1980

I had worked briefly at JB White's Dept. Store over Christmas, until I hurt my back. I was trying to get some bags off of a shelf above my head, and the weight shifted. I was out of work. In 1980, the Census was being taken, and I thought that would be a cool job. I had to take an oath to the federal government, which was kinda strange, since 6 years before I had wanted to overthrow the govt. My job was Special Places Clerk. I worked in the office and sent people out to count folks in colleges, hotels, motels, bus stations, and other places were there were transients. It was pretty interesting work. After we did that, my job changed to finding folks who didn't return their forms, and I was also the liason between the Census Bureau and local governments in our area of 5 counties. Most towns and cities accepted our counts, but Columbia wanted to challenge it. The formula was $1500 in federal tax dollars for every person in the city, so the more people they had, the more money they would get from the govt. Columbia provided me with a bunch of addresses that we didn't count, and I had to research each one. They were right about some of them, but one turned out to be a dugout on a baseball field. They tried to say that a homeless man lived there, but we could never find him. In the end, they gained about 2000 people from our count, but that was far less than what they wanted. One great part about my job was sending out marshalls for enforcement. I called to a motel in Sumter one day to find out about their facilities. Whatever they had like a refrigerator in the rooms, determined how they were classified. The woman at the motel refused to give me that information. I told her she was violating federal law by not providing it ot me. She said she didn't care and hung up on me. So, I sent the marshalls. Later that day, she called me to apologize and thought I was just kidding. I loved the power. The govt. taught me how to find people. It is a talent that I have. One day, I called a woman in Winnsboro. Her husband had not paid taxes in 7 years. I asked to speak to him, and she said he was gone. I asked when he would be back. She said he was passed. I had never heard that term before, and that's when she started crying on the phone and hung up. I found out what that meant. So, I worked in a rather secure job, working with a lot of sensitive materials. After 9 months of this, my boss asked me one day if I had had a background check done on me for my job. I said no, so they sent me to the police station and had my fingerprints taken. They also did a background check. A week later, my boss told me that my job had been "phased out". It turned out that the FBI file came up, and I was deemed a risk. Nevermind that I had the job for 9 months, but I guess they were afraid that I was going to turn over the info to the Russians, so I was let go.