We wanted to move to Florida so back in the late summer of 2015 The Lady of the House and I said “adios” to eastern New Mexico and “hello” to Pensacola, Florida.
The Lady of the House grew up there. Well actually she grew up in Fort Walton Beach about 30 miles east of Pensacola. Jobs seemed more plentiful and real estate was cheaper in Pensacola. Looking back I wonder if we would’ve had a better Florida experience if we’d moved to Fort Walton Beach instead.
Me? I lived in many places growing up…New York City, Honolulu, Baltimore…I’d ripped myself up and landed in Albuquerque and Phoenix with no job prospects and was doing well within a few weeks. In other words I never had a problem in moving to a new city.
Until Pensacola.
I suppose if I’d done some research I might have discovered wages in the area were low and the city was dominated by a class of people who sought to monetize every human encounter they had.
I have never been so quantified, scrutinized and rejected in my life when it came to landing a job. Pensacola is a young person’s city. Oh, and you damn well better have your college degree if you want a decent job there.
A car dealership hired me. I sold six cars the first two weeks I was there. Then the next month when I didn’t do jack in the first two weeks I got fired. The Lady of the House and I went and bought a box of fried chicken, had a picnic on the beach and pondered my next move.
My career has been in media…radio, newspaper. It was my lifelong work yet that experience mattered little to the folks who ran those things in Pensacola.
So while I kept looking for a gig in media I kept looking for a job in other fields to pay the bills.
I gave a shot at being a call center automaton…that lasted three weeks.
I had a fun gig driving cars back and forth between car dealerships and the local auto auction but it only paid minimum wage and the schedule was just for 20 to 30 hours a week.
Then came the interview with a Pensacola funeral home…a job that paid the princely sum of $10 an hour.
This wasn’t the first time I’d ever kicked around working at a Pensacola funeral home.
There was that time I put on a suit and tie and went just a few blocks down from my west Pensacola house to the funeral home right on the boulevard.
I walked right in and noticed right away that I was the only Anglo guy in the place.
Everyone else was African-American.
“Hi,” I said to a fellow in a suit and tie at a desk handing him my resume’, “I’d like to apply for a job.”
The dude reared back in his chair and looked at me like I had just farted loudly or something.
“One moment please,” he said. He got up and disappeared down a hallway, my resume’ in hand.
Moments later the fellow reappeared.
“Sir, if you’d come right this way,” he said.
I followed the guy down the hall where he pointed to an open door.
Inside, standing with the help of a cane was an elderly woman.
I stuck out my hand and shook hers.
“Hello, my name is Grant McGee.”
“Yes Mr. McGee, I have your resume’ here,” she said, “My name is Mrs. Miller.”
I was talking with the owner, I reckoned. It was called “Miller Funeral Home.”
“Close the door, Mr. McGee,” she said.
I closed the door.
“Have a seat,” she said as she went around to sit behind her desk.
“We do have an opening for a night receptionist,” said Mrs. Miller. “Someone to greet the deceased’s family and friends when they come in.”
I nodded my head.
“Mr. McGee, I’m going to speak off the record here…”
“Yes ma’am?”
“You DO know this is regarded in town as Pensacola’s premier black funeral home.”
“No ma’am,” I said. “I’m looking for a job and I live a few blocks west of here. My wife and I moved here from New Mexico a few months ago.”
“Oh, I see,” said Mrs. Miller. “Well, you speak pretty good English for someone from Mexico.”
I thought about correcting her but then I thought about that old saying, “Discretion is the better part of valor.”
“Like I said, Mr. McGee, I’m going to speak frankly here,” said Mrs. Miller. “You don’t see anything wrong with a white man working in a black funeral home?”
“No ma’am,” I said. “Who we are in terms of race is just all about where our ancestors came from…Africa, Europe, Asia and such. Besides, I think one of the most overlooked news stories of 1997 was that the human genome shows no markers for race, per se. We are basically all human.”
Mrs. Miller looked me right in the eyes for a few moments.
“Well, Mr. McGee, your view is refreshing,” said Mrs. Miller, “But while you may not have a problem with being the only white man at an African-American funeral home my customers and their families and friends just might.”
“Yes ma’am,” I said. “I can understand that.”
“But now this is just you and I talking. You having been in management understand that I’m not actually allowed to talk about this with you. But I wanted to be honest with you about this.”
“Yes ma’am.”
Mrs. Miller stood up as did I. She extended her hand. I shook it.
“It’s been very nice to meet you, Mr. McGee. I will give this some thought.”
“Yes ma’am,” I said.
I went on back home where I found The Lady of the House in the kitchen.
“What happened at the funeral home?” she asked.
“They want a night receptionist.”
“Night receptionist?”
“I’m pretty sure it’s like that time I worked the front desk of a hotel. Same clothes too…a nice sport coat, khakis, nice shirt, tie.”
“You’re not really serious, are you?”
“Sure, you know, people would walk in and I’d smile and say, ‘Good evening, welcome to the funeral home…yes he’s right down the hall’ and I’d escort the visitors down to the parlor. I’d answer phones and make sure the coffee is made and all that stuff.”
“You? Working in a funeral home?”
“Sure. You know, if someone says, ‘She looks like she’s asleep’ or ‘He looks like he could sit right up and talk to ya!’ Or I might say, ‘Yes, here at the funeral home we do mighty fine work.’”
Mrs. Miller never called me for a job. The Lady of the House predicted she wouldn’t call and she was right.
So I kept looking for work. People couldn’t understand why a man of my age didn’t have my own business. Others thought I was overqualified and yet others thought I was underqualified for their management positions.
I was doing this while I waited for the local newspaper to call me telling me they were bringing me on board in the advertising department. I interviewed with them in October, I interviewed with them in November and again in December. They kept telling me they were working on deciding when they want to hire me. By the way, I never got that job.
Anyway, back to the $10 an hour funeral home job…
It was an ad in the Pensacola paper: “Drivers wanted” it read. “Flexible hours” it read. I thought it would fit nicely with the part-time gig I had delivering cars.
I put on my sport coat, tie and all the other stuff that is “de rigueur” for a job interview and showed up at the funeral home on time.
“Do you have any problems lifting?” asked the funeral dude as the interview began.
“How much will I need to lift?” I asked, I was looking for a poundage figure.
“That depends,” he said. “Some people can be pretty big.”
“Oh,” I said. “You’re talking about moving bodies.”
“Yes,” said The Funeral Dude, “That’s part of the driver’s position we’re hiring for.”
I flashed back to an incident when someone died where I worked. And yes, it was the funeral home dudes who showed up and had to take him away. I mean, SOMEBODY has to do it.
“Well how many people are sent out on the job?” I asked.
“Two people can usually handle the task,” he said.
“What about decomposition?” I asked.
He sat back for a moment. I don’t think he was expecting that question.
“I knew of this guy who was working for a funeral home in New Mexico,” I said. “Someone had died in the middle of summer in a mobile home and wasn’t discovered for days. When they went in to get the body they opened the door and the stench was incredible awful. Then they stepped through the door and the carpeting was squishy…that was from where the body’s fluids had oozed out and soaked the carpet.”
“We have body bags for that,” he said.
“And the drivers have to load the body bag?” I asked.
“It’s all part of your training,” he said.
“So when people die they express urine and feces, don’t they?” I asked.
He sat back for a moment. I don’t think he was expecting that question either.
“Well,” he said. “That happens but not that often. Our black body bags are for those who have decomposed or expressed shit because they have a deodorizing element built into them.”
It turns out it was an on-call job. When the funeral home got the call to come pick up a body the driver was expected to be at the funeral home in about 20 minutes. Attire for a body pickup was expected to be a sport coat and tie. Transporting a body to Orlando for those folks who donated their bodies to science was casual attire. And for those days when I’d be asked to drive a hearse or the flower van I was expected to dress in a suit….something I did not own.
I could be watching my favorite TV show and be called out to move a body. I could be enjoying a day at the beach and be called out to move a body. I could be grocery shopping with The Lady of the House and be called out to move a body. I could be enjoying a sound sleep and get the call. All for 10 bucks an hour.
The opportunity to take the job was on the table.
I told the funeral dude I’d get back with him.
And I did.
“Hey, thanks for your time,” I said over the phone. “But I need something with more structured hours. Thank you for your time.”
That was part of the reason I didn’t take it.
The other part was I didn’t feel like forking out over a hundred bucks for a suit for a 10-dollar-an-hour gig.
I eventually found a job in Pensacola in my career field for the princely sum of $11.84 an hour. My years of experience meant nothing, that pay rate was low… comparable to what I made when I started out in the broadcasting business. I put up with that for over a year until we had enough of the low wages and that unfriendly, money-hungry city in general.
We left Pensacola in September 2017 to return to eastern New Mexico.
I’m damn glad we did.
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