Another Failed Career

Now that I am retired, I can look back with fondness … or amusement … or embarrassment at some of the jobs that I have had. Some have been interesting, but I have had my share of spectacular failures.

The summer after my sophomore year in college, I scored a great summer job as a concrete inspector. A twenty year old kid, pretty wet behind the ears, I would drive sometimes 60 miles to a construction site to perform a simple test, called a “slump test,” on the concrete from each truck before it was poured. I would get a pail of concrete from the truck, and fill a slightly cone-shaped foot-high tin cylinder. Then I would slowly lift the cylinder, leaving the pile of concrete unsupported. If the pile saged three inches, the concrete was good to go. If it didn’t sag enough, the driver would add more water into the truck, then I would test it again.

A brief discussion of concrete and water: water is essential to a good concrete mix. Too little water, and some of the cement is not dissolved, leaving dry cement powder and weak spots. Too much water, and the cement paste becomes runny. The sand and gravel start to separate from the paste and settle out. When the cement truck is initially loaded at the plant, the right amount of water is added. But as the concrete is turned in the big round tub on the back of the truck, water is lost due to the heat of the sun and chemical reactions in the cement. So the driver often needs to add more water at the job site. Also, the concrete workers much prefer wet concrete that will flow easily into the forms. So there is a constant tension between the need for water so that the concrete flows well, and the need to keep excessive water out so that the concrete is stiff and strong.

So I would perform my test. If the concrete was dry, more water was added. If, however, the concrete sagged too much, the concrete in the truck is too wet, and there is no way to dry it out. I got to tell the driver, the foreman, and anyone else who cared, that the truckload is rejected and has to be sent back. Picture a cement truck driver. Picture a construction site foreman. You can imagine how well that goes over.

One hot summer day I was sent out to a construction site, an addition to the library in Lynn Massachusetts. Nine foot high plywood forms for a new wall were baking in the sun, waiting for the concrete. I tested the first truck that pulled up. The slump test passed: good stiff concrete. They maneuvered the chute over the forms and started pouring.

Almost immediately the foreman stopped the pour. “We’re going to have to add more water.”

“Can’t,” I replied. “the concrete is perfect right now.”

The foreman paused for a minute. “The forms are so hot,” he said. “The moisture will evaporate as soon as it hits the walls. We’re going to get bubbles unless we add more water.”

I had been a “concrete inspector” for all of two months. Judgment calls were out of the question. I had done my test, and that was that. “Can’t add any more water,” I repeated.

“Ooooh Kaaay,” the foreman said slowly. “Let’s pour it,” he hollered up to the truck driver. The big drum turned, and the concrete poured out into the tall forms.

A week later when I called in for my daily assignment, my boss at the testing lab told me to meet him the next morning at the library. As I parked across the street I could see the wall. They had pulled the forms off the day before, and even from a distance I could see that the surface of the wall was covered with bubbles and pockets, some of them as big as a fist. There standing in front of the wall was my boss and the same foreman from the week before.

“What happened?” my boss asked. I explained that the concrete had tested perfect. Something told me that it was also important to explain that the foreman had predicted problems if they didn’t add more water, and that I had refused to allow it. My boss just nodded his head a bit as I spoke. “Well,” he said finally, “better get on to the next job,” and he gave me the address. As I turned to go, the foreman said “It’s OK, kid. You did what you had to do.”

I walked to the car, feeling like a failure, but also feeling like I had passed some other test that I couldn’t quite explain.

Frank Kearns

May 2015

Dragging the River

Between the ages of five and ten, I lived with my family in Orono, Maine. Orono is a small town near the center of the state, home of the state university. The town had a population of eighty five hundred then, and has barely grown in the sixty-odd years since.

           

Orono sits and the junction of the Penobscot and Stillwater Rivers. These two rivers are classic Northeastern rivers. They are deep, and don’t meander like a Midwestern river. The Penobscot carries between its steep banks more than twice as much water as the present day Colorado, and from the shore one can see the fast current roil the surface down the middle of the river.

One morning, when I was perhaps nine and my brother seven, we decided that we were going to walk uptown just for something to do. This would seem unusual to us now, but as children we roamed that small town with a surprising amount of freedom. We were well acquainted with uptown. It was really one street, named Main Street of course, up a gentile hill less than half a mile from our house. Our school was there, and we walked to it every school day.

Fishing polls, bobbers and hooks had arrived the Christmas before, and they had never been used. Since the high bridge over the Stillwater river was at the east end of Main Street, close to everything else, it seemed like we could give them a good try-out by dangling our lines off the bridge. Mother issued the standard warnings: “don’t be gone too long,” “keep away from the bank of the river,” and most importantly “don’t go across the bridge to the opposite side.” Legend had it that numerous children had been lost on those steep and muddy banks on the opposite side.

Off we went. Our first stop was the hardware store. We walked up and down the aisles, checking everything out. The shovels got special attention, because the one we had at home had a broken handle and we thought that Dad should buy a replacement so that we could do some more digging in our back yard fort. Finally we bought a jar of those little red artificial bate-ball things to attract the fish.

It was early afternoon by the time we walked out on the Stillwater bridge. We inspected the situation. The water was a long way down. Iron-gray folds of current moved passed the pilings. Out on the river, away from the shelter of hills and trees, the breeze chilled us. So we quickly decided to skip the fishing part of our plan.

To kill some more time, we went across the bridge to Webster Park. Even though we were not supposed to cross the bridge, we figured that by staying away from the river bank we were well within the spirit of our mother’s admonitions, if not in compliance with all the details. This decision was so obvious to us that it didn’t even require discussion.

Webster park had some large trees and lush grass, and we sat in the afternoon sun sheltered from the wind. After a while we got tired of the birds and squirrels, and also we could feel that it was getting toward dinner time. So we got up, picked up our stuff, and headed back across the river toward town and home.

Our little house at the bottom of Pine Street had become a busy place. At three O’clock, my parents had become worried. At four O’clock, they had called the police. The police confirmed that several shop-owners had seen us, and one person even reported seeing two young boys crossing the bridge. So by the time we could see down Pine Street to our house, three police cars lined the curb. We were in big trouble.

We slinked through the back door with our tail between our legs. We couldn’t imagine what kind of punishment awaited us. Our parents didn’t use corporal punishment much, but a good spanking might not be out of the question. In a few seconds the policemen, our father, and finally our mother realized we were there.

Silence. But then the most amazing thing happened. My mother jumped up, hugged us both, shoed us up the stairs and told us to stay there.

We could hear the adults talking in the hall. There was laughter, and we heard a policeman say “Well, looks like we don’t have to drag the river.” And for us, we puzzled over our new discovery. We had been in big trouble a number of times, and taken our punishment. But here, the biggest thing that we had probably ever done wrong, and every one was so happy to see us. The world of adults was such a puzzling place.


© 2015 Frank Kearns

The Horses

All through my college years, I worked several nights a week and often during weekends at a McDonalds in Andover, Massachusetts. It was there that I was introduced to gambling. Joe Picarelli¹ was the day shift manager, and he claimed that he made big money betting the horses at nearby Rockingham Park, affectionately known as “The Rock”. The Rock had a unique form of horse racing called “the trotters.” The horses pulled little 2-wheeled carts called sulkies where the driver sat. And the horses had to run the race in a trot, not a gallop, a “two beat diagonal gait” in which they always seemed to have two feet on the ground.

I was intrigued by Joe’s stories, and so at his insistence I decided to try it out. Being a bit of a geek, I naturally kept track of my winnings, or loosings as it turned out, in a small spiral notebook.

When it comes to horse racing, there were various levels of participation. The first level was the general public. The general public got their information from the racing form printed daily in one of the Boston newspapers. The racing form listed all the horses in the upcoming day’s races, their recent performances, and the odds of them winning this time. Students of the sport would spend lots of time (often in the bathroom) studying the racing form, looking for mismatches such as a horse that has performed well but is given long odds, or a poor chance of winning. But of course since this same information was pretty much what the odds makers used to determine the odds, so the chances of anyone getting ahead were pretty slim. Nevertheless, thousands of people would place bets at the Rock every day based on studious examination of the racing form.

The second level of participation was called “in the know.” These were folks who perhaps know a trainer or a driver, or who spent long days listening to small talk in the stall area or watching horses exercise. Those “in the know” thought they had access to information beyond the racing form, like how a horse was feeling that day, what their recent workouts were like, or most importantly, which horses had been holding back on previous races to try to get the odds up for a big score.

Which brings up the third level of participation. This was the shadowy level of those who were “connected.” The mob was a real presence in the Northeast when I was young, and it was widely believed that the mob controlled horse racing. Those who were connected had access to knowledge of “the fix,” and knew when to bet on an unlikely winner when the “the fix was in.” It was universally accepted by the general public that “the fix was in” quite often, and the only way to really make any money betting on horses was to be connected. Yet in spite of this knowledge the same general public religiously studied the racing form and bet piles of money at The Rock every day of the racing season.

So Joe and I would study the racing form, and several evenings a week would go up to the Rock to make try our luck. I didn’t bet too heavily, but even so by the end of the season my ledger showed that I was eighty dollars in the hole. I knew Joe was down a lot more than that, and he complained bitterly that this was “the first year in a long time” that he had had a loosing season.

I remember the last night that I went to Rockingham park. As usual I had carefully studied the racing form, and I had a good feeling about my pick for the “daily double.” This was a bet on the winner of both the first and second races, and the odds, or return if you won, were pretty high. In this case, the odds were eighty to one, and a win of my two dollar bet would pretty much even out my entire summer’s effort.

My pick won the first race, and I was feeling confident. My confidence grew during the second race as my horse had the lead at the inside rail on the back stretch. Rounding the last turn, he was ahead by a buggy length. But as they entered the straight, my horse seemed slower, and bit by bit the second horse gained. It was a close enough finish that they put up the photo. My horse had lost by a neck, and in the photo you could see my jockey leaning way back, pulling back on the reins for all he was worth. The fix was in, and once again we the general public were left out in the cold.

Notes:
1. As always, names are fictitious, and any resemblance to a real person is purely accidental.

Learning To Fly

Once, in a dusty attic in my grandmother’s house, I saw the remnants of the model airplanes my father had made as a child. Long as a grown man’s arm, they were made of tiny sticks, lacy and delicate, covered with the thinnest of tissue paper. I could imagine them floating in an open field, like a butterfly, carried on cushions of air.

The models that we made were very different. Their construction was crude, about the size of a serving plate, made of light slabs of balsa wood for wings, body, tail and rudder. At the heart of these models were tiny gas motors which, even with an attached fuel tank, were about the size of a one quarter measuring cup. Once started, the motors screamed like a thousand angry bumble bees. Our ears buzzed, fumes flowed in the blast of air and coated the hands of the boy holding back the plane, while the “pilot” raced to where the control handle lay in the grass.

These models were called “control line” models. Two thin wires ran from one wing of the plane to a handle maybe fifty feet away. The “pilot” held this handle at the center of a circle, and turned in place as the plane flew round and round, restrained by the two wires. Dizziness was always a danger, as was wandering away from the starting place as we turned. If the pilot wandered, the circular flight path could move to where there the edge of the house or the laundry post out in the field would cause a mid-air disaster.

The motors were strong relative to the size and weight that the plane, so the models didn’t so much fly as trail desperately after the propeller as it clawed its way through the air. These models flew fast, so our learning process was about what you would expect. The plane would take off; our attempts at control would cause a few quick up and down oscillations and then finally a dive into the grass.

In spite of our complete lack of mastery of these simple models, we began to build a larger more sophisticated version. This was a completely different project. The wingspan was the width of a kitchen table, and the construction was more like a real airplane, with ribs and bulkheads forming a skeleton which was covered by balsa sheeting. The motor was larger, and surgical tubing ran back from the motor to a separate aluminum tank, the size of a small coffee cup, nestled in the middle of the fuselage. This model took us about a month to build and paint, much longer than the simple slab models we had been flying.

The big day finally came. We had heaver control wires to handle the additional power and weight, and they were longer too. Since we were using up a lot more of the back field and there was less clearance to the various obstacles, we arranged a 4 foot diameter circle of red bricks around the pilot pivot point, so that if we started to wander as we turned round and round, the bricks would warn us and keep us in the right spot.

After a couple of spins of the prop, the motor came to life. Rather than the frantic high pitched scream of the smaller motors, this one had a more satisfactory tone, like a chain saw in full song. My brother held the tail of the model, I ran to the center of the circle, picked up the control handle, pulled the slack out of the control lines, and gave him a quick nod to release the plane.

The plane was still fast, but not as fast and frantic as the smaller models. I actually felt like I had some control, and instead of crashing after a couple of turns I was able to keep it airborne turn after turn. Finally we were really flying!

The crash was so sudden it seemed the world stopped. One instant there was the plane circling fifteen feet off the ground, its red stripe along the side clear in my memory. The next instant all sound was gone, the lines were slack, and pieces of balsa, fragments of fuselage and wing and tail, were sailing through the air. I had somehow wandered out of my circle of brick, and drifted over so that the plane had collided squarely with the six inch thick twenty foot high cloths line post. And what I remember most clearly of all was the aluminum fuel tank, free of the fuselage, gleaming in the sun, as it performed a slow cartwheel, painting a filmy arc of fuel in the clear air as it turned.

We never did much flying after that.

Here's Finger In Your Eye!

In the Fall of 1965, Don Kearns won a Boston Globe photo contest with this candid shot of sister Dottie greeting the child of one of Dad's friends. There was a local and then national contest, and Dad won a 21 day trip to Europe which they enjoyed in the summer of 1966. Here is the announcement of the national winners, from the November 7, 1965 Boston Globe.

Ancestral Mysteries

I found a scrap of paper from a small notebook that I used to carry around. It had some notes from my last visit with Aunt Connie:

       "Grandpa Kearns (Jeremiah Henry Kearns) was a bricklayer. He died in Boston from a fall off of a scaffold."

I believe this was "Jeremiah the scoundrel" that Dad often talked about. His genealogy records have him a born in 1860, and died in 1907. Notes in the entry say:
"Record of Marriage (Div. of Vital Statistics) gives age of Jeremiah as 39
on the date of marriage (4/12/1895)and that of Mary O'Neil as 38. This
leads to a discrepancy in birth dates of these two people (cf 1900 Census
record list Jeremiah as born 1860) Ref: Div. Of Vital Stat., Mass., vol.
453, Page 68, No 1211. No record of birth was found in the indices of
births at the Mass. Archive. Date of death given in 1908 Boston City
Directory, p.944."

Any one have anything more to add to his memory?

My First Job

Carol Kearns

May 2012

            I badly wanted a job when I was teenager.  I couldn’t say that I “needed” the money, because we certainly weren’t poor.  But I didn’t get an allowance and I wanted some discretionary funds of my own. 

            My first real job was at the local bakery when I was 15 years old.  They hired me to work three days as extra help for the Christmas holidays.  In my eyes this was the Bigtime because I even had to get a work permit. 

            For part of each shift I would scrub the large metal trays used in baking.  This was difficult and hard on my hands because of the steel wool and hot water.  But all my tribulations were forgotten on the second day when I was assigned to stuff the jelly donuts and the chocolate, crème-filled cupcakes.  I tried to look mature as they explained the procedure, but inside I was screaming, “Are you kidding?  Have I died and gone to Heaven?”

            They gave me a fat syringe filled with jelly, and I would actually stick the point in the middle of the donut and push down.  I couldn’t believe I was filling jelly donuts by hand, one at a time.  This was the most exciting thing I had ever done in my life!  I thought about the person who would eat the donut, and tried to insert as much jelly as possible.  I wanted the recipient to think, “This is the best donut ever!”  I had to control myself so that the jelly didn’t ooze back out of the donut.

            I was even more ecstatic over the crème-filled cupcakes.  Each time I pushed down on the plunger, I envisioned the bliss of the person licking so much cream.

            On my last day, as I was carrying a completed tray of donuts to put in a slotted rack, the owner told me to put it down quickly and help her with something.  The tray was full and needed to be held with two hands.  As I looked around for a safe place to set it, she gestured toward a pile of boxes that were filled with dozens of preordered brownies.  I hesitated because I could see that in all of the holiday rush, a few lids weren’t on straight, making the entire stack a little crooked.  The pile needed to be straightened if it was to hold my tray of donuts.   

When she told me a second time to put down the tray, I felt I had no choice, so I did, and sure enough, the crooked boxes started to slide.  I managed to save the tray of donuts, but the brownies in one box fell out on the concrete floor.  They weren’t badly damaged, just not sellable anymore.  Many were just a little smushed from rolling in the box, and those that actually fell out of the box were still edible if you cut off the part that touched the floor.

I felt relieved when the owner didn’t yell or say much, and assumed that she understood that it wasn’t my fault.  I assumed wrong.  When I got my paycheck for the three days of work, I saw that she had deducted the box of brownies.  Even worse -  she had taken the brownies home herself!  I paid, but she got to enjoy.  My brothers would have loved the rejects. 

My mother was a little miffed as well, but the bakery was so wonderful that we didn’t stay away for long.