In 1975, I interviewed for my first real job as Site Coordinator with the Ohio Valley Medical Microwave System, a grant-funded project with Ohio University.  Ron Black, the person who interviewed me, talked for 45 minutes out of the hour I was there.  I didn’t think he found out much about me. I had waited at least three months after the interview to learn if I had gotten the job.  By then, I didn’t think I’d be hired.  Plus, I didn’t feel the interview went very well.  But then, three months later, I got a call saying I was hired.

The car I had at the time was a Mercury Cougar.  It had started to develop engine trouble and I didn’t have the money to fix it.  And it certainly wasn’t going to be reliable enough to drive an hour each way to work every day.  So, since the job was with Ohio University I went to the OU Credit Union to ask for a car loan.  That was three days before I was to start my job.  They actually processed the paperwork and approved my loan in that time.  I picked up the approval letter and went to the car dealer.  I had gone to this particular car dealer because I knew a salesman there from when we had worked together for OU Residence Life.  It was someone I could trust to make a good deal.  And so I hopped into my used orange little Fiat X1/9 and drove to Holzer Medical Center to start my first day as the Site Coordinator for the Ohio Valley Medical Microwave.

Over the next 12 months my Fiat was in the shop for a total 3 of them.  Out in the middle of nowhere the alternator light would come on.  Then the car would start coughing, and then just stop running.  This was way back before cell phones.  So I’d have to walk to a nearby house to use the phone or hitch a ride with someone driving by.  I eventually started carrying camping gear in the trunk.  For years afterward, I’d have nightmares in which I’d see that orange alternator light come on.

Each time I’d have it towed back to the car dealer.  And each time they supposedly fixed it.  It was something in the electrical system that they couldn’t trace.  Finally, enough was enough.  I told them they owed me a good deal on a new Fiat X1/9 and I traded the lemon in.  That new Fiat lasted 12 years.  I heard that my “lemon” was later sold to someone else who had exactly the same electrical problems as I did.