The Summer of 1988 was the greatest vacation/school break time I ever had in my life since 1982. Despite money issues, multiple burglaries, roommate conflicts and the worst heat wave in decades (when scientists called it the greenhouse effect), at least I wasn’t under the yoke of my parents! Every Summer before 1988 was always ruined by some huge factor of their doing: moving away, being the new kid, etc.
Meanwhile, the Summer of 1989 was fast approaching and I was more prepared, especially in the money department. Housing was covered because Dad was kind enough to assist me in scoring an apartment for the next school year (I paid the rent, he managed the deposit). I landed an interim spot too since leases in the Milwaukee-Marquette area started on June 1. (A story for another day.)
The romantic front was looking pretty good too. Matters between Carrie and me congealed after the Mojo Nixon concert so I wouldn’t be spending all my free time commiserating with Phil and Jose over our lack of girlfriends. Actually, I was thrilled to have my new friends from Mashuda sticking around, I just preferred to take a lady to certain social events instead. I’m confident the feeling was mutual.
Now I had to secure an adequate job to complete the Summer trifecta.
Remembering how miserable the quest went before in 1988, I did some hunting while school was still in session. WQFM was obviously no help because it was run by cheapskates and the station’s trapped-in-the-Seventies program director didn’t like me. My front desk gig from West Hall (during the school year) gave me the inside track on any ORL (Office of Residence Life) positions short of RA. These didn’t pay well enough unless my grandparents were going to pony up more dough to put me through Summer school. Even if they did, I wasn’t interested. I really needed the three months off to recharge. I went ahead and applied in case nothing else came through in time.
That Summer, the FFP (Freshmen Frontier Program aka rich kids coming in on academic probation) and EOP (Equal Opportunity Program aka poor kids) students were going to be residing in Schroeder Hall, the worst dorm Marquette had. Not only did it have the poorest housing traits (horrible lighting in the rooms and community bathrooms), it was always number one in vandalism when I was there. On the upside, it was a couple blocks from my future apartment.
Matters looked promising. The hall director, some guy named Lee Rhea, called me and said he’d like to have an interview on the Saturday afternoon after my shift at West ended. I continued to pursue other avenues though because this would only be around $4/hour and maybe 20 hours/week.
Earlier I mentioned how my relationship got rolling with Carrie around the end of April. Well, the evening before the interview, she crashed at my dorm room; it was planned due to a party we were having (we being Paul, Helen, Jose, Phil and I). Not until the next morning did I notice the love-bite Carrie put on my neck. It was huge, disgusting and embarrassing. You’d think I had been out with Nosferatu! Carrie shared the anguish and tried to cover it with her foundation makeup. She managed to make it a lighter shade of deep purple but unless Star Trek: The Next Generation was going to introduce aliens with odd neck markings instead of foreheads, I had to endure the taunting for the next few days. I decided to go for broke by wearing my infamous railroad-engineer overalls. Maybe the clothes would draw attention away from my White Trash badge.
Ha! I got a (well-deserved) dose of razzing from the staff and residents of West Hall but it emboldened me to not sweat Schroeder. There I met Lee and his assistant hall director Mark. They asked the usual battery of questions. I can’t recall what nor did I care. I know I was in the zone; I didn’t have anything to lose, thus I came off relaxed, jovial and competent. That’s my recollection and I’m sticking to it. Lee and Mark thanked me for my time and Lee said he’d let me know in a couple days. I thought they were a nice duo, certainly friendlier than the hall director at West, Annie Aversa. (Lee told me later in 1994 he had no recollection of my neck. The overalls worked!)
The following week I ran into the full-time guys from Physical Environment’s (PE) Paint Shop. I had maintained my contact with them after quitting in 1988 due to our mutual dislike of their co-worker Pete W (there were two Petes). They wanted to know if I was interested in joining up again. Initially I said no because it didn’t pay enough last Summer to make ends meet. Then they told me the whole student program was overhauled so it was now a buck over minimum wage (it was still $3.35/hour in 1989). They’d prefer to have me around over another Chinese grad student who’d be napping on the dorm beds (actually, we all did such things). I figured I had burned that bridge yet I applied on their advice. The head of the Paint Shop must’ve had a poor memory; I was told to show up on the first Monday after exams.
Later on I received a phone call from Lee offering me a spot on his front-desk staff for the Summer. I told him I’d love too but I landed the PE job. If Marquette would let me work nights and weekends, sure. Turns out this wasn’t feasible. PE and ORL were different departments of what were the same employer, Marquette University. If I worked my 40 with PE, I was automatically earning overtime during ORL shifts. Never mind MU’s deep pockets, this was reserved for the crappy basketball team. My alma mater was always hat in hand for everything else. Lee decided to make this arrangement instead. He thought I was a good person (was he insane?) so he would let me work outside my PE shift. The hours I racked up would be put aside and turned in on days I took off from PE. Not a bad deal, sick time which paid 75 percent of what I normally made. It was a smart move too. PE jobs didn’t always last until school started. When the Summer budget was expended, it was SOL time for the students and this tended to happen around early to mid August. I was going to GenCon though and the reserve income could lessen the debt I’d accrue from participating.
Thus began our friendship 20 years ago.
Most days when I saw Lee at Schroeder I was working. We’d chat about the new Batman movie or the comic books I was reading. Not much else. I found him rather cool though. Past ORL bosses were rather uninteresting or played favorites with people who should’ve been fired: pot smoking was a common hypocritical problem amongst the RAs and hall directors.
I’m glad Lee convinced me to take the position. The PE gig ended earlier than expected (the bulk of us were playing Pictionary with the first coat at O’Donnell) and another ORL director desperately needed people to work the front desks of the other dorms until move-in day. I ended up making enough dough to coast through August without needing my financial aid (my grandparents) early.
The following Fall Lee transferred to Tower Hall which was an easier assignment. His first year with Marquette had been rather awful. Schroeder was usually given to the new people which was a stupid policy on ORL’s part. Nothing like burning out fresh recruits by having them manage the Animal House of the dorms. Things were looking up for Lee this time. He’d be running a building with half the population and staff plus it had a more mature, well-behaved clientele. It’s why I chose to live there my sophomore year. Well, the rooms also had private bathrooms which was mandatory for me.
We continued to stay in touch through my senior year and we became better friends, no longer being boss and employee. I learned about his nickname of Doc which is what I then started to call him. I was already called Mag due to my signature on paperwork (it’s much shorter than what I legally have to put down). When I wasn’t with Carrie and other college buddies, Doc and I took in a movie or hung out at his Tower apartment. He was a huge factor in making my DTP assignment in a journalism class stand out by letting me use his Macintosh SE which had a scanner. Doc’s assistance is a major reason why I took a chance on working for Apple.
Another thing he turned me on to was the works of his favorite movie critic, Joe Bob Briggs (nee John Bloom).
By the Summer of 1990, Doc chose to take a job at another university. Marquette had no interest in having him around for a third year. Part of this was ORL’s prejudice against non-Catholics and I figured he had enemies like I did, namely Annie Aversa the Hutt and Director Ron Orman (rumor has it he resigned in disgrace). I was sad to see Doc go, especially to this weird place called Lamar University in Beaumount, TX. I liked Texas but only Houston where I had lived from 1982-84.
We promised to stay in touch and did. Doc was instrumental in getting me to overcome past letter-writing inertia through the usage of Macs; creating a newsletter like he did for his Christmas letter in 1990. This evolved into my fake magazine and eventually this web site. Again, the man’s influence propelled me toward the brief typesetting career I had with kinko’s, GDW and CCG.
Doc kept me abreast of his activities in Beaumont while I remained in Milwaukee. He studied Japanese, managed the student clubs and met a couple interesting ladies.
The spot with Lamar only lasted a year so he relocated to Austin to pursue his dream of film school at UT. It blew my mind. I figured he was going to stay on the Academia track. He had a master’s degree in such stuff. As long as he was happy, I was cool with his decision. Doc did put the bug in my brain to come down during a moment of doubt at GDW in 1992. I should’ve follow through sooner.
I did finally roll the dice on Austin with his help in 1994 and we were back to the boss-employee situation at University Towers. It didn’t go very well this time. I won’t go into the reasons, theories or friction, we’re both past it. I will admit to a sizable amount of it being my fault and I almost returned to the Midwest after a few months because I felt this new city was just a theme park for the rich brats of Houston and Dallas.
Most people cut their losses when a good friendship is dashed on the rocks by disagreement, office politics and uncomfortable dilemmas amplified by a corrupt, hypocritical general manager. I uncharacteristically didn’t give the situation the kiss off for some weird reason. As much as Doc was pissing me off (and vice versa), I vowed to do everything possible to preserve our friendship and not end my time at Towers under a cloud; another lesson he ingrained in me. This entailed stretches of barely interacting with Doc for days. I knew matters were patched up by the following Spring since we revived our Friday night movie outings and I didn’t feel like I needed to walk on egg shells around him.
The crucible of tension did have other good outcomes. I landed a temp job working for Apple by May 1995 and I went from being a liability at Towers to an asset in the leasing department; I was the pinch hitter helping out on weekends. I bet I could still give a pretty accurate tour of Towers if given the opportunity. The asset thing must be true because I received a going-away present of an X-Wing fighter from the staff, not the more traditional one-year ban from the property
Doc left Towers shortly after I did thanks to his new job in Japan as an English teaching assistant. There he lived for three years. I regret not going over to visit but the whole PowerComputing-Nortel-PSW-Grandpa Dying fiasco was a more immediate concern.
Now he lives in the Knoxville, TN area with his wife Masami. We try to stay in touch but it has been more difficult lately. Doc’s pretty swamped with his current career working at the university (the big one, UT, TN not TX). I have a similar problem yet from time to time I write him an e-mail, I keep storing the wrong phone number which is why I don’t call.
Yes this was a long, meandering tale about meeting Doc (Lee) for the first time but my friendship with him has been similar. He, like Lester, became an unintentional mentor (or sensei) for me to get my head on straight. Much of my leadership style comes from his advice. I execute it differently; being more forceful and passionate yet it remains tempered by Doc’s wisdom.
I often think of him and always thank him for bringing me to Austin too. Coming to this city in the beginning felt like a mistake but he convinced me indirectly to tough it out and many great things followed: Somara, the cats, home ownership, Apple, other awesome friends, live music and all the famous people I’ve met. I owe him a debt of gratitude I may never be able to pay back…unless he returns to Austin. Believe me, I won’t stop trying.
And it all began with a routine interview for a Summer job.
