|
Melinda Iuster is a speech pathologist and writer, living in Santa Cruz, who was dedicated to finishing college no matter what it took. She is a long-time member of the Tuesday evening writing practice class. She wrote this piece in response to the prompt, "Something I Did to Make Ends Meet."
It started out so little, just a few computer cards. Just a box or two of used computer punch cards. I guess they were used to program very early computers in 1978. The boxes of used computer cards were stacked on the loading dock of the UC Davis physiology building... building 700. My boyfriend Dave swiped a couple of boxes occasionally as he left his lab, and brought them to a recycling center where he was paid about eight dollars. Eight dollars was a lot of money. If I try to correlate those eight dollars with today's money, it would be about eighty dollars. On those eight dollars we could either go out to dinner, or to a movie. I could afford a movie about twice a year.
"Take more cards," I would beg.
"No, Melinda, it makes me nervous."
He wouldn't do it, so Sharon and I decided to take them ourselves. Sharon Williams was my dearest friend. She was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis in our senior year of college, so it became impossible for her to ride her bike with me to school. Neither of us owned a car, so her boyfriend supplied her with a 15-year-old Vega station wagon. That is the car we used to nab a few computer card boxes and take them to the recycling center.
We shrieked in delight: $10 dollars to split. We knew a Mexican restaurant where we could share a tostada for $4 dollars, and still have some money left over. The next week we became more brazen: 6 boxes - $30 dollars. Giddy with delight, we went shopping and bought matching jeans and sandals.
The next week it was 8 boxes, and the week after that, 10 heavy boxes, each weighing about 20 pounds. Her Vega station wagon hung low as we slunk home from UC Davis to Sacramento in the dark of night. The next day, between our Stuttering and Articulation classes, we drove the heavily-laden jalopy to the recycling station. One hundred dollars! Hallelujah, it was now paying our rent.
It was the night before our Stuttering final and our semester was almost over. Sharon was going to be leaving college. She was giving up. Her disease had progressed; the stress was too much. But there we were in the dark, dark night taking the long trek from Sacramento on highway 80 to retrieve another shipment of computer cards. We stopped the car at the loading dock and stuffed her car full.
Suddenly the whole area was flooded with light from every angle, blinding our eyes. Sirens were blaring from all directions as police cars closed in on us. The bullhorn barked: "Turn around, hands up on the car." Three police men raced to our sides with their guns drawn. "You have the right to remain silent..."
Oh my god, I thought, They are reading us our rights.
They opened the car and began ripping into the boxes, the glove compartment, under the seats.
Then Sharon yelled, "Hey, get out of my car."
"Stop yelling Sharon. We can't go to jail, we have a Stuttering final tomorrow morning," I whispered.
That's when I began to cry.
"What are you two girls doing?" The police looked at us, stumped.
I spoke up, "We are taking the computer cards to the recycling center to make a little money." I tried to make us sound really pitiful so he would have some mercy. "We are so poor, the money helps us survive." The policemen looked at us, dumfounded. The car was stuffed with a ton of cardboard. The old car hung so low it almost dragged on the pavement.
The policeman explained that someone had been stealing equipment from the labs and they were trying to catch the thieves. "Go home, you two. Take the cardboard and go, and ladies: please don't come back."
Our bodies trembled as we sat back down in the car. We drove past the flood lights, the 10 police cars, and down highway 80 to Sacramento. The next morning we went to school, took our Stuttering final, recycled our cardboard and split 150 dollars. Then I said good-bye to my best friend, her old Vega station wagon, and my profession stealing cardboard from UC Davis.
Trackback(0)
 |
TrackBack URI for this entry
Subscribe to this comment's feed
Subscribe to RSS Feed
