After basketball season had concluded in January, my focus drifted. The part-time work on the weekends at the Mexican flea market with Dominic was drying up. He tried opening a convenience store on Elston Avenue just south of Lawrence. The merchandise was made up of the same junk and rabble that he offered at the flea market. No one was going to frequent a business that was a poor man’s version of a dollar store, and they didn’t. Work with Dominic faded away by early 1993.
In March of 1993 and I was reaching a crossroads of sorts. There were no longer any after-school activities that I was participating in. I no longer had a part-time job. I was floating along quite rudderless. From that standpoint, not much had changed since my days in Pittsburgh. The place where the original combination of idle time with no direction leading to a general malaise had taken root. My sister Ann had seen enough of my listlessness and lack of ambition. Her intentions were correct, and her delivery was brutal. I cannot recall her exact words, but it was concise and damning. “Jimmy, you need to get a job. You’re lazy!”. Both statements were factually correct, but it was the disdainful tone with which they were delivered with that wounded me.
My room was in the basement of their home. That was where I retreated to be by myself. I remember sitting on the bed and crying. It was probably the first time I had cried since August of 1989 when I realized I had left everything behind in Chicago. Why was I crying? As the old cliché goes the truth hurts. Yet it was not as simple as that. In Pittsburgh, I had been allowed by my mother to fall into a pattern of shiftlessness. The desire to feel useful was within me, but the confidence to find the path to that place was not there.
I then took the decision that I should have made in Pittsburgh in 1991. I walked to the closest supermarket by the house which happened to be the Dominck’s Finer Foods at Lawrence and Pulaski. I entered the store and walked directly to the front desk. There was a middle-aged man with glasses, sporting a push-broom mustache wearing a black sweater vest standing with a clipboard. I approached him along with a shorter, younger Hispanic man looking smart in a white shirt, tie, and business slacks. Mustering up courage and bluffing a casual directness, I posed the question, “So what are the chances of getting a job around here?”. The middle-aged mustachioed man whose name tag read; “Jack” responded that there may indeed be a pretty good chance. I was given an application and subsequently hired on April 8th of 1993.
Working at the Dominick’s on Lawrence and Pulaski played a prominent part in the last stretch of senior year.
The job at Dominick’s would be just what I needed in so many ways. It was structured and there was supervision. I was hired as a front-end clerk. My main responsibilities were bagging groceries, retrieving shopping carts from the parking lot, and putting away overstock back on the shelves. Simple tasks that did not require too much brain power. Perfect. There was also a significant social aspect to the job as you engaged with the public and your co-workers. I enjoyed the job, and I liked working fast. One of my co-workers that was hired around the same time was this tall Greek kid by the name of George. He worked at a quick, robotically relentless pace. Whether he was outside gathering carts or moving from register-to-register bagging groceries, George was an expressionless machine. I liked matching his pace and embraced the physical aspects of the job.
Another aspect of the job that I quickly grew to look forward to was bagging for the cute cashiers. There were three female cashiers that I was always happy to see on my shift. Angie, Laura, and Joanna. Each one was very distinctly different and attractive. Angie was of Ecuadorian heritage but had grown up in Chicago. She had long, luscious, thick black hair, olive skin, a shapely figure, and a great smile. Angie was also nice, relaxed, and easy to talk to. She fit the bill in many ways as the well-adjusted All-American girl. She had a longtime boyfriend, Frank who was in dental school. Angie was always friendly and good company.
Laura was the definition of petite. She was white with light brown hair that fell right around her shoulders. Her makeup was always tastefully done, accentuating her pixie-like features. Laura possessed a bubbly, energetic persona. I may have to employ an adjective that I loathe but I daresay she was perky. Her pale skin, small frame, natural features, and makeup made her the personification of a nymph or winter sprite. She also had a longtime boyfriend, Jay who worked as a stocker in another part of the store. Laura could always be counted on as good company with her happy eyes, excited energy, and eager-to-chat nature.
Then there was Joanna. She was also Ecuadorian like Angie but raised in the US. Perhaps not quite as physically alluring as Angie, but Joanna was very cute, and I was drawn to her. She was relatively short and had black hair that was regularly pulled back into a ponytail. She had open, doe-like expressive eyes and full lips. She was not as immediately friendly as Laura or Angie and could be quietly moody at times. However, she could be flirtier than both when the moment possessed her. She had a persona and a way about her that suggested perhaps a more damaged past. Maybe that is why I was more attracted to her than Angie and Laura who appeared very normal and well-adjusted to me. To my chagrin, Joanna was spoken for as well. Her boyfriend being an oddball, always dressed in a dark trench coat and a baseball cap. Tellingly, I never saw her smile when he arrived to pick her up.
There was another cashier, Georgia, a Greek woman in her mid-twenties. She carried herself with the casual ease of someone who knew they were blessed with stunning looks. Dark hair, glasses, pouty lips, olive skin and a total awareness that she could bat her eyelashes and men would be at her beckoning. I remember her fiancé was some guy who looked like a shorter Toni Kukoc and drove a BMW. Early in my tenure at the supermarket, I asked her where something was located. Instead of simply pointing the way, she took me by the hand and led me toward the front desk. I was so dazed with stupefied astonishment that this was happening. I almost passed out from the intoxication I felt from the chemical reaction she triggered. I think Georgia loved giving occasional cheap little thrills like that to some of her young male co-workers. She knew what she had. God bless her. What was great about Georgia was that she was smart, sarcastic, and didn’t take herself too seriously. She was genuinely so nice to me whenever we crossed paths.
Working at Dominick’s injected a new energy into my life. For the first time in years, I was not trying in vain to reach back into some version of the past that I had idealized. Here was a new and vibrant situation. Little did I know at the time, but Dominick’s Finer Foods on Lawrence and Pulaski would function as much as a place of social integration and development as a place of employment. However, towards the end of senior year, the Dominick’s adventure was but in its embryonic stages. Nonetheless, my focus shifted from high school to Dominick’s.
One of the most vivid sports memories of senior year happened at Dominck’s while on an evening shift. The Chicago Bulls were playing the New York Knicks in game five of the Eastern Conference finals. The Bulls and Knicks had become a seriously heated rivalry. The Knicks had replaced the Detroit Pistons as the Bulls main rival in the Eastern Conference. Coached by the slimy Pat Riley, the Knicks employed a physical brand of basketball that often crossed the line into thuggery.
The series was tied 2-2 and the critical game five would take place at Madison Square Garden. It was a nick and tuck affair. The game was physical and tense. I timed my 15-minute break to watch the last two minutes of the game. There were small televisions set up in the produce department near the store entrance. The last sequence of the game played out. The Bulls led 95-94, the Knicks had the ball. The ball was passed to Charles Smith (former university of Pitt alum). He rose up on three consecutive attempts to try and score from under the basket. We held our breath as the frantic sequence seemed to last far longer than the seconds it took to play out. Horace Grant, Michael Jordan, and Scottie Pippen each blocked or stripped Smith of the ball until finally it was hurled downcourt to BJ Armstrong. The entire produce section of Dominick’s erupted, and I was jumping up and down. We knew at that point the Bulls would win the series. They broke the Knick’s heart then and there. The Bulls would go on to play in the NBA finals against the Phoenix Suns.
Charles Smith looks panicked as he tries to power up to the basket. He knew what was gonna happen….
One of my enduring memories of my early days at Dominick’s was pushing around the cart of overstock around the store late in the evening. Music played over the intercom. I can keenly remember Tears For Fears “Head Over Heels” and Boy George’s “The Crying Game” playing late in the evening as I put away stock back on the shelves. Oddly blissful moments enjoying the songs in my own world.
Gospel Outreach School and High School Memories 1988-1992 