Tightening the screws

For the first time in my life, I’m really concerned about the state of our economy, mostly because for the first time in my life I’m really unemployed.
I haven’t worked a real paying job since the end of June, before the stock market fell down the stairs and broke its hip, before John McCain reassured me that the fundamentals of our economy were strong, and way before he backtracked to say what he meant by fundamentals was the American worker and our ingenuity and spirit.
The corporation I worked for – not this newspaper, which pays me for these columns in baseball cards – sold our business to a competitor in Kansas and laid off all of us fundamentals. Four months later, I’m starting to feel just mental.
Losing your job can hurt, but being unemployed with a severance package felt like a mini-vacation at first. I got up, drank coffee in the sunshine and searched the internet for the perfect next career between pit stops checking box scores, dorking around on Facebook and watching chunky kids fall down on YouTube.
Resumes went out, naps were taken, and dinners were cooked, but it wasn’t long before the thrill of the hunt was gone and the number of job listings had shrunk like the economy had just finished a cold swim.
It’s a frightening time to be unemployed. The latest numbers from the U.S. Department of Labor showed unemployment rose from 6.1 to 6.5 percent last month, meaning 10.1 million Americans are now available to watch “Live with Regis and Kelly” with me in the morning. That’s great for Regis’s ratings, but not so good for my job prospects.
You don’t know how much your job defines who you are, especially to other people, until you don’t have one. In social settings, people always ask, “So, what do you do?” I usually just tell them “male escort” to save them the embarrassment of having to search for something casual and comforting and to say after I tell them I’m unemployed.
If I want to stay positive, I stay away from the nightly newscasts and read only Laurens County news.
Just a couple of years ago, it seemed that Laurens County was the sole place on earth suffering from a recession. Our industries were shutting down, people were out of work and our plastic-making saviors didn’t seem to turn things around like we thought they would.
In recent weeks, Laurens County and its new industry recruits have been the lone bright spot on a bleak national landscape.
First there was FITESA, a Brazilian manufacturer that announced it would invest $150 million and create 125 new jobs in “the LC.”
They make polypropylene nonwoven fabrics for use in diapers and feminine hygiene products. Hey, I may be embarrassed to go buy them for my wife, but I will make them all day long if the pay is right and the benefits are good.
Last week, I read American Titanium Works is going even bigger in Laurens County with a $422 million investment and plans to create 320 jobs at a new “mini-mill” near the Wal-Mart Distribution Center. They say the jobs there could pay around $20 hour. For that kind of cash I will send my 2-year-old to work in the titanium mines.
If I can’t get work in Laurens County, I will try to hold out until President Obama puts his new energy plan into place.
I imagine myself, in a year or two, wearing a hard hat, shimmying up a huge white pole planted somewhere in the American West to tighten the screws on a wind turbine. With the sun just about to set and the sky a deep red against the mountains, and me looking like a new age, eco-friendly male version of Rosie the Riveter for the new century, I’ll pause, gaze across the wind fields and be grateful for this great country of ours and our renewed American spirit.
Directly underneath, my supervisor, T. Boone Pickens will shout, “Attaboy, Greg! I knew I hired the right guy!”