About job hunting

Why have I been thinking about the time I felt lucky to have a job digging toilet holes for campgrounds on west shore of new Hungry Horse Reservoir?

This valley is presently a beehive of activity. Going to work at 7 a.m., I often have to wait in the middle lane of U.S. 2 south of Kalispell before turning into the KGEZ radio station because of traffic in long strings roaring in both ways. There are commercial vans, private vehicles, logging trucks, big interstate semis, and you name it.

Can’t help wondering where all those people are coming from or where they are going. Plenty of hustle hustle in towns and consider the traffic on highways into Whitefish, Columbia Falls and Bigfork? Sometimes looks like rush hour in Seattle, especially twice a day on U.S. 93.

Certainly seems like there is activity almost everywhere — new businesses, new houses, improvements on existing lands and buildings. There is action around here, and it’s not tourists. It is positive thinking.

Still too much public hype dwells on every negative figure the bureaucrats toss out, especially “unemployment percentage figures.” Whether accurate or not, they produce misleading headlines. Pshaw, I say.

On this Feb. 20, I called the State Job Service in Kalispell and asked how many jobs were open for people who wanted to work. Was told the figure had been hanging around 200 in the worst of winter but has been going up steadily, “now” at 277. Inquired if those openings were just for highly skilled and specialized folks, and was told there were openings in those categories but the “want list” was across the board for all kinds of jobs, from manual labor on up.

Now back to those toilet holes. Ran out of money while in college and came home to find work. Waited in long line at what was then the State Employment Office, where there must have been over a hundred ahead of me. That was because layoffs from finished construction of Hungry Horse Dam. (You talk about unemployment)

Couldn’t believe there were still jobs when I finally got to a desk, but there were three of them. Forget what one was, but the others were retail shoe salesman and Forest Service toilet hole digger. I took the pick and shovel job.

Later learned most people coming to that office only wanted jobs like they’d been doing — ironworkers, cement finishers, heavy equipment operator, etc. Although I had three years of college, my greatest skills involved training parachutists; however, I did have that low-tech Army education in digging fox holes, but my folks had raised me during the Great Depression and had wisely taught me to take whatever job was available ... until something better came along.

It now seems a fair question, “Why is unemployment in the Flathead a big problem for anyone of even moderate physical condition, when so many private and commercial employers are looking for help?”

Would it prompt some idle folks to change their attitude if they read this column, then pondered the meaning of life ... while sitting in an outhouse at Graves Creek Campground?

G. George Ostrom is a national award-winning Hungry Horse News columnist. He lives in Kalispell.