A tour of duty on the planet of the apes

Whose woods these are I think I know. 

His house is in the village though;

He will not see me stopping here

To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer

To stop without a farmhouse near

Between the woods and frozen lake

The darkest evening of the year

He gives his harness bells a shake

To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep

Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep.

But I have promises to keep,

And miles to go before I sleep,

And miles to go before I sleep.
        -- Robert FrostThey made me an offer I couldn’t refuse.

It had been less than a year and a half since I was hired as executive director for the Montrose Recreation District. And that was quite a coup for a 25-year-old who had never held a fulltime, permanent job.

But I had worked hard, met all objectives and, to be frank, felt that I had earned more respect than I was being given. My board of directors had just turned down my request for a pay raise that would have brought me more in line with colleagues holding similar positions in neighboring communities, though they had given me a smaller raise.

I was earning $11,000 a year – more than I had ever expected back in the mid 1970s, but less than I came to believe was fair and appropriate. The job in Arizona was advertised at $18,000 and included some very intriguing attributes.

Page, Arizona, was one of the newest cities in the state. It had been built by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation to house workers and others involved in construction of the Glen Canyon dam.

By 1975, the bureau was eager to pull up stakes and stop administering the town as well as the dam. The citizens of Page were offered ownership of all of the public works (water and sewer lines, streets, parks, administrative buildings and more) as well as start up money.

It was a sweet deal and put the new city in a position to offer services other communities couldn’t afford – including a year-around community recreation program.

And that’s where I came in; if hired, I would be the town’s first recreation director and would be in position to create a new program out of whole cloth.

One of my Montrose board members was an employee of the BOR; he told me about the opening in Page, and put in a good word for me. When I called to express interest, I was told to charter a small plane and fly over for a visit and initial interview.

If I had been only slightly interested before, this first-class treatment quickly moved me into a very enthusiastic mode. I met several local officials and got both a bird’s eye view and a ground-level tour of the city. I suppose I felt I was being given the kind of respect I deserved, and that was somewhat lacking back in Colorado.

In any event, the offer came and I asked for an emergency meeting of the Montrose board. I told the members that I wanted to stay, but that my career and family might benefit more by leaving. If, I suggested, the board would agree to give me the raise I had asked for a few months earlier and further agree to consider, in good faith, a second increase a year later, I’d stay and attempt to prove I was worth the kind of money being offered by the other agency.

By a narrow margin, the board denied my request – though they did make a fairly generous counter offer. In the end, I decided – for better or worse – to move to Arizona.

About 20 years later, I passed through Montrose and dropped by a softball field we had built while I was the director there. I spotted a familiar figure working on the site and approached him.

It was Cosme Cisneros. I had hired him out of the University of Colorado; he had stayed with the district for all of those years.

Leaving that first fulltime job established a pattern that continued through all of my work life. I never worked in the same position for more than six years and held many temporary and part-time jobs.

Regrets? I’ve had a few. But then again, too few to mention…

I've been a puppet, a pauper, a pirate,
A poet, a pawn and a king.
I've been up and down and over and out
And I know one thing:
Each time I find myself, flat on my face,
I pick myself up and get back in the race.