While working as a busboy at Manning's in LA, waiting to take my tests for the LA police academy, I met a guy who worked at the BOP (Buick Oldsmobile Pontiac) plant. He told me how much a guy could make there -- twice as much as I was making now, plus overtime. So I applied and was accepted. A mistake. I learned that being happy in a job was more important than money. I was making more, but I hated it. They gave you a whole half hour to walk upstairs to the cafeteria, go through the line, sit down at a table, eat, and get back to the line before it started up, because that line waited for no man! It would start up on the dot -- even if no one was there.
The foreman took a liking to me and made me a handyman which meant I would fill in for guys that were taking breaks, etc., that meant I didn't stay on any one job very long, so it wasn't as boring. I liked that job pretty much and I learned something that came in handy years later. You see, one of my jobs was brazing under the chassis.
I had never braze welded before, so I would stick the brass rod along the hole I was trying to fill, hit it with the torch, the bronze would melt and fall on the floor and the line would move on to the next chassis. I must have let twenty chassis leave my station with no weld there before I finally learned how to do it. Now what I learned that came in handy in later years was that anything manufactured in a factory had the very good chance of being put together by someone that had never done it before. So one day when I had a dead battery in my car and I replaced it with a new one and that one didn't work either, instead of trusting that the new battery had to be good, since it was new, buying another one right away saved me trying a new generator and further troubleshooting the charging system. Just because it's new doesn't guarantee that it will work.
I got notified to spend a day testing for the academy. First test was a written test. Next test, physical test. I got the results back and passed both tests.
Next test was an oral interview. Three plainclothes officers sat at a table with me at police headquarters. Others were being interviewed at other tables. The only thing Ican remember is being asked why I wanted to be a policeman. I said I didn't know -- and I really didn't. Wanting to be a policeman seemed to come to me from outer space. I really had no idea. They asked me was it the uniform? No. Wanting to serve the public? No. Wanting to fight crime? No. I knew I was blowing it so when they asked me if I had anything I wanted to say, I did something that was very unusual for me. I opened up. I told them that I really didn't know why I wanted to be a cop, but I knew that I wanted to be one very badly. I passed.
I was home free. I was almost a cop. I only had one more test to pass and this one I had no worries about passing. The psychological test. I was sane, ipso facto, I would pass. I was late taking this test. I don't remember why. I think I had gotten notified that I had passed all the other tests when I took this one. I know I couldn't take the test when I was supposed to. I had to take it a week or so later. Besides the written psychological test, which included Rorschach ink blots, I was interviewed by a psychologist.
I was notified that I was to attend the academy at their training facilities in Estes Park. That first day we got our ID cards, which was a beautiful work of art. I remember red in it, but nothing else. I wondered if I could ride buses free. They told us that we were now policemen, but that didn't mean we were to try to chase down speeders, like I guess some people had done in the past. They also showed us a mockup of a convenience store -- that's where most robberies occurred. They used it to teach how to gather evidence, look for clues, etc. Man, was this going to be fun!
Third day. We were to go pick out our pistols that afternoon. Sitting in class, I get tapped on the shoulder and told to follow the tapper outside the classroom. Outside, he tells me I failed the psych test. I was dumbfounded. The only test I never worried about passing was the one I failed! Kinda shook my world, let me tell you. I asked the guy what was wrong and he said it wasn't his department. Thanks a lot, buddy.
I did get a check for those three days. Wish I had saved it to frame. Funny thing was, it never occurred to me to try some other city's police academy.
This event caused me to enroll in Compton Junior College in a Psychology class. I really wanted to find out what was wrong with me. It was in ths psychology class that I learned anything about Sigmund Freud. I probably had heard the name somewhere before, but honestly, I really might not have. This was to be the second ripple from the stone of my desire that I threw into the pond of fate. (Yeah, I know - pretty corny. I couldn't help it.) The first ripple was being pulled out of class for failing a psych test.
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