Employed 14 Part 5

l hope my candor in E14 P4 will not be mistaken for braggadocio; what's going on there, is confession, mostly; no matter the state of one's union, there is no excuse for cheating on the Mrs., then or now. Of course that judgement is made in my current time-frame. l gave my infidelity the green light without thought or hesitation at the time. The fact of her not needing to be persuaded was all the permission that l needed. No thought was given to whether or not l should give myself permission. But even including some of the negatives, l had a great time on that trip. lrvin and l always had good times when we got together. l was just four years older than he and l was a big fan of his from the day he came home from Nanny Petersen's Mid-wifery. The nine months, from the time l first heard about his impending arrival seemed like it would never pass. Growing up we found mutual interests, (except for sports;He lettered every year of high-school in basketball, (forward): in track, shot put, discus,
and javelin, in American Football (center) Outside the bounds of interscholastic
sports he taught himself a French kick-boxing regimen. This, he once told me,
virtually eliminates any possibility of his ever finding himself with a kicked ass.
And almost assures that he will do any of the ass-kicking that gets done in his vicinity. Luckily, he never had a reason to kick mine.(Actually, the head is the target in this kind of boxing as well as in American boxing. By contrast, my 
extra-curricular activities were limited to playing trombone in the marching band and the orchestra. Also, l had parts in most of the stage plays which 
were produced while l was in grade school and high school. When lrv had been
out of high school for ten years many of the records he set there were still in force. None of those who considered lrv a friend liked his propensity for street
fighting. Having an opinion at odds with lrv's relative to street-fighting could bring reaction. With me, though, he was always loving and giving. And l tended not to press him on issues which might get his dander up. He was as generous
as anyone l've known; even with his time. To make the Taos trip with me he had to take off from work in Vegas and he insisted on sharing the expenses of our trip.
l'd  been back to "work" at P.V. four days when l realized that none of the staff
was willing to forgive me for my little trip. Everybody loved Deanne (Mgr. of the lead generation department and second-in-command of P.V.) Obviously,
in her position my absence would  necessarily add to her work. Before the Taos trip Deanne would be at work an hour or more before l would arrive. She would bring her coffee to my desk and drink it while she went thru the stack of paper
work that was really for me to do. But since the lead generation dept. didn't
start 'til 9:30, Deanne would go thru my paper work and finish the pile for me.
So after Taos, she let me do my own paperwork. So then l at least a little something to do when l came in in the morning. l just didn't have a staff that revered their manager.
l felt very bad about losing Deanne's (and her husband's) friendship. But two
weeks after l returned from Taos, the staff was still relating to me as though it was their first day on the job. (stay out of sight;speak when spoken to.

Worse yet. The first day after returning from Taos, l had called Thom and got
his answering machine. l left some inane message, informing him that l had 
returned  and that everything was fine in San Jose. A week passed with no call-back from Thom. l left another message on Friday nite of the same week.
The next day l was visited at about 10AM by a man whom l hadn't met before.
He turned out to be Thom's emissary. He had a Patio Village check for me. lt represented what l was owed at that point. A shoprt. hand-written note from Thom instructed me to give the emissary my keys to P.V. and to remove from my desk and the rest of the store any personal property. l did as much and 
went home for lunch an hour early.
l really wasn't that worried about being suddenly unemployed (UE). Based
on my income at PV, my UE check and Dahlia's paycheck would still cover our monthly obligations, and my personal checking account balance was over $2k.
That was way more money in 1964. Enough to pay the rent on the apartment
in which we then lived, eight times.
So we were not destitute. Besides Dahlia's income was nearly equal to mine and her's was all salary whereas a sizable amount of mine was commissions and over-rides.
Since my separation from PV came about two weeks before Thanksgiving.
there was little chance that l could schedule an interview, let alone nail down a job before the new year. That was really not a big problem. lt just meant that l could take a nice vacation until mid to late January and then line up some interviews. After that, it's time to put some of what l learned in the "Speaker's
Club" while at Soledad North to work at the job interviews. In interviews one is called on to present one's self in a conversational manner (without notes or
prepared speeches. The Speaker's club encouraged members to write their speeches but we could not read them or use them as notes.Great training for
a salesman closer: The prospect doesn't want to be read to,either.

l know. l've already told you about the Speaker's Club, but l wanted to connect
how it can benefit someone in executive sales. Or Politics, or Teaching. Just anyone whose work requires vocal communication can benefit. Outside of 
prison, what we called the Speaker's is called Toastmasters International. I'm
sure you could get more information on the internet.
Apparently, the trip that Irv and l took to New Mexico wasn't enough to quench my travel junky. Dealing with a lot of disapproval from formerly fellow workers
(and home mates)l've  found it can be somewhat alleviated by a few-hundred
mile change of scene. But before leaving, l needed to make sure l got everything from my desk. Some framed photos a few paintings. Everything easily fit into my car's trunk. But the big comfortable' swiveling,reclining  chair
that l owned and had used at 2 or 3 of my previous jobs' just would not fit in the big car's trunk or inside the cabin. Almost at the same moment l realised
my predicament, l saw Adolph Malterer, in his pickup, just pulling into his parking spot. Adolph is the guy that worked closely with Irv to transform  a
five-bedroom house on a four acre lot into Patio village. He was, at that moment PV's San Jose installation manager. He asked if l was really through.
l told him yes, l'mjust here to pick up my stuff. l'm unable to get my chair in the car. When you are ready to leave. could you help me put it in your pickup    and carry it to my house? You know where it is? He said he knew and he'd be glad to help. "If you throw in a couple Heineken l'll help to put this stuff in the house".

The mid-60's was only twenty years  after WWII so, to some, Adolph was still a bad word. Of course it wasn't a bad word to Adolph, but he suggested that we might be more comfortable calling him Mark, his middle name.Mark Malterer. Sounds German, but more civilian. and german civilians were considered victims of the Third Reich. l called him Adolph most of the time because he introduced himself to me as such.Whatever he was called, we all knew he was great at his work. His crews put up the best mistake-free jobs
that required fewer man-hours per sq.ft. of constructed cover than the industry standard. He was very good with customers,too.Something with which most installers had difficulty.He and Irv became close friends during the time they had worked together. Irv's endorsement is what moved Thom  to make Adolph Installation Mgr.

After we got my stuff in the house, we had a couple of beers and a bunch of talk. The subject of travel took us immediately. The xmas holiday being a time when anythingbut that gift which can be considered a christmas gift will
be very difficult to sell. So...We decided to go to LA. To leave before dawn on Christmas day (very few cars on theroad) We would return the day after New Year.
l called my friend Chuck C. (my co-worker at Soledad) who lived in Pasadena at that time. He was glad to hear that we would visit there.He even had a few extra beds at his place where we could crash. He was the custodian of a building that was in the process of being made into a n up-scale restaurant
and bar that was scheduled to open on January 25,1965

                                                                                   .

Employed 14 Part 4

Before we married,Dahlia had worked for a Building Contractor  as an executive secretary. when l took the job as an assayer for A.R.D. Corp. in Nevada, my salary was sufficient to allow Dahlia to be a stay-at-home mom for Reyann. Since l did the assays in a building next-door to the house we rented, on a given day the three of us spent much of the day together. That situation turned into a memory when our produce "business" failed. Luckily, it was about that time that we met Aylene Lawson, a professional contestant, who taught a quite-popular class in "The Art of Contesting".  She had many students who found success in contesting, as did Aylene. She also ran a child-care business. Her rates were good, as l recall and our giorls never complained about her care. (When they had been out of her care for a few years though, they admitted that they never liked her as much as Dahlia and l did. We saw her as a very pleasant person who used her contesting income to full advantage and helped her students to replicate her results. She made it possible for both Dahlia and l to have completely safe and sane care for our kids while we concentrated on our jobs.
She was absent from her day care on more than a few occations. Quite often she was on some cruise or trip that she had won, but no worries; She worked together with a group of child-care pros who filled in for each other. with that much going for her, she made it easy for us to hand over our kids and happily  take our places in our workplaces. At the time Thom was offering me the Branch Managers position, at Patio Village, Dahlia was already several months 
into her Executive Secretary position at IBM in Southern  San Jose. That was a giant step from the Building Contracting company for which she worked previously. As we will learn later, she was to rise to much greater heights at IBM
and beyond.
l have neglected,'til now, to mention one of the most important persons who worked on the construction of Patio Village; My bio dad, Leon Gideon. A person
can have step-dads as many as are chosen by one's Mother, but there is only one bio dad to a customer. Mine had a varied work history, ranging from working as a cook on a merchant marine ship during WWII, to (when we first met) work-
ing as resident manager of Sunnyvale Mountain Park. Along the way, he had many other jobs, in shipyards after the war and in the logging industry after
that. He had also done a lot of carpentry, both framing and finishing. He, with
a couple of very competent helpers,did the re-construction of the big house.
Dad took some accumulated vacation to work there and my step-mom took charge of the park, in his absence, which she was well-accustomed to. Dad didn't really need the work though l guess he had an idea for using it. l was totally please that "the masterpiece in mohogany", which l called his work there,
would surround me, where ever l was in the office building.
The nearly two months that he was working at Patio Village, was the one time 
we were able to spend most of a workday focusing on the same project and maybe having lunch together , some days a couple of beers after work. His
input visible in every square foot of the interior and exterior of our main building, l always felt that l belonged there.

One evening, after a particularly good day, about six months after our opening,
one of the closers and l  were talking and half-listening to the TV in the back-
ground, After a while the show's host interviewed a guy living in New Mexico who was building a place near Taos where he intended to make a self-supporting
commune, where he and his family would share the place with other families.
Before long, most of the staff, still in the building, had pulled up a chair to watch TV with us. For the next few days, "the Northern New Mexico Beatnic" (that was 
some time before the word "hippie" had reached the vocabulary)was the main topic of our conversations at work. l was very interested and l began to think l should go to New Mexico (Taos)  and check out the commune, first hand.
Within a few days l prepared Dahlia for my being gone a week-or-so and asked 
Deanne to cover the store for a few days.My brother Irv was in Vegas at the time so l stopped there on my way to New Mexico. l was surprised to learn that he had seen the same video about the commune and l convinced him to go with me to Taos . We left for Taos before sunrise the next day. We spelled each other with the driving and only stopped to use the rest area or to eat. We were well past Kingman when the Sun rose.

It was a good thing that both Irv and l liked travelling for travelling's sake, because we knew in the first half-hour in our visit to the commune at Taos that it was not going to be something we'd like to be involved with. We left there with promises that we would return soon. We then headed North and West 
with Durango Colo. our new destination. Irv had a friend there that he hadn't
seen since she moved from Elko County a couple of years before. By noon the next day, we had decided to return to San Jose via Salt Lake City and Reno. we
stopped in Elko County for a couple of days and visited some of Irv's friends
Most of my old friends no longer lived there, or were unwilling to even talk on the phone or have anything to do with an old friend who had recently become an ex-convict.
At our Elko stop, Irv called a friend (David) who lived near Irv's place in Vegas
but at the time was visiting family in Lovelock. David was about to return to Vegas and agreed to wait for us to arrive in Lovelock. so Irv could ride home with him.

 l decided to stop for lunch in Fernley for lunch. l had a couple of whiskeys before eating and then a couple more instead of eating. In an hour or so l was too drunk to drive, so l took a room at the Fernley Inn. l was having trouble 
getting my room key to work, when the lady from the room next door came out of her room, noticed me and my predicament and offered to help. She had a little trouble with the lock as well, so by the time l was able to enter, we were well into conversation. She picked up the smaller of my bags and followed me
into the room. 
l almost never get picked up by pretty ladies. And the only reason l can say "almost" is that it happened that time. This lady was way out of my league.
Most of the one's l like, are. But she seemed unaware of the imbalance. l sure was, though and l couldn't help but be a bit suspicious, but soon was convinced she was just a nice, self-confident pretty lady who was not opposed to casual sex. We sat and talked for about an hour before we decided to have dinner,
where we must have spent another hour, talking and laughing at each-others'
stories.
We returned to my (our)room, continuing our conversation as we undressed each other and slid between the sheets. It just happened as though it was scripted. Some time during our second day, she told me she would have to leave
in two more days and after that, we could not be together again or have anything to do with each other.
At first l was crushed. Hell, l had already figured how to break the news toDahlia. (And to Thom Kessler, if the change would involve crossing some stste lines)
During the fourth day l employed  my sales personality, which almost always wins (93% closer). And it worked; Before we went to sleep that fourth nite, we 
had decided to continue our friendship. We would spend a fifth night together to celebrate our decision.At least, that was our plan. On what would have been our fifth day together,l woke up at three PM with a bad headache and a missing room mate. l felt very bad for spoiling our last day together, by being a posessive asshorn. She had had a schedule to keep and she shared it with me.

Her having to "mickey" my drink was my fault for assuming that her schedule was less important than my need to win.

By 4PM l had showered, dressed for work and phoned the Patio Village office to 
say l'd return that evening. l ate a late lunch, gassed the car and got on the road by about 5PM. l was in my office at 10 PM. (and that was before I80 was
built. Pulling into the parking lot at Patio Village, l noticed three employee parking spots were vacant; mine, and those of two closers, that are at that time no doubt, closing contracts. Before long the two closers showed up (each with signed contracts)Then all of us sat down for a couple hours QandA l won't bore 
you with the details, but closers and their enablers were a bit unhappy about my recent absence, but they wound up welcoming me back.

This trip exemplified a tendency that l got caught-up with almost every time l was making more money than l deserved and just couldn't get enough travelling. this time was one of the less harmfull of the bunch.l got my butt chewed, but the job (and my salary) remained the same