My Work History
Year - 1966
My first job after High School was with the Mitchell & Stark construction company with whom my dad worked most of his life.
My plan was to earn as much as possible that summer, so I could attend college in the fall and become a biology teacher.
My first assignment was as a laborer helping a crew put in a new drainage system for the Town of Cumberland Indiana. The company rented a very large furnished house for the crew to live in thru the week, thus allowing us to avoid a two hour trip from Medora. We were required to be up by 6 A.M. each morning if you wanted breakfast.
Once at the job site, I would help unpack heavy clay tiles and move them one at a time to where the pipe layers would be connecting the pipe. While all the work was hard, This was my least favorite part of the job. Once this was completed, I knew the rest of my work day would be downhill. Next, I would put special hydraulic jacks into the deeper trenches to keep the dirt walls of the trench from caving in on workers. I would then take a hand shovel and backfill the trench with approximately a foot and a half of dirt. This allowed the heavy equipment operators to fully fill the ditches and not worry about having a rock come down on the tile and crack it.
On a few occasions, I was down in the trenches helping lay pipe. You received extra pay for the time you were in the trench. While the extra money was great, I would have nightmares after being in a deep trench, realizing that your life could end at any moment.
We would stop each day for 30 minutes to eat lunch and take short water breaks throughout the day. I remember once we were working very close to an ice cream stand on a 102 degree day. I found time to grab a cone and think how much I would like a job with air conditioning.
Typically, we would end work at around 5:30 in the evening, as the goal for everyone was to get at least 10 hours a week in overtime pay. In the evening, we would get our showers while a foreman prepared supper. Every night after the meal, various members of the crew would start up a poker game that would go midnight. Being a rookie, I had very little say in what activies I could participate in.
During one of our trips from the job site to the house we encountered a severe traffic accident. It was my first time seeing a dead person outside of a funeral home. We arrived shortly after the accident and went to see if there was anything that we could do while they were waiting for medical assistance to arrive. I remember walking up to one vehicle and seeing that the driver was dead and his wife and daughter were unconscious. There were over 15 vehicles involved in the accident. A Chevrolet Corvair was hit so hard that the complete engine was knocked out of the car into a field next to the highway. I then saw a man laying on the ground with his right arm pretty much severed. He was still breathing but unconscious. Lacking any medical skills, there was nothing I could do to assist those involved.
There was very little conflict in the crew. However, the youngest brother of our foreman was teasing Danny, our “Master of the Manholes”. Danny was legally blind but in great physical condition. When Dannys’ work for the day would end he would exit the manhole by climbing out using only a rope. It wasn’t long before Danny embarrassed his tormentor by taking him to the ground and pinning him.
One day at lunch, a coworker who was quite a joker kept tossing things at me in a playful manner. He was shorter than me but his muscles were very puffed up. I leap up, grabbed him, letting the air out of those muscles by quickly pinning him to the ground. I finished the summer lean, mean and having a lot of green.
Year 1967
Well, college did not work out for me. Mom encouraged me to apply for a job at a personal finance company in Seymour Indiana. My responsibilities included interviewing potential customers and making collections for delinquent accounts. Better known as being a bill collector.
I had to go into some very rough areas and see if I could recover or reach a settlement with those folks who were delinquent in their accounts. I remember going into one area to repossess a TV that a client had purchased. As I approached a very remote home, I was somewhat concerned for my safety as the client was of a backwoods nature. However, after he determined the reason for my visit, he apologized for not being able to keep the payments up on the TV. He even helped me carry the TV to my car. We chatted for a little while, and I returned to Seymour with the TV.
Being an introvert by nature, this was not a part of the work that I enjoyed. My only confrontation was when I went to a house to discuss a delinquent account regarding a refrigerator. A lady answered the door and upon hearing my reason for being there she gave me a good cussing and shut the door in my face.
Ironically, a few years later my wife and I rented a small home from her and her husband. Our oldest son Chris was born at this location. The house was a simple concrete block two bedroom structure. I left the finance company after I was told that they had a former employee returning to assume my duties and I would need to move to their Franklin Indiana location if I wanted to stay with them. I declined their offer and drew unemployment for a few weeks while I decided my next step.
One day, while I was looking at the classified ads, a well dressed stranger came to our Medora home. He informed us that he was looking for students to attend his school of data processing.
After a lot of discussion I agreed to take their upcoming classes. I found that I did have a true aptitude for this field and graduated with a 99.6 grade point average. In addition, they were so impressed with my skills that they offered me a teaching position with their university at an annual salary of $10,000.
This was very good money in the year of 1967. It was hard to turn down, as I remembered living on $20 a week, with my room costing me $12 a week, there were days that I went hungry.
Fortunately, the human resource manager at the school was able to find me a part-time job at a local service station.
I really did not want to live in the urban Indianapolis area as a group of my classmates were robbed at the local McDonald's and a person was killed outside an apartment complex close to where I was staying. I declined their offer and returned home to try and locate a job closer to home.
Year 1968
I applied in person at Cummins Engine Company in March of this year. They had one of the largest data processing centers in the state. However, I was told that they were not currently hiring any new employees. As I was leaving the building, the head of Human Resources caught up with me and asked me to come back to her office. It seems as she was filing my application away, she noticed that I had a reference letter from her boyfriend. After a little discussion she said that there were two jobs that I could have if I was willing to enter their workforce at an entry level. One was being a mail clerk and the other was processing engine build information. I chose the engine build position. I soon was able to transfer to an entry level position at the data center. So now, I have my foot on the first step of the Data Processing ladder.
Years 1969 - 1970
I am now able to use the training from my Data Processing School. I was promoted to a punch card machine operator on the second shift. I was able to program the respective machines in addition to my operator duties.
I learned that my data processing school (Indianapolis Technical Institute) had acquired a State-of-the-art IBM 360 Computer and were offering programming classes. When ITI recruited me they promised that if I wanted to return for any additional classes they would be free to me.
The programming classes started at 8 a.m. each morning and would end at 12 p.m. each day. Timewise, this was quite the challenge for the three months of courses. Once I finished class, I would then drive to Columbus, have lunch and report to work for my 4:30 P.M. to 12:30 A.M. shift. I would then drive back to Indianapolis and arrive at my dorm by 1:45 A.M. The good thing about this arrangement was that I had my own room and the courses were taught in the same building .
Year 1971 - 1974
I accepted a job as a computer operator at the Cummins Engineering Tech Center. The Engineering Group utilized a model 1401 IBM computer. Fortran was their programming language of choice for the engineers. I did very well at the Tech Center as I was a very productive worker, processing many more computer programs than my predecessor. Also, if an engineer had a simple coding error, I had learned enough Fortran to correct the errors and sucessfully run their program.
While I was receiving much positive feedback for my efforts, I was more than a little surprised when our vice president came down to the computer room one evening to introduce himself and tell me how much he appreciated the quality of the work I was doing for the group.
I felt bad for the engineers, as there were times that I was not able to process all the programs by the end of my shift. My supervisor asked if I would be willing to work overtime when we have a large backlog. I agreed that I was willing to work overtime as long as it was a minimum of three hours as I was carpooling and did not have a ride home. Many times, my wife would have to bring our baby boy along to pick me up after work at 3 or 4 O'clock in the morning. While the organization's budget was very tight at this time, my supervisor saw It was much more cost-effective paying me overtime than having several engineers waiting for the results of their respective applications. The extra money allowed my family to take a very nice vacation.
Within a year or so, our organization purchased a new state-of-the-art computer which required much more operator attention due to additional peripheral devices. Also, a communication application was added. And while there were many advantages for having such an application, we found that mechanics and engine testers were playing a computer football game during their shift. Yes, the first generation of computer gamers. After this discovery we put in place safeguards to prevent these activities.
Years 1975 - 1980
Cummins was solicting employees to train as computer programmers. They received over 200 applications for the 12 exempt positions that they were wanting to fill. I was able to meet all their criteria and began several weeks of training in the COBOL computer language. We were still using punched cards to document our programs and were only guaranteed that we would have the cards processed each evening and be returned to us the next morning along with a printed output showing the results of the execution of our respective programs.
Years 1981 - to be updated
Computer programmers were in high demand and we would receive calls regularly from what we called “Headhunters”. Actually, they were recruiters for other companies.
I remember the day I received a call, and the guy says I just want to ask you two questions: how much would it take for you to come to New York and can you be here in 2 weeks? I failed to answer. Also, about this time we had a former employee recruiting programmers who would like to travel to Saudi Arabia. He had been there about a year and told us we could earn up to $100,000 a year.
Years 19