Black Winter
This major downturn in my style of living began in earnest in the Fall of 1990.
I had pretty much let things get out of hand in my first "real" management job of my life.
I had been "management" (Recreation Coordinator) at BVC in the mid '80's and to my surprise, apparently did poorly in that position according to my best friend/boss Linda. She and her boss Veronica had met and decided that I needed "to go". So, Linda let me in on the scoop and I was allowed to graciously resign.
Now in 1990 at Amego, it was happening again, though I was in a position overseeing more staff and had much more responsibility attached to it...not to mention much better paying.
My boss Karen called me into the main office in Quincy, Mass. to discuss my "staff evaluation". In Human Service fields, it's common to be "empowering" enough to allow your staff to evaluate a manager's performance and submit that to the manager's boss and the manager's boss takes this as a true representation of the staff's perceptions, fair or unfair.
My staff had rated me poorly, for the most part, and in one quote, a staffer stated that I "acted like the Queen Bee" of the group home. (I wasn't officially "out" to my co-workers at this job, but I think it was generally assumed)
This evaluation hurt being, initiated by the folks under me who I though were overall loyal. But after weeks of contemplation I came to realise that the negative review was political payback for hiring a white assistant over a black one. My staff were mostly black and I think they saw me as racist for the promotion of the white guy and the reprimanding their habit of sleeping on the job and not conducting assignments as scheduled.
But Karen stuck by their word and de facto "vote" if you will (like management positions are democratic! Well in Human Services they partly are!) so I was kindly asked to resign.
I felt it was best as well so I resigned in October giving a full month's notice as is customary for management in that field.
Well, relations with my staff seemed to worsen for one reason or another so I was then "dismissed" after only two weeks of my "notice" period.
Thinking I had a full month, I hadn't even started looking for something else.
It took me 2 months before I found another job.
Meanwhile, finances hadn't been all that great that year anyway and since I was behind on my rent at Apollo Rd. in East Providence, I decided to not pay anymore rent and allow my first eviction to occur. (The first in four)
Before any actual sherriff came to take my stuff out though, I found a small attic apartment on Logee St. in Woonsocket that was cheaper and closer to Northern RIARC which I hoped to get into.
I also "returned" my leased used car that I was paying over $88/week for to the "Lease Here/Pay Here" lot by just abandoning it on the side of the lot with the keys in the car.
I resorted to using my very handicapped Fort Escort which, because of major automatic transmission issues ran in only "first gear".
I got a job with a door-to-door survey service verifying residents and such, kinda like the census but much suckier cause you weren't from the government but from the "Polk Directory" which people didn't know from jack-shit. So I just made up the answers for most of my route and quit before the week was out incase they caught on.
In December I was almost out of money and forced to call again on my tried and true friend John Batura at DialAmerica.
I started working for them again in mid-December but the job sucked so I was out the usual 50 to 80% of the time, thus making crappy paychecks.
But on the night of January 10th, 1991, my crummy decrepit, supposedly "rebuilt" 1981 Ford Escort decided that the trek from Warwick to Woonsocket (25 miles or so) was too long, or the night was too cold (10 degrees above zero Farenheit), or the engine too abused (running effectively only in "first gear" and couldn't be "shifted" since it was automatic and needing approximately 2 quarts of replenished motor oil per day)...or a combination of these factors...so that it just died.
Halfway home from Warwick, about 12 miles south of Woonsocket on lonely Rt. 146A, in the middle of a rural and sparsely populated suburban area, at about 1:30 in the morning...the engine gave one last gasp and seized. I was able to get the car off the road on the grassy area beyond the breakdown lane, and then that was it.
She never made another sound again.
Luckily, since the car also had no heater, I had dressed well for the cold in a long outercoat, but I was tired and not looking forward to a trek to a phone.
I walked about 2 miles before I came to a pay phone, but, being the wee hours of the morning on a weekday, no cabs were available. Even Providence cabbies weren't out this late, there just wasn't any usual call for it.
So, in the frigid night wind I trekked on to Woonsocket and made it home hours later and very numb indeed.
That cold walk cleared my head though and knocked me out of my funk. Of course, I didn't go back to DM since I couldn't drive there now that I didn't have a car.
I arranged with my father to borrow his Plymouth Duster and used it to get around for the next couple months.
I stepped up my job hunt for a quality job and decided to put aside my self-doubt and self-blame for the Amego experiences and went for management at NRIARC. After a series of tough, but well-performed interviews, I was awarded the manager position at Gaskill St. at NRIARC.
By late February, money from this new job was starting to make it's existance known by paying off my 2 months rent debt to my brand new landlady Nancy (with whom I went to high school with) and allowing me to eat and drink again. Oh, and how I would eat and drink again.
So the financial crisis of the "Black Winter" was over by March, but it's psychological effects lingered on for years.
No more should I consider myself "immune" to poverty, even to the point of homelessness...I knew how close Nancy came to turning me out.
No more should I consider a car a "birthright"...it is a benefit, but in no way guaranteed. And one must have the means with which to keep it and keep it running.
No more should I consider a job "easy to replace" and quit just because a few people were not satisfied with me. I should fight for the positions I truely feel passionate about.
Too bad it would take decades for these lessons to "sink in".
This major downturn in my style of living began in earnest in the Fall of 1990.
I had pretty much let things get out of hand in my first "real" management job of my life.
I had been "management" (Recreation Coordinator) at BVC in the mid '80's and to my surprise, apparently did poorly in that position according to my best friend/boss Linda. She and her boss Veronica had met and decided that I needed "to go". So, Linda let me in on the scoop and I was allowed to graciously resign.
Now in 1990 at Amego, it was happening again, though I was in a position overseeing more staff and had much more responsibility attached to it...not to mention much better paying.
My boss Karen called me into the main office in Quincy, Mass. to discuss my "staff evaluation". In Human Service fields, it's common to be "empowering" enough to allow your staff to evaluate a manager's performance and submit that to the manager's boss and the manager's boss takes this as a true representation of the staff's perceptions, fair or unfair.
My staff had rated me poorly, for the most part, and in one quote, a staffer stated that I "acted like the Queen Bee" of the group home. (I wasn't officially "out" to my co-workers at this job, but I think it was generally assumed)
This evaluation hurt being, initiated by the folks under me who I though were overall loyal. But after weeks of contemplation I came to realise that the negative review was political payback for hiring a white assistant over a black one. My staff were mostly black and I think they saw me as racist for the promotion of the white guy and the reprimanding their habit of sleeping on the job and not conducting assignments as scheduled.
But Karen stuck by their word and de facto "vote" if you will (like management positions are democratic! Well in Human Services they partly are!) so I was kindly asked to resign.
I felt it was best as well so I resigned in October giving a full month's notice as is customary for management in that field.
Well, relations with my staff seemed to worsen for one reason or another so I was then "dismissed" after only two weeks of my "notice" period.
Thinking I had a full month, I hadn't even started looking for something else.
It took me 2 months before I found another job.
Meanwhile, finances hadn't been all that great that year anyway and since I was behind on my rent at Apollo Rd. in East Providence, I decided to not pay anymore rent and allow my first eviction to occur. (The first in four)
Before any actual sherriff came to take my stuff out though, I found a small attic apartment on Logee St. in Woonsocket that was cheaper and closer to Northern RIARC which I hoped to get into.
I also "returned" my leased used car that I was paying over $88/week for to the "Lease Here/Pay Here" lot by just abandoning it on the side of the lot with the keys in the car.
I resorted to using my very handicapped Fort Escort which, because of major automatic transmission issues ran in only "first gear".
I got a job with a door-to-door survey service verifying residents and such, kinda like the census but much suckier cause you weren't from the government but from the "Polk Directory" which people didn't know from jack-shit. So I just made up the answers for most of my route and quit before the week was out incase they caught on.
In December I was almost out of money and forced to call again on my tried and true friend John Batura at DialAmerica.
I started working for them again in mid-December but the job sucked so I was out the usual 50 to 80% of the time, thus making crappy paychecks.
But on the night of January 10th, 1991, my crummy decrepit, supposedly "rebuilt" 1981 Ford Escort decided that the trek from Warwick to Woonsocket (25 miles or so) was too long, or the night was too cold (10 degrees above zero Farenheit), or the engine too abused (running effectively only in "first gear" and couldn't be "shifted" since it was automatic and needing approximately 2 quarts of replenished motor oil per day)...or a combination of these factors...so that it just died.
Halfway home from Warwick, about 12 miles south of Woonsocket on lonely Rt. 146A, in the middle of a rural and sparsely populated suburban area, at about 1:30 in the morning...the engine gave one last gasp and seized. I was able to get the car off the road on the grassy area beyond the breakdown lane, and then that was it.
She never made another sound again.
Luckily, since the car also had no heater, I had dressed well for the cold in a long outercoat, but I was tired and not looking forward to a trek to a phone.
I walked about 2 miles before I came to a pay phone, but, being the wee hours of the morning on a weekday, no cabs were available. Even Providence cabbies weren't out this late, there just wasn't any usual call for it.
So, in the frigid night wind I trekked on to Woonsocket and made it home hours later and very numb indeed.
That cold walk cleared my head though and knocked me out of my funk. Of course, I didn't go back to DM since I couldn't drive there now that I didn't have a car.
I arranged with my father to borrow his Plymouth Duster and used it to get around for the next couple months.
I stepped up my job hunt for a quality job and decided to put aside my self-doubt and self-blame for the Amego experiences and went for management at NRIARC. After a series of tough, but well-performed interviews, I was awarded the manager position at Gaskill St. at NRIARC.
By late February, money from this new job was starting to make it's existance known by paying off my 2 months rent debt to my brand new landlady Nancy (with whom I went to high school with) and allowing me to eat and drink again. Oh, and how I would eat and drink again.
So the financial crisis of the "Black Winter" was over by March, but it's psychological effects lingered on for years.
No more should I consider myself "immune" to poverty, even to the point of homelessness...I knew how close Nancy came to turning me out.
No more should I consider a car a "birthright"...it is a benefit, but in no way guaranteed. And one must have the means with which to keep it and keep it running.
No more should I consider a job "easy to replace" and quit just because a few people were not satisfied with me. I should fight for the positions I truely feel passionate about.
Too bad it would take decades for these lessons to "sink in".