CHAPTER 1
Square Peg—Round Hole
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Whoever said that happiness is watching a workplace disappearin the rearview mirror has never been forced to sit idle. Tradinga livelihood for leisurely living may sound appealing whenthe hounds are howling, but after all of the stressful issues havefinally been resolved and the dust has settled on that last decisivechallenge, the overwhelming sense of uselessness that comes withinactivity is crippling. The longer a guy is out of the game, themore he is inclined to crave being a player.
Sometime during the winter of 2006, thoughts of retirementbegan seriously crowding my scenery. Visions of laying down thewrenches and kicking back into a life of leisure had always beenin the back of my mind, but other than putting money into anIRA and paying off the mortgage, I had not formulated much ofa plan for crossing that career-ending finish line. It occurred to methat making the transition from dream to reality was no longer allthat far into the future, but gazing over the hill at the backside offifty also presented an interesting dilemma. Do people actually putaway their careers and still have purpose? More to the point, couldI ever realistically afford to stop working?
For years I had been quietly observing the lifestyles of theretired and anonymous. At one end of the spectrum, the goldenyears seemed to be characterized as winters spent in Floridaplaying shuffleboard, Tuesday morning tee times, and a wardrobeconsisting of plaid polyester slacks and polo shirts. On the flip sidethere was Bubba in his backyard next to the outdoor refrigerator,charring burgers on the grill, a spatula in one hand and a beer inthe other, sporting a sleeveless football jersey and a ball cap withhis favorite NASCAR driver's number on the back.
Both images screamed "Run for your life!" Although certainaspects of nearly every lifestyle held a measure of appeal, thethought of a pigeonholed existence to any extreme scared me todeath.
Understandably, my idea of front-yard, hands-on hobbieswould likely be considered intolerable inside one of those sterilegated communities full of perfectly manicured lawns andpainted driveways. Likewise, I would find no comfort living ina neighborhood full of cars on blocks, staring at the engine partsspread across the guy next door's front porch.
In other words, if I decided to spend my retirement years on agolf course, it would probably have to be as the cart mechanic. Funis relevant, but there needs to be something more tangible thanbragging rights to show for the time I invest in leisure activity. Ascore card just doesn't do it for me.
And there lay the problem: What exactly was retirementsupposed to look like, anyway?
Dad was a World War II veteran who had lost his leg to aGerman mortar. If anything, the challenges he faced as a legamputee inspired him to rise above the obstacles and show theworld that he did not need crutches. He pursued happinessthrough independence and self-discipline.
Like most folks of his generation, war and strife had hardenedDad. Growing up without a mother during the Great Depressionof the 1930s forced him and his eight siblings into survivalthrough the school of hard knocks. Nobody had held their handswhen they were faced with adversity, so they weren't about to holdanyone else's. When it came time to introduce their own childrento the ways of the world, all they had to fall back on was theirpitiless self-confidence.
When I was somewhere around the age of nine, Dad taggedme with the nickname Daze, probably because I always struggledwhen handed chores that didn't come with instructions. It neveroccurred to me that his approach to getting things done mightactually have been a vote of confidence in my ability to handlethem on my own.
It was disappointing after each project had been finishedto watch Dad review my bent-nail-and-split-board quality ofworkmanship with head-shaking frustration while grumblingunder his breath. My nickname was eventually changed from Dazeto Dunce. I pictured myself in the front corner of the classroom,wearing one of those cone-shaped hats while classmates pointedand snickered.
In spite of feeling as though I would never be able to pleasehim, I still loved my dad. Adolescence wasn't all that bad bycomparison. Our guidance had certainly been laced with impressivedoses of fear, rejection, disappointment, and uncertainty, but atthe time, there seemed to be nothing unusual about the way mybrothers, my sister, and I were being raised.
By the time I was a teenager, life for the most part had becomevoid of any recreational interaction with my parents. I alwayshad a job at the family business to earn spending money, so therewas never any lack of opportunity to learn the value of a buck.But once the time card went through the clock at the end of theworkday, the Dunce was usually nowhere to be found.
Dad frequently tracked me down to lend a hand with hisbackyard projects, but even on a good day our working relationshipwas halfhearted at best. We had little patience for each other.
About halfway through one of those father-and-son weekendencounters, progress at the work site came to a screeching haltwhen I finally threw down my tools out of frustration and stagedmy own protest. I was tired of trying to read his mind only to bescolded for having misinterpreted some elusive gesture. I got intoDad's face and took a full swing at his chin with a closed fist, but Ipulled the punch inches before making contact when something inmy eighteen-year-old brain suddenly brought me to my senses.
Firing a warning shot across his bow certainly seemed to gethis attention. After that showdown, Dad dropped the nicknamesand began making a noticeable effort to include me during theplanning stages of every project we launched together. Owing towhat appeared to be a total change of heart, my father found waysto explain what he was trying to accomplish while we worked. Mylittle mutiny had somehow earned his respect.
The episode also established in me a significant sense ofsovereignty. It goes without saying that someone must lead andothers should follow, but following felt a lot like being pushedaround to me, and that was unacceptable. One successful rebellionagainst authority and I was ready to make it through life on myown. Unfortunately, because of that bullheaded independence, Inever learned the art of losing.
Looking back, I have to admit that Dad's tough love seemedan appropriate way to teach self-discipline. Personal responsibilitywas deeply ingrained. Aside from his one-legged swagger, he wasvery much like many of the other dads I knew. The world todaymight be a better place for everyone if misbehaving juveniles withtheir droopy drawers and flat-brimmed attitudes were forced toface Dad's brand of discipline.
Through my teenage years in the 1960s, our small ruralcommunity experienced its share of economic euphoria. Followingthe terror brought on by World War II and the Korean War,Americans were industrious and profitable, but their bullishbehavior spawned a generation of overfed, rebellious children laterknown as the Baby Boomers. Public optimism began to wane onlyafter the first shots had been fired in Southeast Asia. That's whenthe all-knowing, all-seeing politicians in Washington, DC, startedshipping young men into the jungles of Vietnam to fight an enemynobody knew how to identify.
Vietnam was an unpopular war to say the least. Nobodywanted to go there, but once the US Army's draft lottery numbershad been drawn, those who were chosen faced very few options.Many Boomers rose up and rebelled against the war. Some leftthe country, while others burned their draft cards and joinedthe growing number of protesters. I stood on the sidelines andwatched, trying to avoid a trip to Vietnam by attending college.
There was a very real fear of what the future had in store formy generation. In spite of President John F. Kennedy's inauguraladdress and Dr. Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" oration,civil unrest and cultural disharmony seemed to prevail. But Dad'smethod of raising children had not only taught us to ignore thecolor of another man's skin; he had also inadvertently prepared meto face the jaws of death without flinching.
After two miserable years trying to maintain a grade pointaverage high enough to avoid flunking out of school, I finally gaveup. At the age of twenty, with no particular interest in anythingbeyond finding a paying job and getting on with life in 1969, Ibecame the family's first college dropout.
Factory jobs weren't hard to find in those days, so thetransition from student to laborer went smoothly. In no time mypockets were full of spending money and I hadn't a care in theworld. That was obviously an extremely shortsighted point of view.It didn't take long for the US Army to receive word that I was nolonger a student. In August 1969, friends and hippies exploringtheir communal peace of mind headed for the little town ofBethel, New York, for an event called Woodstock. I, on the otherhand, landed a round-trip bus ride to the Armed Forces InductionCenter at Fort Wayne, Detroit, to undergo the army's preinductionphysical examination.
While being herded from room to room in our underwearduring the physical examination process that day, a group ofus who had been crammed together in a corner discovered themilitary's lottery within the lottery. We watched a marine liaisonemerge from his cubicle, walk over to a line of draftees, and tagevery third guy as an inductee into the Corps.
"Can they do that?" I whispered to the guy standing next tome. "They can't draft guys into the marines, can they?"
"Apparently they can," he whispered back. "I know mynumber's comin' up, so when I get out of here, I'm gonna go seethe navy recruiter. There's no way I'm gonna be a marine!"
Everyone knew that both the US Army and the Marine Corpsguaranteed its soldiers an all-expense paid trip straight into thejaws of combat. Contemplating that bone-chilling prospect sent awave of fear shivering through my body.
A week later I paid a visit to the US Air Force recruiter inPort Huron, Michigan. He put my name on the list for thenext scheduled session of air force entrance exams and stuck myapplication into his files. Thank God for that bit of foresight. Onbehalf of the war department, Uncle Sam sent me a Christmascard that year with a personal invitation to join the party. Onefrantic phone call to the air force recruiter's office, and the army'spaperwork was intercepted. Two days later I signed on the dottedline and became a brand-new US Air Force recruit through thedelayed enlistment program, although the delay wasn't nearly aslong as I would have preferred. Three more months of civilian lifeand I was wheels-up aboard a military charter flight, wonderingwhat had happened to that freedom everyone always talked about.
For entirely different reasons, both Woodstock and the militarywere interesting and eye-opening experiences. Country Joe sangprotest songs to the throngs of young adults crowding the stage setup in the Catskills while GI Joe waded through the jungles, tryingto avoid contact with the Vietcong.
My twenty-first birthday came and went while in basic trainingat Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas. My next stopwas twelve weeks of aircraft maintenance training. On August 1,1970, I married my girlfriend, Carole, and then climbed aboard aflight bound for Southeast Asia.
So much for avoiding the war in Vietnam.
Although I never experienced a real fear of dying whileoverseas, I honestly did not expect to come home alive. Onenight in October 1970, two months into my tour, that fatalisticpremonition rubbed shoulders with reality when a C-130 Ishould have been aboard went missing. My friend Tom Bosnickwas on that flight. We were both very upset by the fact that oursquadron commander would not authorize me to join him as hismaintenance assistant. Tom took off for Taipei, and I returned tothe barracks. The wreckage and remains were finally found twoweeks later, plastered to the side of a mountain seventy-five milesoff course. Everyone aboard had perished.
Shortly after that airplane went down, I was taken off the flightline and assigned a desk job. So ended the threat of having to flyinto a firefight at treetop level over the jungles of Vietnam.
I wasn't one of those who were spit on when they cameback stateside, but I sure didn't receive a hero's welcome either."Ignored" would be a more fitting description of the receptionreceived when I was feet-dry on American soil. Regardless, I wasproud to have served my country honorably, and nobody wasgoing to take that away from me.
The public's lack of respect didn't really faze me. I was justhappy to be back in the arms of the girl that I had married onlytwo weeks prior to shipping out for Taiwan.
I came home to Michigan and rejoined the family businessafter being discharged from the air force in September 1973. Therewere a lot of other career opportunities to explore, but I had beenprogrammed to take the safe, conservative route. Buying into andowning the family business seemed to be the socially accepted andresponsible thing to do at the time, so into the cauldron I dove.
I was haunted by my decision to walk away from college,and this caused me to seriously contemplate the future. The keyto happiness would be independence, but independence requiredan education. Thanks to the GI Bill, college tuition funding wasavailable. I spent my nights and weekends pursuing a degree, onecourse at a time.
The wheels hauling my young family unit toward financialsecurity were in motion, but it wasn't long before that trainderailed. I finally abandoned my plans to take over the business in1979, when Dad had an emotional meltdown and leveled his sightson me after verbally firing defensive rounds into every corner of hisexecutives' offices. Once again, the plunder of disappointment hadcarried the day.
Slipping back into survival mode, I walked away from thefamily operation for the last time and spent the next few yearstraveling as a working musician until leaving the road to finishcollege and start a home-based bookkeeping business. Carolesupported the kids and me while I struggled to develop a future.
Near the end of the recession that had lain to waste so much ofAmerica's industry in the 1970s, men in black suits from the IRSaudited my parents' livelihood and retirement plans into oblivion.Witnessing the way our government had allowed one of itsagencies to turn so venomously on my father, a disabled veteran,was breathtaking. The IRS agents sent to conduct an audit werethe equivalent of Nazi storm troopers dispatched by the SS. Thoseguys weren't there to help preserve the operation; their assignmentwas to gut what few assets remained and leave the carcass for localbuzzards to pick apart.
Our parents' encounter with that bureaucratic death squadtaught me to be wary of the potential for destruction at the handsof strangers whose sinister authority granted sufficient power tocrush lives. Looking back I can see how the experience ignited inme a bitter fear of failure, which might explain my cynical attitudeand relentless effort to keep my own little world from unraveling.
Generally speaking, however, there was not much remorseamong my siblings and me over the unfortunate demise of thefamily business. Compassion during our formative years had neverbeen a prime directive. Besides, we had all moved on to otherthings in our own lives, so the end of a would-be legacy presentedno personal sacrifice. We just stood with hands in pockets on thesidelines watching Mom and Dad's ship go down, dragging theirlittle nest egg with it.
Growing up in a family business while living in a rural farmingcommunity offered very little opportunity for becoming streetwise.A couple of pyramid scams handed me some hard lessons, butthere were still a few enticing shell games to trip over until mynecessary education in survival had been polished.
While I was still struggling to get my little bookkeepingbusiness up and running, an old high school friend approachedwith a plan for saving his floundering manufacturing operation.I needed an income, and he needed someone with experienceto manage his business operation, so we joined forces. His offerincluded ownership in the operation in lieu of a decent salary.The arrangement seemed legitimate and provided all the incentiveneeded to sign on with reckless abandon. The deal was done on ahandshake. He dangled the bait, and I swallowed it hook, line, andsinker.
