"I am not too sure about the Future"

Today we bring you a touching story of frustration, perseverance, and hopefulness. Carolie Lindenmuth writes to us from Detroit, and we appreciate her story because she has experienced many of the elements that Clean Slate Detroit focuses around. Carolie worked in the auto industry, she lives in Detroit, she finds herself out of work, she has moments of fear and lives with relative caution, but she has an overall aura of peace and hope. She also owns her home and lives a debt-free life. These themes are central to Clean Slate Detroit. Thank you Carolie for sharing your experience with us.  

Twenty seven years I had been in the automotive design business.

At 3:30 in the afternoon I was asked into the conference room where I was told that I was to be terminated. I was not laid off or fired, but terminated. I received a severance check. It amounted to about 2 months pay. I was told that I could not come back, and my job was terminated due to the economy.

I was an automotive designer, I had worked at this company for over twenty years and I was a 5-year-old female. I had been one of the first females in the business. In 1982 I started out as a print runner, which was the bottom of the food chain. I loved that job and I loved running prints around Ford country. I felt like a little piece of something so big and wonderful. It was something I had wanted to be part of since my first drafting class in high school. Now here I was. I soon was promoted to detailing, where I had an opportunity to draw. This was why I was there. I had an aptitude for this, learned fast and enjoyed every minute.

Opportunity led me to work in house at Ford Motor Company for a time. I enjoyed this very much, but was never accepted there. I was an agency person, often seen as scab labor, despite the abundance of work, great pay being given to the in house employees and the fact that my company had a whole office full of people "doing Ford work". I educated myself at my own cost to improve my abilities. The classes I took were tough, but I enjoyed all of them. I would be late at classes then go home to do home work. Up before the sun, I would head back to work to do ten hour days plus Saturdays. The overtime money was great and I was able to support me and my two kids. Evolution as it is, I became a designer and eventually learned cad design. I missed the drawing.

After 911 the company I worked for was never the same. At one point we had a great working relationship with a foreign car manufacturing company, but the job was pulled a week after 911 and they were never able to renegotiate a contract with the management, as it was, afterward.

It is November 2009. My chosen profession now requires a degree to get hired. Not so in 1982. I took my retirement and made sure I would at least have a roof over my head. I have paid off my mortgage, but I still can’t find work. I am no longer looking for design work. I am over- qualified for anything I send my resume for but keep sending it out. My pay requirements are not as large as before, and I don’t want to work forever, but will require work soon. Food, utilities and taxes will be needed until I die.

How do I feel?

There is a commercial I see on television, a woman is talking about how careful she has to be, despite the fact that her husband is still at his "good job" and nothing has changed in her life. What is that all about?

A fellow employee told me, after I left, that the management of the company explained the current events as "just a cyclical thing that the auto industry goes through". This has been true in the past, but do the people who are still viably employed really know what is going on? Perhaps some do. Not where I used to work.

I have no health insurance, which is just the way it is. That was cancelled when I was terminated and the cost to get COBRA was prohibitive. It would have cost me half of my unemployment. I’m lucky. I’m healthy right now.

I have spent a lot of time watching the healthcare debates and wondering what the out come will be. Will I be able to afford the government health care? What does the government consider affordable? Those people still have an income, a good sized income. What do they consider affordable?

I just live one day at a time. The house is warm, there are groceries in the kitchen and I have scraped together the taxes for this year. Life is good, but 

I am not too sure about the future.

Like I said, I am lucky, both me and my children have it good. Tomorrow? Who knows?

Right Now is All You Have

This blog, like Clean Slate Detroit, is going to become a patch-work quilt of stories, ideas, and inspirations. Clean Slate Detroit is not a singular idea- it is a marriage of needs and desires between young frontiersmen who can't afford to go on a frontier and a city that needs renewal and energy. The very essence of Clean Slate Detroit is multi-faceted, and the blog will take on the same character. Today's posting is written by Andy Meakins. 


I lost my job a month ago today. It was a casual meeting. I didn't expect that the first words spoken would be "we've got to let you go." It was a quick exodus from the office and a sad walk home. 

Panic, anger, frustration, betrayal, sadness, humiliation - all of these emotions I felt at once in a reoccurring cycle for the next few weeks. What were we going to do? We have this debt. We have this life. How can we pay for this? How will we eat? 

For the last few years we’d become a safer bet, building our credit and faithfully paying our debt. We could buy. We could do whatever we wanted, within reason of course. We didn’t want for much. I wouldn’t say we were extravagant, greedy, or wasteful, but we generally had what we wanted. We were comfortable, warm, and full. We saw a few amazing places, and bought a few nice things. Whatever it was, though, generally we could…but for a price – an increase on the school loan, or a bit more on the credit card. Still, we could.

After getting laid off we couldn’t. We had to rely on the provisions we’d stored, the few real goods we had. There was some food in the pantry soon to be eaten, a little money in the bank soon to be siphoned, clothes in the closet soon to be worn, and our collection of wine in the pantry. Not expensive or fancy wine, but bottles filled with memories. We’d been saving that wine for special occasions and future celebrations. It was intended to be a living memory of the amazing places we’d seen and good days we’d had. We had this collection and could no longer afford to add to it. In one way, in one very real and enjoyable way, we could.

We work, and we work, and we work. We hear the stories of those people who worked their entire lives, dreaming of their retirement, saving for the sailboat they’d sail around the world when retired, and then dying of cancer two months after retirement, gold watch on the dead wrist in the buried coffin. I was working towards that goal – to save and build my collection, to watch it grow and age – all the while the wine becoming vinegar in the bottle.

I appreciate what I really have, not the futures, not what I wish I had or assume I will have.

I lost my job a month ago today. I’ve opened five bottles since then- each the best I’ve ever had. 

Become a facebook fan and help spread the word! http://www.facebook.com/pages/Clean-Slate-Detroit/296713165074?ref=ts