Long Term Memories

Sunday, March 06, 2005

FHWA Memories 22 and 23

Well they aren't FHWA memories exactly. They are social.

Unlike in San Francisco I didn't really feel that close to anyone in the Atlanta Office.

#22 - I'm not sure how it happened by I became friends with a couple of groups of people. One group of people had a house in a newly gentrifying part of town. Another was north of town. Actually in that second one, I was friends with a woman who lived in Atlanta then but who I had known many years earlier in high school (and actually in elementary school) - I still correspond with her and her brother lives not too far from me.

#23 - I met Ann in Atlanta. It seems to me that subconsciously I was aware that this was my last training assignment and I should consider a serious relationship. Anyway, we met in a synagogue parking lot (she had walked there, I had driven). On our first date, she ordered the least expensive thing on the menu and then gave me some of it saying she couldn't finish it. Can it get more romantic than that. Based on photos of myself then, I looked a lot like Kramer did on the early Seinfeld episodes. ¶ 5:05 PM

FHWA Memory 19, 20 and 21

Three work related things I remember about this assignment.

#19 - One of my assignments was working closely with the Tennessee govt on a project. I went to Nashville several times and worked with their staff and without any direct supervision. The State govt workers were very happy to have the help and happier still when I gave them informal training in the area (it was air quality analysis). The Secretary of the Tennessee agency wrote a very nice letter complimenting FHWA and hoping that this type of work would be done again. Near as I can tell, it has almost never been done again. I think the head of the FHWA office in Atlanta was ticked off because he wasn't a part of the project and he was also ticked off at being given no credit for it (he didn't deserve any). Possibly he was also ticked because it was an 'outsider' and a 'rookie' who was doing the good work his long time staff couldn't do.

#20 - Another assignment I had was to help with the ordinary processing of grants. This wasn't particularly difficult or interesting.

#21 - Another assignment was to help the Atlanta office review proposed regulations, technical guidance documents, etc. of headquarters. This was also not very interesting but I tried to make the best of it by injecting sarcasm into the responses that the Atlanta office made.

After working in the Atlanta office for 6 months, the HQ hoped that the Atlanta office would want me permanently. However, they didn't (see #19). I had one meeting where the head of the Atlanta office told me that they 'usually' didn't have trainees in that position (the one I was in)stay. I knew something about that. I asked him how many times 'usually' was. He said he didn't know. I said that I had researched it and it was only one. I told him I consider his actions in this matter to demonstrate laziness and intellectual sloth or dishonesty but that I wasn't going to file anything against him. He then said, well the region couldn't afford to have specialists. I said that in fact the region did have some specialists and anyway they hadn't asked me to anything too different from my specialty because they needed me for that. I again said that he had distinguished himself with a weak argument where he didn't know the facts.

Ironically, the following things happened over the rest of my FHWA career.
- I worked more with this region of the country than any other region.
- I became well known in this region for something very different from what I was working on then.
- The regional offices were abolished in the 90s. ¶ 4:35 PM

Friday, March 04, 2005

FHWA Memory 18 - Atlanta - Apartments or..

When I got to Atlanta in Jan 1976 it was time to look for an apartment. It turned out that I didn't like any of the apartments I saw so I found a room in a big house, almost a mansion, near Emory University. My landlady was a divorce who got the house as part of the settlement. It was near a bus route also and close enough that on very nice days, I could walk to work (about 4 miles or so).
¶ 10:39 AM