SHAMELESS SELF-PROMOTION!

Okay, so I'm promoting another of my websites here...PAUL MASHBURN - FINE ART, but if I don't who will?!

I have been accumulating photos for years, and have finally got to the place in my life where I have the time to spend outside at different times of the day and night to capture the images I see in my mind's eye, and the money for the kind of equipment one needs to do the job right. 

Photography has always been a passion of mine, or at least from the time, back in 1964, when a friend, Frank Boyce, gave me an old "Mamiya rangefinder" 35mm.  I used that little wonder all through the Air Force, including documenting my tour in Vietnam, and up until the time I started working for the Roane County NEWS as advertising manager.

Man, did I have fun working in advertising.  Naturally, it involved great accounts with the boutiques in our little county, and pretty high school girls (who weren't that much younger than me then), and beautiful clothes!  What more could a creative mind and a love for photography ask for?!

Of course, I spent my time on the sidelines, nearly getting creamed by running backs, just to get that one great shot for the sports page!  I think the anticipation of the darkroom experience after the game was almost as exciting as the game itself.  I loved the smell and feel of the darkroom, but most of all what you could do with a negative.  All the while, looking forward to surprising my owner/editor with a great shot!

Today my darkroom consist or software called Photoshop!  No smell, no feel, just greater control.  However, I miss the isolation and the yellow light glowing up in the dusty corner of a musty little curtained off room.

Another chance meeting that spurred my interest and knowledge in photography was working with Bill Hall*, who was a renowned, yet mischievous, photographer, and the paper's chief camera man.  He used a Hasselblad, a "Hackeyblad" as he called it, which in my mind elevated him to great photographic stature!  I was almost ashamed to stand by him with my little Minolta 35mm!

I learned a lot about the art of photography, and the darkroom from Bill.  I owe him for pushing me on to be the best I could be with what I had.

In this old newspaper clipping (above), you can see that I did all the work (a day teaching), while Bill flirted with the college gals and got the photo credit at the bottom. 

However, I soon began getting my own "credit line", as the clipping above shows.  I was just Paul then...the "J" came later!

I even spent my time sweating, literally, over a 39, plus 1 double exposure, wedding shoot so I could thrill some newly wed with a cheap (cost wise) wedding album.  Thirty-nine 8X10 photos in a tufted and monogrammed album all for $200!  No one could beat it...except maybe with a little more quality that multiple lights offered, but hey, I couldn't afford all the extras at the time.  I was just trying to supplement my $150 a week income, and possibly save enough for a better camera, or another Mustang!

I ended up with a 2 1/4X2 3/4 format camera called a Rapid Omega 200.  It was really nice and gave me some of the finest color negatives I ever got from a film camera.  I still have it...if anyone's interested!

So, back to today...I decided to offer my best photos (solely judged by me) for sale.  I get request all the time from my Flickr site from people wanting this or that, but never had a way of really selling to the public.  After getting request for my night shot from Buzzard's Bluff recently, I started researching in earnest.

I found Fine Art America while Googling and comparing companies, and I think I like what they offer.  There is no commission to be paid...I just list base price I want out of a sale, and they add on shipping, handling, tax, framing, and take credit card payment from the buyers.  I simply get a check for what they've sold for me every two weeks.

Well, don't get excited, I haven't made any money yet, and I probably will never get rich, but at least when someone asks how they can get a copy of a photo of mine I have somewhere to send them, and I just stay out of the negotiation.  They can take it or leave it...I just want to take pictures!

Oh, did I ever give you the website?  JUST CLICK HERE, and check it out!  Check back often too...I'll be posting new ones there frequently.

*Just learned today, 071618, that Bill passed away.  So sorry.

AS IT WAS MEANT TO BE

I continued working at The Roane County NEWS for a little over four years, becoming the Advertising Manager and hiring two wonderfully talented sales women. One was a beautiful young and energetic California lady who I quickly assigned the “hard sell” accounts. The other was a sixty plus year old woman with more energy than a three month old pup, sharp as a whip, and who had known every established business man and woman in Roane County for over fifty years!

I took on the new Wal-Mart, Goodyear, Sears, and shops owned by women. Most of these accounts required extra time on the golf course or in back rooms playing poker, and, in general, needed more attention than any of the others.

Together, we were quite a team and effectively increased the advertising inches required to publish the bi-weekly newspaper. The paper at that time was a very large driving force, helping to promote businesses and sports in Harriman, Kingston, and Rockwood, Tennessee. Even though the towns were rivals on the playing field, they came to realize the NEWS was the place to reach their customers.

Corey’s mom and I started our home during the period between the newspaper job and the time that I was hired at Oak Ridge.

I did pretty well during this time and even ran a wedding photography business on the weekends. I used a Koni-Omega Rapid 200 camera and shot in 120mm film in the 6X7 format that required no cropping when printed in 8X10 size. I developed a package of 40 – 8X10’s for $200. It was a sweet package for a young couple just getting started, but the pressure of making each exposure, with two of them combined into a double exposure that depicted the bride looking down upon the wedding scene, was nerve racking!

I only took 4 rolls of film, 10 exposures each, to a wedding – no room for error! There was a system to the madness and every shot came in order and to a prearranged sequence in the tufted album. If “Uncle George” came up and requested I take his picture, I simply hit the test button on the Graphflex flash and, for all he knew, I had taken his photo!

Since the shots did not have to be cropped, I ordered everything developed and printed in 8X10! It was a chinch, but caused me to soak many a “leisure suit” with hard earned sweat!

I was once asked, “Are you the groom sonny?”

“No mama, why do you ask?”

“You’re the only one here sweatin’, so I figured you were gettin’ married!”

The new home, and the problems we had with builder(s), and the nine month long horror may have set in motion the end of our marriage, but that is a story you will not read here.

Suffice it to say, by the time Corey had reached four years of age, I had accepted an hourly job at the K-25 Gaseous Diffusion Plant near Oak Ridge Tennessee. K-25 was built during WWII to enrich some of the uranium for the first two atomic bombs.

The head of personnel did not really want to hire me, thinking that since I had a degree I would not stay long in the hourly union ranks. However, to me it was a foot in the door.

After a year and a half working as a second class mechanic on seven day rotation, I was recommended for a “weekly” job. I have always worked hard and even though the union boys kept after me to “slow down” and saying “you’re working yourself out of a job” I remained true to my upbringing and advanced up through the ranks with recommendations from my supervisors.

I worked the weekly job, directing the movement of large equipment, some over 40 tons, out of the UF6 diffusion stream, to refurbishment, and back into service, for over two years. Then one day a job appeared on “the board” looking for someone with television experience.

I had taken a quarter of television production, in preparation for making commercials, at UT. That, plus my good looks, got me the new position!

That led me into encrypted slow-scan video of classified meetings between Oak Ridge, Torrance, CA, and Portsmouth, OH concerning the new enrichment technique of centrifuge separation.

A new day, around 1985, dawned and my facility was transferred into the Telecommunications Division. Somewhere along the way, I moved to the “voice communications” department, and was promoted to a monthly position. To clarify, hourly simply means you are paid by the hour, weekly, by the week, and monthly means you get a check once a month! However, the grades in this level are much higher and normally require a sheep skin! Got one!

I first took a position as “Telecommunications Coordinator” at the Y-12 weapons plant, about ten miles away, but still under the Department of Energy umbrella, and working for the same division head.

Then I was asked to help out my friend Robert Ridenour, the supervisor of the Telecommunications Section, that administered a contract with AT&T and South Central Bell for telephone services, and supervised the incoming calls for adds, moves, and changes at the three plant sites, which included the National Laboratory at ORNL, and the DOE offices within the city of Oak Ridge. This all amounted to over 20,000 telephone lines and data circuits.

Robert ran into a foul pole playing softball injuring himself and was off several months. When he came back, I was in charge! We shared duties for a time before he moved on to something new.

These were probably the happiest times I enjoyed while employed. I had fifteen or twenty great employees, only 4 were men, and the women could all cook. We were blessed with a huge break room and full kitchen and some of the most wonderful meals were cooked there - partly the reason I look the way I do today. I loved them all, even the two guys I was forced to fire over timecard abuse.

I then worked for Patti Pitts, a very intelligent and demanding supervisor that insisted sexual harassment was mandatory! Not really, but it was a running joke.

Patti’s group listened to communications problems and complaints and found solutions for the issues. Mostly we replaced the antiqued 1A2 6-button sets with the then new, now old, Merlin phone systems. Basically, we made secretaries very happy!

Later I did another couple of years as the Communications Coordinator for the K-25 Plant, which continued until about 1999 when DOE awarded a contract to the Bechtel Jacobs Company (BJC) to clean up and shut down the plant, turning it into an open industrial park that DOE could then lease.

The original Communications Division outsourced itself to a private company, but Bechtel Jacobs needed a Communications and Computing Division to continue service for the five year duration of their contract. Truth is, these poor folks are continuing that work today, almost nine years later.

I was given the choice of going commercial or staying with DOE and BJC. I was the only person who dared to stay.

Long story short, I became a Department Head, working under Miller Taylor, overseeing all telecommunications (phones, data circuits, network, cellular, and radio services) after only one interview with my new boss. I never worked harder for any man, than I did while under Miller's supervision, but I never learned more either!

I was under great stress through the first few weeks, but one day Miller told me the secret to managing – “You don’t have to do it yourself, you have to make sure the people with the right knowledge gets the job done!” After that, I never pretended I knew every thing. I just let people with the expertise do what they were trained to do, took their advice, and made the decisions based on all the educated input. The other thing I did was to praise them everyday for doing their job. If I got praise, they got praised! I even praised them if they just tried. We were all working for the applause!

Before I left in 2005, I had also become responsible for the computing for BJC. Our computer room had over 300 servers in the beginning, but we slowly cut that back, and I assume they are still trying to consolidate and reduce the number of applications used today.

I also had the maintenance section that installed, replaced, and repaired thousands of personal computers and servers. Quite an accomplishment, if I say so myself, for a big handsome fat guy who started out in one of the lowest ranks.

God blessed me by letting me retire still under the umbrella of DOE, which means I receive a company pension and a 401K. My wife also retired from the DOE arena, so we want for little, and we thank God everyday for His blessings.

Young people being hired today only get offered a 401K. There are no more company pensions – that era is over.

I started working for DOE under a Union Carbide contract, that later became Martin Marietta, then Lockheed-Martin, and finally BJC. Hopefully, I’ll out last them all!

YOU TAKE WHAT LIVES GIVES YOU

Somehow you get locked into a community, a local area that becomes your home, and you cannot remember exactly why. If you put loved ones in the ground, or you attend a school for more than five years in a row, then more than likely you will become rooted whether you want it that way or not.

I probably could have lived anywhere besides Harriman. I mean Waverly, Tennessee was nice and I have a lot of memories from that time, even went to school there for over three years, but I guess it was because we did not have to bury anyone there.

Florence, Alabama was nice, and I attended school there for two years, but I suppose it was the threat to tornadoes, the red clay soil, or possibly the flatness of it that prevented me from going back.

The truth is I settled in Harriman because I went to school there for six years, including my last two in high school, buried my dad there, married a girl with life long roots there, got my first jobs there, and my mother retired there.

One day you just wake up and you realize that this is where you will also die. Nothing will make you move from the familiarity of it all, or the relationships you have intertwined into life.

Oh, there was a time I wanted to leave, and had my first wife not had her roots deep into family and the area, we would have left and probably ended up in Atlanta, Georgia.

During my senior year at UT, the College of Communications arranged for “field trips” of a sort to Atlanta to participate in “mock interviews.” I suppose some of us could have been offered jobs, but the truth, as it was given to us upfront was that these were trial runs designed to give us experience at interviewing and to test our portfolios.

The top advertising agencies in the United States has offices in Atlanta, and in those days the top two were Doyle Dane Bernbach (DDB), of Alka Seltzer and Volkswagen fame, and McCann-Erickson, of Coca-Cola fame!

I instantly wanted to work for McCann-Erickson, because in my view it was such a laid back and creative environment. To me, it appeared that the account people just sat around in this big room and brainstormed ideas. All around the room were red and white Coke creations (signs, print ads, coolers, etc.) they had come up with and I wanted to be a part of that so much.

I knew I had what it would take to be creative mentally, but after a few of the copy writers explained how tough the business was, I had second thoughts. Some of the agency people talked about working for 2 or 3 agencies during the course of a single year, while others said they had been working on the same product, but had just walked across the street when the account changed agencies! It began to sound like a dog-eat-dog world, and a voice whispered “you had better be good if you want to survive here.”

Nonetheless, the big ad agency was what I had my heart set on!

Atlanta was a fun time in 1972, running around with a dozen college friends with life leading us on and a tiger by the tail. Even an encounter with a homeless wino on the Atlanta streets did not seem to dissuade me from my dream.

The wino grabbed my arm and demanded money. I was scared out of my wits and my entourage just kept walking, leaving me to deal with the situation. I jerked my arm a couple of times and it was obvious he was not letting go, so, always quick to mentally work my way out of a situation, I reached into my pocket for some change. I was shocked to find that I only had a nickel! I was doomed, I thought if I handed it to him. Therefore, the smart thing to do was to flip the coin into the air. The drunk released his grip and cupped his hands and ran away to get under the coin.

Meanwhile, I had already caught up with the cowardly crowd and moved on down the street. Bastards never said a word or looked back.

Quick thinking would also save me from an even nastier scene years later!

Suffice it say, we did not move to Atlanta. You just take what life gives you!

I finished school, still living with my in-laws, and took an advertising sales job with The Roane County NEWS in Kingston, Tennessee.

There was little glamour in the job, but it paid $200 a week, provided me with transportation, and gave me little moments of creativity genius to satisfy me.

Looking back, had the job paid more, or had provided better insurance, I might still be there plugging away with my pencil and layout pad, and my 35mm camera, shooting football games on Friday nights, and attending local community events shaking hands and smiling superficially. Who knows, I may have even become an editor and/or part owner, with a bottle of creativity down in my bottom drawer.

However, I know one thing, I would not be retired now…if ever.