The Job

I got off work from Coca Cola in Mobile, AL about 7:30 that morning and drove across the street to the grocery store. Picked up a few things we needed. Connie was at home, asleep, having just gotten back from 6 months working at a hospital in St. Croix.

When I started the car they were talking on the radio about a plane crash. In New York City. Then, as I drove out of the parking lot, a second plane crashed and at that moment, all of us knew what was going down.

We were planning a move back to our hometown of Tulsa, Ok. We had been moving around the country for 17 years, mostly because there was high demand for someone who could run and maintain a soft drink bottling and canning operation. Uh, that would be me. But something happened that changed all that. A career change, a MAJOR career change. What could cause all that? My first granddaughter was born.

The house we were moving out of was built in 1906. A newer house for that area. But I learned how to "restore" older homes, not remodel. We were planning for me to start restoring one of the old oil baron homes north of downtown Tulsa.

Unless something fun popped up.

We moved into Connie's mom's farm south of Bixby and started making plans to build our dream home that we had designed ourselves. Reading the paper one day, I found an ad for a mechanically inclined person to work for a new aquarium being built in Jenks, a nearby town. I showed Connie and asked if that qualified as "something fun". She said that it most certainly did. So I decided to go by and fill out an application the next day.

I've been working for the Oklahoma Aquarium for over 11 years now and it's the best job I've ever had. I started when the steel girders were going up and worked my ass off, like everyone else there, to get the place open. It was fascinating work. My boss designed all the filtration systems and sometimes we had to get creative to make the systems work. That was my job. I was asked by someone what my job was. I said "Whatever needs to be done". It's still my job.

Take my word for it. You don't get to just walk away from a job like this. You don't just forget your friends who you've worked with and gone through everything with. I can walk down the center of the Aquarium and point to everything I've helped create and just about point to all of it. There are so many crazy things that happened in 11 years and so many stories to tell. Maybe the subject of another post.

I've been so lucky to have my last job be the best one of them all.