would have been interested in certifying me --at a price. I resisted the temptation to go that route and sweated out my last year. I jumped the gun in January, taking all the accrued leave I had, although I had to go back for a couple of weeks. March 7 was liberation day.
There have been many periods of my life when I have felt a good bit of frustration, and this was perhaps the longest such. Frustration had sometimes been more acute, but also more temporary. This was a matter of sweating out a couple of years when I would very much rather have been doing something else.
Meanwhile Ellie was continuing to progress in her job, win promotions and friends doing important and interesting work. I was happy for her, and especially grateful for the money she brought home. Otherwise I would probably of necessity have had to make some waves about more money or another job. She relieved me of that necessity, and I lived for my 62nd birthday. Not a good place to be at all!
Looking at the bright side there was the Quaker meeting. Here I had friends, respect, interesting pastimes, no--important activities. We were trying seriously to help people--and with some success. (See the Twelfth Step in the Sixth Day.) As I have so often during my life, I lived for those special moments of the week (or month or year) when life would take on real meaning. And I endured the five days at work, the traffic congestion going to and coming from work, the filthy air that I felt was ruining my lungs.
The filthy air was to a large degree my fault, also. We had bought the Arlington house in 1976 (it served us well for 10 years). The following year we sold the Winston-Salem house and had some money to use as we saw fit. We invested it in the house at Falls Church. (Had we been primarily interested in the pecuniary dimension, we might have bought more, lower class residential property, but when it came to a showdown, we found that we could not purchase a house as an investment that we would not care to live in ourselves.)
My 'seventh day' chronologically began on March 7, 1986. However in terms of life epochs March 7, 1988 marks a more radical turning point. That was my retirement date, and perhaps as big a change--in lifestyle, circumstances, outlook, general satisfaction-- as any of my life. It was Liberation Day, when I got free from from a frustrating and onerous office routine and general existence and moved into a wide and ample life of pleasure, meaning and general joy!!
In the Sixth Day brief mention was made of some of the burden of those last years at EPA. They had actually hired me to set up the docket; I was a professional, and I did a professional job for them: a high standard docket, operated efficiently and economically in accordance with all the legal and other requirements. I found it quite rewarding to do this constructive job, using the skills I had developed in my previous three years at the other agency.
Had I been 'career oriented' and 'ambitious' like so many of our estimable civil servants, I could probably in time have easily developed an office with a dozen clerks, which would have made me a much bigger man (grade-wise and salary-wise) than I became. Thank God I had no real desire for such a 'career'. If truth be known, I had virtually worked myself out of a job by the time I had been there perhaps three years. (All this is an expression of my firm conviction that if they were so minded, and especially if they were appropriately rewarded, 1000 civil servants could easily do the work at present done by 10,000!)
By 1981 I had trained Gordon McLeod to do whatever needed to be done. In addition to him one or two low level clerks could have operated the docket about as well as it was actually done---without my presence! In fact I had not been there six months when I began to sense the shape of the future, and I had offered to take the law library in addition to the docket (See Sixth Day). That was not to be, so the last 7 years at EPA I was underemployed.
If I had it to do over again, I do believe I might have looked for better employment--that no doubt would have been the more honorable course. However by this time I was 55, an age at which new jobs are not so easy to find. Another extenuating circumstance is that I had come to Washington to major on the church--employment was not my primary consideration. Unfortunately neither the church nor the job worked out for me as well as I might have liked. But we got along. I was un-ambitious, and at an office Christmas party (one of the few times that Gordon and I had anything to do with the office to which we belonged) I announced my intention of remaining 'for the duration'. And that I did--but often wondered if it wasn't a mistake!
It was just about the beginning of my 7th decade that Gordon left me, and the job immediately became grimmer. It was not really hard, but a bit more demanding, and I had been badly spoiled with a very excellent assistant; thereafter I did the work. Some time before I finished, my boss,
Yamada told me that one of the docket customers had reported that I was surly, and I had to confess that it was probably true. I believe that Yamada understood something of my circumstances: he knew that they had exploited me, and left me there without a thought as to my personal needs or capabilities. He gave me a promotion near the end!
My job at EPA was undemanding, but distasteful and onerous. The whole scene had become distasteful-the traffic, the rush; the air especially was slowly (maybe not so slowly) destroying my lungs. I seriously considered trying to get a valid medical excuse for early retirement. A Filipino doctor at the Waterside Mall would have been interested in certifying me --at a price. I resisted the temptation to go that route and sweated out my last year. I jumped the gun in January, taking all the accrued leave I had, although I had to go back for a couple of weeks. March 7 was liberation day.
There have been many periods of my life when I have felt a good bit of frustration, and this was perhaps the longest such. Frustration had sometimes been more acute, but also more temporary. This was a matter of sweating out a couple of years when I would very much rather have been doing something else.
Meanwhile Ellie was continuing to progress in her job, win promotions and friends doing important and interesting work. I was happy for her, and especially grateful for the money she brought home. Otherwise I would probably of necessity have had to make some waves about more money or another job. She relieved me of that necessity, and I lived for my 62nd birthday. Not a good place to be at all!
Looking at the bright side there was the Quaker meeting. Here I had friends, respect, interesting pastimes, no--important activities. We were trying seriously to help people--and with some success. (See the Twelfth Step in the Sixth Day.) As I have so often during my life, I lived for those special moments of the week (or month or year) when life would take on real meaning. And I endured the five days at work, the traffic congestion going to and coming from work, the filthy air that I felt was ruining my lungs.
The filthy air was to a large degree my fault, also. We had bought the Arlington house in 1976 (it served us well for 10 years). The following year we sold the Winston-Salem house and had some money to use as we saw fit. We invested it in the house at Falls Church. (Had we been primarily interested in the pecuniary dimension, we might have bought more, lower class residential property, but when it came to a showdown, we found that we could not purchase a house as an investment that we would not care to live in ourselves.)
The house at Falls Church had some really neat features. The heat was in the floor--hot water heating. Quite nice. A very nice master bedroom, a split level! What I didn't take into adequate consideration was the interstate highway across the street! Apparently many people have been able to live with that without undue stress, but I was not one of them. In 1986 we sold the Arlington house (tremendously appreciated!) and moved to Hallwood Street. I came to regret it, but at the time it was simply a change--a change that I needed badly. I put Ellie to a world of trouble, and as usual she buckled down and got the job done. How patient with my foibles she has been through the years--and decades!
It did provide a bit of variety to my life--badly needed. But my lungs started hurting awful, especially in the summer. I became convinced that my mortal life was near an end. Actually when I retired, I simply hoped for a year or two of peace and happiness. (Once again I was to be surprised by joy.)
In January of 1988 I took as much leave as I had. We bought the Nissan Van and headed for Florida. I was really uptight, and this trip no doubt helped to relieve the frustration a bit. Ellie had less leave than I had, so at the end of her time I took her home and went back to Florida alone. I fooled around in Florida, went up to Atlanta, drove around quite exhausted, unable to decide where to stop. I finally went to the Stone Mountain State Park and registered for a campsite. It was self registration as I recall. I left the car at the curb and went in and registered.
When I came back the van was gone. I had left it in neutral and it took off for a lower spot. It had left the road, gone crashing through the woods until it came to rest in front of a tree. An old couple had witnessed the driverless vehicle and apprised me where it was. What a humiliation! I called Ellie, and she was most supportive, as she has always been.
I was fortunate enough to get a wrecker who came and with great skill warped the thing back into the road. With the front all caved in, I got in the van and drove off--to a motel. And then home, and made arrangements to get it fixed (and drove it the next 100,000 without noteworthy incident). I was uptight!
One good thing happened on that trip. Passing through Ocala we stopped at the tennis courts and met the old people who were later to become a big part of our January and February lives in Ocala (and beginning in 1999 our tennis friends year round).
I had hoped to take terminal leave, but this was against regulations at the time, and I had to return to the office for a final two weeks. They had conducted a competition among existing employees of the Office of General Counsel for my replacement; the candidates were largely secretaries who wanted to get out of the main office. They selected a high type young black woman, whom I began training a couple of months before retirement time. She soon learned what she needed to know and took over the work and left me in the (relatively) happy situation I had been in before Gordon left. She was glad to get the job (especially the working conditions), grateful to me, and did the work well.
Finally March 7 arrived. Mustering out! Great relief! Walking out of there a free man, just like getting out of the service! Ellie had resigned her job, her good job with pleasant working conditions and associates, in order to be with me in the new life. We soon loaded our van and departed for the West Coast.
The 7th Day properly begins with retirement, especially if one is smart enough to retire at a reasonable time in his life. Some people hang on until they drop. Sen Thurmond of S.C. seemed to be working at age 100, an automaton, still doing just what he was doing 50 years ago. Poor man. Things are so hard for a rich man. There's such a terrible temptation to worship the created good and thus remain fixed at a preliminary stage of development.
The Created Good and the Creative Event. A book by a naturalistic Chicago theologian named Ernest Wieman introduced that concept to Ellie and me some 40 years ago (early in the fourth day for me). The idea is that we all have a strong tendency to worship the good that comes to us, to make an idol of it, and this condemns us to become the sort of person who hasn't had an original thought in 50 years. To perceive the creative event (which is new) one has to recognize the relativity of the good he has committed himself to. Hurrah.
The Created Good and the Creative Event. A book by a naturalistic Chicago theologian named Ernest Wieman introduced that concept to Ellie and me some 40 years ago (early in the fourth day for me). The idea is that we all have a strong tendency to worship the good that comes to us, to make an idol of it, and this condemns us to become the sort of person who hasn't had an original thought in 50 years. To perceive the creative event (which is new) one has to recognize the relativity of the good he has committed himself to. Hurrah.
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