{"id":39932,"date":"2005-10-05T12:00:34","date_gmt":"2005-10-05T17:00:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=39932"},"modified":"2013-11-19T18:06:47","modified_gmt":"2013-11-20T00:06:47","slug":"it-was-twenty-years-ago-today-part-iv","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=39932","title":{"rendered":"It Was Twenty Years Ago Today, Part IV"},"content":{"rendered":"

Resumes in hand – and an actual job lead clipped from the Sunday Star\/Tribune (which, I didn’t yet know, didn’t put all<\/em> of its job leads in the outstate edition), I set my date: Monday, October 14.<\/p>\n

I had a couch or two to stay on. I had a company in the Twin Cities that was interested in talking with me when I got to town.<\/p>\n

I had a goal!<\/p>\n

I had nine days to kill before I could blow out of town, outside of work (which at that time was doing roofing and siding in the tiny town of Cleveland, North Dakota). But I had a little spring in my step that I hadn’t had before my impulsive decision to move.<\/p>\n

Did I mention that I had nine days to kill?<\/p>\n

I spent part of it working on my car.<\/p>\n

Of course, my car needed at least that long to be ready to go.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

I was driving my first car at this point – a 1973 Malibu that I’d bought from my pal Rich Larson. I’d paid $125 and a case of beer for it. (Don’t laugh – I think at that point North Dakota title transfer forms had space for things like beer and cattle along with money). It had been a “farm car” in Northern Minnesota (from whence Rich hailed). This was important; in the winter, Minnesota salted its roads, while North Dakota used some sort of chemical or another. As a result, fifteen year old cars in North Dakota were frequently pretty pristine, while Minnesota cars tended to get mottled with rust. The Malibu? Well, it has gotten me through a year and a half of college, and even a couple of trips to Fargo – 90 miles, no accidents or breakdowns. She ran great, but rust had eaten most of the side panels up to the two foot level. The driver’s side door panel flapped in the breeze; if I got going much more than 20 miles per hour, it picked up a bit of an airfoil effect; I’m sure if I could have gotten it up to 150 it might have taken flight (and rolled me over clockwise, since the left door panel was either fine or completely rusted away; I can’t remember).<\/p>\n

But it had a 350, and it could still go plenty fast. Although the tires were bald and, not being much of a mechanic, the thing was pretty much running on faith.<\/p>\n

I bought a couple of new used tires, changed the oil, and got ‘er ready for the trip.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Resumes in hand – and an actual job lead clipped from the Sunday Star\/Tribune (which, I didn’t yet know, didn’t put all of its job leads in the outstate edition), I set my date: Monday, October 14. I had a couch or two to stay on. I had a company in the Twin Cities that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-39932","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-twenty-years-ago-today"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39932","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=39932"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39932\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39938,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39932\/revisions\/39938"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=39932"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=39932"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=39932"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}