A Girl and a Job In Thomas M Parsons

20. A Job and a Girl

My tuition paid by Mr. No Brain’s insurance company, I finished out that first year of seminary and returned home to Lincoln Park for the summer. I was able to get my old job back at Wayne State University’s records office for the summer. Soon the summer passed and I was back in Grand Rapids ready to start my second year. But I had an urgent need.

I needed a job to help meet expenses. One day in the school library, I perused the want ads in the Grand Rapids Press. I came across an ad for a part-time bank messenger. I called the number given in the ad, and soon I was downtown in the old Union Bank building being interviewed for the job. I was soon the new messenger for the Mortgage Department of Union Bank and Trust Company.

It was really an easy job, and perfect for my situation. I worked from one o’clock until five each weekday. When I arrived each day, my desk was loaded with legal documents and checks that had to be hand delivered to various institutions in the area. Papers had to be taken to the Register of Deeds office. Payoff checks had to be taken to Old Kent Bank or another bank in the area. Titles had to be dropped off or picked up at the office that searched for discrepancies in titles to properties.

Once I had these organized as to destination, I would pack them in the briefcase they gave me and set off on my afternoon rounds. When I returned, I had to take papers I had picked up to whomever needed them. This might be a fellow worker in the mortgage department, or it might be someone in another department at the bank. On a good day, I would arrive back from my rounds with just enough time to distribute everything to its proper destination. On a less than good day, I would have some time left over at the end of the day to help the full-time people catch up on filing.

This job enabled me to get well-acquainted with downtown Grand Rapids. I regularly visited Old Kent Bank and Trust, the City Clerk’s Office, the Kent County Clerk’s Office, Michigan Title Company, and a variety of lawyers, smaller banks, and other government offices. I met several interesting people as well, including the Registrar of Deeds for Kent County. It usually took about two hours to complete my rounds. So, with one hour to get things organized, two hours on the streets, and one hour to deliver things on my return, it was easy to get my four hours a day in. They paid me minimum wage, which was not a whole lot by today’s standards, but which was decent enough for my needs in the fall of 1966.

My immediate boss, Ted, was a jovial young executive who laughed his way through many a tough situation. He was always pleasant to work for. He told me what he wanted, and I did it, and he respected me and I respected him. His boss, however, was a different person. He went by the book. Everything must be just so. And he didn’t always make it clear what he wanted or expected from his people. He would wait until you messed up to tell you what you did that was not the way it was supposed to be.

But he had a boss, too, the executive in charge of the whole mortgage department. He was everybody’s boss. I really did not have much to do with him. He had a private office at the end of the large open area where the rest of us had our desks. His secretary was out in our area, but the boss wasn’t. Besides, he was usually not in his office. He had important people to meet with, and important lunches to take, and important business that took him out of his office and out of the building. Sometimes he was out of the office with his secretary. That caused all kinds of speculation among the office gossips, one of which, I must admit, was me.

The boss of the whole operation, the president of the bank, was a sour, stern, oppressive-looking old man who walked around his bank looking scornfully at his employees but gleefully at his cronies. He was rich, of course, and made so because of the faithful work of the employees he often seemed to scorn. He reminded me of my dad’s boss back at the shoe store in Detroit. What is it about men who get rich on the efforts of others? So often they seem to resent the very people who make their success possible. Is it that they feel superior to the plebeians who have to work for a living? Or is it that they feel guilty that they enjoy the fruits of others’ labors?

I do not mean to imply that these men were lazy. It was, after all, their head for business, as Mr. Scrooge was want to say, that made the employment of others possible. But, like Mr. Scrooge, they often scorned those who made their success possible.

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The building occupied by the bank was an old red brick building in Grand Rapid’s financial district. The mortgage department was in the basement where occasionally rain would enter and sit on the floor until a janitor could be secured to mop it up.

But a new building was in the works. Across from the already in place Old Kent Bank and Trust Company, and the City and County complexes, Union Bank and Trust was building a gleaming, white building next to the old city hall. In a year or so, the new building was scheduled to be completed. In that building, the mortgage department would not be in the basement, but on the fifth floor, above any rainwater that might find its way into even the new structure.

So much for the job, now what about the girl? Well, she was beautiful, to say the least, but a departure from my usual preference for blondes. She had short, dark hair. She was also taller than all the previous girls I had taken an interest in, but still shorter than I was. She was from the Detroit area like I was, also. She came from a small town just outside the metropolitan Detroit area, on its southwest. Oh, and did I mention she was beautiful?

She was a student in the college that shared a campus with the seminary. I often saw her in the library studying, when I was there to study. And I saw her in chapel services, since once a week there was a chapel service that included all college and seminary students. And she worked the lunch line. When I came through to get my chili (that seemed to be about all the food service on campus served), she would be in the line to serve me.

She was perfect, I thought, even though she wasn’t a blonde. She loved the Lord, and wanted to serve Him. She would make a good pastor’s wife. She was from a small Baptist church in her home town where she had been active before coming to school. She was unattached. And, did I mention the fact — oh, yes, I did.

Things were shaping up. I had a job that was interesting and that was paying my tuition so that I didn’t have to keep having car accidents with Mr. No Brain. I was getting an education and a degree that would open doors of service for the Lord for me. And I had a girl who was beautiful and who loved the Lord.

Now all I had to do was ask her out.

Finding the right girl was never an easy task for me, as I have mentioned before. I had a history of getting interested in someone who was not interested in me. And I didn’t seem to have the knack of being able to get the girl interested in me. I wasn’t particularly ugly. In fact, looking at my high school graduation picture today makes me think I was better looking than I thought I was back then. I wasn’t interested in athletics, that is true, but did girls really think that was so important? Was I just an uninteresting person? A blob of protoplasm just taking up space but not enough space to impress a girl? The closest I had ever come to a long term romantic relationship with a girl was with Janet, the girl with whom I went steady for about six months back in Lincoln Park. But she lost interest and broke up with me. The closest I had ever come to a real relationship with a girl, that is, consisting of trust and confidence and sharing with each other, was with Beth. But she and I were never more than friends.

Would this time be different? Would this dark-haired, tall, lunch-line girl be the one with whom I could share the rest of my life? After all, at the age of twenty-five as I was in 1966, that is really what I was looking for. I didn’t want just a girlfriend. I didn’t want a friend who was a girl. I wanted a wife. Most of the seminarians were married. Many had children. And of the few of us who were not married, only two of us did not have a real, live fiancé waiting for us somewhere. I just wanted to join the married seminarians. I didn’t think I could be in the ministry without a mate. I believed strongly that the Lord wanted me to marry.

Okay, so all I had to do was ask her out. Simple. Maybe.