Beware The Man Who Can Start Tomorrow

Finding Work was like Pulling a Heist…

Only you’re the mark.

We hit the streets in 1983, latest peak of the Endless Recession. Interest rates were in the high teens. Portland looked deserted, a relic. More dive bars than people. But still more people than jobs. Applicants lined up around the block in the rain for a cashier gig at a stationary store. A buddy and I set out. We knocked on every glass door downtown. Finally a soft-spoken kitchen manager hired us for $3.35 an hour. Everybody embezzled - food, tips, silverware. It was better than stealing.

Rung by rung, job by job, jumping from ladder to ladder, we moved up, sidestepped, fell off, started over. The American Dream revealed itself like one of those trick drawings in which some see the white vase in the middle and others the black silhouette of a face on either side: it was a magnificent caper in which everyone was on the make, everyone was the mark, and nobody could tell who was which.

Then, gradually, it happened. Somewhere between selling the Oregon Bank’s bonds and unloading containers full of knockoff sneakers from China in the gritty swelter of SoCal, we grew accustomed to it. The hunt, the game, the hardship. We even got good at it. Exploring one’s prospects indefinitely proved far more intriguing than committing to somebody else’s idea of the good life.

Each job is a tale, each tale a chapter. Banged out on a Royal Adler Satellite between shifts or unemployment checks. The stories came around unbidden, like a couple of kids looking for work with little more to offer than their curiosity and laughter, but no less.