The Unmuddled Mathematician

First Day on the Job

Chris S. Coray, The Unmuddled Mathematician

Young boys normally start out doing lots of chores and little jobs around the house.  These begin the transition from strictly being supported by the rest of the family to becoming a resource and learning how to work.  I followed that fortunate tradition and my dad was my model for he worked as hard at home as he did providing for his family. 

I remember the mowing of grass, using a reel lawnmower that had no engine.  There is an art to getting just the right angle on the handle to make the cutting more efficient.  And the blade needed to be sharp or this little task got very hard.  We did not leave the clippings on the grass, we raked them.  And we cut the grass two different directions.  It looked really nice but water and fertilizer just set the alarm for the next week’s turn.

I had a paper route, using my 47 lb Schwinn bike with a rack on the back, a relentless job (like kids who grew up milking cows on dairies) but it didn’t pay well.  All the risk was mine and when customers didn’t pay me I was just stuck with the loss because the newspaper company billed me, not individual customers.  It was a good lesson, sometimes with bone chilling cold and snow.  The bike is partly responsible for my calves which are not dainty.

One job led to another as I grew up.  None required thinking.  Then came a dramatic change in summer work.  My dad was a lawyer for the Union Pacific Railroad.  He had lots of friends and influence in that huge company.  In the summer when I reached my 16^th birthday he found a regular job for me on the railroad.  This was the lowest kind of labor but for a kid in 1959 the hourly wage of $2.23/hour was promised wealth beyond imagination. 

Memories of my first day on the job will never leave.  I wore new work boots, levis, T-shirt, and a hat my dad treasured but loaned me.  It was his fishing hat.  He called it a Borsalino.  That’s my spelling and I’ve no idea of whether it’s close to being accurate.  Check it on Google.  It looked like a hat you would see in an old movie about Al Capone.  Early in the morning, onto the bus, downtown, walk to the shed that housed what was called the B&B unit.  Those letters stood for Bridge and Building.  A 16 year old kid surrounded by men who jobs provided for their families.  The foreman must have seen me coming, for he told me that he had a special job for me.  I wasn’t smart enough to know that special didn’t mean enjoyable.

In those days when the mechanics who worked on the giant railroad diesels changed the oil they just dumped all the old oil into a ditch with a tiny gradient that carried a little water but mostly old oil out to the Great Salt Lake and that was it.  The problem was that over a years’ worth of being left alone the ditch was nearly completely clogged with tumbleweeds, reducing the flow to almost zero.  I was given a 16 foot long steel rod with a small hook on one end, and an empty dump truck with driver was sent to drive along the ditch next to me.  My job was to reach out with the steel rod, hook an oil laden tumbleweed and lift it up over my head, dropping it into the dump truck.  Then do it again.  And again.  And again.

I was strong so while the physical part was hard it was not the worst part.  Those hundreds and hundreds of tumbleweeds dripped oil from the time I lifted them until they were in the truck.  And the height difference between the ditch and the truck bed meant that the arc went right over my head.  By now you can sense what was happening.  In an hour, let alone the 8 hour shift, I was completely covered and soaked with black, used oil.  My mother could not have recognized me.  The Borsalino was finished, as was every piece of my clothing.  At the end of the day I had to fill out a time card.  The truck driver couldn’t spell ditch on his card.  He wrote “Clened Dech”.  Then I headed home.  Not so fast, said the bus driver.  He wouldn’t let me on the bus.  I don’t blame him now but it was hard at the moment.  So I walked home, about 3 miles, leaving the easiest track to follow ever created. 

When I entered the backyard my mom, who was by now a little worried about when her first born might show up, recognized me, I think solely because of my voice.  She instructed me to remove all clothing, including the Borsalino, and leave it in a pile.  Then she hosed me off with our garden nozzle and using a soaped brush made me acceptable to enter the house and get into a tub.  The clothing made a heck of a small bonfire in the back yard, with the blackest smoke you’ve ever seen.   

There are good parts to this story.  First, the ditch job was a once a year thing and I never had to do it again.  Second, when I looked up the hill there was the University of Utah.  It didn’t take Sherlock Holmes to give me advice about the importance of education.  It was a good push toward becoming a mathematician.  Third, no mosquito would have anything to do with me for a month.  There were downsides, chief among them the Borsalino, now just ash.  My dad really missed that hat.