Name/Title
It's A Good Thing He Got To Be A LawyerScope and Content
Poem by June Kelly, date unknown. Black print on basic 8.5"X11" white paper. The print is light but still legible.
Hand written note at the top of the page: (Did this as a writing exercise after a casual conversation with John Schlom)
IT'S A GOOD THING HE GOT TO BE A LAWYER!
By June Kelly
Today Johnny is a successful, well-respected, very busy attorney-at-law in a small, progressive city in the center of a rich agricultural community. He has come a long way from his student days at the University of Wisconsin.
Back then he was a young struggling family man, going to school and working, too. Jobs were extremely scarce. But he needed a job with a capital NEED. Most any kind of a job would be greatly appreciated. As he was searching, he came across a job he thought he could handle: wanted, auto mechanic.
After all, Johnny had always worked on his own cars. He kept them in good running order. Whenever there was a problem, he tackled it and always came up with a solution. What could be so hard working in a service garage?
He may have had an inkling when he walked into the shop and saw the work pits, hydraulic lifts, automatic tools, various ratchets, wrenches, clamps, and a myriad of odd-shaped hand tools, strange and mysterious, kinds he had never seen before. This certainly was different from the little workshop he had in his one-car garage at home!
It wasn't long after he got the job that he realized he might have overstated his automotive capabilities. He was convinced of it when a car owner brought in his expensive, exotic, English
model car to be serviced. For some reason its electrical system was on the blink.
Johnny opened the hood, gulped and felt the blood drain from his head. His hands became clammy. What do I do now? he wondered. Where the heck do I start? Well, he wasn't going to give up that easily. He pulled on this wire and shoved on that spring. He gave a tug to a belt and wiggled a pulley. He traced this hose system and looked at the battery cells. What in the world was this bulbous looking thing? He barely touched it and found out in a split second!
It was an under-the-hood starter, he discovered, as the car lurched forward, restrained only by the shop's outside wall, its magnificent horsepower testing the tensile strength of the wall, making a loud, grinding, gnashing, errrr-errrr-errrr-errrrring sound. The split-second action required a split-second re-action by Johnny.
He quickly looked around to see if anyone had witnessed his predicament. "Thank God," he murmured, as he swiftly turned off the engine. Then, slowly moving the vehicle back, away from the wall, he resumed his systematic testing of every link and line from fuse to fuel pump.
By some lucky instinct or chance, he corrected the malfunction. His sigh of relief sounded like a fast leaking tire puncture.
Feeling pretty good about himself by that time, he felt more confident when, some time later, a customer brought in a special custom classic for a check-up with oil and lube included. It
was the type of vehicle that had to be slightly elevated in the middle to open up the places to be lubricated.
Thanking his stars that he knew about this technique, he promptly set about getting the jack under the proper stress point and flipped the "on" switch which worked perfectly. Unfortunately, the "off" switch was not in such perfectly working condition. To his horror, Johnny watched the car arch in the middle while the front end and back end hung down helplessly.
Frantically flipping, jiggling, tugging, shaking, trying to reverse the upward motion of the hydraulic monster, Johnny's thoughts were racing toward a sledge hammer conclusion. Suddenly, just before the imagined snap, crack and pop, the motion stopped and he was able
to release the power that brought the car on a downward track. A forehead, sweat-wiping whew! was heard wafting up from the pit.
One day a nattily dressed customer brought in his Mercedes-Benz for a simple clean-up-wash job. Wow! I can do that! Happily Johnny pulled out the floor mats and set them aside. He got
the vac, whisk broom, the polishing cloth, the pail and chamois. When he was finished, he stood back to admire the sparking beauty.
Oh, Oh, almost forgot the floor mats. He turned around to pick them up. No mats. No mats?! Oh. My. God. He asked his fellow workers if they had seen them. One of them commented that the
garbage hauler had just been there to pick up the trash.
Johnny's only recourse was to call the hauler's company to see if he still had them on the truck. Worse luck! That pick-up had been his last stop. That load was already deposited in the Dane
County Dump. (They called landfills dumps in those days.) Finding the truck driver, Johnny asked him approximately where he made the tip-up. After a few hours of scrounging through hundreds of pounds of trash, junk and dirt, he found the blasted M-B mats.
This job must have been a great learning experience. since Johnny remembered it in such detail. Perhaps he finds some use for it in his law practice. But, for the good of the automotive world, it's a good thing he got to be a lawyer!
* Typed as written by author.Acquisition
Accession
2016.0088Source or Donor
Waupun Historical SocietyAcquisition Method
Collected by Staff
