My wedding anniversary is June 14, but I have always associated it more with the 4th of July. After a low-budget, two-day honeymoon in which we took the ferry to South Bass Island, stayed in a cheap hotel in Huron and went to see Rodney Dangerfield in “Back To School” at the Sandusky Mall, Janet returned to our new apartment in suburban Perrysburg and I went to my old apartment in Norwalk to pack things up and wrap up my internship with Wendy’s International. It would be another 10 days before we moved in together.
Honestly, it was a very stressful time. Janet’s auditing job with Peat Marwick in Toledo didn’t start until July 1, and although I had sent out a dozen resumes in response to help wanted ads in the Toledo Blade, I hadn’t even had a legitimate interview request yet. As a new college graduate, Janet didn’t have a penny to her name, and I had a few hundred dollars in the bank. Our margin for error was maybe 90 days.
I was finally able to schedule an interview for an “account manager” job with a “consumer loan” company for that following Tuesday. The business was based in a strip mall in the Franklin Park area of Toledo, on the northwest side of town, about 20 minutes from Perrysburg. Janet came with me, intending to browse the nearby mall during my interview. To be blunt, the company was a predatory lender and I wasn’t really interested in that sort of job, but since it was the only lead I had, I didn’t completely dismiss it, either.
We got a little turned around finding our way back out to the highway, and wound up on Secor Road. Purely by coincidence, we passed the Best Products store, where I had sent a resume
several weeks earlier in response to an ad for an assistant department manager. I figured I had nothing to lose, so I pulled into the parking lot, went into the store and asked to talk to the manager. The assistant store manager, Connie Sandifer, came out, and I explained that I had applied for the assistant manager job but hadn’t heard anything. She explained that job had been filled, but another had come open, and she asked if I had a few minutes to meet with the department manager.
It was a very informal discussion over a Pepsi in the break room, and when I got back out to the car, Janet asked what had taken so long. I told her that I thought maybe I’d just had an interview but wasn’t exactly sure. We laughed at that but didn’t think too much more about it, so I was surprised when Molly Jones, the department manager, called the next day. I thought I had perhaps earned a second interview or a more legitimate first one, depending on how you wanted to look at it. She asked if I was available the next day, Thursday, at 10 a.m., and I said, “Of course.”
“Great,” she responded, “and your schedule for the rest of the week will be …” I didn’t grasp at first that I had just been hired, but as it sunk in, my only thought was, well, that was bizarre. I started my new job a few days before Janet was scheduled to start hers, and many of our financial worries dissipated. It wasn’t a great-paying job by any stretch, and the hours were long and erratic, but it was steady income in a line of work I found interesting and in which I could envision a career.
As a result, that 4th of July weekend turned into a happy time exploring our new hometown, splurging on Chinese carry-out and hanging out at our apartment complex’s pool. Looking back, it was probably the most carefree holiday weekend I’ve ever experienced, certainly the most carefree since I was a kid.
As I write this article on the precipice of life changes nearly as profound as those of the summer of 1986, I wonder if it will be possible to feel that carefree again. I genuinely hope so.