Drunken Memories

 “Dumb Will Prevail”

There are first jobs and there are FIRST JOBS.

I am sure that young people today will never bag groceries, scoop ice cream or sweep warehouses on school nights and summer weekends. From what I have read on the interweb, most of today’s young people graduate from high school and go right into college.

Good for them.

When I was young man, I needed to work. I needed that money from bagging groceries on school nights and weekends to fill the 30-gallon tank of my 1971 Cadillac. For a short time, I even worked two jobs, working at bagging and then I would drive across town and flip pizzas until 1am. All on a school night.

Good times.

In 1985 my high-school was trying to deal with the explosion of rust buckets being driven to school by students and what seemed to be the ever-shrinking space within the muddy ‘student’ parking lot. The plan the great ‘powers that be’ had was to institute a Parking Pass lottery. A week before the school year started, each student who wanted or needed a parking pass was welcomed to complete a ballot. There were a few instances when a parking sticker was instantly granted.

*Student needed to arrive or leave school late or early.....Nope.

*Student was an Honor Student and volunteered off school campus....Definitely NOPE.

*Student had a job and needed to leave class early....This could be a maybe.

So, I filled out my parking ballot with all my Pizza cooking info and hoped that it was enough for a parking pass. It was not.

My 1971 Cadillac threw a rod the winter before, and I had grown into a torch red 1975 Cadillac Coupe De Ville and I was not going to take the bus to school dammit. For four months I drove to school and parked in a different parking spot every couple of days. Monday was in the teacher's lot. Tuesday and Wednesday was on a dirt road behind the football field. Thursday and Friday was at the pharmacy on Canton Center Road. I never got towed but the parking tickets were killing me. I needed a parking pass. It got so bad that in my desperation I created a fake parking sticker that worked for about a month before I got caught and suspended for two days.

Good Godd help me.

My art teacher in high school was the only person in this world that I would offer my own life for. She was a saint. In the darkest days of the teenaged drama that I vomited out for her every art class, she was there for me. One morning I explained my situation. Her immediate response was ‘I know a place that is hiring’. She explained that several weeks prior, a factory in Belleville had sent a job request to the printshop teacher. It was a part time job that required design skills and understanding of screen printing. On top of all this, it came with 3 high school credits, the ability to leave school a half hour early AND A PARKING PASS! My teacher stated that no students had even applied and that if I applied, I would get the job.

I applied.

The next week I got a phone call from AVS Plastics.

The factory was in Belleville right off of Haggerty Road. My teacher helped me prepare a portfolio of drawings, logo design work and several examples of my best (Crappy) silk screen work. I was so fucking nervous during the interview. The man interviewing me was the owner of the plastics company, his name was Gordon Noakes. I don’t remember much of the interview, most of it was a blur. But I do remember that Mr. Noakes told a few jokes and made a few comments that, at the time, flew over my nervous head and landed without me laughing. I remember laughing a day or two later.

I got the job AND my parking pass.

Mr. Noakes had built his plastics factory out of scrap steel and his own determination. The factory was actually two separate companies, AVS Plastics and MirrorAcryl. AVS made 4 x 8-foot sheets of colored and clear plexiglass while MirrorAcryl plated the sheets of Plexi-glass with a mirror finish in huge vacuum chambers. My job was to design and silk screen Christmas designs. Mr. Noakes had a dream to create HUGE Christmas ornaments using scrap Plexi-Glass and sell them at the yearlong Christmas village in Frankenmuth, Michigan.

I designed holiday bells, reindeer, and the best Santa you have ever seen. All of the designs were graphed out and loaded into a huge laser cutting table (That Mr. Noakes designed and built). After the mirrored colored Plexi-glass was cut, the plastic was silkscreened with my designs. Epic cool.

They didn’t sell a goddam thing.

Oh well. I got my parking sticker and a paycheck. Once I graduated and summer started, I quit so I could hang with my girlfriend before college. She blocked me on Facebook several years ago.

I do remember Gordon Noakes as being an incredibly smart man with an incredibly dry sense of humor. Guys in the factory told me that he designed and built every piece of tech in that factory and even perfected the chemical formula for a cheap sheet of Plexi-Glass.

A couple of weeks ago I was sitting in the chair I sit in late at night while drinking and doing laundry. Memories of my past burped up and Mr. Noakes popped into my head. The interweb is a wonderful thing, because I found him.

"Dumb Will Prevail"