Monday, March 26, 2018

Back Injury & Phone Books

 1984 has come.  I don't have a job, as White Oak phased out my job there in 1983.  I was looking for some money when SCETV called.  I could always count on them, if they needed someone for a film.  This time, it was an industrial film called "Back Injury".  I knew about that subject, as I had lower back problems since that cursed play "The Breaking of Bread" back at Anderson College in 1972.
 This film was designed to be shown in factories on how not to get a back injury and the ways to treat a back injury.  It was very technical.  They brought in a doctor to show the ways to treat the back.  I played a factory worker.  There were two other actors who also played factory workers.  The scene was in an office with chairs.  We went through several exercises from sitting up straight in chairs to standing straight against a wall.  I actually learned something for my own back's treatment.  We also learned to lift with our legs, not our back.  That came in handy later in life for me.  The film ran about 20 minutes.  I have never seen it, but I hope it helped someone else.
 Another job I had at this time was delivering phone books.  My area was South Beltline and Fort Jackson.  I had to deliver them in the rain, as they had to be given out on a couple of days.  I put them in the trunk of my car which weighed it down to a point that it did a number on my shocks.  It also seemed that everywhere I went had speed bumps in the road, which didn't help my shocks at all.  The South Beltline area was mostly apartments.  It was a lot of walking in the rain, but not all that hard.
 Fort Jackson was another story.  I got to the front gate and told the soldier I was going to deliver phone books to the residences at the fort.  He told me to go to the headquarters building, and they would give me directions to the houses I needed to go to.  I did what he said.  I asked for a map of where the houses would be.  They didn't have a map, but they did give me verbal directions.  Then, they told me something that I dreaded:  "You can't miss it".  Well, of course I did miss it.  I drove all over the fort looking for these houses.  I found myself at the rifle range.  I drove by the hospital.  It was raining, and I couldn't see the street signs.  Finally, quite by accident, I found a street on my list.  The houses were surrounded by fences.  No one was home.  I was able to throw the books onto the porches of most of the homes.  That was until I came to one house.  They had a ferocious dog in the back that didn't want me to get anywhere near their porch.  I tried to reason with the dog.  I tried to be nice to the dog.  But, the dog didn't want any part of that.  He just wanted a part of me.  I was afraid that if I tossed the book over the fence that he would get it and chew it up.  So, I decided to avoid delivering that book for my own personal safety.  I drove back to the headquarters soaked.  I told the guys there that I couldn't deliver one book because of the dog.  They all laughed and said that was the colonel's house.  I didn't care whose house it was.  I gave the colonel's phone book to those guys at headquarters and told them to deliver it themselves.
 I got paid pretty well for the delivery of the phone books.  They were so impressed with my work that I was offered a job selling ads for the yellow pages.  I didn't take that job, because it was on straight commission, and I needed steady pay.  I also didn't need to get back out there with bad shocks.

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