How spending a month in Omaha got me to Phoenix in 1977


Although I'm not as silent as my parents were, whose generation was famous for it, I've tried very hard as I've drifted into my senior years to not talk too much about "the good old days", or "how I did things when I was young". But since this is a blog post, and you can easily skip over it, and go watch an Avengers movie or something, I thought that I'd share my experiences that got me to Phoenix in 1977.

The short version is that I graduated from high school, decided that since I had a car and a map that I would go west, to where it never snowed. This will be the long version, because I spent a month in Omaha, which was along the way that I was going, from Minneapolis to Phoenix. I worked part-time for an inventory company, and had requested a transfer. After my boss hung up the phone, telling me that I had a job waiting in Phoenix, he asked if I would be interested in stopping in Omaha, and lending a hand to the crew there. I said yes, because I was in no hurry.

The company put me, and many other people who had come into town to help, in a motel. I have no memory of where it was, and although it wasn't luxury accomodations, it was nice enough. We were given cash every day, in addition to our regular pay, to pay for our breakfast and lunch expenses. I've since learned that this is standard company practice - they don't pay for your dinner because if you were working locally you'd be home for dinner. Whatever they gave me, it was way more than I spent feeding myself, and so the money piled up. I had a good amount of it when I got onto the road for Phoenix, I must have been carrying at least $100, if not more. This came in handy by the time I got there.

By the time I got to Phoenix, I checked in at the local office, was told that they didn't have my paycheck yet but I would get it soon enough, and I headed out to find a place to sleep that night. I bought a newspaper, checked the rentals, looked at two places, and decided on the first one. It was in the, uh, "less than fashionable" part of town, was a tiny furnished studio apartment, and it looked fine to me. The rent was somewhere between $100 and $200 a month, so I handed them a wad of cash and the place was mine.

That I lived simply was a given. I had a frisbee that I used as a plate, which served me just fine. It was plastic, I cleaned it, it didn't have an dog teeth marks on it, and was fine for my usual meals of cheese, beans, and hot dogs. When people visited, and asked if I had, for example, a cheese grater, I would get one, and little by little I built up my inventory of household necessities. At some point I proclaimed myself the best-equipped bachelor in town, and it's a title that I still proudly hold.

In 1982, after graduating from ASU I moved to Los Angeles. I wonder if anybody'd think I'd flipped, if I went to LA via Omaha?
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