The End of My Tenure at US Steel

I was depressed and having a hard time dealing with work. They noticed the change in me and sent me to see a psychologist. He spoke to me for about 10 minutes and started pontificating on how all my problems were related to my relationship with my dad. We hadn’t discussed my dad at all during our brief exchange. He totally ignored the fact that my wife had just left me, taking our children with her. He wanted to put me on a new at the time ‘experimental drug’, Prozac. It didn’t sound like anything I wanted to be saddled with. So, I declined – told him I could get much better drugs on the street and cheaper. I never went back.

Within a couple of weeks, I quit. That began a period of about 4 years of very short-term employment at several small job shops. I had finished my apprenticeship and was a journeyman machinist by then. But I just couldn’t get into that kind of work anymore – no motivation. That changed, but not till I settled down with ‘the girl who almost ran into me with her bike on 10th St in Lorain, to whom I previously alluded. More about her in coming sections.

For the next few years, I embarked, or at least tried to, on an intensely musical journey…

To be Continued

–LE