American TV: Between it and Signetics
After the day that I quit American Television Service and spent the remainder of the morning and into the afternoon walking home there was a period of two months that I was without employment. We took a family vacation with Marie’s family to Colorado to Verl’s home area and on the way spent a little time stopping to see some of the wonders of nature that exist in Utah. I have pictures of Jeff and Ben in holes of rocks and to this day do not remember where we saw them other than it was between here and Colorado. That vacation was only one week of the approximately two months that I was unemployed. Verl let us go rent free until I was again employed and we used the savings we had put away to pay for bill and food during that time. I will always appreciate Verl for giving us the help. My mother also helped as she could with some money for our needs.
I had applied at the Employment Office in Provo and had to send in weekly surveys stating where and when I had applied for jobs and what I had done during the week. It was a terribly difficult thing for me to do since I had always been employed and didn’t like the fact that the government didn’t trust me, but I knew it wasn’t the government at fault just the freeloaders of the past and present who proved that the government had to ask those questions.
I applied finally at Signetics and in the interview with Aagie Olsen, the Maintenance Supervisor, I was asked a number of questions that I felt I had really bombed out on since it had been three years since I graduated in Electronics from Snow College. Aagie then asked if I had any questions and when I asked about what type of equipment that they repair I was simply told: “Nothing you have ever seen before.” He was right I had never seen anything like them, evaporators, masking machines, furnaces, and later Ion Implanters and Series 10 Plasma machines. I have also always appreciated Aagie who gave me a chance to work probably based more on my willingness to work than on my knowledge of electronics. I didn’t realize it at the time but when he said “we will train you on the equipment” it meant more than just doing electronic repair but would also include drafting, plumbing, carpentry, janitorial labor, supervising, design, and a host of other jobs that just don’t get covered in a two or even four year degree in college. Life is like that though, you train in a little area and then get a job where you become trained on what you really have to do on that job and it isn’t ever just one thing or at least hasn’t been in any of my employment histories.
