The Dirt on JM Enterprises

I've gone into detail about how much people who came to Unimart/Rent City were being ripped off. However, that seemed to be what the parent company, JM Enterprises, was based on. Their wholesale buyers club turned out to be something that wasn't completely honest with customers.

In Denver, the wholesale buyers club was known as Unimart. It went by other names in other cities across the country, like US Direct and Uniway. When I worked at Rent City, this was how the club operated: People would get postcards in the mail telling them they qualified to win one of a number of prizes, including $1,000 cash, a 19" TV, a vacation to somewhere exotic or a 35mm camera. But there was a catch. (Actually, it was several catches.) You had to be married, make above a certain income level and both you and your spouse had to attend one of their presentations.

During the presentation, they tried to get you to join their club, in which you could purchase appliances, electronics and furniture at wholesale prices. You had to pay a fee to join the club. It was several hundred dollars, but you would supposedly save more than that buying their merchandise. You paid $50 a year to remain a member. You could also pay for everything on installment plans, but I got the idea they charged the same interest rate as they did at Rent City.

People would go into the presentations, which lasted an hour and included a tour of the showroom. They would listen to the pitch and wait for it to end so they could claim their "prize." It was the camera. It was ALWAYS the camera. And it was some cheap plastic fixed-focus camera that probably cost five dollars. One of the Unimart employees told me that he once saw a couple actually get a TV set. I once had to deliver a shipment of 500 cameras to one of the Unimart locations. After we had unloaded the van, I told the staff I was going to return with 500 TVs. Their jaws dropped. I told them I was kidding.

It's bad enough that deception was used as a marketing tool to get people to come listen to the presentation. But I was surprised at how many people joined on a daily basis. I mean, at some point, they had to run out of people in the Denver area to send mailers to. And I think they did. Doing some research, I found that in the early 1990s, they had switched their campaign to leaving scratcher cards on car windshields. The cards had 10 silver panels. You were instructed to scratch off only three of the panels. If you got three cherries, then you won a chance to get one of the prizes and sit through a presentation. According to an article in "Tulsa World," all but two of the panels had cherries. And of course, if you didn't get three cherries, you could always grab the scratcher off the windshield of another car in the parking lot.

Unimart got sued several times and lost. Plaintiffs were always able to prove that they weren't really saving any money over what they could purchase at a retail establishment. I'm certain they didn't need much evidence to prove that.

All in all, it just seemed like Mr. JM set up a business that was based on seeing how much money he could coerce out of middle to lower middle class people. I think everyone who worked there got their jobs the same way I did. They just got naive people to answer their want ads and trick them into doing unethical work. You get in there and you start getting paid. It's easy to just go with the flow so you can keep your apartment and food on the table.

And Rent City? It appeared that all that business was set up for was to deliberately harrass people. They didn't care about the money they received on rentals, they just wanted excuses to make people feel misterable about their predicaments in life. I had way too much heart to work there. I'm glad I got fired. I would hate to see the person I would have turned into if I had stayed on. I definitely started feeling like I was in a downward spiral before they kicked me out.

In 2006, "Tulsa World" published a follow up on its 1992 article about the scratchers. The story said that the company no longer appeared to be in business ANYWHERE. I have no idea what happened to Mr. JM, Dind, Brud or anyone else I met while I was there. It's almost like that company was just a bad dream.

Unfortunately, it was a bad dream that a lot of other people had.

True Stories of Collections, Part 2

Yesterday, I shared a few tales of my experiences as a collector working for Unimart/Rent City in Denver. Today, I'll begin with a TALL tale.

We received a call from someone who had moved into a house and found one of our TVs had been left behind. (Our store name and phone number is written on every appliance and electronic merchandise.) A driver and I went over there to get the TV. A woman was at the house, but said we were going to have to wait until her husband got home. She was told not to let anyone in the house. We tried to get on the walkie-talkie to communicate this, but the battery was dead. The driver knocked on the door. He asked the woman if we could use her phone to call the office and let them know what was going on. While he was talking to her, he wormed his way into the house and started using the phone. The woman was rather meek and was trying to get him off the phone, but never spoke loudly enough for him to hear her. We asked what time her husband was supposed to get back. She said it would be an hour later.

We left and came back. Hild said he would meet us over there. We got there first and knocked on the door. Then this guy came out. I am not kidding, HE WAS SEVEN FEET TALL! AND HE WAS ANGRY! (Every negative stereotype you've heard about men with double-Y chromosomes? That was this guy!) He started yelling at us for coming over, forcing ourselves inside, helping ourselves to the phone and threatening his family. (What did his wife tell him?) It was clear he wanted to kick our butts, and he wouldn't have had to lift his leg very high to do that. We both just backed up. Then, Hild arrived, jumped out of the van and tried to calm him down. The man was yelling that he didn't owe us any money. Hild told him that was right, we just needed to get the TV. They still wouldn't let us in the house. The man and his wife got the TV and brought it outside. This was supposed to be a simple pick up, so I don't know how things just kept going downhill.

Another so-called "simple pick up" involved me going over to this woman's house. We had a board that listed all the pick ups we needed to do that day. There was one that said that we needed to retrieve a stereo from this one home. I figured I could do that myself, so I grabbed the van keys and headed out. I got to the house. The woman let me in, but she didn't seem too happy. I got the stereo and wrote her a receipt for it. She asked me, "Aren't you going to take the other stuff?" She was talking about all the electronic equipment on this large shelf, including a 26" TV and the shelf. I said, "I thought it was only the stereo." "No! It's everything!" So I had to take it all apart and put it in the van, and she just kept getting more mad the longer it took. I was upset at whoever wrote that on the board. That job needed two people.

Even though I made my supervisors mad when I would give breaks to the customers, every once in a while, they would screw up big time. If we needed to get our merchandise back, we usually have to catch the customer at home. Sometimes, we would find an apartment manager who had been getting stiffed by the same guy who'd been delinquent in paying us, and he would be very co-operative in letting us into the customer's apartment. This one guy came home as we were getting the last of his stuff in the truck. He said, "Don't do that! I can pay you right now!" "Okay, give us the money right now." "I don't have the money on me, but I can get it." "We can't wait. Come to the store tomorrow with the payment." Hild said that guy was probably going to sit there in his empty apartment that night and think about not being late on his payments again. The next day, the customer came in, paid at the front desk, and we took his stuff back out. A few days later, I found out that after everything we had been through the day before, THEY LET HIM PAY WITH A CHECK! It was actually a check from his mother and IT HAD BOUNCED! (And I don’t even think his mother wrote it!) We ran back out there because we knew the apartment manager would let us back in, but he told us the guy left a few days earlier and hadn’t paid him, either.

The problems I had with Unimart/Rent City didn't always have to do with collections. Deliveries could turn into adventures as well. I can't tell you how many times we brought furniture to someone's apartment and found it next to impossible to get it through all the stairs, hallways, doors and corners. There were times when we figured out that there was no way we could get the merchandise inside and we had to refund the money. There was one time we cracked the window of a neighboring apartment trying to get a couch up the stairs. Fortunately, that person wasn't at home and we finished that delivery before they got back. However, there was one apartment building that had these nice wide returns on the staircase between floors. That meant we didn't have to stand the couch on its end and slowly work it up. We were able to simply walk and carry it all the way upstairs. I think the architect who designed that building had delivered furniture before.

We also had one woman who rented a washer and a dryer. We got to the house and found out that while she had the hookups for the washing machine, she had no 220 volt outlet for the dryer. She said, "Oh, but I have an adapter!" and handed us a three-prong adapter for a two-prong outlet. That wasn't going to work. When we got back to the store, we told the person who wrote up the contract that we couldn't deliver because she didn't have the outlet. "Well I asked her if she had an outlet for one of those plugs that look like a claw and she said she had an adapter." Then the supervisor came out and said, "I heard that conversation and I thought, 'There's no such thing as a 220-volt adapter!" Well, if he heard that, he should have come out of his office and straightened things out before we wasted a trip.

After a big TV ad push, we got a lot of customers who wanted their merchandise that day. We had ten deliveries to make. We were out until 2am making those deliveries. Around 11pm, we called the last three customers to see if we could deliver the next day. No, they all wanted their merchandise that day like we had originally guaranteed. (I don't think the supervisor offered any kind of discount, like a free week or anything. That would have worked.) The worst part about that night was that all of those customers, EVERY SINGLE ONE, wound up defaulting on their first payments and we had to go pick up the merchandise. That meant the night was a complete waste of our time.

Because of that, I got to the point in which I COULDN'T STAND to see new customers come into our store. I just knew that eventually (and probably sooner than later), they were going to wind up on our delinquent list, we were going to have to call them and harrass them and eventually work to get our stuff back. If I was given someone's application to verify, I could always find a reason to turn that person down for credit. Sometimes, I didn't have to look too hard. One woman gave us an application with phone numbers of where she worked, but none of the numbers were correct. I called another guy's employer and they wouldn't even confirm that he worked there. I told the person on the other end that I was going to have to decline his credit application and I would be certain to tell him who wasn't forthcoming with details. They'd have to deal with him the next day. I just hung up the phone after I said that.

And then, there were issues that had nothing to do with customers. Our delivery fleet consisted of two trucks and two vans. They had a lot of mileage on them and were constantly breaking down. It didn't help that if we told Brud that one of them was leaking oil, he'd say to put more oil in it. If we got a flat tire, he'd tell us to fill it with sealant. If we had a battery that kept dying, he would tell us to buy one of those car battery chargers, but he wouldn't buy a new battery. As a last resort, we had to take the vehicles over to be repaired. It seemed like we always had at least one vehicle in the shop at any given time.

I mentioned in an earlier post that we were right in the middle of Welfare Town in Denver. The store and the corporate office were in a pretty tough neighborhood. I was shown areas around the outside of the store where people had tried numerous times to try to break in and steal our merchandise. They never succeeded in getting inside the store, but that didn't keep them from trying to take things outside the store. One day, I was going to make a delivery and I got in one of the vans. The inside smelled like WD-40. I then realized why. Someone had broken the steering column in an attempt to steal the van. It was in such disarray, I couldn't even start it with the key.

One day, we got a report that one of our vans had been recovered by the police a few blocks away. That meant someone had actually stolen it. Brud went on the rampage, demanding to know why we weren't aware that it was missing. We kept trying to tell him that we were so used to our vehicles being in the shop for repairs, we thought it was there. Even with this reasonable explanation, he was still trying to find someone to blame for this.

With all of our antics in trying to collect payments or merchandise from our customers, you would think that those we hounded would never want to do business with us again. But after all the harrassing, the phone calls, the humiliation, many of our customers kept coming back to us to rent more stuff and the manager would keep renting to them.

One morning, we arrived at the store to find that someone had written graffiti on our front door. It said, "All staff are A******S!" Our supervisor looked at it and said, "Well, I've always wondered what we were. Now, I know." But you know what, I'll bet that person still came in to rent from us again. Why? Because they literally had nowhere else to go. We were the lowest pit in Hell and they had to beg to be admitted.

True Stories of Collections, Part 1

When you work as a collector for a company, you're bound to have a lot of wacky stuff happen. So much of it is out of your control, but it seems like the people you're trying to get money from know that they're in control. I've mentioned a couple of incidents when writing about Unimart/Rent City in Denver. But you know there are several other tales of people ditching their responsibilities.

Keep in mind that as I got fired after only three months on the job, I never got closure on some of these cases.

As I said in the earlier post, some people will do and say ANYTHING to get out of paying their regular bill or giving back our merchandise. I called this one account and asked to speak to the customer. The woman who answered said, "Oh, she died. I'm her sister." I then tried to make arrangements to come pick up our merchandise. "Oh, I don't know what she did with all that stuff. I'll have to call you back." Come to find out, she did that all the time. Hild told me he had called her and gotten the same routine from her before. The fact of the matter was that she wasn't really dead. And she did other things that were very suspect. I never saw her come into the store, but the other staff members said she was in a wheelchair. When I went over to the house to see the "sister," she was standing up outside her front door. Then, she sent her caseworker down to see us. We explained that what the customer wanted to do was have us remove her name from the account and put the caseworker's name on it. That would make the caseworker responsible for the payments, while the merchandise sat in her house. That caseworker just walked out of the store.

There was one man we were trying to get the merchandise from. We somehow received a tip that he was at his house. A driver and I went over there and knocked several times. We didn't get any response. We had a walkie-talkie system and told the manager he wasn't home. The manager told us he was definitely in there. The driver started shouting out his name and saying that he needed to give the stuff back. He finally opened the door. He was mad at us, but let us in so we could get the furniture.

There was one account that I couldn't track down for anything. The woman apparently left town. One day, I got a call from someone who told me he knew where the TV she rented from us was. He gave me the address. I went over there on my own. I rang the apartment number on the outside of the building. I was buzzed in. I went to the apartment. It was an older gentleman. He allowed me to come in and look at the TV. He said that our customer had sold him the TV for $50. I looked at the back and determined that it was from our store. I told him it was our property and he was going to need to give us the TV back. He started yelling and screaming that he wasn't going to give it back unless we gave him $50. I communicated this on my walkie-talkie to Hild, who was at the store. The old man was still yelling and screaming while I was talking to Hild about what was going on. Hild said, "Fayd, get out of there RIGHT NOW! We're on the way!" I left the apartment building and waited for him.

When he arrived with a driver and saw me outside, he asked, "What are you doing out here?" "You told me to leave!" "I told you to leave the apartment, not the building! How are we supposed to get back in?" "We'll ring his doorbell and he'll buzz us in!" "I don't think he's going to let us back in!" I rang the doorbell and he buzzed us in. Hild was able to get the man to give us back the TV without us having to pay for it. Hild told him he was in possession of property that had been reported stolen and we could have him arrested. Actually, it wasn't true that we had reported it stolen, but the man didn't know that. We took the TV and went on our way.

A driver and I were sent out to do a collection on a Saturday morning. We went to the woman's house and knocked on the door. After a few minutes, this burly guy opened the door and started yelling at us for waking him up. We told him we were from Unimart. He yelled, "Unimart! We made a payment and dropped it off yesterday! Here's the receipt!" He showed me a receipt from a money order. Apparently, they had dropped the money order off at one of the Unimart wholesale buyer's club locations (which they were permitted to do), and the store forgot to tell us they had received the payment. That means we went out to their house for nothing. After we had cleared that up, our supervisor made us go back and apologize. APOLOGY? THAT WASN'T OUR FAULT! AND THEY WERE LATE EVEN WHEN THEY DROPPED OFF THE PAYMENT! On top of that, she didn't even give us a phone number to her house. I always tried to call her at work, but she always came in after we were gone for the day. I wanted to just walk away and tell the supervisor we apologized, but the driver insisted we go ahead and talk to the man. He accepted the apology. I didn't find this out until later, but the place the woman worked was a strip club. I never got to see what she looked like.

Speaking of problems with people making payments at our wholesale club locations, we had an issue with those employees when they took the payments and wrote out the receipts. At least one of them had a tendency to write the words "Paid in Full" on the receipts. That means that the entire account was paid in full. Somehow, every single customer who got that written on their receipt knew that and wouldn't pay us any more money. Even though they clearly owed more money on the contract, legally speaking, we couldn't collect any more from them and we were forced to write it off. Somehow, those employees never got fired for that (because they worked in a different division of JM Enterprises).

But there is so much more to tell about my experiences. I'll get to those tomorrow.

Promises, Promises

This is a follow up to a video I posted about Bernie Sanders a few months ago.



Do I expect him to pay any attention to this and take my advice? Heck, no!

Work Friend: Hild

I met Hild my first day working at Unimart/Rent City. He was also working collections. He was a couple of years older than me. He had also been a radio DJ and had played in a band with his brother. He had been adopted, but managed to get in contact with his biological father and brothers during the time that I worked with him.

He had a really outgoing personality and was easy to get along with. I don't know how long he had been doing collections, but he really seemed to know the ins and outs of what we could and could not do in terms of trying to get people to pay us the money they owed. He knew all the rules and laws. More often than not, he broke them because he knew he was likely never going to have to suffer consequences. He had a lot of fun on the job. I really didn't see the fun in trying to make people's lives miserable, but I have to admit it was funny to watch him do it.

He would harrass them at work by calling and just repeating the person's name over and over, like a recording. Whoever happened to answer the phone would try to ask who was calling, but he would just keep repeating the person's name and sometimes slip in "...needs to pay bills" every once in a while. If that business went and talked to the employee and found out it was likely us who called, they would call us back and talk to Hild. He would say, "No, that wasn't us. We don't have a recording that does that. I don't think we're the only people he owes money to."

One of the things we would generally do when we went to people's houses was leave paper hangers on their doorknobs, requesting that they call us about their accounts. Once, Hild made this giant door hanger and left it at the front door of a customer, who lived inside the apartment building. It said, in very large letters, something to the effect that everyone needs to pay their bills on time. Anybody in the building who walked by his door would know he was a deadbeat.

He told me that if he got the idea that someone was at home, but not answering their door, he would remove the peephole from the door, roll up a door hanger and stick it through the hole. He would keep the peephole. If the customer accused him of taking it, he would say, "I didn't take it. The peephole was gone before I got there." And if they said, "We saw you come up to our door." "Well, if you were home, why didn't you answer the door?" He would also perform other acts of sabotage, like remove the light bulbs from front porch fixtures and door decorations that were there.

Once, we went to the apartment of a woman who was always late. We knocked on her door, but she wouldn't answer. We could hear her using a walker to get around the apartment and the TV was on. After we waited about 10 minutes, Hild found the breaker box in the laundry room next door. He flipped a switch and turned off her power. The next day, a payment for her account had been left under our front door.

This was the same woman I referenced yesterday from whom I had to repossess her dresser. This was the day that I had tried to quit earlier in the morning. I was sent to her appartment by myself. This time, she answered the door. (I guess she didn't want her electricity shut off again.) I was surprised to see that she was about 30 years old. She was living on disability. I told her that if she couldn't pay, I would need to take the dresser with me. She relented, but wouldn't let me take the dresser until she took all her clothes out. That took about a half hour. When she was done, I had to move the dresser out to the van all by myself. It was challenging at first because there was a mirror attached to it. I didn't have any tools (and I couldn't go out to the car, because I wouldn't be able to get back into the building.) I was able to use one of the van keys as a screwdriver to remove the mirror and carry it separately. It made the job a lot easier.

When I got back, Hild was very excited that I had managed to get the dresser from that woman. I didn't really feel that good about it, but I was glad I didn't have to repossess something like an oven or a refrigerator from her. I wouldn't have been able to do it. Taking a dresser is one thing, but taking a major appliance would have affected her ability to eat.

Hild was aware that I was able to play keyboards and he invited me to help him and his brother record a Christmas song at this brother's house. It was called "Hollywood Santa Claus," and it was about Santa updating himself with a modern image. I brought my keyboard over. There were a couple of other guys who joined in the session. We attempted to record the song on his brother's four-track cassette system. We basically goofed around for a few hours, but we got a workable version completed. A few days later, he and his brother decided to record in a studio and didn't invite me (or the others) to take part.

After I got fired from Rent City, I had to go back in that Saturday to receive my final commission check. I got a commission from all the late fees that were collected from the delinquent accounts. It usually came out to about $400. Hild and I would share some of the commission with the drivers out of our pockets. When I got the check, I went to the back to see him. I wish I hadn't done that because he talked me into giving up $100 to share with the drivers. (On top of that, the president and CEO of JM Enterprises, Mr. JM himself, hornswaggled me into helping them load a van. I really am a loser.)

That was the last time I saw him. I still had one more check coming to me, but when I came to pick it up, he wasn't in the store. When I came back a couple of weeks later to see him, the manager (whom I'd never see before) told me he no longer worked there.

I had an unusual coincidence that surrounded my efforts to find him 25 years ago. His last name was "Brand." He hold me he was the only "Hild Brand" listed in the phone directory. I called directory assistance to get his phone number. I spelled out his last name and they connected me to the recording that gave out the number. I was about to call it when I realized that the prefix didn't sound like it was from Denver or the communities immediately surrounding it. I looked it up in the phone book and saw that the number belonged to a "Hild Brandt" in Boulder. They had given me the wrong number. When I called directory assistance back, they said they only had the phone number for "Hild Brandt." I was glad I didn't call him.

About a year later, when I was working as the Assistant Manager for the Mayan Theatre, someone cleaning one of the auditoriums found a checkbook on the floor. The name on the checks was "Hild Brandt" from Boulder. IT WAS THE SAME GUY I GOT THE PHONE NUMBER FOR A YEAR AGO! I'm REALLY glad I didn't call him before. He came by a few days later to pick up his check book. Yep, he definitely was not Hild Brand.

I have not been able to locate where he is now because he has a rather common name. It would be nice to get that $100 back.

Job #13: Unimart/Rent City Era (1989)

After losing my job at the nightclub, I had to scramble to find another job. I didn't have any money saved up because I was spending it on gas and eating out. (I was hardly ever at home because sometimes, I'd wind up working 10-hour days, from 4pm to 2am six days a week.) I didn't really get to make a lot of my meals.

I was going through the want ads. One of the things I frequently looked for was "Customer Service." I found this one place on Emerson just north of Colfax Avenue near Downtown Denver. The business was in what used to be a regular two-story house. This was the corporate office for JM Enterprises. JM Enterprises was the parent company for Unimart, US Direct and other entities that were wholesale buyer's club. People could join and get discounts on things like furniture, TVs, stereos and so forth. They recently started a subsidiary company called Unimart/Rent City, which was a rent-to-own business and right next door. It was located in an actual store front.

I came into the corporate office and applied. I was then brought into an office to interview. There was a woman behind a desk. She appeared to be in her mid-30s, had bright red hair and was rather attractive. She also smoked during the entire interview. Her name was Dind. She told me that the job would be working in the showroom, helping customers decide what items they wanted to rent to own, do credit checks, complete contracts, help on deliveries and every once in awhile, make calls to collect on delinquent accounts. It didn't sound too bad. I thought I would be able to do all that and that's what I told her. The manager of Rent City came in and talked to me. His name was Brud. He was from Texas and talked like it. He gave me a little more of the rundown on the collections aspect of the job. Dind went ahead and hired me and told me to show up for work on Monday morning at 9am. They were going to pay me $5.50 an hour. It wasn't as much as the nightclub, but it was much better than minimum wage.

Around 7am Monday morning, the phone rang. It was Dind. She asked me to go down to the DMV to get a copy of my driving record. That meant I had to get ready to go right then and there, instead of waiting another hour and a half. That kind of irritated me. I went to the DMV and miraculously got out of there in 30 minutes, so I was able to make it to work on time. One of the things I noticed about my driving record was that something I had gotten a ticket for in December of 1988 had a "UR" next to it. I looked at the glossary and "UR" stood for "Unpaid Referee." I had gotten a ticket for speeding in the town where my Uncle Ord lived in Douglas County. I had sent in a money order for $50 for the ticket. I figured they had received it. According to my record, they didn't. I thought for certain they wouldn't let me work there with that black mark on my record. I had no way of proving otherwise because I had thrown away my receipt for the money order.

I went into the corporate office and handed the DMV record to Dind. She glanced at it and had me fill out paperwork so I could begin working there. After I finished, she walked me next door to the store. I didn't realize it at the time, but I was about to begin THE WORST JOB I EVER HAD IN MY LIFE!

The first thing the manager did was hand me a computer print out of names and phone numbers. He told me I needed to call everyone and get them to come in and make payments on their accounts. There were TWO-HUNDRED names on this list. I got absolutely no training on this. I was just supposed to sit at my desk (which was located in an office in the back of the store) and cold-call everyone. I did get some guidance from Hild, the other person working in collections, but he had his own list of 200 names to call. Most of the time, I couldn't catch the people at home, so I would have to call everyone again. I spent no time training on the floor, so I had no idea how they were running the business.

I was aware that the store closed at 6pm and I could hardly wait to go home. But at 5:55pm, the manager said, "Oh, you're not going home yet! Monday and Tuesday nights are the nights we go out and try to catch the more delinquent accounts at home!" WHAT? No one said anything about this all day. Honestly, I should have just walked right then and there, but I knew that I would be getting overtime for this, so I went out with one of the drivers. The driver I accompanied actually used to be one of the collectors, but he transferred into doing the deliveries. He was willing to do the driving on Monday and Tuesday nights. He told me anecdotes about his experience and those of other collectors. He told me not to stand directly in front of the door when knocking because he knew someone who got shot right through the door.

We weren't really able to find anyone at home. (I was actually relieved about that.) I got home after 9pm and went straight to bed. When I got up the next morning, I went to work and did the whole thing all over again.

So, this was the deal with rent-to-own. If you see something you want in the store, you can rent it on a weekly, bi-weekly or monthly contract. It's a way for people with low incomes to be able to afford furniture, appliances and electronics in an effort to improve their credit rating. If you keep up the payments until the end of the contract, you own the merchandise. If something happens and you're not able to make the payments, you agree to return the merchandise back to the store. The one setback is that you pay an astronomical interest rate.

What set Rent City apart from places like Rent-A-Center was that we would allow people on welfare to rent from us. The store was actually located near the heart of Denver's Welfare City, which had a bunch of really cruddy, run-down apartments. And this was the problem: People who barely had enough money to feed and clothe their families were coming to us because they couldn't buy a TV from a thrift store or pawn shop and they couldn't get credit from anyone else. We were literally a last resort.

More than the unexpected long hours, the jerk supervisors and the fact that we were ripping off people who couldn't afford it, what made this THE WORST JOB EVER was that it caused me to temporarily lose faith in mankind. Almost every single person with a delinquent account would LIE to me every time I made contact with them. They'd promise me they'd bring in the money that afternoon. They wouldn't show up. They'd tell me they left a money order under the door. We didn't get anything. Well, someone must have stolen it. And then there were people who would move and leave no forwarding address, but had no problem taking all our stuff with them without ever contacting us again.

Understand that we made it easy for everyone who had delinquent accounts: If they weren't able to make the payments, they were welcome to call us to come pick up the merchandise or bring it in themselves and they wouldn't have to pay us a dime more. We just wanted the merchandise back so we could rent it to someone else.

I was working at Rent City when the Loma Prieta earthquake struck the Bay Area in 1989. After that happened, I said, "I'll bet you anything someone is going to call us up and use that as an excuse for not paying on time." Sure enough, I got a call from one of our frequent delinquents. He said he wife went to San Francisco because her mother lives there and she took all the money with her. (Uh, you had enough money for an emergency plane ticket, but you can't ever pay on time? RIGHT!)

After about a month of working there, I decided I couldn't handle it any more. I called up Dind before work one morning and told her that I wanted to quit. It seemed like my supervisors were always yelling at me for being too tender-hearted and allowing delinquents to slide a little. She told me she hadn't heard anything negative about me from my supervisors. I said that the job wasn't as she originally described it and all I was doing was calling on the delinquent accounts. She told me to come in to work and she would try to straighten things out.

I went in and did my calls. Then, I was asked to go out to someone's apartment to do a collection. I'll go into more detail about this tomorrow, but I actually repossessed a dresser. For me, that was a major accomplishment and made me feel like maybe I had what it took to do this job.

After I got back to the store, Dind asked me to come into her office. She told me she talked to my supervisors and they were surprised that I tried to quit. They said that I always showed up on time and did what I was told. She wanted me to continue working there, so she agreed to have the supervisors lighten my load on the collections and I would be doing more work on the deliveries. I felt like that would make things more tolerable. And it did. However, I got into a big fight with Brud after my immediate supervisor had told me I could take off early that afternoon. I said I had already been told that I could leave and I was going to do just that. The next day, Brud told me I needed to start looking for another job. Two weeks later, I was fired.

The one good thing that came out of the job was that I was making money faster than I could spend it. In the three months I had worked there, I had saved up enough money to buy an engagement ring for Bez. I never did buy that ring, but this was the only time in my life I ever had enough money to carry me through for a few months after losing a job. In fact, my Dad had come to visit me a couple of months later. He was in a bind because he left his wallet behind and he asked me to loan him a hundred dollars. I was able to do that without hesitation. It's the only time I've ever been able to help my Dad out with cash.

I moved out of Denver in 1991. I came back the next year during my vacation. I drove by the store, but it was no longer Rent City. I wasn't surprised. However, Unimart was still operating, but that entire operation went defunct by 2006.

And I have a lot more to share about all the stuff that happened working as a collector. I may have been done with Rent City almost 27 years ago, but I'm not done on this blog.

Job #12: F. Scott's at the Doubletree Inn Era (1989)

So after working at Phone Survey, Inc for about a year, I was kind of getting fed up with people getting on my case for calling and disturbing them at home. It seemed like it was just getting worse and worse every day. And it also looked like we were getting fewer and fewer projects, so that meant I was making less and less money. On top of this, we had been told we were supposed to be getting health insurance, but the woman who was supposed to be providing it for us wouldn’t tell us when that was supposed to kick in. (And this was after we had filled out the insurance forms and turned them in.)

I never told my girlfriend Bez that I wanted to get another job, but she had a friend who worked as a bartender at a hotel. They had a nightclub and they were looking for a new DJ. She knew I used to be a radio DJ and recommended me for the job. It wasn't radio, but I would be able to get back to playing music again, even if it was going to be just a single room of people.

I went over to the hotel to meet the club manager, whose name was Tird. It was the Doubletree Inn in Aurora. The name of the nightclub was F. Scott's. (The hotel had a restaurant next door called "Fitzgerald's.") It was a rather upscale nightclub. When I first got there, I found Tird at the DJ booth spinning records. He appeared to be maybe five years older than me. When I went up to him, he put on a cassette tape that began with the song "(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman" by Aretha Franklin. We went over to a booth and talked. I told him about my experience as a radio DJ and Music Director with KZZO-FM in Clovis, NM. I said that even though I didn't work in radio at the time, I still kept up with the latest happenings in the music world and had a good ear for what people like to hear.

He had me get up and DJ for about a half hour. There were just a few people in the club, and no one was there to dance. I looked through their library. They had a good selection of music, but there was nothing current. The only most recent song they had was "She Drives Me Crazy" by the Fine Young Cannibals. I picked out a few songs and played them. Then he asked me to do a mix from Billy Ocean's "Carribean Queen" into Michael Jackson's "Billie Jean." I didn't realize it, but the two songs actually sequed quite nicely. After that, this customer came up, gave me two dollars and asked me to play a certain song. Even though the club didn't have that big a library, they did have it organized and I was able to quickly find the song. After I played it, Tird put on another tape and we continued talking.

The main marketing for the club was aimed at the guests. If people from out of town were looking for a little night life, they were encouraged to come down to the club and check it out. That way, they wouldn't adventure outside the hotel and spend their drink money elsewhere. Tird told me he had a vision for the club that it could be turned into a hotspot for young people to come to. (I don't know how he was expecting to do that with the music library they had, but I didn't tell him that.) He said he would hire me and pay me $8 an hour. I was rather thrilled to hear that. I tried to give him the $2 the customer gave me, but Tird said I could keep that. SCORE!

I came in and trained. One of the first things Tird told me was that I was going to be a contract employee, so they were just going to pay me not as an employee of the Doubletree Inn, but as a contractor. I didn't really know what that meant. I was hired to replace someone who recently quit. The guy who trained me told me he was about to move out of town, so he would also be quitting soon. He told me that one of the problems with being a DJ at F. Scott's was that the DJ booth appeared to be an afterthought. Other clubs put the booth way in the back. Here, they put it next to the dance floor in the middle of one of the seating sections. This meant that customers could come up to us from all sides to request songs. And there was a problem with people coming up, reaching over and seeing what records we had. He was right. This was an issue.

Tird had me show up an hour before we opened at 4pm to help set up the club. This involved blowing up the balloons for Happy Hour. He wanted balloons all over the club every single day. I told him I wasn't really good with tying balloons and that I was one of those people who couldn't stand the squeaking. He said he didn't care and that it was part of my job. So I figured out how to tie the balloons.

Because I was "technically" an employee of the hotel, I was able to take advantage of the free meals they had in the employee cafeteria. They would put out a few items on the steam tables. It was pretty good, but I started noticing that most of the food tasted like rubber. I couldn't figure out why they would serve us food that tasted like that. Then I realized that what I was tasting was the latex residue on my hands from tying the balloons! I started thoroughly washing my hands after doing the balloons, but no matter how much soap I used or how hard I scrubbed, I couldn't get rid of all the residue. I had to resort to eating everything, including hot dogs and sandwiches, with a knife and fork. It was always nice when we ran out of helium or balloons.

I also had an issue surrounding the song "Tender Love" by the Force MDs. I didn't have a problem with the song. It was a magic song. It never failed to get romantic couples out on the floor. After that, you could build up the tempo and have a lot of people enjoying the music that followed and stay on the floor. When I first started working at the club, I played it at least once a night. However, when the guy who trained me left, I couldn't find that record. HE TOOK IT!

Weeknights were split up into two sections. We had Happy Hour from 4pm to 7pm. During this time, I would play an AOR and Pop-style format. After 7pm, we turned into a dance club. We were typically busiest on Friday and Saturday nights. One a month, there was an older adults singles group that would have a get-together on a Saturday night. Those nights were REALLY packed and everybody seemed to be having a good time. It was great when there were a lot of people out on the floor. And it stunk when no one was dancing.

My first couple of weeks, I thought I was doing a good job. But one day, Tird came up and talked to me and started telling me how to DJ. He was giving me certain "rules" I needed to play the records. This drove me out of my mind. It was similar to my experience with Crad, in which I thought I knew what I was doing, but he had different ideas and having to follow his arbitrary directions threw my head in a tizzy and I was always second-guessing myself. After that, I just never felt like I was doing things right.

A problem we encountered was that we had no way of getting new music in without purchasing it. After about a month of playing the same stuff over and over, I went out and bought some new records. I was expecting to get reimbursed for those. (A funny thing was that I tried to buy Milli Vanilli's album, which was really hot at the time. It would have saved me from buying a lot of separate songs. However, the vinyl version was one of the first casualties of the mainstream drive to CD. I couldn't find a vinyl copy of the album anywhere!)

Then Tird tried to spice things up by bringing in a friend he had worked with before at a theme restaurant. This guy had a girlfriend and she had a friend. They would come out and do dance routines on the floor. They created some excitement, but no one was coming to our club just to see them.

One night, this guy came up and introduced himself to me. He turned out to be the guy I replaced. He told me he was coming back to work at the club. I thought it was a good thing because I had been the only DJ for the past couple of months and having to work six nights a week was really wearing me down. My schedule changed somewhat. I still worked Saturday nights, but he worked Friday nights and a couple of other days. We had a couple of days in which I would work the Happy Hour and he would work the night.

This went on for about a week. One night, as I was leaving after working Happy Hour, Tird was waiting in the booth closest to the door where I usually left. He said, "Before you go, sit down. I need to talk to you." I said, "Uh-oh." He went into this spiel about how the club wasn't happening as he had anticipated and he had to let me go. (Of course, this didn't make sense. He should have laid off the guy I replaced. In fact, he shouldn't have even hired him back.) He said he was also going to have to let the dancers go, blah, blah, blah.

I don't know why I expected a nightclub to be any different than a radio station. He told me to show back up the next day to collect my final paycheck. When I arrived and was about to enter the club, I heard a song on the PA system that we didn't have in the library. It was Yello's "Oh, Yeah." I went into the club. There was somebody in the DJ booth. HE WAS AUDITIONING FOR TIRD! I just went in and got my check from Tird. As I was leaving, the DJ sequed into Depeche Mode's "Strangelove." I thought, "Yeah, that's going to make this place a real hip joint when your DJ's playing stuff that's THREE YEARS OLD!"

While I worked there, I had a really big crush on this one female bartender. Her name was Gaz. She was tall and thin and had short blonde hair. She had a great smile and I mostly admired her from afar. We did get to talk a few times, but since I was involved with Bez, I couldn't really pursue anything.

One of the bad things was that I had given Tird the receipts for the records, expecting to be reimbursed. He got a note from the accounting office that said they needed to know which records I bought before they would give me my money back. I didn't bother to do that after I got laid off because I figured they wouldn't give the money to someone who no longer worked there.

A few months later, I got a message from Tird on my answering machine. He said he wanted me to call him. I thought maybe he wanted me to work there again. I decided to call him just to tell him no. When I called, he just asked for my Social Security number. Not long after that, I got a 1099-MISC in the mail. It wasn't a W-2, so I didn't know what to do with it. I just did my 1040-EZ with the W-2s I did receive and didn't even include the F. Scott's money as income.

About 18 months after I was let go, I decided to visit the club to see if anything had changed. I went on a Saturday night. As it happened, it was the night that singles group got together, so there were a lot of people in the club. I sat down at a booth, ordered a soda and watched things for a few minutes. I didn't recognize anyone from when I used to work there. Then, I saw someone who looked like Gaz at the bar. Her hair was longer and curly. I went right up to the bar to get a closer look. When I used to work at F. Scott's, all the bartenders had nametags. I guess they didn't have that requirement anymore because she wasn't wearing one. Since it was really loud, I yelled at her: "Gaz!" She looked up. "Hi, I'm Fayd! I used to work here! Do you remember me?" She remembered. She asked what I was up to. I told her I was the Assistant Manager at the Mayan Theatre. She said she knew my boss, the House Manager. They were working together on some charity project. She told me what she had been up to, but I don't remember what she said.

Even though I was single at the time, I still didn't have the guts to ask her out. I was always certain she had a boyfriend. After I was finished talking to her, the DJ was playing "Carribean Queen." The next song was, you guessed it, "Billie Jean." Yep, some things never change.

I actually felt like going up to the DJ booth and taking the records I bought, but never got reimbursed for. But I really didn't want to cause a scene.

As I was leaving the club, I walked past Fitzgerald's. Tird was at the host podium. My hair was much longer and I was dressed rather raggedly, so I hoped he wouldn't notice me, but he did. He called out, "Hey!" We talked a little bit. I told him where I was working now, but I can't imagine he really cared what happened to me. I left and never set foot at the Doubletree again.

That 1099-MISC caused problems for me in 1993. I got a notice from the IRS that I owed $600. I wasn't surprised and didn't fight it. I agreed to pay $200 a month for three months. However, after losing the job I had at the time, I had to switch the payments to $50 a month. Because I owed on my taxes the next year, it took me two years to pay off the IRS.

I found out later that I could have significantly reduced the money I owed the IRS by doing an amended return with a Schedule C and claiming certain expenses, like the cost of those records and the driving I did running errands. But that probably would have only reduced the amount by about $50. I would have had to pay someone to do that return and it would have cost more than $50.

They still have the nightclub at the DoubleTree Inn, but it's now called "Fitzgerald's Pub." I can't really tell from the pictures, but they started a microbrewery there and appear to have gotten rid of the dance floor and the DJ booth.

Gaz is now an independent marketing consultant in the Denver Metropolitan area AND Princeton, NJ. (You've got to be REALLY good at it to cover TWO large markets.) She used to work for Johnson and Johnson. Her profile photo still shows that great smile that I remember.

I don't remember Tird's last name, so I have no idea what happened to him. I can only imagine he wound up managing a Tim Horton's. Otherwise, I don't really care what happened to him.

I never worked in another nightclub again.

Friday Video on Monday

I wanted to post this on Friday, but I had a problem uploading the video



Just don't let your kids get too close to this.

One Wacky Day: 06/23/89

On Friday, 06/23/89, I got a phone call from my best friend Rid. He said he had just gotten fired from his job in Downtown Denver and didn't have a way to get back home. (I guess his mom drove him to work.)

He had been working for the phone company doing phone surveys (like I did at Phone Survey, Inc.) Interestingly enough, I had applied for that same position with the phone company and was offered a job, but since I had found work with The Doctors Group by the time they called me, I declined the position. When I lost that job a week later, they wouldn't hire me.

Rid had a problem holding onto jobs. Just a few months earlier, he had started working at a brand new Burger King that had just opened up. I have no idea what happened there, but at the phone company, he said that his boss had asked him what the three pat responses were and he wasn't able to answer. Apparently, he had been given some sort of homework assignment and was supposed to be able to come up with the response. However, he said that the night before, he had been working as a volunteer EMT and got in a situation in which he witnessed a little girl dying in front of him. He said this was all he could think about was the look on that girl's face and he didn't have time to bother with the assignment. (I don't know if the EMT story is true, but if reciting the three pat responses takes less than ten seconds, he could have easily learned that in the five minutes before he started work.)

He was still permitted to hang around the workplace after he had been dismissed. He told every one of his former co-workers who would listen the same story. After awhile, we left. Rid just wanted to spend the day hanging out. He asked if he could apply for a job where I worked. I told him we were always hiring. He met the office manager and filled out an application, but he never got hired.

This happened to be the day that Tim Burton's "Batman" movie came out, so we decided to go see that after he had finished the application. We had missed the first show of the day, so we ran down to the movie theatre and bought tickets for the next show. We went out and got something to eat, came back to my apartment and waited to leave for the movie. When we were about to leave the lobby of the apartment building, I noticed that the mail had come. I opened my box and got the shock of my life when I saw I had a letter from Chez.

I had last spoken to Chez in February when I called her on Valentine's Day. (I didn't send a card or anything.) The conversation was rather somber. She didn't sound real excited to have heard from me. Not once did she say "I love you," or any other expression of affection. She didn't tell me if anything was going on with her. I have a feeling there may have been other people in the room with her, but I didn't realize this at the time. I figured that she had perhaps met someone else in school and was dating. I felt like she was coming to accept that she was outgrowing the crush she had on me and that we probably wouldn't be together in the long run. When I got off the phone, I actually thought that would be the last time I would ever talk to her. I considered myself being let off the hook.

But when I got this letter, I found out I was so wrong. In case you can't read from the photo above, it says (parentheses surrounding names indicate alterations I made to the letter in the picture, stars indicate foul language that I did not edit out of the photo):

"Dear (Fayd), So how's life? Mine's real S****Y right now. I'm going crazy. I know this letter comes as a surprise. But I decided it was about time I wrote you. I can't take it anymore. Living in this house sucks. (Kiz) moved back and everything’s going to Hell. I just got grounded for a week (from everything!) They still treat me like I’m a (f****n’) kid. It’s pissing me off. And then you. I don’t hardly ever get to talk to you and you never come down here so I can see you. My parents are being a******s about everything. Like the other day they told me, “Why don’t you just move out. Go move to Denver with your so-called boyfriend.” I got mad…”

(It’s interesting to note that this was written by a 17-year-old girl. Notice how everything is properly spelled and punctuated. That was the quality of American education just 25 years ago.)

The remainder of the letter reveals that her parents were thinking about coming to Denver for a vacation during the last week of August, but they hadn’t decided if they were going to take the kids. She also mentions that if she got to go, they wouldn’t do a lot of running around all over town to try to find me. She indicates that her parents were starting to not like me very much because I wasn’t keeping in touch and they were trying to get her to go out with a friend of Perd, her step-brother.

I told Rid about how she hated Marz, how she had gotten into fights with her before she met me and that she once said something about killing her. (I guess I didn’t mention that in the previous posts.) While we drove to the movie theatre, Rid read the letter and attempted to analyze it. He said, “Well, she obviously wrote this while she was angry. She’s just acting like a typical teenager who’s frustrated at everything. But you know what you need to do? You need to watch the movie ‘Play Misty for Me,’ because this situation is a lot like that. After that, you need to watch ‘Casablanca.’ And then, you’ll be completely confused!”

But I really didn’t know what to do. I was more worried about the last week of August, when she might show up at my doorstep. It would have been real easy for her to find me because she had my address. Even if she didn’t have a street map of Denver, she would have been able to figure out where I lived because the maps on the backs of the Denver Metro Area phone books only had the location of a few streets. It was mostly the major ones, like Broadway and Colfax, but for whatever reason, Logan (which is only four blocks from Broadway) was on there. All she had to do was pick up a phone book. I just KNEW she was going to show up when Bez was visiting me in the apartment.

Rid and I went to the movie. We saw a long line for ticketholders, so we figured that was where we needed to be. When they let everyone in, it turned out to be the line for “Honey, I Shrunk the Kids.” Our show had already been let in. If it weren’t for me having to stop and read that letter, we would have gotten to the theatre earlier and had better seats. We had to sit down way in the front and all the way on the right side. That meant we had to filter the entire movie through our left eyeballs. We still had a good time at the movie. I don’t know why, but Rid didn’t realize until a few weeks later that we had seen “Batman” on the first day it came out. (Bez had already gotten to see the movie at a preview screening with her mother.)

I drove Rid back home. I have no idea what he told his mother later. All I knew was that if Phone Survey didn’t hire him, he was going to have to go looking for a new job really soon.

Chez never did show up knocking at my door. I don’t even think her parents came to Denver. I’m pretty certain that even if they didn’t bring the kids, they still would have sought me out to have a little chat with me. That wasn’t the last I heard from her. She wrote me a couple more times before the end of the year. I was aware that her 18th birthday was looming around the corner, but I didn’t even try to call her. I just didn’t know how or what to tell her. I knew that no matter what I did, it would break her heart, so I took the cowardly route and did nothing. I regret treating her that way and wished I’d had the decency to treat her like a human being instead of a hedge.

But the strangest coincidence came out of this. Rid had mentioned those two movies he recommended. In 1992, I was living in San Diego and working for a movie theatre there. I noticed in the TV Guide that the movie “Play Misty for Me” was going to be on HBO at 2am. I had never seen it before, but there was no way I was going to stay up that late to watch it, so I set the VCR to record it.

The next morning, I watched it and enjoyed it. I then had to get ready to go to work. I was actually going early because we had a press screening and I wanted to see that movie. I took my shower, and as I was fixing my hair in the mirror, I thought about what Rid had said three years earlier about watching “Play Misty for Me” and…

…I suddenly realized that the press screening I was going to was for the 50th Anniversary re-release of “Casablanca.” I stood there stunned for a few minutes. I couldn’t believe the circumstances that led up to this. I mean, for HBO to happen to be running that movie, for me to happen to notice it was going to be on, because I didn’t watch that much TV nor looked at the TV Guide, AND for my theatre to have scheduled “Casablanca” for the press to see all on that same day. I felt like it was destiny.

And it did kind of turn out to be destiny, but in ways I never expected. I’ll be getting to that MUCH later. As usual, my story with Chez has not ended.

But I do have a footnote. After watching the movies, I called and told Rid about what he had said three years earlier. He had no recollection of saying that.

Family road trips (with two completely different families)

Losing my job at KSYY-FM freed me to spend Christmas 1988 with my family. We had planned a trip to see my Aunt Cind and her family in Missouri. My girlfriend Bez had gone with her family to Lincoln, NE to take her grandmother back home. I didn't like the idea of spending Christmas apart from her and I wondered if we were going to drive right by each other when we were going through Nebraska. That didn't happen.

Nothing really eventful happened in Missouri, but this would turn out to be the last time all of my immediate family members would be together on a trip for several days at a time. We started back to Denver the day after Christmas. When we got home, I took Loyd with me to meet Bez, but as I mentioned before, he wasn't too impressed with her. However, he could tell that I liked her very much.

Her parents decided they needed to go to Los Angeles to pick up the rest of Bez' stuff that was being stored at her grandparents' house. (They would be her mother's parents.) They invited me to go along, if I didn't have to work. I asked the office manager at my job if she was going to need me for the next week or so. She said she didn't, so I was free to go. (But I didn't like the idea of not getting paid, so it wasn't really free.)

We took two separate cars because Bez had THAT much stuff in LA. I only got to ride with Bez for the first part of the trip because her parents (who were driving the two vehicles) decided later that they both needed someone in the car with them to keep them awake while driving and take over driving once in awhile.

Another bad thing was that her parents wouldn't let us sleep together in the same bed at the motel. Her father said that if we paid for the room, we could share the bed. We stopped somewhere in Utah and spent the night. The room had a double bed and two single beds. Crisis averted.

The next morning, we drove through Las Vegas. This was the first time I had been there since I was 14 years old. But this time, I was over 21 and I could sit at the slot machines and the tables. We drove through Downtown and the Strip. We decided to go into Circus Circus. Bez and I played a couple of slot machines. I got a winning spin, but no money came out. I was expecting to hear the chink, chink sound of the coins going into the hopper. Somebody walking by heard me say something and explained that I had to push a button to receive my winnings. Well, that's not the way things were 20 years earlier.

Then we went and sat at a Blackjack table. I got a seat at a $1 minimum. That was good, because I only wanted to bet $1 at a time. I won some, I lost some and got about three Blackjacks dealt to me. Each time I got one, the dealer gave me a 50 cent piece (because you win $1.50 with a natural). I put the 50 cent pieces in my pocket. Then they raised the minimum on the table to $2. I left after that. I counted the money I walked away with. I broke even. Then I remembered the 50 cent pieces. I actually came out $1.50 ahead! I was GOOD at this Blackjack thing. Bez and I found her parents. They had been paging us, but neither one of us could hear the address system at the table. They were kind of mad because they were ready to leave. We still had another six hours before we got to LA.

It was Friday, 12/30/88, when we drove the rest of the way to LA. Along I-15, there was nothing but traffic coming in the opposite direction. Bez explained that was all the people from LA coming to Vegas for the weekend. For years in college, I would read the Calendar section of the Sunday LA Times and wonder why they had several pages of advertising related to Las Vegas. I suddenly understood why.

We got to her grandparents' house. They had enough bedrooms for everybody, so Bez and I got our own separate rooms. However, that didn't keep us from starting to do activities of a sexual nature when we were alone in her room.

We went over to Pasadena, where her sister and brother-in-law lived. We got to see some of the floats that would be in the Rose Bowl Parade. We also went to the Norton Simon Museum. The exhibits that astounded me the most at the museum were the works by Van Gogh. I'd only ever seen the paintings in books, but seeing them up close was an entirely different experience, as his brush strokes have a dimensional quality that cannot be viewed in a photograph. More than anything, you truly feel the artist's presence in those painting.

I got into a little trouble at the museum. I was showing Bez something and I touched the glass covering a painting. (It wasn't a Van Gogh, and I was only touching the section where the label was.) Within 10 seconds, a curator came up to me and calmly requested that I refrain from touching the paintings. I apologized and complied. I'm glad I didn't get thrown out. Later, Bez and I went into a phone booth in the museum and made out for about ten minutes. We didn't get caught.

Sunday was New Years Day 1989. Almost all of Bez' cousins (10 of them) came over, so I really got the family onslaught. Everybody seemed to really like me. But an unusual thing happened during the gathering. The phone rang. Bez' father came in and told her that someone was on the phone for her. She asked who it was. Her father replied, "A friend." She told me, "Oh, it's probably my old boyfriend" and went to talk on the phone. One of her male cousins made a comment about her getting back with the old boyfriend. Another cousin accused him of trying to stir up trouble. Someone else said it wouldn't be a family gathering without him doing just that. I laughed. It kind of made me feel like part of the family.

When Bez returned from talking on the phone, she told me that her old boyfriend asked to see her and wanted to meet me. After my experience with Marz and her former boyfriend Nid, I knew I didn't want to put up with any dirty glances during what's supposed to be a "friendly get-together." I told her she could go see him if she wanted, but I didn't want to meet him. She wound up not seeing him. (HA! I win!)

There was a little bit of drama one evening. I had been out running an errand with her father. When we came back, Bez was in her room. Apparently, her grandmother said something that upset her, possibly about her inability to hold a job or a boyfriend. (I didn't really get the full story from Bez.) I knocked on the door and asked if I could come in. She agreed. She was sitting on the bed. She had been crying. I did what I could to be the supportive boyfriend, but I wasn't really certain that anything bad had happened. I just let her vent for a bit and that was it.

While I was at her grandparents', I created a kind of minor disaster by breaking the clip on their showerhead. I'd never taken a shower using one of those hose showerheads and I broke it because I didn't know how to remove it from the clip. (You're supposed to pull it up, not out.) I was embarrassed and told them that it just broke when I accidentally backed into the showerhead. I think her grandparents got upset about it because they don't sell those clips as spare parts. They were probably going to have to buy a whole new showerhead.

We came back a different route, through Arizona and New Mexico. We got caught in a bad snowstorm and had to spend the night in Williams, AZ. The motel room where we stayed only had two beds: a medium-sized bed and a king-sized bed. I had to share the king-size with Bez' father. I didn't remember signing up for this.

We were able to make it back to Denver the next day. I was looking forward to getting home and enjoying a little alone time, but there was a lot of snow on the ground and Bez' parents didn't think it was safe for me to drive home that night, so I had to sleep on their couch. I did get to go home the next day.

But for all of this, I thought it was moving toward something, like me becoming a part of their family. As I explained earlier in my diatribe on Bez, that just didn't happen, and I never saw any of those family members again.

And I never had to pay the consequences of breaking that showerhead.

First Snowfall in Denver

I'd heard the legends of the snow in Denver before I moved up there. Blizzard conditions, people being stuck in their homes for weeks, nobody going to work. I'd seen bad snow in New Mexico, but it was very infrequent. Denver was going to be a whole new level of winter.

We didn't get snow in the fall of 1988 until November. I'd heard on the local radio stations that this was the longest it had gone without snowing. One morning in November, the skies were overcast, but the temperature was rather mild. But when I listened on the radio, they were predicting snow. I thought, "Really? It doesn't feel like it's going to snow." However, the person on the radio said something like, "If you're new to Denver, I know what you're thinking! But those of us who have been here awhile know it's going to happen today."

Sure enough, it snowed. But it wasn't too bad. The streets were still somewhat warm, so most of it melted away. We had a few more incidents of snow the next couple of weeks. Nothing really major.

Then in December, we got the REALLY BIG snowstorm people had been bracing for. I happened to be Downtown at the City and County Building working as an extra on a TV-movie when it started coming down. Our waiting area was in the main lobby and all of us extras just stood by the front doors and watched the snow come down.

After shooting had completed, I walked to the parking lot where my car was located and started driving home. It usually took about ten minutes to drive home from Downtown. However, I ran into something I've never experienced before: gridlock. This is where cars are completely stopped in the intersection when you have the green light and you cannot move forward. When I did move, my wheels often spun because they couldn't get any traction. Listening to Y108, it sounded like someone was doing a complete play-by-play of my drive home. And every once in awhile, the station would play a recording of wheels spinning out in the snow. EVERY SINGLE TIME THEY DID THAT, I thought it was MY car making that noise. I actually thought it was a pretty funny practical joke.

At one point, I was going up a hill to get onto Broadway. My car kept sliding backwards. I was tempted to just park it, walk home and come back for it the next morning. But I was able to get up the hill and be on my way. Along the way, my car wouldn't move forward. I had to get out of my car a couple of times and motion for the person behind me to give me a push. My car also slipped a couple of times and hit some parked cars. I didn't stick around or leave a note. I figured this was the one day the cops couldn't really do anything.

It would usually take me 10 minutes to get home from Downtown. With this snow, it took me TWO HOURS. I was supposed to work that night and my supervisors got kind of mad at me for not showing up without calling. I had no way of knowing it would take me that long to get home and I was so traumatized that I certainly didn't feel like getting on the phone and doing surveys the rest of the night. I went home and went straight to bed.

I still had one more day to work as an extra. I decided not to drive and walked instead. The whole week, the production company would reimburse us each a dollar for parking in the lot. Even though I didn't use the lot that day, I told them I did and took the dollar. I really needed that dollar.

After that, I swore I would never drive in heavy snow ever again. And I never did. I learned how to take the local bus system and made use of it quite frequently during the next few years. I was always able to get where I needed to go when I needed to get there.

The first snowfall in the fall of 1989 came relatively early. One night in September, I walked out to my car after work and found six inches of snow on my car. However, there was no snow on the ground. This was a bewildering sight.

I found out that the three winters I lived through in Denver were relatively mild. There were no blizzards or major snow drifts during that time, but it seemed like the snow wasn't finished with me when I was moving to San Diego. I left Denver on 10/29/91. I had loaded up the U-Haul and was towing a car back to Artesia. It started to snow as I drove out of town. I kept the radio tuned to KOA and found out that it was a monster snowfall, causing all sorts of problems. On top of this, the storm was heading south. It was actually chasing after me and it followed me all the way to New Mexico. I was able to keep ahead of it, which was good, because there was no way I was going to be able to drive a U-Haul while towing a car in the snow, especially going through Raton pass. We rarely got snowfall in November in New Mexico and it was snowing in October for the first time that I could remember.

I wouldn't mind if I never saw snow again.

The best things I ever ate at McDonald's

(One of the things I never fully explained about the concept of this blog is how the articles sometimes represent things I would have written about if the internet had been around during the years I was growing up, going to college and my early 20s. This is one of those mundane subjects I likely would have tackled.)

When I was a child, I never got to eat much at McDonald's. The closest one was 40 miles away in Roswell. After being subjected to constant TV commercials during my childhood, my family ate there maybe once every two months. My favorite was the Quarter-Pounder, and this was before they added cheese to it. I enjoyed the sesame seed bun, but I always had to make sure the staff made my hamburger PLAIN AND DRY!

When I was a junior in high school, the man who owned the McDonald's franchise in Roswell decided he'd try to start up his own fast-food chain and opened a restaurant in Artesia called "Jingle-Bob's." He basically made the same food as McDonald's, but gave all the menu items different names with a western theme. I probably ate there once a week during my last two years of high school. My brother Loyd actually worked there for a while before he got fired for grazing.

When I went to college, I ate more frequently at McDonald's because there was one within walking distance of the campus at Eastern New Mexico University. I probably ate there about once every weekend when I had money. I actually considered getting a job there, but all the employees had to wear these really tacky-looking neon green uniforms. I didn't want to do that. A couple of years later, the uniforms were changed to a dark green. I was a little more tempted to apply, but by this time, I was already working at KZZO-FM.

When I moved to Clovis, the closest McDonald's was about 1 1/2 miles from my apartment. I rarely had money, so I didn't eat there very often. I would make exceptions when they had the Monopoly game going. But the main problem with Clovis was that the corporate office never sent enough game pieces. Monopoly was so popular in Clovis that one week after the game began, they ran out of game pieces. The promotion was supposed to last for a whole month and we only got a week to win anything. At least that kept me from spending more money there.

So all of this is leading to my experience with McDonald's in Denver. Pretty soon after I got there in 1988, McDonald's did a limited promotion with its nine-piece Chicken McNuggets. They had a Chinese theme and came with these three new dipping sauces, chopsticks and a fortune cookie. It turned out they were doing this to compete with Burger King's Chicken Tenders, which advertised all-white meat. I never tried this version of the McNuggets, mainly because I rarely got anything larger than a six-piece order.

A few months later, I was really hungry and went to a McDonald's and ordered a nine-piece McNuggets. I did not know this beforehand, but they had a Mexican theme at the time with three new dipping sauces: Mesquite Barbeque, Salsa and Zesty Green Chili sauce. The Mesquite Barbeque was a little less sweet than their regular Barbeque sauce and the Red Chili Salsa was okay. But the Green Chili sauce was AMAZING! The bad thing was that the new sauces were half the size of the regular packets, so there was never enough of the Green Chili for all nine McNuggets. I actually hoarded some Green Chili packets for awhile after the promotion ended. They never had the Green Chili again, even when introducing new sauces.

About a year later, McDonald's added a couple of items to its breakfast menu. They were the Biscuit with Gravy and the Sausage Burrito. They were both pretty good on their own. However, if I dipped the burrito into the gravy, it was an incredible mix of flavors that tasted so good together! It reminded me of breakfast at my Grandma Bend's in which we got eggs with biscuits and gravy and we'd put the gravy on the eggs.

This was the routine: I would order the Biscuit and Gravy and the Sausage Burrito. I would eat the biscuit first, then dip the burrito into the gravy for each bite. The only bad thing was that there was inconsistency in the biscuit to gravy ratio. Most of the time, the staff would smother the gravy and there was always plenty left over for the burrito. However, sometimes, they would just barely cover the top of the biscuit with the gravy. I would always get mad when I came up short on the gravy.

On my last vacation to New Mexico before I left Denver, I went to a McDonald's there. They had the Sausage Burrito, but they didn't have the Biscuit and Gravy. I was a little disappointed, but glad I could still get a burrito. However, when I ate it, I found that there were ONIONS in it. They didn't put onions in the burritos in Denver. I wondered whose idea it was to have a different recipe in New Mexico.

Not long before I left Denver, McDonald's stopped serving the Biscuit and Gravy. It was a real letdown. However, I was glad to see that they kept the Sausage Burrito on their breakfast menu and they didn't put onions in them. I still enjoy eating them to this day, even without the gravy.

You'll see on-line that some people miss the McRib when it's not being served and some people miss the McPizza (which I've never tried), but I'm probably the only person who misses the Green Chili Salsa and the Biscuit and Gravy. It's sad to know that I'll never have those again.

The Day I Stopped Being a Republican

As I mentioned before, I registered as a Republican after I had turned 18 in 1982. I was rather naive at the time and I thought it was a good thing to be a Republican. After my college education, I decided that being a Republican wasn't really the best thing, but I also didn't care much for Democrats. I felt like I couldn't belong to either party.

So, when I decided to change my registration so I could vote in the 1988 Presidential election in Denver, I selected "No Party Affiliation." I did seriously contemplate registering as a Libertarian. On the surface, I liked some of their ideas about government and how it relates to citizens. However, when I got a look at their complete platform, I thought, "Okay, these people are just plain crazy!"

Prior to my registration in Denver, I discussed what party I should choose with my friend Rid. I laughingly said I should register as Communist to see what would happen. He said he did that and afterward, he would see a black car driving past his house on occasion. (I don't think he really did that.).

Choosing to go the "No Party" route turned out to be one of the best decisions of my life. Why? Because it kept me from getting into a lot of combative conversations when meeting new people. You're probably familiar with some people who meet you for the first time and ask "What's your sign?" Well, there are those who like to ask what your party affiliation is. Sometimes, they can be scarier than the astrology people. However, not belonging to a party does make you seem apathetic and someone who is likely not to vote. I can guarantee that is not the case with me. With the exception of the 1984 Presidential Primary, I have voted in every election since my registration became valid in 1982.

A few years later after moving to San Diego, I registered as a member of the Peace and Freedom Party (which was practically the Communist Party). I did that so that a friend of mine could get her name on the ballot in her run for US Representative from my Congressional District. She succeeded in doing that, but did not win the election, which was expected. She then asked me to participate in a meeting with a few local P&F members at her house. I came, and the main topic of discussion was trying to get more people to register with the party. (P&F was in danger of losing its official political party status in California in 1997 because it wasn't getting enough votes to support it. The reason for this happening was that higher ups in the organization kept running for office every time and didn't allow anyone else to run in 1996. When other party members tried to run in the primary, it split the party. People who didn't vote for the nominees in the primary didn't vote for them in the general election either.) One of the things that got suggested at the meeting was that everyone seemed to know a lot of Democrats who seemed to show support for P&F and they thought they could get them to register with us. At the meeting, I said we shouldn't bother with people who are already registered as Democrats because they weren't going to switch no matter how persuasive we were. I suggested that we go after those who have no party affiliation because that's how I got involved. My suggestion fell on completely deaf ears as everyone was still discussing getting their Democrat friends to join us. I never went back to another P&F meeting after that.

Sure enough, the Peace and Freedom Party faded away in California the next year (although it did make a return a few years later). Because I wanted to have some voice in primary elections, I registered with the Natural Law Party. That one also soon dissolved after I joined. (I know, it's too bad that didn't happen to the Republican Party when I was a member.) Since then, I have not registered as a member of any party.

That was all before 2000. Since then, it seems like the Republicans and Democrats have become so much more diametrically opposed to each other. And it became worse with the onslaught of social media. Now, it seems like there are thousands of pages that are dedicated to undermining the opposing parties (and a few that want them done away with altogether). Reading all the memes, one would get the idea that Republicans are all racist, sexist elitists who don't care about the poor or the environment and that while Democrats do not appear to be racist, sexist, greedy or deniers of climate change, they sure don't have a problem discriminating against people they believe to be that way.

And that's not even the worst part about the memes. Many of them contain half-truths and flat out lies just to make the other party look bad. (In some cases, meme creators have realized that making blanket statements about specific groups of people is not the way to go, so they use the terms "liberal" and "conservative" in place of "Democrat" and "Republican." It doesn't really make a difference.) I have one friend on Facebook who will share anything (and I mean ANYTHING) that denigrates the Republicans and conservatives. But as usual, the things he posts don't always contain the truth. I and his other friends will quickly point out the flaws in what he shares, but he never takes anything down. It was really funny when he posted something about how liberals are all independent thinkers, but he'll just blindly post everything without even considering what is being expressed.

What's even funnier is when I post responses on those pages, depending on which side I'm taking, I get accused of being a Republican or a Democrat. I've even gotten accused of lying when I try to explain that I have no party affiliation. (This actually happened on a video I posted in the Comments section.)

And I have to go on record to say that while I support efforts to vote out the entirety of Congress and have it filled with individuals with no party affiliation, I have to admit that the Legislative branch of the US government needs the two-party system. If you think Congress isn't getting anything done now, just imagine what would happen if someone had to try to go see 434 other individuals to see if he or she could get support for proposed legislation. When you're a member of a party, you can pretty much count on the majority of the people on your side of the aisle to get behind your efforts. That would result in a new two-party system emerging and I'm afraid it will be worse than what we have now.

One thing is for certain: I'm glad I'm not going to be voting in the Republican primary in 2016.

I'm back!

It was a good vacation, but I'm glad to return to blogging. What better way to start off than to gripe about something?



I'll have regular articles starting Monday.