Guardian of Knowledge Chapter II

1975 - 1980

David Cooper’s New Reality

David had left the terrors of war in the rice paddies and jungles of Vietnam and was anxious to restart a life he had barely begun before being drafted into the Army. His hometown of Leominster, Massachusetts, hadn’t changed much since he had been gone. Two forms of factories dominated the city. One type of factory produced plastic pellets, the raw material needed for manufacturing everything from toothbrushes and sunglasses to five-gallon buckets, pink lawn flamingos, and car parts. The other factories ran the molding machines that produced everything made of plastic. There was a third place a person might find work if he had training, and that was a tool and die shop. This is where blocks of steel were skillfully carved into the molds used by the molding machines to form the plastic products. Out of the three occupations, tool and die maker paid the most, but none of the jobs interested David.

Safety was not as important as production in these factories, and the shop foremen weren’t shy about letting the workers know how they felt if quotas weren’t met. David’s grandfather lost a hand when a malfunctioning molding machine slammed shut around his hand with over 5 tons of pressure. The machine had been reported as faulty, but that line was behind quota, so they couldn’t afford to be down one machine. It was better for the company’s bottom line to pay a small monthly disability check to his grandfather than interrupt production for unscheduled maintenance. Losing a hand, several fingers, or part of an arm was looked upon as a normal way of life in this factory town. The callousness shown by the industry towards its employees infuriated David, but he was sure he could do nothing to change the culture, at least not while the corporations were making large profits.

The former sergeant took a good, hard look at what the future had in store for him if he remained an unskilled worker living in a town like Leominster, and knew he needed to make a change. David was a good student in high school, not the top in his class, but better than average. His grades were high enough to get him accepted at every school he applied to, but not good enough to be granted a scholarship. Tuitions seemed to be rising every semester, and even with his GI bill money, David couldn’t pay to attend a four-year school. Attending a local junior college part-time was his only option. Mt. Wachusett Community College was his closest and least expensive option, so he decided that something was better than nothing and enrolled. Now all he needed to do was find a job that wasn’t in a factory.

Working at the local library was his dream job. David looked at libraries as the guardians of knowledge. He would consider it an honor to work in one of them. Apparently, there are a lot of people who feel the same way because they haven’t had a vacancy in several years. Instead of arranging books on shelves, David spent his working hours changing oil and pumping gas at a local Exxon station. The job wasn’t as bad as it sounded. His pay plus the monthly GI bill payment gave him enough cash to live on and pay tuition. Besides, he got to meet a lot of the locals, one of whom was Alexander Harrington III, Alex for short.

Alexander and David were the same age, and both were from Leominster, but until the day Alex pulled in for gas in his shiny new Jaguar, they had never met. Alex attended private school throughout his childhood. He attended Princeton as a legacy student, and his family owned multiple factories in town as well as shares of others throughout the state. The two men had almost nothing in common, except books. David spotted a copy of Brave New World by Aldus Huxley sitting on the passenger seat when he went out to fill up the Jag.

“I read that.”

Not expecting to have a conversation about a book with a pump jockey, Alex was momentarily lost for words, but recovered quickly.

“Oh ya, what did you think?”

And the discussion began.