A-Mazed in Oriab 2
- A-MAZED IN ORIAB 2 - A black ink and black color pencil drawing on an 11 x 14 size coquille board. It appears in the book, "Iced On Aran," by Brian Lumley, published by Ganley in 1992.
In 1974 at the age of 44, having lost my job, I decided to try to earn a living as a full time self-employed illustrator. It was a very difficult decision to make and there would be a huge price to pay; I would be leaving behind 25 years of acquired Electronics knowledge, and wasting years of experience I had accumulated in the US Air Force, and later at Dumont, Curtiss Wright, and Simmonds Precision. I was especially concerned that being self-employed, I would no longer be getting the benefits that come as an employee of an electronics company; medical coverage for myself and my family, paid vacation time, paid holidays, paid sick days . . . Somehow I would have to deal with that.
So I started drawing and painting full time and things were going fine. But about a month after Simmonds Precision had terminated my job, my doorbell rang. My visitor was one of the managers from Simmonds, one that I knew and got along with. He had been sent to talk to me about my job. Apparently when they decided to release me they didn't realize how many top priority jobs I had been working on, and there was nobody else in a position to work on them! So my visitor asked me, "What will it take to get you to come back to work, Steve?"
Suddenly, I could have had my job back, probably with a modest raise and all the benefits, which included a month of paid vacation time! And unbelievably, I turned them down!
I moved back to New Jersey and continued to illustrate, and after a few years my family and I went to Vermont for a weekend vacation and when we passed Simmonds, it wasn't there any more! A big sign at the entrance read, "GOODYEAR Manufacturing Division". Funny how things work out.
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