Harry Smallenburg, my old friend, musician and blog guy (http://harrysmallenburg.blogspot.com/) wrote this story on his blog and I left a comment. However, it seems significant for my life so I am copying it for you with my comments added.
“Ha! Got’em by the short Hairs”A boast by the CFO of Center for Creative Studies—I didn’t hear this directly. It was reported to me. But I could imagine him saying it, with his fist clenched, and a sense that he was saving the institution from financial collapse and disappearance into the abyss. His initials were J.C. (I’ll withhold his full name.) Interestingly, “J.C.” are also the initials of another not-so-very-unknown messianic figure.CFO overstates his title—he was the school’s accountant. He handled all the financial transactions, and in that capacity he considered it his personal mission to be as tight-fisted as possible. “Scrooge” was a compliment. When I first arrived at CCS, in 1976, shortly after it had converted from a two-year certificate-granting institution to a bona-fide four-year degree-granting institution, he held sway. Outside the exercise of his professional responsibilities, he was a genuinely congenial and easy-going guy, but in his office, watch out! He had the cop’s “command and control” demeanor, and a bulldog’s stocky, solid build. He always wore a white or off-white dress shirt, no tie, sleeves rolled up to reveal muscular forearms—he might have anchored a bowling team in his off-hours. His wife, whom I met once, was unfailingly sweet and good-natured.If I ran out of chalk in a classroom, I had to make a trip to his office (a building away) for more. On my first visit, I expected that he would give me at least a box of chalk—if not several—to keep in the department offices. This appeal must have happened before, though. He was prepared. He rummaged in his desk for a moment and produced two clean white sticks, admonishing me to use them sparingly. When I suggested that it was ridiculous for me to walk over to his office just for two sticks of chalk, I got the command and control glare.The academic department had no typewriter. The secretarial staff in the main office had, I believe, just started converting from manuals to IBM Selectrics. I asked about getting a typewriter for our department and, several days later, was given a Smith-Corona portable electric typewriter purchased at K-Mart. We used that for several years. We may have gotten a second one later. It took a couple of years of typing out letters and memos on what was essentially a student’s dorm-room typewriter, with its only marginally professional look, to be qualified for a Selectric.I was told that he locked the sugar (for the staff coffee machine) in the safe when he went home at the end of the day to make sure no one stole it or used more than their fair share.On several occasions, impatient with this regime, I purchased some office supplies on my own and asked to be reimbursed. The sum total of my purchases over several occasions could not have come to more than $60 (in a school with a $3 or $4 million dollar budget. In variably, though, he was furious that I had purchased something without using the school’s tax i.d. so I could avoid the sales tax. He read me the riot act until I told him to go ahead and take the sales tax out of my salary—we were talking about less than $2.He gradually had to give up his iron-fisted control with the arrival of a new administration that took us from the era of the ditto machine to actual copy machines like other organizations had had for decades. We knew the modern world had arrived when the Academic Studies Department was finally allocated a small desktop computer to use for word processing.Eventually he retired, and I understand that he, his wife and friends drove their giant recreational vehicles around the country to places like Lake Powell, where they enjoyed the camping life. He had, honestly, been a good steward of the institution’s finances, and an okay guy when I wasn’t asking for money, so I was glad to hear that he was happy.And, truth be told, he did influence me: even in our current, more environmentally-conscious times, institutions use reams and reams of paper, almost always only on one side, sometimes only for a couple of lines of information (even now, with inter- and intra- departmental e-mail). CCS was no different; it just went through trees at a lower rate than a big institution like Wayne State. Asking myself, what would J.C. do, I decided that I would collect this barely-used paper and recycle it, making notes for class discussion and lecture, printing meeting agendas, etc., etc. One day, I told the dean I had such a collection, and it was increasing at an alarming rate—I couldn’t write notes, memos, agendas fast enough. He laughed and gave me the J.C. prize for the day. There was no medal, no plaque, no document (we had to save money, after all). In fact, there was nothing—it was a joke in passing. But I did get a special frisson at having deserved such merit. J.C., wherever he was, cruising highways and byways, probably smiled with satisfaction at his enduring legacy.
My turn:
J.C. had stock in K-Mart which was why we bought everything there.
He watched a box of paint with my name written on it for weeks, waiting for me to "steal" it. Finally, in desperation, he asked me about the box. I had no idea there was a box of paint with my name written on it but I looked into it and found out it belonged to the sculpture department. They put my name on it so no one else would steal it!
“Ha! Got’em by the short Hairs”A boast by the CFO of Center for Creative Studies—I didn’t hear this directly. It was reported to me. But I could imagine him saying it, with his fist clenched, and a sense that he was saving the institution from financial collapse and disappearance into the abyss. His initials were J.C. (I’ll withhold his full name.) Interestingly, “J.C.” are also the initials of another not-so-very-unknown messianic figure.CFO overstates his title—he was the school’s accountant. He handled all the financial transactions, and in that capacity he considered it his personal mission to be as tight-fisted as possible. “Scrooge” was a compliment. When I first arrived at CCS, in 1976, shortly after it had converted from a two-year certificate-granting institution to a bona-fide four-year degree-granting institution, he held sway. Outside the exercise of his professional responsibilities, he was a genuinely congenial and easy-going guy, but in his office, watch out! He had the cop’s “command and control” demeanor, and a bulldog’s stocky, solid build. He always wore a white or off-white dress shirt, no tie, sleeves rolled up to reveal muscular forearms—he might have anchored a bowling team in his off-hours. His wife, whom I met once, was unfailingly sweet and good-natured.If I ran out of chalk in a classroom, I had to make a trip to his office (a building away) for more. On my first visit, I expected that he would give me at least a box of chalk—if not several—to keep in the department offices. This appeal must have happened before, though. He was prepared. He rummaged in his desk for a moment and produced two clean white sticks, admonishing me to use them sparingly. When I suggested that it was ridiculous for me to walk over to his office just for two sticks of chalk, I got the command and control glare.The academic department had no typewriter. The secretarial staff in the main office had, I believe, just started converting from manuals to IBM Selectrics. I asked about getting a typewriter for our department and, several days later, was given a Smith-Corona portable electric typewriter purchased at K-Mart. We used that for several years. We may have gotten a second one later. It took a couple of years of typing out letters and memos on what was essentially a student’s dorm-room typewriter, with its only marginally professional look, to be qualified for a Selectric.I was told that he locked the sugar (for the staff coffee machine) in the safe when he went home at the end of the day to make sure no one stole it or used more than their fair share.On several occasions, impatient with this regime, I purchased some office supplies on my own and asked to be reimbursed. The sum total of my purchases over several occasions could not have come to more than $60 (in a school with a $3 or $4 million dollar budget. In variably, though, he was furious that I had purchased something without using the school’s tax i.d. so I could avoid the sales tax. He read me the riot act until I told him to go ahead and take the sales tax out of my salary—we were talking about less than $2.He gradually had to give up his iron-fisted control with the arrival of a new administration that took us from the era of the ditto machine to actual copy machines like other organizations had had for decades. We knew the modern world had arrived when the Academic Studies Department was finally allocated a small desktop computer to use for word processing.Eventually he retired, and I understand that he, his wife and friends drove their giant recreational vehicles around the country to places like Lake Powell, where they enjoyed the camping life. He had, honestly, been a good steward of the institution’s finances, and an okay guy when I wasn’t asking for money, so I was glad to hear that he was happy.And, truth be told, he did influence me: even in our current, more environmentally-conscious times, institutions use reams and reams of paper, almost always only on one side, sometimes only for a couple of lines of information (even now, with inter- and intra- departmental e-mail). CCS was no different; it just went through trees at a lower rate than a big institution like Wayne State. Asking myself, what would J.C. do, I decided that I would collect this barely-used paper and recycle it, making notes for class discussion and lecture, printing meeting agendas, etc., etc. One day, I told the dean I had such a collection, and it was increasing at an alarming rate—I couldn’t write notes, memos, agendas fast enough. He laughed and gave me the J.C. prize for the day. There was no medal, no plaque, no document (we had to save money, after all). In fact, there was nothing—it was a joke in passing. But I did get a special frisson at having deserved such merit. J.C., wherever he was, cruising highways and byways, probably smiled with satisfaction at his enduring legacy.
My turn:
J.C. had stock in K-Mart which was why we bought everything there.
He watched a box of paint with my name written on it for weeks, waiting for me to "steal" it. Finally, in desperation, he asked me about the box. I had no idea there was a box of paint with my name written on it but I looked into it and found out it belonged to the sculpture department. They put my name on it so no one else would steal it!
Here begins a collection of JC stories. The one about the paint is great!
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