November 14, 2003

for daddy

My dad worked his way up from an accountant to Vice President, Secretary and Treasurer at a company that no longer exists - Falstaff Beer.

He was such a loyal employee that he had both my sister and I bow our heads whenever we passed the old Falstaff headquarters at 5050 Oakland in St. Louis, Missouri. I had my first sip of beer when I was but a toddler, and by age 6, I knew the proper way to pour a beer and serve it to a guest.

Daddy has been dead for gee, 7 years. He gave his life to a corporation, and the corporation pretty much shit on him and all the other people who had worked for many, many years at Falstaff. For the history of the company, go here.

My dad lost his livelihood, his pride, his home, his honor when the brewery was bought by a very petty, evil man, way back in 1975, when I was a senior in college.

I remember it well, because Daddy was in the hospital with a gangrenous (yes, gangrenous) appendix, and right after surgery, the man who bought the company, Paul Kalmanovich (may he rot in hell), called him in his hospital room and fired him. Yes, after 42 years of service, he fired my dad.

What made it worse was that Daddy, age 62, not eligible (at that time) for Social Security, had to go look for a job and accept unemployment benefits.

Mom and dad had to sell the house we grew up in and move into an apartment.

The company refused to give him his pension - which he had paid into for all those years. Daddy, along with other executives at Falstaff, had to fight for his pension in court - it went all the way to the Supreme Court, and finally, 5 years later, after losing everything, Daddy won.

Now, this was back in the days when a Fortune 500 executive made way under $100,000 a year - my dad made $42,000 a year when he was fired back in 1975. Corporate executives were not the millionaires they are today.

Why am I talking about this? I don't know. Perhaps it explains my very deep distrust for corporations - they do not have their employee's best interests at heart.

Tears still come to my eyes when I think of the pain my mom and dad went through. He had worked his way up from nothing and then lost it all to the capriciousness of a nasty rich man.

Neither of my parents ever recovered from this - they found that many of their friends were really friends only because of Daddy's position. Mom developed a drinking problem, got over it, and then died suddenly of a cerebral hemmoraghe at age 69, when Andy was only 1 year old.

Perhaps this is a warning to all - don't put all your eggs in one basket, don't ever depend on a cold corporation to stand behind you - always keep a resume handy, and know who your true friends are.

Posted by Beth at 07:33 PM

October 29, 2003

This is my blog

I have deleted comments to my post last night about hyphenated-americans.
If you cannot put down a name, you don't get to comment here.
I am paying for this blog. I don't have to give anyone free speech rights here unless I wanna.
As for Dina, sorry, dear, I have decided to block your IP.
There was no discussion on the merits of my thoughts.
And, Dina, no, I don't want everyone to be the same, but I do want Americans to identify themselves as Americans first.

Posted by Beth at 05:50 AM

October 26, 2003

It's Sunday and I have

absolutely nothing to say for now.
Go read all the good bloggers. They are on my blogroll. (-:

Posted by Beth at 09:55 AM

October 12, 2003

I am:

Actually, that's fairly accurate. I am an oddball!
Thanks to his most Imperial Emperor for the link!

Posted by Beth at 06:00 PM

October 06, 2003

What is really important to me?

John, Andy and all the critters.

Posted by Beth at 07:06 PM

October 04, 2003

Politics

I often feel that my own political beliefs are such that I cannot safely discuss them with co-workers, etc. Why? Heck, I guess it is political correctness and all that other rot.
I used to be quite the liberal - in fact, I was a Democrat Precinct Captain in Johnson County, Kansas - a Republican stronghold, until Bill Clinton was elected.

I'm not sure why I changed my thinking on things, or even if I changed my thinking - I think the Democrat Party moved really far away from me in the 70s and 80s and 90s.

Yes, that does make me old - pbbblllllltttt. I'm 50.

I remeber the day that JFK was killed - I was in 3rd Grade French Class ( we had a teacher who always reminded me of a French Hen), when Reverend Mother McMally came into our classroom to ask us to go to the chapel and pray, because President Kennedy had been shot. School was dismissed until the day after the funeral.

I remember when Robert Kennedy was shot - I was spending the night at Laurie Lamberton's house and we saw it all on TV.

I remember when Martin Luther King was shot - mostly because the assasination caused riots in many cities all over the country.

I was a Hubert Humphrey democrat - I have always felt that our National Defense was of most importance, but that social concerns needed to be addressed, also.

Well, I could on with this, but I'll skip a few decades.

When I was 32, I had my son, Andy.

When I was 34, I miscarried, and was crushed for a long time - I then started feeling very angry towards so-called pro-choicers (I prefer to think of them as pro-abortionists) because they denied the humanity of those babies not yet born, yet I felt to my very soul that a separate little human being in my care had died for whatever reason - this was not just a lump of tissue!

I had another miscarriage at 37. My then Mother-in-law said it was just as well, because her son, my husband, had some health problems at the time.

When I was 39, I lost my third pregnancy - this one was so much worse because I had made it past 4 months - had just seen a wonderful sonogram of our baby, and then I got influenza, a fever of 104, and lost that baby. This was such an awful experience, along with other issues, my 18 year marriage began to come to a close.

Anyway, as one who has lost 3 babies naturally - I have real problems with women who can so easily dismiss the children of their own flesh and blood as body parts - pieces of tissue - nothing alive in its own right.

I started leaning more towards the right of middle.

When I was a year out of college, I joined the Army Reserve as a behavioral science specialist. When I did this, a lot of my liberal friends mocked me, but I have always felt that I should give back just a little to our country - we do live in the most wonderful place on earh. I was embarrassed to tell people that I could not do anything on a weekend because I had my Reserve weekend to serve.

I met some so-called feminists who were active members of NOW when I was was in my 30's - one of them tried to convince me that abortion was a better end for a baby than adoption - when I told her I had been adopted, she told me I would have been better off dead.

ArggghhhH!!!

And they think Republicans are cold blooded?

I am also very much a libertarian. I do think the current ' drug war" is an incredible waste of money - I think that the majority of drug abusers/sellers in prison would be better off by far in a detox or community setting - this should not be a crime unless you do something really evil in tandem with the drug use.

I don't care if someone it gay or straight or bi. It's their business, their issue, and as long as no one is fucking in public, I don't care who does who in what matter.

I hate over regulation. I will never live in a neighborhood with a Homeowners Association. I want to landscape my yard the way I want to do it - not the way some overpaid designer has decided upon.

damn, this is getting really long. I am not a Republican, but I am less of a Democrat. I will most likely vote Republican, because writing in a name is pretty much of a waste of my vote.

Actually, most politicians are pretty damn close to evil in my mind - how many are really there to serve the people? Or, how many are there in an effort to impress someone or other?

I'm tired. Going to bed!

Posted by Beth at 08:31 PM