He also said something like he wants his daughters to marry a Duggar-like guy.
I have an uncle, who got a job at IBM sometime in the early 1970's. He worked on or with electric typewriters, and for someone who had no education beyond High School, it was a really, really good job, that let him have a nice home and support a wife and three kids comfortably.
He'd been in that job maybe 15 years, and he had three kids, a mortgage, and generally a nice life. . .but it was now the mid 1980's. Electric typewriters didn't sell as much as they used to, and the new thing was the Personal Computer.
He got told at work that he would have to go to school to be re-trained to support PC's. The school would take over half a year, and was somewhere "up north." (I don't recall exactly where, but somewhere in the northeast US).
My Uncle lived in Tennessee, was born and raised in Kentucky, and was very, very proud of his "Southern" identity. He objected to being sent off to live in "Yankee" territory like that to go to school.
Apparently it was then explained to him that IBM would put him up in housing of some kind for his entire time there, and cover his travel expenses.
That wasn't enough for him. He reiterated that he wouldn't go to be among "Yankees".
They clarified that they'd pay for his entire family to come with him, if they wanted. They'd even rent a large apartment or rental house for them to stay in for the duration of the school. They'd pay all the moving expenses, he could come home to his family every night after class, and they even clarified that everyone in his class were people from the same area as him, and his class would be full of his co-workers from Tennessee, and mostly people he already knew.
He reiterated again, that he absolutely, positively refused to EVER so much as set one foot on "Yankee" soil, that he's a proud Southerner, a proud member of the Sons of the Confederacy, and that he said he'd rather die than spend just one day of his life in "Yankee" territory, no matter what.
. . .so IBM fired him, for refusing to go to required training. Like that, his high-paying job was gone, suddenly he couldn't support the mortgage and give his family their comfortable life. He had no degree or college credits, and his only professional skill was he was trained to service electric typewriters. . .and even then that was a skill that was becoming obsolete. He bounced around from local factory job to local factory job, tried a few get-rich-quick schemes, tried working as a used car salesman, and generally the who
... keep reading on reddit ➡
