Publicity Clerkin' At New American Library Revisited: (24)

 After publicity-clerkin' in the 9-to-5 skyscraper work world of paperback book publishing at the Times-Mirror media conglomerate's New American Library [NAL] subsidiary during the winter, and not finding other workers in the 9-to-5 cage who were either as dissatisfied with the 1970s U.S. classist economic system as I was or whom I felt wanted to become closer to me on a personal level, I naturally felt, by springtime, that it was take to make my escape from that workplace.

If the job had only involved just working with the then-NAL publicity manager, Marge Ternes, as her publicity clerk, I probably would have felt less of a need to leave the NAL work scene once I began to get spring fever, because I liked Marge's non-authoritarian, easy-going, kind-hearted and gentle personality, felt she was an intellectually interesting, good-natured and pleasant person to have as a supervisor, and was personally attracted to her.

But the publicity clerk job also required me to work at the desk next to Marge's secretary most of the workday; and Marge's secretary was the kind of culturally straight person with whom I felt I had little interests in common, whom I felt no attraction for, who would tend to relate to me in a "low-brow boss-type" way whenever she had the opportunity, and who I was always eager to want to get away from by the end of each day.

So, not being involved emotionally with anyone else outside of work while employed at NAL when the Spring weather arrived in New York City, I used the telephone on my desk at NAL to call long-distance an old woman friend who was then sill living and working in one of the Midwest campus towns.

And, after talking with her for awhile, I decided it made more sense for me to scrap the NAL publicity clerk "flunkie" job and spend part of the newly arrived Spring taking a Greyhound bus out to the Midwest and visiting her.

So, on the evening after I cashed my next NAL paycheck, I then used my cheap portable cassette tape recorder to tape myself singing some of the folk songs I had written, on a cassette tape (including a humorous/satirical folk song, whose lyrics and melody I long ago permanently forgot, indicating why the paperback books NAL was then publishing and marketing didn't appeal to me); and on the following day, instead of going to work in Manhattan, I mailed the cassette tape of folk songs, along with a brief letter of resignation, to the NAL publicity director.  

And in my letter of resignation, I indicated again, that I was resigning my position as a NAL publicity clerk, in part, because I felt the quality of the paperback books NAL was marketing  was not that good anymore; and that the NAL paperback publishing firm had become too commercially-oriented in the 1970s and had become more commercially-oriented in the 1970s than it had been, historically.

Then, a few days later, I went to the Port of Authority bus terminal in Midtown Manhattan, bought a bus ticket, and hopped on a Greyhound bus that was heading to the Midwest.