WannaskaWriter

    One reason, I moved to northwestern Minnesota was to get away from all the hatred and violence that was happening all over the country. I was tired of living under lock and key; tired of watching riots and demonstrations on television; just fed up with society at large. Northwest Minnesota seemed just the place to go where there wasn't any of all that. No racism, no prejudice, everybody is happy, yada yada yada. What a dope!    I had spent a few winters laid-off from various jobs I had and began writing journals, reading and studying American history. I've always been bookish and possessed a penchant for reading and writing versus watching TV or whatever the rest of the world is doing in their spare time; I don't mind isolation or quiet places. Outside stimulation, like video games, is out: a brilliant display of the northern lights is in. I lean toward the natural, fade from the artificial, that sort of thing.      I learned years ago, that saying something po

    I grew up in Des Moines, Iowa in the 1960s, and experienced the effects of racism and rioting throughout my junior and high school years. My experiences of schools emptying within minutes, arrivals of ambulances and police cars, having riot police as hallway monitors and the rising tension between blacks and whites leading to violence on a daily basis, were mirrored by students of that era in larger cities like Boston, Chicago, and Detroit. As a result, people are genuinely surprised to learn that Des Moines too, had its civil rights turmoil.     I grew up in an old neighborhood on the city's east side. My elementary school was only a couple blocks away from my house,  on Des Moines Street, east of the railroad tracks. Brooks was an integrated school, having a body of 'culturally-mixed' students, if not teachers. We played together on the playground, as kids do. Two of my classmates, one black and one white, were close friends, who lived near one another and sometim

    In factories of the upper Midwest today, the available employee pool isn't what employers wish it was, in my opinion. It's been reported in business journals and newspapers previously, I realize, but I offer a first-hand viewpoint backed up by many of the Baby Boomers who are retiring faster than their roles can be filled. Forty percent attrition is now common place in industry across the region as new employees come and go on a whim, some walking off the job the same day they started.      I recently met a young woman, at the toy factory, who, after I asked if she was summer help, answered she had been there two years. "Amazing!" I said, smacking myself in the forehead. "I know." she said, smiling, seemingly quite proud of the fact.     Maybe it's just me, but when I walk into the building some days, judging by the apparent age and appearance of my fellow co-workers, I feel as though I'm walking among the middle-school crowd. I am the odd on

    In the past, there was a lot of horseplay. Some guys did it all the time and got away with it. I could hear women, in particular, scream infrequently, as they were frightened by somebody or the victim of some prank, most in the nature of good fun, but some bordering on the vulgar as was the man's nature and sadly, the woman's humiliation. As a kid, whenever I acted the teaser, it sometimes backfired on me and someone would get hurt- - (sometimes it was me)- - and so, lent a reluctance to further participation. So it was at work too until I became the butt of a few pranks. Accepting the notion of, "Kill or be killed," I hid away under an assembly table during break, just before a female co-worker came back to the department. I grabbed her leg as she walked by and she let loose with a wild ear-shattering scream, threw her coffee cup- -with all her coffee in it- -into the air, where it hit me on its descent, as I crawled out from under the table. I never did that aga

    Harold Anderson knew all the jobs in our department, and he helped everybody learn them. He showed us the procedures and taught us which parts to use, where to find part numbers, and the like. It was about that time he was put into another department in another part of the building. I didn't work with him again.     It wasn't hard work. We were off the assembly line in an area where parts for the machines were assembled before the assembly line then carted to it either by hand or by forklift. The toy factory was pretty small back then as it was restarting operation under new management. In our department there were five or six people, mostly women, who did various tasks to complete this particular part.      One of the younger women seemed in-charge and was peculiarly brusque to me, I thought, a situation in which I became somewhat powerless (read: wimpy) because I thought she was the foreman. I needed this job and told myself to endure her criticisms. I tho

    During those first days at the toy factory, I smiled and talked to people whenever we met, although it was out of my comfort range. I'd been living like a hermit all winter and admitted to myself I was lonely for conversation, to be around people again; I had lost touch with the realities of the day-to-day and needed to get back to it for my mental well-being. Besides that, I was near-broke. I couldn't go on working half the year and sustain any credit I had built up over my life to that point. I needed a real job and working at a factory would fill that void, 'for a while' I thought. I would keep my eyes open for something else to come along because I never wanted to work in a factory the rest of my life. . .     I met a bald-headed, white-haired guy, in his early sixties, named Harold Anderson. A kindly, soft-spoken man, of average height and weight, he had worked at the factory for 30-odd years and was near retirement. He'd been a foreman in his