Events and activities discussed in the preceding two segments began as
a result of my coming to TIMEX’s Little Rock Plant 2 as accounting manager in
January, 1964, a position I retained until February, 1981; I was a member of
the Worldwide Customer Service Group (sort of an oversight committee) the last year and a half before I
retired.
I have
used three titles (Plant Accountant, Controller, and Accounting Manager) for
the positions I held at Abilene and Little Rock Plant 2. All three meant the same thing; I was
responsible for all accounting operations during my tenure at each plant. The job title changed over the years, from
Plant Accountant to Controller to Accounting Manager, but my responsibilities
and pay grade stayed the same. Nor did
my pay grade change in early 1981 when I moved from the job of managing Little
Rock Plant 2 accounting operations to the Worldwide Customer Service Group. I joked at my retirement luncheon that I was probably the only
person in the United States who had stayed with the some company for
twenty-five years without receiving a promotion.
The first several years at Little Rock Plant 2 were tough – largely
because it was a new facility started from scratch, but also because we had to
deal with inherited “cans of worms.” My
staff had no TIMEX experience, so my days were spent at “management”
activity, then for at least a couple of years I returned to the plant most
weeknights after supper to work on routine accounting tasks, just to get our
work done; the whole staff worked many Saturdays.
We eventually
reached the point (after several years) that Saturday work wasn’t routinely
required, so several of my group often played tennis on
Saturday mornings. Jim Hurst, until he
left our company to join the Affiliated Foods organization, regularly
joined George Tribble, Jim Johnston, and me in playing doubles;
the foursome continued after he left, with his place taken by Brenda
Riley. Those “Saturday morning tennis years” were my most enjoyable while with the TIMEX
organization.
As an accounting manager, both at Abilene and Little Rock, I tried to
follow a management maxim learned years earlier: “Hire people smarter than you are, then get out of the way and let them do their jobs.” I was fortunate in being able to hire some
very good people; George Tribble was with me from the beginning, I hired
Frances Forrest (now Brown) and Dorothy Shock (now Trickey) soon thereafter,
and Jim Johnston and Andy Bruner came on board during the early years. All of those were still around when I
retired (although Dorothy and Andy, as members of the information services
group, had been under home office management for several years before I
left). Many fine clerical personnel
(e.g., Brenda Riley) were a part of my staff as the years passed; Brenda was
still with our organization, in a responsible accounting position, when I
retired.
Hiring capable personnel and letting them do their jobs also left me
generally free (after our difficult early years) to do special assignments
(e.g., writing memos/speeches/presentations) for plant managers. I probably spent more time writing than at
any other activity:
·
I was the '‘ghostwriter" of hundreds of memos that
left Abilene and Little Rock Plant 2 over the names of the plant managers.
·
I drafted texts and made charts for many Customer Service
presentations, helped write and edit the script for a motion picture
presentation of customer service operations, and drafted operational procedures
as requested by plant managers.
·
I wrote speeches for Mario Fazio, one of whose titles was
“Customer Service Director,” for presentation at corporate managerial gatherings.
Frances
Forrest, a supervisor in my department, often laughed about my “book writing”
when she saw my work table covered with dozens of pieces of paper I was trying
to assemble into final form; I told her CPA was an acronym for “cut, paste, and
assemble,” so I was only doing what
I was trained for; rewriting a lengthy presentation usually required cutting up
early drafts and reassembling the segments for better thought flow – which had
to be done manually in those days before personal computers enabled writers to
“cut and paste” electronically.
I didn’t mind the extraneous writing responsibilities, for I had
capable people on my staff handling accounting routines; besides, the plant
manager was boss, and doing a decent job helping him with his duties protected
my own future.
From time
to time I reminded one of the plant managers (at some risk to my continued
employment, I’m sure) that because of my group’s ability to carry on the work
of my department, I could be fired, retired, or expired and things
would continue to run smoothly. I also
told him he could tell when my department was in trouble, for I would be bent
over my desk pushing a pencil, trying to help the troops get the work done –
and he could know things were running well if he saw me leaning back in my
chair with my feet propped up.
Living
dangerously with that plant manager extended to touchier situations. Once, as we reviewed a historical
presentation I had written (at his request) about activities at our plant, he
noted, critically, that some of the things mentioned favorably had occurred
before he became manager – at which point I (unwisely?) told him many good
things had been done prior to his arrival, and that truthful presentation of
the plant’s record required historical accuracy. Fortunately, he seemed unoffended, nor did he take umbrage later
in the conversation when, after he had questioned my reluctance to seek credit
for certain activities for which I had been responsible, I remarked that I
didn’t have the same ego needs he did.
Fortunately for me, his character was as big or bigger than his ego
needs.
Is it any wonder I received no promotions
during my twenty-five years with TIMEX, when I had no better sense than
talk as I sometimes did?
◊◊◊
I often had opportunity to kid
the troops at work; that kidding usually involved some sort of Arkansas versus
Texas comparison:
·
I told them I
had raised the average intelligence levels in both states when I moved from Texas to
Arkansas.
·
Soon after I
arrived in Little Rock (January, 1964) I told everyone that having a Texan as
president (Lyndon B. Johnson had recently been inaugurated following the
assassination of John F. Kennedy) meant that Texas would soon secede from the
union, annex the other forty-nine states, then change the name of the nation to
the United States of Texas.
·
I told them we
Texans never asked anyone where he was from; if he were a Texan he would soon
tell us, and if he weren’t we wouldn’t want to embarrass him.
·
Each time I
made a trip to Texas I asked the Arkansans if they had any requests for me to
relay to Saint Peter as I passed through the “pearly gates” at Texarkana on my
way into the “promised land.”
I didn’t kid Arkansans about
Arkansas/Texas football; that subject was too serious. I was kidded a little bit, but not badly,
when the Razorbacks defeated the Longhorns the first three years I was in
Little Rock (1964/65/66). My alma mater
seldom lost to the Razorbacks in the next sixteen years before my retirement,
so I came out well ahead as a whole.
Sometimes the teasing and
kidding at work was turned on me.
Frances Forrest told me the girls in her group said they wanted my heart if
they ever needed a transplant, because it had never been used. I hope they were joking.
A cute
comment, somewhat like the one about my unused heart, made about another
manager by someone not fond of him, was that Will Rogers must never have met that manager.
(Will Rogers once said he’d never met a man he didn’t like.)
My propensity for using humor to keep the work environment more
enjoyable backfired on at least one occasion.
I had noticed a news item about a person who had been forced to make an
irrevocable choice between spouse and children, so I asked the troops at work
the next day which they would choose if forced to make such a decision,
assuming that whichever they didn’t choose wouldn’t suffer, financially or
otherwise. We took a poll; some of the
gang indicated they would choose their spouses, others their children. Unfortunately, a couple of the ladies who
had chosen children instead of husbands told their spouses about the office
poll and confessed that the spouse had been the loser, thereby upsetting the
“rejected” husband.
As I recall,
most of the men said they would stay with their wives, and leave their children
to the care of others, while a majority of the ladies said they would keep the
children and let their husbands go.
When asked why I would choose wife over children, I replied that if I
chose Arlette, I would have her for life, whereas if I chose the kids I would
still lose them when they reached adulthood; besides, I had vowed to love,
honor, and cherish Arlette “until death did us part.”
◊◊◊
After seventeen years as accounting manager for customer service
operations at Little Rock Plant 2, I became a member of the Worldwide Customer
Service Group – a coordinating/oversight committee comprised of Mario Fazio,
Geary Pope, and me. Mario, by then the
General Manager over all Little Rock operations, whose office was at Plant 1,
headed the group; Geary and I moved into an office in that facility to be
near/with Mario, at his beck and call.
The three of us (Mario/Geary/Ken) spent most of May, 1981 touring our
European customer service operations; we also met with marketing/sales people
in London, Munich, and Paris. We
visited our customer service facilities in Copenhagen (Denmark), Pforzheim
(Germany), Besanćon (France), Lisbon (Portugal), and Dundee (Scotland). My principal task, reminding me of my days
as an operational auditor at Convair, was to review customer service receiving
and shipping procedures at each facility to determine that repairs were
processed expeditiously; that, as is the case with most audit work, was often
boring. However, we were able to do
non-boring things away from work at nearly every stop:
·
We spent the Sunday afternoon after first arriving in
London seeing a few of the city’s highlights. We walked the full length of Hyde Park, saw Buckingham Palace,
Big Ben, the Thames, the Parliament building, got as near to 10 Downing Street
as was possible, and saw the changing of the guard at the Admiralty.
·
We visited Tivoli Gardens in Copenhagen, a place of great beauty,
over twenty restaurants, and good outdoor entertainment.
·
The streets of Munich looked clean enough to eat on, but we didn’t; we had some great
pizza at an Italian restaurant.
·
We traveled by automobile from Munich to Pforzheim. I enjoyed seeing the German countryside; the
fencerows along the roadway looked manicured.
·
Pforzheim topography includes a man-made mountain comprised of war
rubble. Pforzheim escaped Allied
bombing until very near the end of WW II, but, when it happened, much of the
city was destroyed. I was told that
General Eisenhower ordered U.S. heavy equipment crews to put all the rubble in
one giant pile, to serve as a reminder of the price a nation can pay for
starting war. Thirty-six years had passed
by the time I saw it, so the mountain looked natural, covered by trees.
·
We spent a weekend in Paris, following a Friday meeting in
our sales office. Having eaten too well
at the cities already visited, we were ready for more mundane fare on Friday evening,
so found hamburgers and fries under golden arches just like those at home. On Saturday we rode the Metro (underground
railway) to Montmarte, saw Cathedral Sacre Coeur and stood in its foyer to hear
a youth choir sing for morning mass, watched painters working at Artists
Square, then went back downtown and visited Notre Dame cathedral as we walked
along the Seine; I went to see the Eiffel Tower while Mario and Geary visited
the Louvre (I could see original art work any time at home, so I took in things
peculiarly Parisian – until I returned to McDonalds for supper that evening).
·
We flew from Paris to Geneva, then traveled by automobile
to Besanćon. The topography of the
countryside between Geneva and Besanćon was much like the Boston Mountains
between Van Buren and Siloam Springs (along Arkansas 59), but our chauffeur
apparently considered the two-lane road through those hills a raceway. I could see the Peugot’s speedometer from my
vantage point in the center of the rear seat; it hovered around 160 KPH (about
96 miles per hour) throughout most of the drive.
·
We went to the westernmost point in Europe while in Lisbon,
an attractive city, but
quite arid compared to the green vistas we had grown used to. (Lisbon was the only place we were asked to
surrender our passports; the hotel kept them in its safe during our stay,
presumably as insurance against our skipping town without paying for our
rooms. I didn’t like the idea of being
without my passport, but nothing went wrong.)
·
We had a Sunday afternoon in Dundee, so drove to St.
Andrews (in Central Scotland, between Dundee and Edinburg) and saw (1) ruins of
St. Andrews Cathedral and (2) the world’s oldest golf course. Geary and Mario, both golfers, particularly enjoyed seeing the
golf course, as did I (from a historical standpoint, not as a player), but we
were also interested in the cathedral ruins.
Construction
of the cathedral (the largest in Scotland) was started in 1161, and was
completed in 1318. After partial
destruction by fire in 1378, then by storm in 1409, it was finally destroyed by
men in 1559 (during the Protestant Reformation, reportedly as a result of fiery
preaching by John Knox).
English was spoken everywhere
we went in Europe, usually fluently.
(Even though English is the language of international commerce, I am
nevertheless amazed at the ability of so many folks in other nations to speak
our language.)
During
our return flight to the United States (from London’s Gatwick airport to
Atlanta) the pilot left his cabin and entered the passenger area. Someone asked, “Who’s minding the store?” The pilot answered, “The plane is on
autopilot; we don’t have to touch the controls from the time we take off from
London until we are on the runway at the Atlanta airport.” I was astounded that radar, computers, and
other electronic gear could handle such complexities without human
intervention; I had considered electronic equipment as aids to, not substitutes
for, pilot skills. (The L-1011’s
landing at Atlanta was perfect.)
The tour and
review of European customer repair and service operations was my last special
assignment during nearly twenty-five years with TIMEX. I stayed around another year after that
trip, but retirement was ever on my mind.
I no longer had managerial challenges, so work was neither as demanding
nor as interesting as it once had been.
During the first half of those twenty-five years I often thought I was
overworked and underpaid; I reached the point in 1981-82 where I
was underworked and overpaid.
It was time to seriously consider leaving.
Whether
I was overworked/underpaid or vice versa at any time is a subjective
judgment. I’ve noted the long hours
worked and special assignments received (presumably because of demonstrated
ability) during the first half of my tenure, yet I received no salary reviews
during two extended periods – from mid-1958 to mid-1960, then for the first
five years I was in Little Rock (from 1964 to 1969). In the first instance, the plant manager was under the mistaken
impression that our company was in financial straits, so submitted no requests
for pay increases for any of Abilene’s thirteen monthly salaried personnel;
during the second period I reported directly to the corporate financial
vice-president (a change in reporting structure that lasted only those five
years), and I think I was simply forgotten, for annual salary reviews resumed
immediately after the management structure was changed and I began reporting to
Mort Goldberg, an assistant
vice-president. I knew the lapses were
unrelated to performance, for those years were among the most productive of my
career; I set up the accounting organization and reporting system in Puerto
Rico during the 1958-60 salary review hiatus, then did the same for the new
centralized repair and service facility in Little Rock, beginning in early
1964.
I
considered leaving during the 1958-60 period, but salary increases resumed
before I had opportunity to do so. I
didn’t seriously consider leaving during the 1964-69 period, because I wanted
to (1) become vested in the company retirement plan (fifteen years’ service was
required for vesting in those days) and (2) retain company-provided medical
insurance.
The plan under which I was
hired provided for retirement as early as age 55 (with drastically reduced
benefits, of course), so retirement at that age became my goal almost from the
day I went to work. Except for such
things as kids’ piano lessons, orthodontic work, college educations, and a few
RV trips, we watched our nickels closely in anticipation of early retirement.
As one example of our
frugality, we didn’t buy an air-conditioned automobile until November, 1975,
after both girls had finished college.
Actually, we saved more money over the years by buying no vehicles
than by purchasing autos without air conditioning. We’ve bought only five new vehicles for
family transportation: (1) a 1956 Fairlane Fordor, (2) a 1964 Fairlane hardtop,
(3) a 1975 Dodge Dart sedan, (4) a 1986 Ford Escort wagon, and (5) a 1997
Mercury Tracer sedan.
We
kept the 1956 Fairlane until 1969; Vicky drove it to school her last two years
at Hall High. Marty took the 1964
Fairlane with him when he entered the University of Texas, drove it throughout
his five years in Austin and until he was firmly established in a job and ready
to purchase a new 1981 VW Rabbit. We
gave the 1975 Dart to the missions group of the Arkansas Baptist Convention, to
be loaned to furloughing foreign missionaries.
As I write this, we still have the 1986 Escort and the 1997 Tracer, both
of which were purchased after Arlette and I retired from fulltime employment.
I’ve joked that we’ve
purchased a new car every eleven years since 1964, whether or not we needed it.
Lest
the automotive frugalities I’ve described seem too parsimonious, I should note
that we’ve owned at least two vehicles at all times since 1959. Some of the second vehicles were worn,
suitable only for driving to and from work; an exception was a new Ford pickup
we purchased March 27, 1972.
The following listing of all the autos (and one pickup) I have ever owned, and the costs thereof, shows why investments in personal vehicles absorbed relatively little of our incomes:
|
DESCRIPTION |
YEAR PURCHASED |
TRADE-IN |
PAID |
|
1940 Chevrolet Tudor
Sedan |
1948 |
None |
600.00 |
|
1949 Chevrolet Fastback
Tudor Sedan |
1958 |
None |
225.00 |
|
1950 Ford Custom Tudor
Sedan |
1953 |
1940 Chevrolet |
850.00 |
|
1954 Pontiac Chieftan
Fordor Sedan |
1960 |
1949 Chevrolet |
600.00 |
|
1956 Ford Fairlane
Fordor Sedan |
1955 |
1950 Ford |
2,100.00 |
|
1963 Ford Galaxie
Hardtop |
1968 |
None |
650.00 |
|
1964 Ford Fairlane
Hardtop |
1964 |
None |
2,450.00 |
|
1965 Ford Fairlane
Fordor |
1973 |
None |
200.00 |
|
1966 Ford Falcon Fordor |
1970 |
None |
500.00 |
|
1972 Ford F-100 Custom
SWB Pickup |
1972 |
1963 Galaxie |
2,350.00 |
|
1975 Dodge Dart Custom
Fordor |
1975 |
None |
4,200.00 |
|
1986 Ford Escort Fordor
Wagon |
1986 |
None |
7,700.00 |
|
1997 Mercury Tracer
Fordor Sedan |
1997 |
None |
10,300.00 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
32,725.00 |
Cash Outlay was the amount paid over and
above value of trade-ins, whose costs at time of purchase are individually
listed.
We call our Toreador Red 1997 Tracer “the Coca Cola car.” A Little Rock couple won it in a drawing
sponsored by Coca Cola, but immediately took it to Schilling Lincoln/Mercury
and traded upward to a larger automobile.
Schilling staff members told me the lady couldn’t handle the five-speed
manual transmission, and that the Tracer wasn’t really dimensionally adequate
for her; its size is fine for Arlette and me, and we appreciated the price
break we received because the car had passed through other hands before
reaching ours, but with only 113 miles on its odometer.
The $32,725 cost of vehicles
Arlette and I have owned is slightly overstated, for we received nominal
amounts of cash for the 1954 Pontiac and 1956 Ford when we disposed of
them. We received nothing for the 1964
and 1965 Fairlanes, the 1966 Falcon, the 1972 F-100 pickup, or the 1975 Dart
when we gave them away.
◊◊◊
Our ability to save for early
retirement was enhanced by Arlette’s eligibility, as a teacher, to participate
in a Tax Sheltered Annuity program, into which she was initially allowed to contribute
one-sixth of her salary; the allowable contribution was later increased to
one-fifth. The Tax Sheltered Annuity
was equivalent to Individual Retirement Accounts now available to everyone;
income tax liabilities are deferred until savings are distributed.
Arlette didn’t learn of the
program for several years, thus didn’t sign up when she was first
eligible. She was allowed to make up
back contributions after she enrolled, but missed out on the compounding that
would have occurred in the years between eligibility and sign-up.
The tax
deferred aspect of her plan was important to us, for our marginal federal
income tax rate during our later working years was 43%, which meant that Uncle
Sam received (1) that percentage of a portion of our salaries and (2)
forty-three cents of each dollar earned by our savings. Deferring income also saved on state income
taxes.
We prepared intensely for retirement during the seven years after all
three kids had “left the nest” (1975-1982). We paid for Marty’s education at the University of Texas during
five of those years, and assisted Vicky as she pursued her doctorate, but we
saved most of Arlette’s salary.
Fulfillment of our educational commitments to our children was
completed in 1980, when Marty and Vicky finished their work at UT:
·
Terry attained independence first.
She finished college in 1975, then taught in a church school while Gregg
attended seminary; he was called to serve as minister of music and youth at
Siloam Springs’ First Baptist Church after graduating from seminary in
1979. Terry almost immediately began
work toward her master’s degree in music education at the University of
Arkansas, but received a teaching fellowship, so needed no help from us other
than a small grant for her initial enrollment fee.
·
Marty graduated from the University of Texas at the end of the 1980
spring term and was employed first by a national CPA firm, then by Gulf Energy
Company. (He left accounting work after
a couple of years, when his interest turned to computers and consulting work.)
·
Vicky received her UT-Austin doctorate at the end of the 1980 summer
term, taught a year at the University of Texas at San Antonio, then founded The Reading, Thinking, and Learning Clinic
of San Antonio in the fall of 1981.
With the kids seemingly independent by late 1980, Arlette and I
glimpsed light at the end of the employment tunnel. That light grew brighter after I turned 55 on September 27, 1981,
eligible for early retirement. By
mid-1982 we believed we could safely retire, at a reduced but acceptable
standard of living, with minimum risk of digging too deeply into capital before
becoming eligible for social security benefits. Our capital included (1) Arlette’s deferred income accumulated
through her Tax Sheltered Annuity, (2) our pension accounts, and (3)
savings/investments accumulated (mostly during our last ten years of
employment). Although admittedly a
financial risk, retirement seemed defensible because (1) Arlette was tiring
from classroom stresses plus burgeoning reporting requirements and (2) my work
was no longer stimulating. We thought
we’d probably like time in abundance better than money in abundance; we could do with
fewer things if we had more time to use those things we had. Arlette wanted to paint seriously, we wanted
to travel, and I hoped to find some sort of volunteer effort at which I could
work outside and learn to use my hands for something other than pushing pencils
and calculator keys.
I had
spent most of fifty years (from age six to fifty-six) sitting at desks, growing
softer and less fit as my middle years wore on; I also developed a cough from
breathing second-hand smoke. However, I
was basically healthy, for I had gone for over twenty-four consecutive years
(from mid-November, 1957 until late March, 1982) without missing a scheduled
day of work.
[Bill
Van Horn, my boss at the Texas Education Agency back in the ‘50s, was fond of
saying that “smoking is a filthy, nasty habit to which I’m blissfully
addicted;” I was never blissfully addicted to second-hand smoke.]
So, as Red Skelton would have said, “We dood it!” Arlette, then 50, quit teaching
second-graders after the 1982 spring term, and I, almost 56, retired from TIMEX
on July 31. It had been a good run.