{"id":12482,"date":"2023-11-23T12:00:28","date_gmt":"2023-11-23T20:00:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sanpedrotoday.com\/?p=12482"},"modified":"2023-11-28T09:24:39","modified_gmt":"2023-11-28T17:24:39","slug":"life-goes-on-but-my-days-as-an-employee-are-over","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sanpedrotoday.com\/2023\/11\/23\/life-goes-on-but-my-days-as-an-employee-are-over\/","title":{"rendered":"Life Goes On, but My Days as an Employee Are Over"},"content":{"rendered":"
That\u2019s a wrap.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n It\u2019s official: As of September 1, I am a retiree. As a longshoreman, I gave up the best \u201cretirement job\u201d in the world, but I\u2019m 72, and it was time.<\/p>\n I had long contemplated this move, looking forward to my wife retiring from her teaching job and us entering our \u201cgolden years\u201d and traveling the world together. That all came crashing down, however, with my wife\u2019s sudden and unexpected death earlier this year. Even though most of my peers have been long retired, Deb would not have let me retire without a long \u201cdebate,\u201d but that became a moot point.<\/p>\n You\u2019re right if you think retirement on top of losing my wife of 49 years might be too big of a psychic plunge all at once, but her death is a constant reminder that life is short. If I don\u2019t have to work and I remain in relatively good health, I should probably try to enjoy what time I have left, even if it is a struggle.<\/p>\n Besides, as longtime readers know, dock work was my second career. I would have retired years ago if my first career hadn\u2019t ended so unexpectedly, and I became what I had always called myself, an \u201caccidental\u201d longshoreman.<\/p>\n The son of a longshoreman from a family of longshoremen, I only began longshoring after being laid off at the L.A. Times<\/i> in 2004. That unceremonious parting ended a nearly 33-year career as a sports writer\/copy editor\/news editor in the newspaper business that started in 1969 as a sports stringer for the News-Pilot<\/i>. With the internet and social media marking the beginning of the end of the newspaper industry, it was only after being let go at the Times<\/i> that I regretted the earlier opportunities I had passed up to become a longshoreman. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n I made an abortive attempt at sales at Green Hills Memorial Park; fortunately, I also got a casual card the same year. I was no salesman, and I also never did learn how to park a 20-foot chassis, but the hours on the docks as a casual added up, and in 2018, I became a registered longshoreman. I was only sworn in as an A book in April, but Deb\u2019s death in May changed everything.<\/p>\n I\u2019m writing this in part as a farewell to my longshore colleagues who are still working, especially those I worked with for so many years as a casual and who, after that long slog, were finally registered. There is only a small circle of ILWU friends I remain in touch with, and, of course, living in San Pedro, I will continue to run into longshoremen, both retired and working, nearly every day.<\/p>\n That\u2019s already happened to me at the Eastview dog park, where you can find me most mornings.<\/p>\n So far, Jack the dog and Jude the cat are the ones happiest I have retired. The only other \u201cbenefit\u201d I can think of for now is I can attend funerals without taking a day off, and sadly, there have been way too many of those (see below).<\/p>\n IN MEMORIAM
\n<\/span>Last month, you read about how four deaths in one week touched the San Pedro sports community. That same week, two other longtime San Pedrans died, two men with whom I was well acquainted who weren\u2019t headline-makers but whose careers and later volunteer work impacted the lives of thousands.<\/p>\n