Chapter 36

I woke up and saw Willie had responded to the rooster a little quicker than he usually did (he almost beat me down the stairs) so I let him do the eggs this morning. He came back and pulled up a milking stool (to Daisy as I was milking Amber) and we started to milk and talk.

“Tommy, thanks for taking me to lunch with Monique, yesterday.”

“Of course, Willie. It’s important for you to see your sister as much as possible. Besides, Judge Hairston would have my hide,” I laughed.

Willie didn’t laugh.

“What’s wrong, Willie?” I asked.

“All those people were looking at us at the diner and that man...”

“That man pointed out some of the things we’re going to have to deal with, I guess,” I observed.

“I don’t know if I’m worth it,” he said lowering his head.

“You are more than worth it. You are part of this family.”

“I am?” he asked.

“Of course. My parents are your guardians. They love you. So do Grandma, Grandpa and me,” I explained.

“But Moany...”

“She’s your sister, so she’s part of this family, too.”

Willie grinned. “You’re sweet on her, though.”

I could feel a flush come over my face. “Well ... yeah.”

I saw his smile get somewhat wider. “Don’t worry, Tommy. She’s sweet on you, too.”

I couldn’t help it. I just laughed and when we finished milking the cows, I gave my foster brother a big hug.

I made a point of talking to my grandparents about Willie’s insecurity.

“He’s a good boy and a hard worker. Picks stuff up even better than you did,” grinned Grandpa, then adding, “He’s been a real asset to the farm.”

“I think all of that’s true, Sven, but the boy is hungering for love and acceptance. We just have to make sure we give it,” nodded Grandma.

I hugged them both and went upstairs to shower and get dressed into some nicer clothes for my meeting.

On the way to the meeting I expressed some of the same concerns about Willie and my father agreed to see if we could find some more tangible ways of expressing our love and appreciation to him.

“My father has set up college funds for both Monique and Willie,” said Dad.

“Really?” I asked.

Dad sighed. “Yes. I wasn’t thrilled and was about to tell him so, but your mom reined me in, as usual. My parents certainly have the money, your mom pointed out, and they care about all of you kids. Your mom and I still plan to set up a trust fund for Willie.

“Maybe you should explain that to him and explain why you are doing it,” I suggested.

Dad nodded, as we pulled into the ‘Commercial Parts Store’ parking lot.

As we walked through the door, we we’re greeted by a flirty Cheryl, the receptionist.

“Hello, Tommy. Hello, Mr. Matthews,” she said making big, blue eyes at my father. Cheryl was a cute, younger divorcee and looked like a younger, slightly shorter version of Mom.

Dad smiled back at her and I swear she almost swooned. “Hello, Cheryl. We’re here for our meeting.”

She closed her eyes, as if to get her bearings and then opened them. “Mrs. Schmidt is just finishing up a call. Can I get you ANYTHING?” she said, drawing out the last word.

“Maybe a cup of coffee, black, please. Tommy?”

“A glass of water, please,” I said and Cheryl ran off as if her life depended on it.

I laughed. “That woman’s got it bad for you, Dad.”

“No, Tommy. She’s got it bad for the head trustee of PASCO. She’s like many of the ladies I deal with every day in Pittsburgh. They’re ambitious and are looking for any way they can to get ahead.”

“Little does she know that Mom would eat her alive instead of being jealous,” I laughed and my dad blushed.

“Tommy, don’t speak of your mother that way,” he said, with surprisingly little heat in his voice.

“Dad, you forget who my girlfriends are. I think it is cool that Mom has such a large capacity to love. We are lucky guys, Dad.”

“Yes, we are, Tommy, but I’d be just as happy if she were the only woman in my life.”

I thought about my ladies and thought the same thing about each of them. The difference was that I had already bonded to all three of them and could see me eventually bonding to Phyllis too. Good thing I didn’t need to make a choice.

Soon Uncle Steve and Mr. Parker showed up and we were sitting in the conference room. I noticed that Mr. Dane, the interim Head of Sales was here, in addition to Monique, Phyllis, Rita Sanders and Aunt Sylvia. I let Dad take control of the meeting initially.

“Okay, we’re here to discuss the implementation schedule for automation of the companies. I know that Tommy and Monique met with some of you earlier in the week to explain what automation would entail. Does anybody have any questions?”

“Mr. Matthews?” asked Mr. Dane.

“Yes, Mr. Dane?”

“Is this a done deal?”

“Automation?” asked my dad.

Dane nodded. “Yeah, I mean we have a system already in place. It works great, so why change it?”

I decided that since this was my plan, that I should comment. “Mr. Dane?”

“Yes, Tommy?”

“Has any customer ever been approached when it was not appropriate to contact them?”

“Sure. It happens sometimes.”

“Automation helps track customer needs by identifying buying patterns. It allows us to identify trends based upon time of year and other metrics.”

“But the human touch...”

I sighed. “We’re not asking you to change your approach to sales. We’re just asking you to use automation as a tool to help you better determine when you should reach out to customers based upon THEIR needs and at THEIR convenience. Right now, you either have to make regular check-in’s with customers or manually scour and sort through the sales records. Wouldn’t it be easier to just click a button and see a sales history for a client? This way you get to see what and when they buy and at what volume, right at your fingertips.”

“Is it easy to use?” asked Mr. Dane.

“Fairly easy. You just need to sit down for a few minutes with me or Monique and we’ll show you how. We plan to do that with the whole sales team over the next couple of weeks,” I replied.

“And this won’t affect my relationship with my customers?”

“If anything, it might improve your ability to anticipate their needs,” added Monique.

“And it won’t typically be involved in generating leads for new customers, although it is possible that our relationships with Matthews Body and Johannsen’s Auto Garage might generate some new leads for you. Since they are tied into the same system, you’ll be able to see what companies do business with them and that might bring us new customers,” I explained.

Mr. Dane nodded and my dad smiled at me.

“So, you see why this is a good idea, Mr. Dane?” asked Dad.

“Now that I understand what automation means, I can see the advantages,” he said.

While Mr. Dane seemed to accept what we were saying, I wasn’t sure that he was completely on board yet. Still, I was hopeful that the first time he generated a sale based upon a lead sheet from an automated query, he might be more enthusiastic.

The rest of the meeting went without a hitch. Aunt Sylvia reported that we had hired on one of our temporary sales staff members on full-time. Our other part-timer decided he wanted to continue as he had been doing. That left us with two full timers and one part timer. We would need to find a new full-timer. Our original sales staff had three full-timers and two part timers. Dad and I both felt that we could run with three full-timers and one part-timer. Both Sylvia and Mr. Dane agreed. I added that the automation project would simplify tracking in such a way that each salesman could handle more clients, which meant more commissions. That actually made Mr. Dane smile.

That afternoon, we had another band jam session. Our repertoire was starting to take shape. Jen was kind of disappointed when Jimmy and Lars shot down Lovin’ Touchin’ Squeezin (as we were already doing Wheel in the Sky and Any Way You Want It).

“No slow rockin’ anthems! Might as well just do another ballad. We’re doing two of their songs already anyway,” complained Jimmy.

“He’s got a point, Tommy,” agreed Lars.

I nodded. Jimmy was a jerk, but his instincts seemed to be pretty good about these things.

Jen was happy that both Elton John’s Your Song and Billy Joel’s Just the Way You Are were included. She made a push for Dan Fogelberg’s Longer, but without an expensive synthesizer or a string section, the song wouldn’t sound right.

Janie pushed hard for female vocal stuff, so we managed to agree on songs by Heart, Fleetwood Mac, Pat Benatar and Blondie. She would be at home on high male vocals, so Journey songs, Styx songs, Boston songs and Led Zeppelin songs would be good too. We also decided to look at Queen too. Jen was lobbying for Love of My Life and Jimmy was pushing for Tie Your Mother Down (I knew the boy was kinky). I was still looking at rockers from Joel, John and Bruce Springsteen. Lars and Jimmy were still pushing for Hendrix, Deep Purple and Cream. In the end, we picked some tunes and decided to create an actual set list.

When we got to song eighteen, Janie rebelled. “You guys better figure who else is going to do some singing. No way in hell am I gonna sing lead on twenty songs!”

I could tell that nobody really wanted to do it (except maybe Jen), but we all agreed that we would think about it.

Once we got down to actually playing, we really sounded pretty darn good! Janie really nailed vocals by Pat Benatar and Deborah Harry from Blondie, but she was also terrific singing vocals by Robert Plant, Steve Perry, Boston’s Brad Delp and Styx’s Dennis DeYoung.

As I’ve said, Jimmy’s a jerk, but our rhythm section was really tight and backed Janie quite well. Jen’s fill in chords on the piano also made up for the lack of a rhythm guitarist and gave us some depth. Lars, Jen and I sounded really good on background vocals too. All in all, I was pleased when I got into Lars’ Mustang as he drove me home. We had the makings of a serious band, if we had the time and inclination to work on it.

When I got home, we had a really good homemade beef stew for supper and I excitedly relayed the events of the day to my family.

That night, I got a call from my English Teacher, Sarah Douglas. She was not happy.

“He’s cheated on me again, Tommy! This time with Miss Perez!”

“The Spanish teacher?!” I exclaimed.

“That’s the hussy!” she spat

While I’ll admit that Miss Perez was beautiful, she had nothing on my English teacher. Her husband was truly an idiot. “I’m so sorry you are still dealing with this. You don’t deserve it!” I replied.

“The worst part is that he’s still justifying his behavior based upon the false rumors about Vice-Principal Thomas. I never slept with Joe. I never even kissed or hugged him! To make matters worse, she’s lying about me and Joe being involved. People seem to actually be believing her. Oh, Tommy! I don’t know what to do!”

I immediately asked her to hold and put my parents on speaker with Sarah. Mom comforted her, while Dad thought through a plan. He referred Sarah to my friend, Billy’s dad to handle the apparent divorce, but Dad told her to note all of the comments she received from staff and administrators. If the situation got worse, Dad would be sure make sure that Sarah was fairly compensated by the town.

My parents let me say a private goodnight to my favorite teacher.

“Oh, Tommy, I know I shouldn’t be bothering you with all of this...”

“Sarah, we’re friends. You’ve always been there for me and I’ll always be there for you.”

I heard a sigh from the other end of the line. “If only I were ten years younger.”

After we disconnected, I thought about how lucky I was compared to Mrs. Douglas. I had a dear friends and a family who loved me. I also had the love of a number of girls who I also loved. I vowed to find a way to make sure that Sarah had people in her life who would care for her. As I spent the last day of my spring vacation ruminating about this, I eventually fell asleep.

Next morning came early as it always does. After splitting the chores with Willie, we had breakfast. Then he, Grandpa and I got to doing some chores around the farm. Willie and I got to operate the tractor, which is always fun. After we did some plowing, I went into the house to get cleaned up. Then it was off to my baseball game!

As usual, I was the first player there and after greeting Coach Daniels, I took a look at the lineup card.

I looked at the posted line up card to just to make sure.

All I could say was “Wow!”

I was hitting cleanup for the first time in my career!

The bad news was that we were playing without two of our steadiest and most productive players (Billy Crenshaw and Mike Wolf) and they were being replaced by two rookies (Dylan Moore and Marty Landers), who hadn’t played the positions that they were being assigned this season. Dylan had filled in for me at shortstop when I had my game off, but he hadn’t played second yet. Marty had started a couple of games in the outfield, but to my knowledge, he hadn’t ever played first (though both players practiced there some at Tuesday’s practice). At practice, Coach Daniels seemed to hint that Davy would be moving from behind the plate to first, but that would mean Terry would be catching. With all the wear and tear catchers take, I could see Coach not wanting to take a chance that Terry could hurt himself (considering he was pitching in just two days).