Incident on a Cinder Track

I’ve never spent a day in my life in a physical state that could be described as “in shape.” Perhaps ths time period, the late summer of ’76, at 25 after a long summer’s work on those hills of Columbia I was in the best shape of my life. One reason for such was my friend Dick Lichty, himself a stellar athlete, wrestler, weight trainer, runner, who used to hound me to join him at F & M’s Williamson Field for a jog and for the steam room afterwards. Truth was I coulda (and often did) did without the run and headed straight to the steamy. This was early in the college’s coeducational days and the steam room sometimes was better than other times.

One day after a hard day of labor, Dick stopped by the 340 and drug me to the track. This day turned out to be one of the more significant days of my life. Early in our run I spied a nice pair of buns on a F & M coed a few yards in front of us. Understandibly, we settled into a nice lope about 25 yards behind the behind. When she had completed her run – I jogged alongside and made an awkward introduction and we cooled down together on a walk around the track. It turned out that she was not a coed at all but worked for the City of Lancaster in hiring. Her job was to assist the City in providing additional opportunities to minorities, females, and diasdavantaged workers. Ironically, her tip in our walkabout lead this whiteboy to pursue a position with City government. She made me aware of an opening in the planning department as a program evaluator.

The next day I was at City Hall filling out an application. The rest – as they say – is history which you will read about in my next post. For the time being it was back to school. My CETA time had been extended and I was guaranteed employment through the end of the 76-77 school year.