It was Friday, April 17, 1987.<\/p>\n
I’d been out of work for two solid weeks.\u00a0 I’d finally meandered my way down to the unemployment office.\u00a0<\/p>\n
I’ve been on unemployment twice in the past twenty years.\u00a0 Most recently, in 2003 when the Clinton Recession in the software market left me with no work for five months and skimpy work for six more, it was a streamlined, online snap; you applied online, called in your hours by phone, and got your checks by direct deposit.\u00a0 Miserable as unemployment was, it was one state program that’s actually gotten easier.\u00a0 And the legislators and bureaucrats had even gotten together to help things make some sense; if you made a few bucks on a freelance job, they’d just deduct it from\u00a0 your unemployment check rather than threaten to kick you off.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In 1987?\u00a0 You went downtown with a folder full of paperwork.\u00a0 And you got in line.\u00a0 And waited.\u00a0 And waited.\u00a0<\/p>\n
And talked with a frumpy, grumpy person who really seemed to hate dealing with you.<\/p>\n
And got a stern warning that if you picked up any income on the side, tried to stretch your check in any way, you could lose your unemployment coverage.\u00a0<\/p>\n
And went forth with a time to come back and fill out more paperwork.\u00a0 And wait.\u00a0 And wait.\u00a0 And wait some more.<\/p>\n
It took a month, as I recall, to actually get an unemployment check.\u00a0 I think it was $275 for two week’s non-work.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Better than nothing.\u00a0<\/p>\n
———-<\/p>\n
But I did finally find out why my roommates and I were getting the stink-eye from the neighbors.<\/p>\n
I walked over to Henri’s one warm afternoon after a day of job-hunting – a little neighborhood corner bar with a pool table, great burgers and $1.50 pints of beer – for a drink one afternoon.\u00a0 I got to talking with the waitress – something I spent a lot of time doing in the next few months.<\/p>\n
I told her I lived in the duplex at the corner of Minnehaha and Fry.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“Ah”, she said.\u00a0 “You heard about what happened, didn’t you?”<\/p>\n
She started explaining…and it came back to me, a news story that Karen Booth had covered at KSTP a few months earlier.\u00a0 An unemployed\u00a0social worker had hatched a project; build a group home in a duplex.\u00a0 On one side of the duplex would be juvenile victims of sexual abuse.\u00a0<\/p>\n
On the other side of the duplex – adult perpetrators of sexual abuse.<\/p>\n
I’ll let that sink in for a moment.\u00a0 Goodness knows I had to.<\/p>\n
The neighbors in the Midway, Karen duly reported, had risen up in arms, veritably storming City Hall to get the Council to nix the idea.\u00a0 Which, after the usual bureaucratic legerdemain, they had done.\u00a0<\/p>\n
News cycles passed.\u00a0 I forgot about the story.<\/p>\n
Until, sitting on a bar stool at Henri’s talking to Lori the waitress, it dawned on me.\u00a0<\/p>\n
I’d moved into that <\/em>duplex.\u00a0 My landlord was that <\/em>social worker.\u00a0<\/p>\n Some of my neighbors were wondering if I was one of those <\/em>guys.<\/p>\n But the duplex was a nice place.\u00a0 And I figured – if the landlord had\u00a0hatched the group home idea, he must <\/em>have worked out a lifetime of dumb.<\/p>\n It couldn’t get any worse.\u00a0 Could it?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It was Friday, April 17, 1987. I’d been out of work for two solid weeks.\u00a0 I’d finally meandered my way down to the unemployment office.\u00a0 I’ve been on unemployment twice in the past twenty years.\u00a0 Most recently, in 2003 when the Clinton Recession in the software market left me with no work for five months […]<\/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-654","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\/654","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=654"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/654\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=654"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=654"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=654"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}