A Little Levity: Dad’s Downsizing

30 November 2025

I awoke this morning, refreshed and recharged after a day of exhausting work, mentally, emotionally and physically.

Ah!  The wonders of a long winter’s nap, even when I’m not actually in pittoresque New England, and it’s not officially Winter!

Officially Anything has become a joke.  It’s been a joke for a long time, but no one was allowed to laugh:  The Prudes-In-Charge banned laughter.

It’s time for a little levity, in the midst of our woes.  And the woes are real.  They are so real that we must needs look away from the sorrows crafted, created and committed by the evil-doers.  We must trust that all will come right.

Because it will.

Every loss is a loss, but, in time, our Maker moves us toward the serenity of knowing there’s a beginning in every ending.  And an ending in very beginning.

We’ve got reams of spoiled-brat idiots who, for the most nefarious of reasons, were put in charge of Making the Decision — that ought to have been made by others.

I’m speaking principally of the U.S. Government, of any guv’mint; but the case can also be made that in the private sector, the Consultant Class corroded any and all profit margin, heck, profit!

It used to be that an Expert was a person who knew what He, or She, was doing.  The space allotted to such a technically savvy person — like myself — used to be about the size of a broom closet.  That’s roughly the space in which my Hydrologic Engineer-Husband worked as a loan-out, during 2007, from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation to the State of California agency, Department of Water Resources (DWR).

He was receiving the type of kid-glove treatment that I’d received more than twenty years earlier, before I met him, when I toiled away in Section A of the Sacramento District, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.  I was clerk-typist/photo clerk/technical-writer/supply-girl/holiday & special events & Friday-lunch/luncheon organizer.

I was duly granted a three-foot space between the File Cabinets and the Flat Files.  It was just exactly big enough in which to fit a desk and a typewriter stand.  I actually liked it there.  I decorated the lone solid wall, to my left, with travel posters.  The posters were “free-bees” handed out to anyone opening up an account at the nearby Crocker Bank.

Even then, my distrust of banks, and bankers, was a force-multiplier for this 20-something very adult-adult, who was very much on her own.  Somehow, and I cannot recall how I sweet-talk finagled it, but I managed to get 3 posters without ever opening up that Savings Account we were all being lectured to start.

“With what?”  I’d ask.

I was living from paycheck to paycheck, and the bi-weekly paycheck didn’t always arrive on time from its data-processing headquarters in Omaha, Nebraska.  Yes, there’s the right way, the wrong way, and the Army way.

I learned all three during my years at the COE!

Oddly enough, my innate claustrophobia wasn’t triggered once during my years of slaving away in that vertical-cubicle.  I was always able to hear the footsteps of someone approaching the Lane Where I Lived, and I got to know the various patterns of sound made by different footwear.  Excellent training for writing a future war/spy novel!!

Those posters are long gone, as is the allocation of minimal work space to the technical experts, trained practitioners, competent craftsmen, qualified workers.

We in the USA have gone from giving a bowling-alley and broom closet workspace to the highly proficient, super-intelligent and talented employees — to granting entire buildings to pompously ignorant frauds pretending to be those stable geniuses!

Dad’s downsizing — and it’s about time!!!

My bowling-alley workspace attracted a lot of attention from the A-E (architect-engineer) contractors who had begun to filter into the Federal Building at 650 Capitol Mall.  The view of that lone wall, with its three travel posters, from the exiting elevator, became a must-see for the A-E, before he met with Head Honcho Engineer.

“Anyone who can decorate a space like that is incredibly talented!”

I guess you could add “interior decorator” to my long list of unpaid —and unrecognized — duties!

 I will avow that my refusal to double-up on procuring scotch-tape just before 1 December rolled around was an ethical choice. (I had typed “ethnical” choice — and Pages didn’t blink a hissy fit!!  FREUDIAN SLIP ALERT — WhiteAngloSazonProtestant, as in WASP, that buzzing insect!)

And I was chronically, and adamantly, lax in ordering more WD-40 for the Cost-Estimator-Expert who worked just beyond the flat-files in front of my desk.

He never asked me, however, to order any rolls of duct-tape.  I don’t think it would have doubled for Christmas-present-packaging.

I was a real disappointment to Jerry, who educated me right in the ways of The Memorandum.  I did surpass his expectations, though, in how wonderfully I cooked the turkey-and-stuffing for the annual Thanksgiving Feast for Section A!

Just what scenic delights comprised those travel posters during the Reagan Era in that Federal Building?

The Eiffel Tower, at night; St. Basil’s Cathedral, at night; and the lower Manhattan skyline., at night.

All that darkness did not become me during those days, and nights, when The Evil Empire was yet to be defeated.  Only to be replaced by a very different Evil Empire, whose name we dared not speak according to those anti-American-Experts.

Me, I’ve always looked to the future.  When you’re wedged with your IBM-Selectric in a bowling alley, and you’re seated just in front of where the bowling pins would get smashed, it’s advisable to dream — and dream big!