Quit Your Job And Run Away To (1995) Or From (2008) New York

Click for larger image

After graduating from college on the 5-year plan and then working for free on a gubernatorial campaign, I waited over 9 months to get my "payback" (with an inexplicable detour of turning down a junior staff position in the Clinton White House working for Dr. Jack Gibbons, Assistant to the President for Science and Technology and Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy - a story for another time) in the form of a state government job with the MD Dept of Environment. Apparently I had dreams of going into environmental law and thought this was the best path and use of my degree ("where the wheel stops, nobody knows...") in natural resource economics.

Yes kids, the offer letter above is real and the starting salary was smaller than a fine for farting on a fish. I was reminded of this life phase when my brother forwarded me an email today from my old campaign connection/college friend:

Yes, we had the bureaucrat life set up for Andrew. If that fat man had not fallen dead from a heart attack in front of your brother - triggering some sort of pre-life epiphany sending him up to New York - he would be wearing short sleeve shirts with a tie today, driving around the state and fining the fuck out of Maryland businesses. Imagine the possibilities.

That's close to a true story but I did not witness the man die. About a month into the job, he was training me at a surface mine in Anne Arundel County and reviewing environmental impact guidelines when it was I who experienced a post-lunch rumble below that nearly doubled me over. This wise war vet said, "boy, you gotta take a dump?" When I nodded he threw me a box of tissues from our state-issued and emergency-stocked Jeep Cherokee and pointed in the direction of...well, nothing. We were surrounded by huge deposits of something, but it all looked like nothing to me. I got a hands-on, think-on-your-feet test in strip and open-pit mining. While I was happy to "pass" (oof), I got a pretty strong feeling this wasn't the job for me.

Late in the afternoon on the very next day, while on trainee rotation with another inspector, I heard the news that he died from a heart attack just hours before during lunch. I shit you not. I honestly didn't know how to react, which explains why I was dazed in the days to come and drove 2 hours to attend a funeral on the Eastern Shore for a man I really did not know. I sat in the back of the church and when I saw a male teenager next to the open casket with a resemblance that left no mystery to his relation to the deceased, I actually prayed to Jesus for several things. At least one was answered, for the day did eventually end.

I lasted a couple more weeks as I waited for the opportune moment to break the news to my family and department head that I would be quitting for a life unknown in New York. Of course there is no right time so I just blurted it to the person nearest to me after a group briefing one morning. The situation was even more strained because everyone in the office thought I originally got the job as a favor to the governor, which was partly true but mostly false. By that point the governor had no idea who the hell I was, if he ever did, though I'm sure my friend circulated memos depicting otherwise.

Anyway, no moral here and no state pension to pad my retirement but I have a few souvenir Polaroids that show me looking over blueprints on a construction site wondering if the silt fences were built to spec and where's the closest McDonald's.