BackwaterBlog

I’ve got a real gut burner of a decision to make.

Those of you from the old site, who followed the dallying of a business owner (that would be me) and the resulting hilarity as a way talented partner and I cut swaths across the wood strewn plains of carpenter land here in North Backwater (which is to say, the city) might better “get this” than the other 2 or 3 folks, but . . .

I got a maybe job offer.

This having exhausted every conceivable avenue in my talent field, across a lot of state lines and local as well, and leaving the last of all phone calls for the one I didn’t want to make.

The phone call to the legacy job.  I think we all have one.  The old time job that you giggle about in good times.  Saying, while holding a beer in one hand and a fifty dollar bill in the other, “Well shoot if it all goes to hell I can always go back to Smithers Widgets!” and getting a riotous cackle from the adoring masses at the pub who all know you, and have heard this story a dozen times.

“Hey, ‘member that dude at Smithers that used to eat cat food for lunch?  Then he got tossed in the pokey for pissing on the side of the building downtown one night?  Yeah!  Bwahahahaaaa . . . !”

“Oh yeah, I worked at Smithers.  Ain’t ever’body?  Bwahahahaaaa!”

And so on.

Truth be told, I worked at Smithers when it was only Smith.  You see.  Worked there for 11 years, started and finished in the office, saw that place built up from starving to way healthy.  Like to think I had a hand in that.  If I’d stayed there, chances are pretty good I’d be talking early retirement now instead of ‘Will work for food, yass’um’.

Honest, I was the shit.  They were crying when I left.  For greener pastures and all that.

In subsequent years, the Smithers boss was frequently heard to say “I don’t understand why you ever left.  God, I thought you were here for life!”

Point of fact, when I left in ‘94, I wondered aloud to my long sufferin’ wife if it was the right thing to do.  “Damn, hope I ain’t farkin’ up here . . .”, was the quote as I recall.

After a couple stints at other places (them thar greener pastures, you see) I started the gig of all gigs.  My own gig.  Which, after a few years, was running along like a Cuban cigar on a slow burn.  Hell, we even had Smithers as a major customer!  A good paying customer at that!  For a good 10 years and then . . .

Well.

Ever have to make one of those phone calls that you have to steel yourself for?  The – “Shit don’t make me do this . . . God I can’t believe . . . Oh just push the buttons and swallow your ever-lovin’ pride “. . . calls?

I made that one today.

Talked to the guy whose only son was born a month after my Middlest One.  You could say that he and I are on the same plain, if not in the same income catagory.  If I’d never left there, I have no doubt he would be my closest friend.

The guy who hired my son, the last of the three children that Ally and I zapped out.  And he didn’t have to do that, and I told him so.  Today.  Told him that.  “I really never thanked you for that bro, but it was a damn fine thing you done, there.  And I wished he’d have worked out better for ye, and not screwed up the opportunity that you gave him, ’cause I was all up in his face about not doing exactly what he wound up doing, and . . .”

Yeah.

The only thing Smithers has got is a job I graduated from 30 years ago.

But he does have that.  And is half assed eager to pay me to do it.  I guess.

Aw shit.

Do I wanna eat or starve, here?