But I didn’t want to go home. I wanted to go back to Norfolk and join up with cool Fred Berdine and his cool rock band.
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In 1978 Oklahoma was experiencing an oil boom, mostly out on “the pan handle” so Enid was the perfect good place for George’s little army of predators and scammers to set up their base. Twice a big as Norfolk and twice as rich, Enid’s predominant culture of newly well-off oil workers was much more used to (and thus less suspicious of) those engaged in the door-to-door sales trade. No one of course tolerated the out and out thievery George’s crew thrived on, but it was a place where they would be able to operate long enough to regroup after the setback in Nebraska.
As for me… My attitude for selling books was now at an all-time low and my sales record reflected this. My experiences during the on-route canvasing of rural Kansas had me properly disillusioned about the entire enterprise and I started self-sabotaging any chance of selling books by changing my pitch to…
“You don’t want to buy any magazine subscriptions, do you?”
Yup, I was a traitor all right, but I was soon to be free. I saw my chance the first day out when I was sent to Woodward. A small town on the panhandle that was booming with oil money, Woodward was ripe for the picking by the likes of George’s crew.
My first day canvasing in Woodward I got lucky, but not selling books…. Oh no. At one of the first houses I went to the owner immediately saw me as the strong, hardworking young man I was. He also saw the stupid situation I was in and he offered a way out. This guy had just recently bought his house. He was a roughneck and said I’d get a job no problem. Starting wages were about $1,900 a month and they were begging for strong young men like me. The man showed me a studio apartment he’d recently built above his garage and said I could have it for $500 a month. He also said he’d let me move in right away and that I could pay him as soon as I got my first paycheck from the oil company.
I was going to do it too. And later I’d wished I had but… I didn’t.
As we drove back to Enid with the sun setting behind us over the beautiful painted mountains, I was finally beginning to feel free. My mind was full of plans. I would return the next day to start my new life on the oil fields. I would pack my stuff and put it discretely in the car and make my escape when we got back to Woodward the next day. But in the morning I was told that I wasn’t gong back there. I was instead taken to canvas a regular neighborhood in Enid where I saw a scene that shocked me out of the idea of working on an oil crew.
Here were the houses of the oil workers who had been doing this job for a while. The houses were small but with expensive toys all around. Boats and cars and patios with a BBQ grill and swimming pool… they had the new American Dream, these guys. The houses were full of big new TVs and expensive stereo equipment and… their wives.
Their spoiled young, lonely wives.
Guy was literally drooling as he spoke of how easy these women were, to sell books to and… It seemed to me that he was taking me to this neighborhood to show me how good life could be, taking from these fools (liberating them from their money). He probably thought it might inspire me to try harder. He had no idea how I saw all this. How to this day, it reminds me of the life I would NEVER want!!
But it also showed me something that would eventually change my plan of going to Woodward.
In a few of the houses the husband was at home. Oil rig workers worked long hours, many days in a row but were then off for weeks at a time. When I got one of these guys answering the door he almost always stopped me in the middle of my pitch and called his wife to speak to me while he went back to his beer and whatever he’d been watching on TV. I noticed that a high percentage of them had missing fingers and this began to bother me. At this time I had yet to take up the guitar to accompany my singing but it was on my mind.
So when I told George I was quitting (as per my plan) and he threw me out of the motel shouting and cursing at me (as I’d expected) I found myself on the highway instead of the bus depot. All I had was a suitcase and the $10 George had thrown at me for bus fare. When I had first signed onto his crew there was actually a clause in the contract stating that at any point I wanted to quit, I was entitled to the cost of a bus ticket home.
But I’d told George that I wasn’t going home to Rochester, Minnesota. I told him that I was going to Woodward to start a lucrative career in the oil industry so he figured ten bucks was all I’d need. I gladly put that bill in my pocket and started walking. But instead of going into town to find my bus, I walked up the entrance ramp onto US Highway 64. I got myself to the northbound side and stuck out my thumb. I was going back to Norfolk, Nebraska to find Fred. Fred was cool and I dreamed of joining him and his rock n roll band and going on tour.
That was the kind of adventure that I was made for.
