My Brother Could Never Hold a Job (Cont.)
Screen 2 of 3Another example of his not being able to hold a job is when Will Gooch was in a CCC (Civilian Conservation Corps) camp at Mammoth Cave, Kentucky.
I'm not clear about the details, but I do remember he was put in charge of a work gang digging ditches, laying water pipe, and putting gravel on roads in the Mammoth Cave Park area. One might have called his position "civilian corporal." I think he was given this responsibility because he was one of the few enlistees who had graduated from high school and completed some college work.
Here again was a good steady job, but apparently my brother did not carry out his duties very well--just as he had neglected his rounds as a waterboy earlier on the construction job. For in less than six months he was no longer in charge of the work gang. He had been relieved of that job and appointed as General Supervisor and Maintenance Foreman of roads and waterworks in the same cave region. What this new job involved I don't know, but the point is he had lost his position in charge of the work gang.
(The Civilian Conservation Corps was organized during the depression in 1933 by President Roosevelt to provide jobs for unemployed young men.)
I'm reluctant to continue this sad story about Will Gooch but I just must tell the reader that he couldn't even hold this newest position at Mammoth Cave. In less than two years, he was relieved of his general responsibility for construction and maintenance of roads and waterworks at Mammoth cave. What he did wrong I don't know; but in any case, some official in Washington removed him from the cave area and appointed him Director of the Renovation of Fort McHenry near Baltimore. (This was the fort where Francis Scott Key wrote his now famous song, "The Star Spangled Banner," during the War of 1812.)
This new federal project apparently was a major one. The government wanted to make Fort McHenry a show place of American history--both for domestic and foreign visitors. Water had to be pumped from old prison cells; some of the crumbling walls were reinforced and others completely reconstructed; the whole area was landscaped with grass and new trees; and roads and parking areas were built to accommodate those who would later come to see the fort. And Will Gooch was in charge of all this activity.
But here again my brother couldn't hold his job very long. Many of his friends--and I, his younger brother who wanted him to succeed--hoped and thought he would stretch this project out for several years so that he could have a steady job for a long time. But instead, it was completed in just one year, approved by the federal government and put into operation soon after. So will Gooch was out of a job once more. It is true that when he was relieved of his job at Fort McHenry he accepted an engineering position with a large private construction firm in Baltimore, at a substantial increase in salary over what he had been making. But still he lost his last job--the same old story. It was all very sad, for as I said earlier he was handsome, smart and charming; and yet somehow he just couldn't hold a job.
I could give several other examples of his inability to hold a job, but I don't want to drag the story out and bore the reader. And certainly I do not wish to embarrass my brother. I will, however, cite just one more case that illustrates this unfortunate characteristic of will Gooch.
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