A thank you note to God

By John Estridge

The Road Not Taken 

BY ROBERT FROST

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

This is new for me. I have never started a column with a poem. In fact, I have never used a poem in any of my articles. I have quoted rock lyrics many times, but not a poem and definitely not an entire poem. But this is one of my favorites.

And this is for the reader. This column is a Thank You note to God. If you are in a hurry, you can jump to the last paragraph and read my Thank You note. But if you have a little time – well maybe a lot of time — and don’t mind a meandering, very long path that has a bunch of side paths (my usual tangents) then grab that walking stick and your best pair of hiking boots and let’s go.

In my long ago past, I was headed down a very wrong path. It was very dark there. And it is really by the Grace of God I have lived this wonderful life I have lived for so many decades and did not end up in a very bad prison for many, many years.

God kept putting miracles out there, and I was too blind to see what was going on. It is in retrospect, that I can clearly see through my rear view mirror what occurred.

But I get ahead of myself.

I was cruising along in the 1980s. Most of my bad ways were behind me. I was married with two children, both little people, with a high-interest mortgage on a nice home, bought for $35,000, and more than one person said I overpaid for it. It was a monster of a home, and I really liked it. There were 13 rooms on two levels not including the unfinished basement. It had a detached garage that like most garages got full of junk. But I had a carport between the house and the garage and that got a lot of use. It was nice to sit in lawn chairs under the carport and watch the kids play in the big backyard. There were kids all over the neighborhood.

My job was at Perfect Circle in Richmond, and I worked in several different departments, because I was very low in seniority; my dad had more than 40 years seniority, and he was not alone. One job I worked a lot — because nobody else wanted to — was called Chrome Plate. We did what it was called. We put a chrome finish on the piston rings’ outside diameter (OD). These rings were for Cummins and International Harvester and those type engines. They were big, heavy rings. We lifted a rack of rings, which were a bunch of rings under pressure, over our heads and placed them into boiling vats of chromic acid. We then finished them off after they cooked in the chromic acid for awhile by putting them in vats of boiling lye and boiling water.

To make the chromic acid we lifted 100-pound sacks over our heads and poured chromic acid flakes into the boiling cauldron. We then had to stir it with a two-by-four until it was eaten away and then get another. We had to try not to breathe while we were doing it. For protection, we wore heavy plastic aprons that started just below our collarbones and went to the floor. Our arms were covered by heavy plastic sleeves. We had no protection for our breathing. We once watched part of a safety film showing people doing about what we were doing, and they were wearing self-contained breathing apparatuses.

The malcontents in the back row, which included me, made so many pointed comments about how we did not have any of the safety gear, the foreman in charge shut off the VCR and told everyone to get back to work. I was not a popular guy for awhile. The offices were air conditioned and many people were asleep.

It was said there were PC retirees, but there were no old PC retirees.

In the winter, it was cold in the factory and others would come to our department to get warm. In the summer, people stayed well away from our department. This was the 80s. We were given salt tablets. Every now and then we slipped out a side door and breathed in relatively cooler summer night air. Our door opened up looking at the PC foundry. We took some solace as to however bad we had it, the guys at the foundry had it worse.

I started praying while working in that department because I am not a strong person. That may come as a shock to many people. When the guy training me told me how to put the chromic acid flakes into the boiling cauldron, I thought it was a malicious joke. That happened on occasion because I had long hair and most other employees were rednecks. But a second person, who was a more sympathetic person, came over and told me “I know it sounds crazy, but that’s how it is done.”

Up until that time, I don’t think I had ever tried to lift 100 pounds over my head and especially not while holding my breath. My trainer, who really didn’t like me because of my hair and because he didn’t like my dad – sins of the fathers and all that – had no sympathy for me at all. He said I could be a long-haired pansy about it and say I couldn’t do it. In fact, I had thought about that, but dad warned me that if I opted out of that department, come layoffs, I would be the first to go. So, I said a prayer that I would be able to lift the 100-pound bag over my head, and I would not breathe in any of the chromic acid flakes or the more deadly dust.

My side of the chrome department was straight time. We got paid very well for the times at PC. And the benefits were extraordinary. We had John Hancock insurance, and it paid for everything. Congressmen and Senators may have that good of insurance today, but I don’t think anyone else has or ever will again.

But the other side of the chrome plate department was piece work, meaning they got paid more the more pieces they did in a shift, and every last one of them was crazy. Chromic acid was thrown around as if it were cold water on a summer day. When chromic acid got into a cut on a person’s arm, it would eat its way through the arm and come out the other side. I kid you not. There were many sharp things around including the metal piston rings that people routinely got cuts. It would cause blood poisoning during its travels. Several employees were in the hospital several times because of it. However, they figured their pay, especially on Saturdays and Sundays, was worth it.

I did not.

So, I stayed on the straight time side: less pay but I never went to the hospital or suffered from blood poisoning.

Anyway, I prayed. Held my breath and found myself pouring chromic acid flakes into the boiling cauldron without dropping the whole thing, sack and all, into the cauldron. I had been told that was very bad, and I did not want to find out what very bad meant if it was worse than what I was already doing. I had to do that several times while I worked the job.

In 1987, the economy got really bad and cars were not selling. Layoffs hit. This was different than other layoffs. The union president and vice president, who I did not like as they were alcoholics who did nothing and got paid well for it, told us younger employees to find other jobs. The possibility was always out there, but it was really jaw dropping when it happened. I discovered what depression was. I was 30 years old, and I thought my best years were behind me. And I’ll say this for those union guys, they were spot on. Very few ever got back in to work, and it did not last that long.

During my last year at PC, I answered a classified ad in the Richmond Palladium-Item asking for sports correspondents. I liked to write, and I liked sports so I thought that was me. I went in and met the sports editor at the time Jeff Higley. He was a little older than me, but he was the quintessential sports editor: big and gruff. He had a test where a paper had some stats from a football game, including the final score and had quotes from the coaches and some players.

I sat down at the computer and pounded out the article. I read it and reread it. I sweated over it. Finally, he got impatient and made me stop. He read it on the screen.

“Not bad, but you forgot to put the final score in,” he said without a hint of a smile.

I was crushed and started to get up. He grabbed my arm and pulled me back down. He told me it happens to everyone. I think he was lying, but he needed warm bodies who could read and write I later found out. He worked with me on what a lede (sounds like lead, like I am going to lead you somewhere) paragraph is, how to do quotes, and how to do stats. He helped me set up a notebook to keep the important stats in a football game, and I began to cover high school sports.

Higley told me the key to getting my article done by deadline on those crazy nights was to write the first three or four paragraphs in my head while driving to the office. It worked.

During that time and later years, I took my oldest child, Donovan, with me to the games and then into the newspaper afterwards to write the article. This was when newspapers were newspapers. The newsroom, which included the sports department, was loud and rowdy. Phones were ringing, people were yelling; people were cussing; people were laughing. Donovan sat and played with hand-held electronic games.

Higley would come along at deadline time and shut down computers. Whatever one had at that time, was final at that moment. Hopefully, one had saved before the computer went off. It really made Donovan nervous because some of the correspondents actually cried when their computer went off, and they had not saved and/or they were far from finishing.

Inexplicably, I found I loved it. I always finished before Higley struck. And I think I got better at writing and keeping stats.

However, it paid $20 a story, and that did not include gas or mileage.

Thus, I had to pay the mortgage so I got a temporary job at The Belden in Richmond. The Belden made all kinds of wire and cables. When the space shuttle blew up, there were some tense moments there until it was found it was not defective wiring which caused it.

My first job there was a cabling machine operator. They were huge. One had to climb almost entirely inside the machine to set it up. My shift was second shift. Nobody wanted to work second shift. I was mostly in a machine one night when the steel plate the machine sat on vibrated violently. I was upset. It meant a tow motor had gone too close to my butt. I came out of the machine ready to fight, but there was no tow motor. I did not have time to contemplate it and went back to work. There was no union there so I worked through my breaks and lunch time. I started before the shift and worked right up until the third shift guy kicked me out. I was afraid of getting fired.

And the vibration? On the way home that night I learned I lived through my first and only earthquake.

The Belden was a temporary job, and I kept looking for something permanent. I thought I found it at Square D in Oxford, Ohio. The guy who hired me was one of the nicest guys I have ever met. He asked me about my previous jobs and then told me I had nothing to worry about there as they did not have layoffs.

Within two years, I was laid off again.

While all this had been going on, I still wrote for the Palladium-Item. The news editor, Cheryl, had come to me one night in the sports department and said Higley had told her I was a decent writer. She asked if I lived near Brookville. I lived in Liberty and told her yes. She said she wanted me to start covering governmental meetings in Brookville. Pay was still $20 an article. No mileage. So, I started coming to Brookville to cover news. On the weekends, I would still do high school sports.

Cheryl helped me with news reporting, which is very different than sports reporting. Everything has to be correct in doing news. I could not get fancy or playful with my words. Quotes had to be exactly what was said. With football games, getting the tobacco spitting, sweating, swearing football coach close on the quotes was always good enough.

One of my first governmental meetings was Brookville Town Council. I did not have a pocket tape player, and Cheryl wanted me to tape the meetings to make sure I got the quotes correct. So, I carried my kids’ Fischer Price tape player, which caused more than a few stares from officials. Like now, I really did not care.

In the middle of the meeting, it was announced the council was going into executive session, and we, the audience, had to leave. The audience was me and Pat Schomber who covered meetings for a radio station. Both Pat and I looked at each other and then left. I did not know anything about the Open Door laws, but that did not sound kosher to me in America at least. BTC met where the police station is today. I went next door to Rosenberger’s and there was a pay phone there. I called the newsroom and got another editor. I told the editor, I had never met, who I was and what had happened, and I did not think it was right. That editor went ballistic. He told me while screaming and cussing to march back into the meeting, open the closed door and announce they were in violation of the Open Door Law.

I did not know them. They did not know me. They had an attorney. I was a factory worker. But I did what I was told. And, again, I said a prayer before I turned the knob.

I made my speech, and they all turned to their attorney. He said they were done with their executive session anyway, so come back in.

I wrote it up the way it went. Cheryl called me the next day and said I was a celebrity in the newsroom.

Come the layoff from Square D, I saw the Palladium-Item had an opening for a full-time reporter. I dressed in my best, went in and told Cheryl I wanted to apply for the job. Cheryl laughed. I think part of me died with that laugh. Really, I believe the last vestiges of my childhood ended at that moment. I did not hear much of the rest of our conversation, but she knew I had never finished college and told me I had to have a bachelor’s degree to even put in an application.

The trip home was not fun being alone in the car. My wife, at the time, was not sympathetic to the situation, and was upset I was laid off again. She took the kids to her mom’s in Florida. My depression deepened.

It was not a good time. I did a lot of praying on my knees, and crying. My across Vine Street neighbor was the superintendent of the Union County school system or something like that. We knew each other to nod and wave. We had never spoken words to each other. For whatever reason, and I never found out why, she came to my back door and knocked. I had been behind a chair on my knees praying and crying for a long time. I still had long hair at the time. I was a wreck with wild hair, my face red, swollen, sweaty and tear streaked when I went to the door. She backed away from the door with this horrific expression and ran across the street to her house. We never communicated again with even a nod or a wave.

During the 80s, my house backed up to the Methodist Church parking lot. An elderly man, probably even older than I am now, was the preacher, Ivan Steed. We would lean on the fence and talk about all sorts of things. Eventually, I started going to his church. Two of my three kids were baptized in that church. I began to help out with things in the church. I was a lay reader. I assisted with the youth group, and I helped Ivan and his wife, Dottie, with nursing home services.

It was a long way from my bad, old days.

My ex and the kids had come back by then. It was late January, and we had really bad winters back then before the global warming stuff. It was about negative 15 in the middle of that Sunday. IU was hosting Purdue, and these were the Bobby Knight and Gene Keady years. Every game between the two teams was a classic.

The nursing home service was over. I wanted to get in my frozen 1984 Cavalier piece of crap wagon and go home.

Ivan had other ideas. We sat in his car. I am not kidding it was so cold our breath was freezing as we exhaled. We could not see out of the windshield. I wanted to start my car so it at least had time to try to warm up. I hated scraping the inside of the windshield while driving just to see a portion of the road. I wanted to get home. I wanted to sit in a warm house and watch the game. I did not want to sit in a frozen car on a frozen street in frozen Liberty.

Ivan asked me what I wanted to do in my life. I said I wanted PC to call me back where I could make good money and have good insurance. I didn’t have any insurance, and I had three small children who each had about three well days a year and never at the same time.

He looked at me with his wise Ivan eyes, and I realized if I got home by halftime, it was going to be a miracle.

Ivan said no. He said if you could do anything in the world, what would you like to do? And I unashamedly told him I wanted to be a reporter and write for a living. I did not tell him about Cheryl laughing at me, but I was thinking about it as I said those words. Because getting to be a reporter was as far away from my reality as getting to watch that basketball game that day or ever being warm again.

So, Ivan then took off his glove. And I realized, without a word being said, he wanted me to take off my very warm mitten. My hands were the only warm part of my body. Other parts had gone numb by then. I was trying to remember the symptoms of frost bite.

Very reluctantly I took off my left mitten, and we held hands in that very frozen moment. Ivan prayed. He prayed that I would get a reporting job, and I could have my dream job of being a reporter. It was a relatively long prayer. Even with Ivan holding my hand in his large hand, my hand was going numb. Finally, came the Amen, and I was allowed to leave his car.

I got home halfway through the second half. Donovan said it had been a great game.

About a week later, I received a phone call from Dan McFeely, a reporter at the Connersville News Examiner. Among his duties at the News Examiner was the Franklin County beat. We had covered many of the same meetings and events and had developed a friendly relationship.

Dan was going to Greenfield to work at that paper – he recently retired from the Indy Star — and did I want to have his job at the Connersville News Examiner. He liked my writing. He said I knew the beat. He had put my name in with the editor, and it was mine if I wanted.

Miracle? Major miracle? Yes, I believe it was.

I went to talk to the editor Dick. He offered me the job on the spot, and I took it even before he told me what I was going to make. I don’t remember the pay. I do know I made much more money on Ohio unemployment than I would make at the News Examiner. And that did not sit well with my not-yet ex-wife. I can’t remember if she took the kids again to Florida, but she might have. I missed the kids, but I really didn’t care. I was going to get to write full-time and get paid for it.

I think there was insurance that didn’t pay much after about a $25,000 deductible, but I did not care.

And remember Cheryl? She found out about my job and paid my tuition to take a journalism class at IUEast she was teaching. She just retired as a professor of journalism at Miami. I learned many things about writing in that class. And I am forever grateful for her doing that for me.

Sitting next to me at the News Examiner was Kimball. He was a reporter who knew everyone in Fayette County. He also covered Connersville sports. He taught me some lessons about covering governmental meetings. We had a quota of articles to put out every day, and sometimes nothing happened. He told me to break my meetings down to several articles. Give background, do some research, and make separate articles for different events in the meetings.

It worked. I made quota every day.

One bad thing was I was not allowed to do sports at the Pal-Item while I worked at the News Examiner. The sports editor at the News Examiner thought I was putting in too many hours. We got paid for 40, and no overtime. I did not keep track of how many hours I put in. I was in heaven on earth. I wanted to do sports also. But Gary said no. It was too many hours, but I could not write for the Pal-Item because the Pal-Item was a competitor with them.

While at the News Examiner and with the guidance from Kimball, I started doing some investigative journalism. I did one office in Fayette County after I received a tip the State Board of Accounts really whacked the department. With Kimball’s tutelage, I broke the articles into a three-part series. We got several Letters to the Editor about it, and Kimball liked it.

That series beget a phone call from another Fayette County employee who wanted me to look at another county department. Again, with Kimball’s help, I began the research. Just as I was about to start the series of articles, my editor got a phone call. He came over to my desk after putting down the phone. He asked me if I was planning another series. I said yes. He said no. And turned around and went to his desk.

It just so happened at the next meeting I covered in Franklin County, it was the school board, Don “Scoop” Sintz came over to me after the meeting and asked me if I had ever thought about working at the Brookville Democrat. It was the first of several times the late Scoop sought to cut his hours or retire.

I said no. I liked a daily with the daily deadlines and thought a weekly was a step down. Don said a figure, and I thought it might be nice to work on a weekly for awhile. The four owners and I sat down for some negotiation, and I even got a little more money to start, and they said if I had time, I could do sports for the Pal-Item.

By that time, the legendary Jan Clark was the sports editor at the Pal-Item. He took me under his wing and taught me how to tweak my articles. There were a few tricks like making sure the paragraphs were not the same size all the way through an article.

He said to put one-line paragraphs in every now and then.

Another trick was to make sure I did not start sentences in the same way, with the same word and to vary sentence structures.

Then, he said to read an article aloud, and if something causes a person to stop reading, even for an instant, to smooth out the verbiage. Also, he said to never stop learning. He told me to reread every article and ask myself how it could be different; how I could improve it.

The final advice he gave over the time I worked for him was the best: He said every article, even if I write 100 football articles, every article is unique because of the variables of the event. One gets one crack at it, so put everything into that article even if it is the 100^th football article. It is unique, and one owes it to the readers and to the people who are the subject of the article.

So, I have plied this craft now for more than 30 years. I have loved every minute of it. I have really traveled more than a 360 circumference because instead of doing it for less than unemployment, I am now doing it for nothing.

Miracles, I believe I witnessed miracles at almost every step.

So, Lord, I know this was all Your doing. I had nothing to do with it. You have allowed me to follow this wonderful path, the path less traveled. I thank You so much for this. I cannot thank You enough. I am truly the most blessed person on the face of Your earth.

Thank You for evermore.