I thought I’d put in my 20 years in the navy and then retire. My half-assed plan only lasted for 11 years.
I left the navy after my second enlistment ended and had planned on opening my own TV shop and that plan lasted 3 years. TV shops all over were dropping like flies in winter. TV sets didn’t fail like they did in the past and Japanese TVs were so much cheaper to buy that a customer facing a big repair on an old TV knew he could buy a new set for little more than a repair on an old set.
Joyce, Annie and I left Missouri for sunny southern California, with only a few dollars in our pockets. I was sure that with my navy experience I would easily get a good job at the naval overhaul electronics shop, having worked on that equipment during my service time. That fell apart in the blink of an eye. The repair facility had a waiting list to even file for a position for over a year. We didn’t have enough money to last a month. I needed a job pronto. I went to several job placement agencies. They were sure they could get me a job and then the hammer dropped. There was an upfront fee to sign up with them and after placement, they got a big chunk of my salary for a full year. I couldn’t even come up with the initial sign up fee and I was not going to give up part of my earnings for a year either.
I was feeling low at that point. The next morning there was an ad in the newspaper for a company called Volt Technical. They had temporary tech jobs available. I went to their offices and talked with a nice young man there. Their deal was they would send you to an interview at a technical company. No upfront fees. If you were hired as a temporary employee you got your full earnings and they got a percentage from the employing company as long as you were there as a temp. I interviewed at a company called Burroughs. First with the head of engineering, then with two other engineers. The interviews went well. I believe I got a call the next morning from Volt and they told me I could start the next day with Burroughs.
I worked at Burroughs for 10 years. Joyce had a job in San Diego during that time. We did well in those years. During those years I told Joyce how wonderful retirement was going to be. We would have enough to live comfortably and could spend our days and nights having grownups fun. We could sleep as long as we wanted and share happy times all day long! I even sat and wrote down my retirement plan, what, when, where and how. That plan worked well, except for one thing, I still needed a job when we got back to Missouri.
I went out on interviews all over Springfield and got nowhere. Each place asked similar questions, where did I come from and how much did I earn there? That was far more than jobs in Missouri so they could not match my earlier earnings and they figured I would go back to California in a few months. That was a double whammy against my employment. A few months later I landed a job at Litton. By that time I knew I would never get as much as in San Diego, but I needed whatever I could earn. 19.6 years later, Litton closed its doors and I finally retired.
Retirement has never been close to what I expected over all the years I worked. My greatest failure was to have never considered I would lose the energy of my younger years or that I would begin to lose my strength and endurance (hard to believe I didn’t see that coming). My vision of sleeping long hours was crushed by the routine of my working years and getting up early in the mornings and it still continues. I rarely ever get enough sleep. Retirement income that would have put us in great shape went out like the evening tides in 2001. I never planned or considered I would outlive the love of my life. I never thought we would ever sell the farm, but it became too much for us to keep. Had we not sold the farm we could not have survived financially. There is one great thing for women as they age; they don’t have to shave their legs anymore. We men never did that to begin with, but for some reason my facial whiskers grow faster and hair grows out on my ears. What’s up with that?
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