Biography, noun, a recipe for dull, dry lists of accomplishments, addresses, acquaintances, and, in some cases, aggressive alliteration (what's the Building Word Power entry for compulsively using unnecessarily big words? I forget. I like big words, and I cannot prevaricate nor dissemble.) Over the decades, I did a lot of different stuff, carelessly and with great enthusiasm, much the way I live my life now.
What's that? You enjoy lists? Okay. Here goes.
As a child, my siblings and I collected bottles alongside the road, for the deposit. We also collected newspapers from neighbors willing to save them for us. We collected old clothes to sell to the rag man. There used to be such a thing. I drove a route of dry cleaners, picking up and returning the items they don't handle themselves, such as pillows, ties, dye, reweaving, and hats, and dropping them at the vendors in Los Angeles. I took orders at a fast food place (still the worst job I ever had.) I was a janitor at a girl's high school, and over that summer, we stripped the dorms to the bare walls and renovated everything. I operated injection molding machines, producing dozens or hundreds of small plastic parts over and over, and then sorting through them to reject the deformed ones. I solicited door to door for a carpet and flooring company. I manned the PBX during off-hours at a university, for the security department. (A few calls came in before or after hours and were told the offices were closed. One time, there was a genuine emergency call, and I had to rouse the guards to wake up a dorm resident with dome terribly bad news. But that's what we were there for. The young women who worked the board all day long when it was really busy got paid less than I did, because they worked for the university, not the security department. Patently unfair.) I etched printed circuit boards. I operated a large format box camera to prepare negatives for circuit boards, and for other printing purposes. I ran printing presses of various sizes and types. I stocked the shelves and did deliveries for a liquor store. I worked as a dishwasher in a college cafeteria. I supervised the shipping dock for the central warehouse of a chain of fifty record and tape stores. I stocked the shelves and cut orders at a fabric and upholstery store. I operated precision injection molding machines under a government contract for parts used in Trident nuclear submarines. I ran the register at a copying service and did the overnight orders, no matter how many had come in. I did phone sales for annual benefit shows for the Policemen's Union, the Firemen's Union, the Sheriff's Mounted Posse, the Search and Rescue Team, and a few others before there were so many people calling every night that all you were doing was annoying people at dinnertime and sales completely dried up. I operated, adjusted, calibrated, and maintained a roomful of interconnected equipment that took aluminum wire, flattened, cleaned, anodyzed, annealed, and epoxy-coated it, to be used in manufacturing coils for fixed-magnet motors. I repaired automobile brakes, and other components and systems. I worked on a crew that built houses. I repaired and replaced roofs. I poured concrete. I re-plumbed houses, and performed plumbing repairs. I repaired and replaced electrical components and systems. I cleaned and organized garages, basements and barns. I chopped down trees and split wood. I made sandwiches at a delicatessen. I spent a rainy winter repairing fences for a sheep rancher, driving around, field after field, making sure the posts were still upright and the electric fence operational. (Do you know how you test an electric fence? You grab the wire and shock the shit out of yourself. There's no better way. It won't kill you, or even knock you over. A friend of mine, who grew up in the redneck wilds of Eastern Washington, tells the story of how he bet his visiting 'city cousin' a quarter that he couldn't pee from here to the electric fence. To this day, he maintains that it was the best twenty-five cents he ever spent.) I maintained the phones, computers and network for a winery and grass seed merchant, and re-designed the Chart of Accounts. I performed warranty repairs on laptops. I replaced and installed printers, and occasionally computers, monitors, servers, and point-of-sale stations (cash registers for you Luddites.) I worked in the scene shop of a university theater. I taught theater classes at a university. I designed and built scenery for a high school theater program. I served on the Board of Directors for Island Community Theater in American Samoa. I designed sets and lights for college and community theater productions there, and stage manged the productions. I taught Remedial English to dual-language (as opposed to second-language) students in American Samoa. I served on college committees as required. I stage-managed the Children's Village stage for DaVinci Days, a festival of art, science, and technology, and served on the committee. I worked as shop foreman in the scene shop of a community college. I was the guide and caretaker for a small local museum. I acted in local non-profit all-volunteer community theater productions., and I directed shows, designed and built sets, designed, hung, and ran lights, designed and ran sound, choreographed fights, designed, built and ran pyrotechnics and other special effects, built props, and served on the Board of Directors. I performed as a 'new vaudeville' duo of washtub bass and mandolin, pretending to be folk musicians. I appeared on television as an extra in a sitcom. I performed as the rhythm section of numerous small acoustic combos over a fifty year period. I played in a rock and roll jam band. I sang. I wrote songs. I wrote short stories. I wrote a biography.
And that, my friends, is how you cram a lifetime into exactly one thousand words.
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