Two summer jobs…
Readers often ask me, “What influenced my writing?” With the hot summer weather upon us, my thoughts often turn to my last high school summer jobs as a partial answer to that question. College costs are onerous for most parents and students now, and still rising, but we forget it’s always been so. Free college tuition at state and community college might alleviate that somewhat, but the incidental costs—food, housing, books, transportation, etc—can still be a hardship. Even when I was a college-bound student, I looked jealously across the pond at their more reasonable approach to higher education.
But there’s something to be said for teaching the young to have a solid work ethic. What might surprise some readers of this blog is that two summer jobs I had would influence a book I wrote decades later. I worked seven days per week to save for college. For five days, I was the foreman (only because I had my driving license) of a surveying crew that took measurements for a civil engineer. On the weekends, I washed road construction equipment—road graders, bulldozers, front-loaders, pickups, dump trucks, and big rigs used to carry the first three.
The job working for the civil engineer taught me about heat and hydration. Most of our work was in the southern San Joaquin Valley just north of Bakersfield. We often joked that that city just over the Grapevine from LA deserved its name. The temperature averaged about 115 degrees F, and sometimes it reached 125. Even if it’s dry heat, that’s hot! Part of my job was to fill up the containers with ice water every morning before heading out to site. Home at night I would take salt pills to replace the salt lost in perspiration. We’d drink a lot of water pounding stakes to mark fields for grading so that irrigation water would have maximum benefit.
Washing road construction equipment had its own challenges. They left the heavy equipment on the big rigs, semis with huge flat-bed trailers. That had its positives and negatives. One positive is that I only had to drive the big rig into position to wash cab, flat bed, and whatever heavy equipment was on the flat bed. One negative is that I sometimes had to back up that big rig from where it was parked before I could drive it into position to be washed. The first day I wasted a lot of time learning to do just that. With some guidance from the owner of the construction company, I managed.
So how did these jobs influence my novel? Some of The Last Humans (it will be published by Black Opal Books in 2019) takes place in that area of the San Joaquin Valley. First, that part of the Valley would be desert if it weren’t for irrigation. Second, with or without irrigation, it’s hot. Third, teamwork can make any job go faster—in fact, sometimes it can’t be done without it. The last is that part of work ethic that some people have trouble learning. Recognizing I couldn’t get that surveying job done without my team is something that many politicians haven’t learned. You can’t be a tyrant; you have to recognize the importance of teamwork. I respected my surveying crew; the owner of the construction company respected me.
All three themes play important roles in The Last Humans. I will forever value that experience obtained under the blazing California sun. The Last Humans isn’t my only book set in California (another one is Silicon Slummin’…and Just Getting’ By), but it’s the only book where my experiences as a college-bound eighteen-year-old play an important role. I hope you enjoy the book when it’s published.
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The Golden Years of Virginia Morgan. This novel bridges between the “Detectives Chen and Castiblanco Series” and the “Clones and Mutants Trilogy.” The plot revolves around a government program that makes sure elderly ex-government employees don’t divulge national secrets. The main character is from the first series; the villain starts there as a nemesis of the detectives and does his dirty deeds in many of my tales, a modern Moriarty if you will. Mystery, suspense, thriller? You’ll have to decide. Available on Amazon and Smashwords and all its affiliated retailers (iBooks, B&N, Kobo, etc). Great summer reading!
In libris libertas!
