“I’ve got to start doing something else though.”
“What I said then. Plumbers call the shots. There’s always work for them. Set up your own business and collect the fifty to sixty dollars an hour for yourself. Sure, expenses and medical insurances. But four hundred a day. Say three-fifty. Only work two days a week and take three months off in the summer. You’d still earn more money and get more vacation time, or the same vacation time but no class preparation during it, than you do now and for about ten fewer work hours a week.”
“What would happen if a toilet was really clogged? Needed a lot more than a snake. I’ve heard stories. Plumbers sticking their arms into pipes up to their shoulders. Not in the toilets so much but in the main basement pipe, with years of crap in it, leading to the sewer. Where nothing but a hand would unclog it. They have gloves on, and I guess they get used to it, but do they? Maybe that’s why they charge so much: to even it all out. No, it’s not for me. Why don’t I just open a little store? Buy one, rather, so when I get it it’s all there, goods on the shelves, the rest. At the most, work another year teaching, save up enough capital, I think it’s called, and open a general store in Maine or Vermont or some country or beach town where New Yorkers and Bostoners and Hartforders and so on vacation. So, three busy summer months, probably another busy month preparing for summer, and eight slow winter, fall and spring months. Lots of fresh air and smells, but in a community — not so remote or in the hills and a school relatively easy for the girls to get to — and our food costs, because of the store, drastically reduced. In fact, everything would be. Beer, wine, motor oil, combs — all at cost. Even gas if we get a pump. We could live in back of the store, or on top of it. We could get a store with a good rear view. Of water, or whatever. Or a frame store. I don’t know anything about framing but what would it take to learn? Again, apprentice myself out for nothing while doing my current job. I think I’d prefer a store like that. Better hours, nothing perishable. No problems with mice, roaches, raw garbage, credit, rats. Paints, printings, etcetera. Documents, cutting the glass, beveling the cardboard the documents or prints go inside. You know, that fastens the print — protects and supports it — to the glass but without the print touching the glass. For what would it cost to open such a store? Then turn it into an art gallery. Or a combination of the two — that’s how they do it. When you’re not selling art, you’re framing it.”
“You want to get away from the kind of people who collect art and go to openings and such, don’t you? Besides, you’re not a salesman and haven’t the personality to become one, and to sell paintings and prints you’d have to be.”
“I could become one. It’s part of our people’s heritage. It’s American also. Everybody in this country’s potentially one. All right, I’m not smooth and I don’t like pushing people into anything, but that’s not the salesman I’d be. I’d put the stuff on the tables and walls and would say ‘Here it is, there’s the price list, nothing’s negotiable. It’s as fair a price as I can make it without cheating the artist and breaking the gallery. Take as long as you like looking at things, come back anytime you like, have a cup of coffee or tea, herbal, decaf or regular; even some cookies.’ I’d keep a box of cookies around and maybe some fruit if it were cheap. No fruit — that’d create raw garbage again. And I’d read. I’d look oblivious and remote. Nothing on my face would express ‘sell.’ Or I’d talk to them if they wanted, and about whatever they wanted. All right. Let’s say my new kind of salesmanship didn’t work. So just a frame store. I could read while I’m waiting there for customers too. Read or make frames, and cut the matting, it’s called.”
“Mats.”
“Mats, matting, or both. But you mat them. That I know.”
“The frame store’s not a bad idea. Whatever makes you happy. Sleep on it.”
“But you know by now I have to do something. I can’t stand my work. Same thing for too many years. Little variations but not enough. I want to get away from it, from everything and all the people in it, except if they travel to our little country town and might possibly buy something in the frame store. Or just visit me in the store, because ‘no hard sell.’ I didn’t think my job was so bad, but every day for months it seems worse. Maybe it’d take too much capital to open a store. I know I couldn’t be a word processor.”
“You mean a computer programmer.”
“Yes, and one who also works on a word processor for someone. Don’t they do both? Because lots of my students do it or have gone on to it for a living.”
“Could be.”
“Too boring. It’d be like prison. Maybe I could be a prison guard. Not maximum security; something lighter. Lots of different people. It would always be interesting. Till retirement age, which I’d think with guards would be early. I’d be good to the prisoners. Wouldn’t wear a gun. Not even handcuffs or a club.”
“Forget it. I wouldn’t let you. Maybe you want something with kids.”
“Did it. Secondary school and lots of junior high school teaching. No knack or authority. Couldn’t get them quieted down or fired up about learning.”
“Kindergarten age then. Just fun and games and the ABC’s.”
“It’s much different now. Wordbooks. People expect big growth from kids in kindergarten.”
“Nursery school. Learn to tinker on the piano. Simple stuff. ‘Old MacDonald.’”
“I’d love to be a pianist. Classical. And compose. Just piano and little voice pieces. But that’s another lifetime.”
“Also learn a repertoire of children’s songs and games. You have a nice personality for kids. You obviously like and respect them and most of the time they adore you.”
“Their high voices would drive me crazy. All at once, and the running. The pay’s slave wages for preschool teachers. I’m sure I wouldn’t be any better at discipline for kids that age. I’d have stomach- and headaches every workday and lots of anxiety on weekends and the last summer vacation month before school begins. As I did when I taught grade school and junior high. Maybe I should become a house painter. Wouldn’t take much to learn. Work alone or hire someone with me. Keep hiring, for they always quit. Worst kind of work in some ways. But I’d be able to take a radio along and I’d play good music all day. Or a tape cassette player. Nobody bothers painters playing music. They’d even welcome a different kind of music, for painters always play too loudly horrible kiddy music on awful radios with bad speakers. I suppose they’re afraid the radios would be stolen if they were any better. I’d stay close to my cassette player and tapes. Palestrina. I wouldn’t even know I was painting. Saint Matthew’s Passion. I’d get the job over double-time with a run of Mozart flute and piano concertos. Just go in, set up and work. Apartment a week or whatever it takes. I like the idea. I really do. Bartok’s quartets. Beethoven’s last ones. Acoustics might be better in completely empty rooms. Four-story brownstones might take two weeks — all of Bach’s cantatas or as many as are on tape. I’d do good work. They get good pay. Five hundred dollars a room. What’s it take to paint a room? A day? For two coats?”
“The fumes. They’d get to you. I understand they make painters wacky after awhile and drive many of them to drink. Something in the paints and thinners acts as a catalyst for drinking.”
“Maybe after twenty years of it. But I’ve painted. Room here and there. Did nothing like that to me. But it would get tedious, I suppose.”
“So? Become a plumber. Everyone respects them. Study in a trade school at night, while you continue teaching, for half a year. However long it takes. And how long would it? I mean, if you’re going to think seriously about changing professions, then this is thinking seriously. You don’t want to become a master plumber right away. You can’t. Then go to work for someone. Firms, I bet, always need new plumbers. The plumbers who work for the company that takes care of this building are always changing. I asked why once. The plumber who fixed that last kitchen wall leak? Is it because the contractor has so many plumbers working for him? He said no, it’s because they’re always quitting. Wages are okay, but they get better offers elsewhere. And you’d save on the plumbing in our own house if we ever buy one.”