How I Got My Job

As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be a soldier. When I was real little, every Saturday my Grandma Robie and I would walk to town, about two miles, and do her shopping. And every Saturday we made the trip to Pruitt's Army Store. I would stay there as long as Grandma Robie let me, looking at the knives, helmet liners, jackets, boots, folding shovels, backpacks, everything the aspiring young soldier just couldn't live without.
I kept this up almost all the way through high school. I even had a job, for a while, at the Army Store, and nobody had to show me where anything was or what the prices were. I knew the drill from day one. Then, about the time I started driving a school bus and paying a slight amount of attention to world news, I realized there was a war brewing, a war somewhere 'way over there' that involved orientals, rice paddies, and an army that didn't wear uniforms while they were trying real hard to kill good ole out side.
I thought about going, but when I talked it over with my dad, he asked me what I was going to do when I got out of service, in two or three years. I had no idea. Jethro Bodine, of the Beverly Hillbillies had not uttered that wonderful line yet, where he was torn between becoming a brain surgeon or a fry cook. I may not even have the brain surgeon part correct. But his two dreams were in opposite directions. Dad suggested I go on to college, and get some background classes under my beltl, and if i still wanted to go in service, I would be coming back with some education behind me.
My high school grades were terrible. Other kids would make a C in a particular class and get depressed. I'd get a C and start the party. I just didn't care. A C was a passing mark, and that was all I was looking for.
I was always good in English, though, although it didn't translate into good grades. Little things, minute things, like term papers and book reports, even homework, were thrown my way to make my live miserable and take time away from important things, like riding my motorcycle and shooting pool.
I went to summer school from the ninth grade on. My daddy used to tell people I was the poster child for year-round education. One would think I loved school, but I hated the place. And I went to Boys High School. Now what does that name tell you? What  little detail just LEAPS out at you? Maybe the fact that there were no girls in Boys High School.
Let me say again that I hated school. The only thing that had my attention at all was the Library. Stuff to read. I started reading early and eagerly  devoured every book that I could get my hands on. That's all I wanted to do. English was the only subject I could abide, and to this day I have never understood the importance of math. If I wanted to know the answer I figured I could ask someone. That proved to be a valid concept.
I went into my 10th grade math class with no idea of learning math. I seemed to have the ability to disrupt a class qickern quick, and after just a few days the math teacher asked me to stay behind a moment after the bell. He asked me what I aimed to do in life. People were always asking me that question. I just smiled. He said the sweetest words I had ever heard in a math class. He told me if I would just sit and be quiet, not try to do any work or any homework or anything, just be quiet and let him teach the others he would give me a D--. That's D minus minus. The minus minus didn't mean anything. They didn't go on the 'permanent file' they were just there to piss off parents. D was passing. I leaped at accepting his proposal.
So, being semi smart, I was quick to make sure the taught the rest of my math classes i was required to take to get out of high school. We kept the same rules. I could count money, read a ruler, go fast enough to get speeding tickets and tell time. That was all I needed.
 When I got out of high school, finally, after getting into an altercation with an English teacher that resulted in me making a 45 on the final 'discussion' exam. If  yo didn't make a 50, you were not allowed to pass, and you could not graduate without senior English.
That English teacher stayed alive simply because I didn't want to go to jail.
So when I decided to continue my education by going to college, there weren't any recruiters waving flags to get my attention.
The only recruiter that was interested in my was Uncle Sam and Vietnam.
I took a look at the available opportunities, and it boiled down to a short list. Anderson College.
I fit their qualifications. I could be a day student. I had the money, and they could just expel me any time they wanted. It seemed my reputation had preceeded me. The whole town knew about that Fant youngun.]
I never have looked it up, but I may have been the first student every to START college on academic probation.
Back then you went to the library to sign up for classes. I knew what I wanted to do. I wanted to take the easiest things offered, so I could stay there at least until the water got hot. But when I walked into the library, my life took an upswing. Standing there, with his back turned, was my high school math teacher. I ducked out of sight and started asking, 'What is he doing here?' I was told he was the new math professor.  So I eased back up behind him, tapped him on the shoulder, and when he turned around, saw me, and started turning pail, I asked, 'Same deal?"
Yep, same deal. So I got all of my college math out of the way in short order, with a steady string of D minus minus marks.
I started liking college. There were women there. You could come and go whenever you wanted. I decided to stay in school. I did, too, because I had been there three years (AC was a junior college, a two-year design) the dean of men called me in.  He had called me in before, of course,  lots of times but it was usually for something small, like trying to burn the back tires off my T-Bird ragtop through the parking lot, smoking in the swings out in front of the school, stabbing another student, things like that.
This time he had my transcript out. He told me, like I didn't know, that I only needed one course to meet the graduation requirement and I wasn't taking it that semester. I told him I didn't intend to take it the next semester either. I couldn't graduate without it and so I could stay in school as long as I wanted, or until the war ended. I shouldn't have been so smug. He told me he was GIVING me that class and I was to graduate in June, which was about two months off.
I was so sad. I rushed down to Selective Service and asked the secretary, 'If I'm not in school in September, where will I be in October?' She mentioned Fort Jackson. I had to continue my education or get drafted.
So I got my transcript and headed off to the next-closest seat of higher education. I applied at Clemson.
I went sneaking in Tillman Hall with my transcript in hand, and signed in. I told the woman, "I want to go to school here in the worst way, and when you take a look at this transcript you will know what the worst way is.. She told me to sit down and wait for my name to be called. After about half a day, I heard, Jesse Reese Fant II called, loud and clear. I jumped up and had a leg cramp from sitting so long and almost fell in the floor. Then a woman halfway down that line of desks said, 'No, wait, I'll take Fant.' I was still hobbling around trying to get the cramp out of my leg. Then I sat back down with visions of me pushing a rifle, crawling through a rice paddy with bullets zooming over my head. I was past scared and was approaching skeered. Finally that woman finished with the kid she was interviewing and yelled, "Fant!" I walked up and before I could get seated, she said, "Is your daddy from Pendleton?' 'Oh, No Mam! My daddy is from LaFrance.' About four miles from Pendleton. She just smiled, and said, 'he's an old boyfriend of mine.'
Then we started in on that transcript. She took classes I had always been told just simply would not transfer. She took two Bible classes, Old and New Testament, that I had been cautioned that only God would give credit for, as two History classes. She took my entire string of D minus minus math classes and told me I had completed all of my math requirements to graduate from Clemson.
I went home that day and asked my dad if he remembered her. He just smiled. Then I said, 'I don't know what you did to her but she damn-sure liked it.' That didn't go over to well but he never denied anything.
But by then Diane and I had gotten married, and before the end of my first semester, she was taken suddenly pregnant.
Well, one day she was not pregnant and the next day she was. That's sudden, isn't it?
So, on the first day of February, 1967, while all those other Clemson students were signing up for additional biology or engineering classes, Diane and I were gettin gour trailer moved from Easley, where she had been working as x-ray tech, to a spot in the pasture of her parent's farm. Her dad had diabetic problems that left him legally blind and Diane could take care of him during the day while her mom worked in the Ellen-Woodside cafeteria.
And I went looking for a job. The first one I landed was setting up an inventory system for a company that sold construction supplies and equipment. i was told, 'This will involve a lot of math.'
"I'm good in math,' I said. 'I already have passed all of the math classes I need to graduate from Clemson.'
I got the job. I stayed there a year,and when the second inventory didn't come close to matching the inventory, especially in the diamond core-drill blades, the owner called me in to find out why. "Your outside salesmen are stealing you blind," I said.
He called me an incompetent smart ass and fired me. I went looking for another job and in a very short time the construction equipment  company closed it's doors forever. Why? Because the outside salesmen were stealing them blind.
Next I landed in the very middle of Donaldson Center, where American Iwer was busily installing Spanish shuttleless weaving machine throughout these United States. I was in Shipping and Receiving, which I was told involved a lot of math. But i had already proven I was good in math. It turned out I wasn't quite suited for shipping and receiving, so I went into technical inspector. Evidently Technical Inspector is the Spanish translation for scapegoat.
This outfit would ship the huge machines all over the countrty without half of the equipment necessary to get them going, and when the customers called in to complain, I would be called to th office where they would yell and scream at me for being a dumbass, while the customer listened in via the phone. Then they would grin, point me to the door, and I'd go back to technico inspectring. I loved my job.
I would probably still be there except for one thing. I bet $5 on a football game. The Greemville News didn't have the score in the Sunday paper or the Monday recap, so I just picked u the phone and called the sports department.
When someone said, 'Sports' on the other end of the line, I said something like, "Look, I know you are fighting a deadline, but  just need one football score.'
"What do you know about deadlines," the sports guy asked.
'I been fooling around the Anderson Independent in one job or another side I was 12-years-old,' I replied.
"Is this Reese Fant, the sports guy asked.
I was shocked, but agreed that he had me. I worked on the city staff there while you were in sports. And we are looking for a sports writer. Do you want the job,' he asked.
I said I would need to know more about this opportunity. He said they would hit deadline in about an hour and why didn't I come up and talk to the sports editor.
I went in to my boss and said, "I'm sick,and I want to go home."
He told me I was not sick, and I told him I wasn't going home, either.
And I headed for the newspaper. I talked to the sports editor, covered a basketball game that night between Carolina High and Walhalla, introduced myself to the winning coach, Lloyd Kelly, and asked him how long he had been coaching. He told me and I asked if he had been interviewed a lot. He had.
"Well, I'm here to interview you and I have never interviewed anyone in my life. If you will give me the answers, I will try to figure out the questions on the way home. He talked, I wrote it down, and went home to compose a story.
Two weeks later I was a sports writer for the Greenville Piedmont. And at that point, I was married, father of two children, we were expecting our third, and I still had no idea what I wanted to do with the rest of my life.
But by and by, it came to me.