Message of the Day – Gratitude
Younger folks don’t know what a telegram is.
Here’s what one looks like.
After taking the Federal government’s Management Intern exam in 1965, I got a couple of job offers.
IRS was first.
Having political ambitions, I hoped I would get other job offers.
NASA came next. I’d have to move to Texas. That’s a long way from home.
Then came the offer I wanted most—from the United States Bureau of the Budget.
The agency had been glamorized for me by my best Oberlin College government professor—Aaron Wildavsky in his “Politics of the Budgetary Process.” The book was a political look at the budget making process.
In the middle of the June, after I had started a summer school course in statistics, I got word that Ihad a job at the Budget Bureau.
Naturally, the job was more important than the course.
I flew East the night 4th of July fireworks were being set off in Ohio.
What a sight.
I spent the summer with mainly Oberlin grads who had summer jobs in D.C.
From the way the telegram is worded, it sounds as if I were on probation.
When I finally got word from my section chief, Sam Lawrence, that I had a permanent job, I sent the telegram you see above to my parents.
All in capital letters, the August 18, 1985, telegram said says,
THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU. 40 ODD NEGATIVE REPLIES.
NO MATTER. NOW THEY KNOW FOR THE FUTURE. NO NEED. WHEN WENT
TO WORK SATURDAY NIGHT AFTER TAKING KIDS TO ZOO FOUND
A LETTER FROM LAWRENCE. GOT THE POSITION. LOOKING FOR
CLOSER APARTMENT. THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU=
LARRY.
Note that the letters are typed on strips of paper and pasted on the Western Union Telegram form. (Click to enlarge.) I don’t remember what the “40 odd negative replies” referred to.
I figure the kids where from an Anocostia housing project that Dennis Bathory hooked people in our house up with that summer.
