3 - No More Lonely NIghts - Paul McCartney – 1984

              No More Lonely Nights -Video


This song, from a failed McCartney-written film, “Give My Regards to Broad Street”, came out in 1984, when I was running the third shift at Accutronics, in Cary, Illinois. I remember it echoing throughout the punch press department, housed in a large room, connected to, yet separated by a wall from the rest of the plant.

            On this shift, I directly supervised about 36 people, walking around the 60,000+ sq.ft. facility, all night long, making sure everyone was busy and not hiding.

            And did they have places to hide! The maintenance shop, down a short flight of stairs, had, under the stairs, a bed made of packaging foam and a speaker hooked up to the PA system, which was tuned to an FM station playing lite rock. When someone came clomping down the wooden stairs you had ample time to get up and pretend you were working on something.  (I never slept there, but there were a few nights when I became sick, and I laid down on the nurse’s daybed.  Being the only supervisor, I couldn’t leave in the middle of the shift, since I had no backup)

In the various departments, operators had radios tuned to more raucous stations, such as the Punch Press and Screening departments, who blared a top 40 rock station, with a tight playlist that repeated every 3 hours or so, so you heard the top hits 2-3 times a night. I got to hate some songs ("Ghostbusters"!) and liking others (this one).

I had returned to Accu in 1983, for what became my last tour of duty, after a failed attempt at law school. I had gone to law school for one semester, but had bombed out and came home to live with my folks, sleeping for the next year on a convertible sofa bed (my bedroom had been converted into the TV room on my leaving for college).

Prior to my graduation from Blackburn College in 1977, I had entertained the thought of attending law school, so I could become one of Nader’s Raiders. Though my grades were OK (3.5 GPA), I did not do well on the LSAT, so I could not get in anywhere I applied. I had resigned myself to returning to Accutronics, until a letter came to Dr. M.G.R. Kelley, my favorite teacher/advisor, asking for the names of promising students of History for Graduate Assistantships. However, Dr. Kelley was under the impression I was only a junior (when, in fact, I was a senior) and did not respond to the Western Illinois University letter. When I found out, I explained to Dr. K that I was a transfer student from Elgin Community College and a senior, so he apologized and wrote to WIU with a glowing letter of recommendation and I was offered a Graduate Assistantship in History.

I then had to make a decision, go back to Accu to work, or go to WIU and continue to live the student life.  It was an easy decision since the assistantship paid all tuition and fees, plus paid the grand sum of $210 a month, for 15 hours of work a week. I lived in Graduate/Married Student housing for $130/month, so I had $80 a month for food and all other expenses. I learned to love Rice-a-Roni, Kroger mac and cheese, and Spam. I had a married student neighbor who was a hunter, and he gave me rabbit several times (tastes like chicken, especially when I used Shake and Bake). I finished the coursework for the MA in a year and a half, the thesis took a little longer, but I had the MA by early 1979.

Several years later in 1982, I retook the LSAT and, with no special preparation, improved my score by 100 points.  Along with my 3.9 GPA at WIU, I applied to Southern Illinois University Law School, and was accepted. I left Accu in August 1982 and went down to Carbondale and read, seemingly from 8 AM to midnight, every day. Now I love reading, but this was all law, and I found very quickly that I had no aptitude for legal thinking or legal writing, though I had written a Master’s Thesis of over 100 pages with relative ease.

Law school does not bring many memories of music; I can only remember Bruce Springsteen’s “Nebraska” and a guy down the hall who was into the B-52s (“Rock Lobster”).  I went to movies in town and after seeing “The Wall”, I became a fan of Pink Floyd (in that incarnation, not anything before “Dark Side of the Moon”). I also remember seeing “The Road Warrior” and “Creepshow” in Carbondale.

Anyway, after one semester, my grades on the final exam (and the final was the first and only exam in almost every class) were abysmal. I decided to go home, so I loaded up my 1979 Mustang to the brim, and drove home. I didn’t call Accu right away, I spent 6 months, sending out 125 resumes, trying to find a position in research, editing or writing. I got 3 interviews, 8 letters of rejection, and no other response. Still not wanting to return to Accu with my tail between my legs, I applied for, interviewed for, and was offered a job with a “state-of-the art” board shop in southern Indiana. I loaded up my Mustang again and drove down to a Vincennes motel to begin my new life in Indiana.

I went into the shop on a Monday morning and saw that there was no one in the front office, there were at least 10 empty offices. I asked the receptionist (who doubled as the HR person as well) where the Production manager, my new boss, was. She said he came in late on Mondays. It turned out he lived in Chicago (a five hour drive away) and came down on Monday, worked Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, then left at noon on Friday. I was told to fend for myself until he came in.

This was not even the shop I was going to run. I was going to run a shop in Princeton, Indiana, about an hour south/east. As I walked around the Vincennes plant, I felt I had entered a time warp of sorts. I had gone back in time to when I had started at Accutronics, in 1974, when there was no OSHA, no EPA. The punch press operators here had no hearing protection (something I did not have in 1974, causing the tinitus and hearing loss I have today), or pullbacks, the cords that attached to your wrists and kept your hands out of the die.

The plant was filled with the acrid smells of soldering and chemicals used to clean boards. My eyes were watering and my throat was sore after a couple hours.

I asked a girl running the solder operation, “What’s the other shop like?”

“Oh,” she smiled,  “ A lot like this one…. only dirtier.”

Luckily, I had not unloaded my car, I left a note for the Production manager (“When I was told this was a state-of-the art facility I didn’t know the owner meant state-of-the art 1960”) and drove back home and the next morning called my old boss at Accu, said I’d never complain again, and asked for a job. Of course he hired me back and I went back the next day, working first on setting up a Nickel/Gold plating line, then about 6 months later, I was put in charge of the third shift and those 36 people.