Pennsylvania Jim
Pennsylvania Jim is not the same person I have mentioned earlier as Jimbo. Pennsylvania Jim does not work for the Government any longer and there is hardly anyone left at the Agency who remembers him.Pennsylvania Jim arrived at the Agency before I did and he also worked in Personnel. He was very intelligent and was a Civil War buff and a very good conversationalist. Jim and I became friends quickly. Jim would spend a great portion of each day making up lists of various topics. It could be to list all the brands of cars he could think of; all the brands of beer he could think of; famous battles of the Civil War and the generals on each side; or just about anything you could imagine. Jim would have been the most feared Jeopardy player of all times - except maybe for Ken Jennings.
Jim had a lovely wife, MariAnne, and both were devout Catholics and therefore did not believe in any type of birth control. By the time that Jim was 30 years old, he and MariAnne had 6 children and she would have been happy to have even more! MariAnne loved children and one time got the most shocked look on her face when I said that I would rather have a puppy! Fed was not always known for diplomatic tact! Jim knew that his salary would not permit anymore children so he started his own "Catholic approved" method of birth control. Jim would go home late from work, take a bottle of cheap bourbon from a hiding spot in his garage, swirl a mouthful in his mouth and dribble it out on his clothes and spit the rest out. He would then walk into the house pretending to be unsteady on his feet and loudly demand his supper and then just as loudly would demand sex from MariAnne. Needless to say, this method proved successful to Jim not having to worry about more children!
Jim's other problem was constant tardiness to the office. MariAnne was not sleeping with Jim - for obvious reasons - and would not tell him to get up and get his butt to work on time. Jim was docked pay each payday for time lost and this led to his becoming more and more tardy. Obviously Pennsylvania Jim had a self-destruct complex. Jim's supervisor, Holt, had all he could take of the persistent tardiness and talked to another Personnel Officer who agreed to have Jim transfer to his station. Jim agreed to do this instead of being terminated and MariAnne did not care since she had just served divorce papers on Jim.
I kept track of Pennsylvania Jim for a few years and then after my phone calls were not returned, I found out he had been fired for - yes - persistent tardiness at his new station. I learned he had gone back to Gettysburg, and was now living with his parents at age 38. I have wondered what ever became of Pennsylvania Jim and if he ever got another job or is he sitting on a park bench in Gettysburg, making up lists all day long? Actually, many years later, I did call Jim's home and got information from his father. Pennsylvania Jim was working the graveyard shift in a Gettysburg paper mill.
The point of this posting? You meet all types of people when you have a 36 year long career. Some are happy stories, some may be stories about tyrants, and some are just kind of sad little stories about a person with a very promising future but just did not know how to handle the problems of life.
posted by Ex-Fed @ 10:23 AM
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