Going to California

It was September of Two-Thousand. It was a major turning point in my life. I only had three jobs. I was a firefighter/EMT with Pullman Fire. I was a worker in a computer lab on WSU's campus. I was a full time corrections officer for Whitman County. I also decided to go back to college and finish my degree in Biology/Education. I was taking a three hundred level biology class.

I had just seen my first dead person while working EMS. It was cluster of a call but in the end we were not meant to go. The person died in her sleep. We were dispatched on accident. We got on scene and I walked through the door and saw a dead person. She was blue in the face and clearly dead. All of a sudden a lady in the jumped out in front of us and said "You can't touch her." Then, as Paul Harvey would say, we learned the Rest of the Story. She was a hospice patient. She died, so the family called her funeral home of choice in the Seattle-area. That was about three-hundred miles from Pullman. So they called a Pullman funeral home. They called the police and in the confusion of everything the dispatchers sent us instead of the police.

So it was a weird situation and I was not totally ready to see what I did. The body was actually peaceful and it was not gross, it was just shocking to see the blue-grey face and have someone jump out at me. This had an effect on me for a few days there after.

At the jail I was working graveyard. That shift started at midnight and went to eight o'clock am. It was starting to be a drag to work those hours. I slept each day from about three pm to eleven pm. It was hard to get good sleep. I had actually worked that shift for eight months. I was off of it for four months while I was working swing shift. Then I was back on it. I was doing another eight month stint on it. Each Friday I would get up at eleven pm. I would work, then go home, but I did not want to miss any of my day off so I would stay up usually for anywhere from twenty-six to thirty hours straight. I did that every week.

While at work I would be up at four am doing a round checking on a jail full of criminals that were in locked cells sleeping. I was really getting into a rut. I wanted a change. I did not want to be up at four am unless I was having fun. I hated what I was doing. I wanted a new job. I wanted to work normal hours.

I had gone to bed to get ready for work the next day when my phone rang. It was a guy named Jim. He owned a company called SolidPartners. It was a computer company based in Livermore, California. He said he was interested in hiring me to be a web developer. He sent me a contract and asked me to fly down there and meet the board of directors.

I had a flight to California two days later. I met people and looked around. I was told that I would have to be there for at least three months and then I could possible work from home in Pullman. I was offered forty thousand buck. That was a big raise over what I was making in the jail. Plus it was doing web work and normal hours. I liked that idea a lot.

The problem was that I would have to leave the fire department. That is something I did not want to do. I love being a fireman and I knew I would not be able to do that in California. For the next week I was in a zone. Each call I knew could be my last. I hated parking the truck because I did not know if I would ever get to ride in it again.

I did a lot of thinking. I debated really hard. Stay in Pullman, work a job I hate but do the things I love. Or I could move to California, make more money, and not be a fireman anymore. After thinking about it I finally decided to take the job. So I packed my truck up and drove to California.

My best friend was seeing me off. He is not one to get physical with other guys. A hand shake is rare from him. I was saying good bye and he reached out for me as I was walking away and he said “here”. He opened his arms and we hugged. I did not know if I would see him again. It was great to know I was going to be missed that much.

I drove to Seattle and then the next morning I was off to California for a new job and a new life. I drove straight through to Livermore. I had a hotel room that the company was putting me in. There was a guy who was hired the same time I was. He came down from Ohio. He was the same age as me. We shared the room.

We stayed there for two weeks while trying to find some housing. He ended up meeting a guy who owned a house down there. I was paying about six hundred a month in rent. It was steep but that was about par for the course down there. The nice thing was it was a great house and it was only about ten minutes from work.

We were going to open a new office. We were moving from a small office to a huge one. I had my own room. Everyone else was going to get a cube and I got an office. Because the owner felt as a programmer I should be able to shut the door and keep it quite. I spent the first month or so in the large building by myself. Everyone worked at the other office.

The other guy from Ohio, Joe, and I hung out a lot. We did not know anyone else. So we went to the bars together and our roommate threw some parties at the house we had. I was starting to have a good time. I met one person. We went out on a small date. I did not find exactly what I was looking for so that did not work out.

As the time went on I worked from about ten am to about midnight on most nights. I did not have a lot of other things going on. I had an intranet project that I was learning how to do it as I was working on it. The company still uses what I built to this day.

It was getting close to my three months. I was debating whether I would stay there or go back to Pullman. I actually had thoughts about staying down there. But in the end I wanted to get back to the fire department and my friends. So I left.

I would not trade that time in California. I had many great times. It was neat being anonymous to everyone. I was able to be someone that was able to go places without knowing people and that was interesting. I also had a chance to see how people in a different part of the country lives. I went to a nightclub that had dress codes because of gang activity. I went to a rich area and to a bar there where everyone probably had been born with a silver spoon in their mouths.

I took a trip into San Francisco and rode on the cable car and hung out on the water front. I saw an old friend in San Jose who was a dispatcher for the fire department down there. I had real freedom in my work. No hours, no dress code. I could come and go as I chose. It was really a great time.

When I went to college I was on my own, but not like when I was in California. I was really on my own there. No friends, no family -- only work.