Exiting The Crime Scene

In early November, I informed my wife that we would have to sell the house and
I would have to find another job. She did not act very surprised and was more
concerned about finishing her first semester of college. In fact, Anita's whole non-
reaction to all that was going on really bothered me.

Anita seemed withdrawn from me, and she had exhibited several major changes
while we were in Chicago. First, she had started going to church almost every
Sunday. In the previous nine years I had been with Anita, she had never attended
church, but shortly after we moved into our new home in Illinois, she started
attending a nearby church and she kept up the practice the entire time we had been
there. When I questioned her as to what was wrong, she would shrug off her
behavior and tell me nothing was bothering her. I knew better.

Another change which had occurred involved our social life. Prior to moving to
Wisconsin, our social life involved relationships with my friends from work making
up the largest part of our social life. Now, our social life consisted entirely of
relationships with acquaintances of hers since no one at Gamma Supplies would have any social interactions with us despite my efforts to initiate such actions. The change was real but subtle. This change seemed insignificant at the time.

My reaction toward Anita had also changed. I would frequently get irritated
and would act irrationally to minor incidences. On one occasion I could not find
a pair of scissors when I needed them so I yelled at Anita for misplacing them. I
then stormed out of the house and went and bought three pair to make sure I could
find a pair of scissors when I needed them. Incidents like this increased the stress
at home and merely added to the extreme stress I was already under.

In early November we made plans to sell the house. Anita did not offer any
arguments against the pending sale. We decided to sell the house ourselves to save
the commission paid to the real estate agents. For a week we toured other houses
for sale in our area. Then we decided on a price and placed an ad in the paper.

We had made a fortunate move when we bought our house. We were located in
the Williamsburg School District and the Chicago area was just beginning to
experience the migration(white flight) to the suburbs which had occurred in the East
several years earlier. The Williamsburg School District was an excellent one (and very white) and thus our house had an excellent, unexpected selling point. On the other hand, the biggest obstacle we faced in selling the house in a hurry was its rural location which was about twenty miles from downtown Chicago.

After two weeks of trying to sell our house on our own without any success, we
started negotiating with real estate agents who would list our house. The same day
we decided on an agent, a young couple looked at the house and made us an offer.
In one day we had sold the house without an agent and the buyers had agreed to a
closing date in late December. The sale of the house had gone exceptionally
smoothly. I had been worried that the people behind my Gamma Supplies problems might try to block the sale. Then I realized that those demented people probably wanted me to have a fast exit from the area.

With the sale of the house set, I turned my attention to finding a new job.
Actually I had been responding to want ads in “Chemical and Engineering News”
since about July with no success. In late August I responded to an unidentified ad
which I was sure had been placed by Tenneland. I called Paul Jones to
inquire about the ad, but he assured me it was not a Tenneland ad and that Tenneland
had no openings. However, I remained convinced the as had been placed by Tenneland.

Now I was making a new, intense effort to secure a job and I began calling
people at Tenneland and applying pressure. If their plan had been that I would
not remember what had happened, I dropped little reminders to let people know that I
did not forget their roll in the plan to get my testimony. Finally, one of my contacts at Tenneland told me there was an opening in Plains, Texas, and I was instructed to call a Mr. Gordon Simms who was the regional sales manager.

I phoned Mr. Simms with great apprehension because I knew Ravi was still unemployed a year after he had been fired, and I was worried that “they” might decide to keep me unemployed. As I talked with Gordon Simms, we discussed what type of job I might like and where I would like to live. Suddenly, out of nowhere, he said, "don't bother to send me a resume. We already have a copy from when you answered our ad last August. We'll use that one, and I'll send you an application form to fill out."

I had been right! The ad had been Tenneland's and they knew I had applied
and they were going to ignore me until now when I applied some pressure. I was
making so much noise they had to change their minds. The fact that their original
intention was to forget about me scared me even more, but I went ahead with plans
to visit their plant in Plains, Texas on December 3.