The Orkin Man In The Attic

Sometimes the past has a funny way of finding you. Mine came looking for me recently in a plastic storage bin in my attic. The bin had been sitting up there for almost 20 years, holding pieces of a career I had almost forgotten: awards, letters, coffee mugs, flashlights, shirts, trinkets and other memorabilia from my years in the pest-control business. There was Orkin stuff. There was Ecolab stuff. There were reminders of a career that lasted 27 years and, in many ways, changed my life. The plastic bin itself didn't survive. After nearly two decades of Kentucky heat that sometimes pushed past 100 degrees and winters that brought bitter cold, the plastic had deteriorated. When I finally pulled it down, it practically fell apart in my hands. But inside, remarkably, much of my history was still intact. As I sorted through those things, I started thinking about how I got there in the first place. It certainly wasn't the career I had envisioned when I graduated from Ole Miss. I had spent five years studying print journalism, with an emphasis in public relations and a minor in sociology. Journalism was what I knew. It was what I wanted to do. It was also where I met Patty. We met at St. John's Catholic Church, eventually married, and started our family. Our son, Galen Jr.—Tony, as we always called him—came along, and life moved us to Kentucky. We moved to Russellville, Patty's hometown, in 1987. I worked briefly for the newspaper there, covering sports, before we moved to Bowling Green in February 1988. Eventually I landed at the Bowling Green Daily News, where I worked in the newsroom as a reporter, book reviewer and editorial assistant. I loved the newspaper business.

But there was one problem. I wasn't making enough money. We had bought a home. We had a new car. We had a family to support. Patty was working, too, and eventually she made a career change of her own, leaving a manufacturing human-resources job to work for a well-known eye doctor in Bowling Green. We both knew we needed to make more money. That's when a man named Bill Guffey entered the picture. Bill was a manager with Orkin in Owensboro, Kentucky. I knew him because he was the grandson of my next-door neighbor, and Bill and I had something else in common: We liked to run. Back in those days, when a lot of us baby boomers were caught up in the running craze, we'd run 5Ks, 10Ks and whatever else we could find. Bill suggested that I consider pest control. Good pay. Good benefits. A chance to support my family. I listened. After five years in the newspaper business, I traded my reporter's notebook for a pest-control truck. And I'll be honest: My ego didn't like it. I'd gone from working in a newspaper newsroom to becoming, as I jokingly thought of it, a "bug man." For the first couple of years, I hated pest control. Not because of the work itself, but because I was still trying to figure out who I was. I had an identity tied to being a journalist. I had gone to college for five years. I had worked in a newsroom. I was supposed to be a writer. Now I was knocking on people's doors, carrying pesticides and crawling under houses. It took me a while to understand something that would become one of the most important lessons of my life: I was not my job. My job was simply how I made a living. I remember going to the library and listening to Dr. Wayne Dyer tapes. He talked about the person on the inside rather than the image we create on the outside. His ideas about ego and identity helped me put things into perspective. I finally realized there was nothing wrong with being a pest-control technician. I was still Galen. I was still a husband. I was still a father. I was still a writer. I was still the same person who had gone to Ole Miss and studied journalism. I just happened to make my living getting rid of bugs. And once I got over myself, something interesting happened. I got good at it. I stayed with Orkin for 11 years. Eventually, I moved on to Ecolab, where I spent another 15 years. Twenty-seven years in pest control. Twenty-seven years of crawling into attics and crawl spaces, walking through restaurants and businesses, treating homes, solving problems and meeting people from all walks of life. And, like any job, there were some stories. I've nearly gotten myself stuck in crawl spaces more than once. There were moments when I was wedged into places where I wondered whether I was going to get back out. A couple of times I came close to having a panic attack. There were mistakes, too. Some could have been serious. Fortunately, I had good management teams who understood that people make mistakes. They helped correct the situations and, when necessary, helped get me out of trouble. That's one of the things you learn when you spend decades working for a company: You represent the company when you're out in the field. If something goes wrong, the company has to deal with it. But you also learn to be accountable. You learn to pay attention. You learn that safety matters. And you learn that one of the most important parts of pest control isn't the chemicals. It's the person behind the wheel. Driving was a major responsibility. You had to obey the speed limit, follow the rules of the road and take care of yourself and everyone else around you. Over 27 years, I developed a pretty good safety record. Looking back now, I'm proud of that. I've also thought about the pesticides themselves. Someone recently posted on Facebook about concerns over herbicides used on crops, fruits and vegetables. She mentioned that it was one reason she didn't eat cereal. I jokingly responded that, I guess, I was doomed. After all, I had worked around pesticides for 27 years. I'm 64 now, and so far, knock on wood, I've been fortunate. But I'm also realistic enough to know that nobody gets a guarantee about the future. When I was considering going to work for Orkin all those years ago, I talked to my priest about it. His advice was simple. "Galen, you've got to support your family." That stayed with me. Every occupation carries some kind of risk. Construction workers build the buildings we live and work in. People dig ditches and tunnels. Ironworkers climb skyscrapers. Workers maintain towers and electrical systems. People do jobs that require them to put themselves in dangerous situations every single day. Somebody has to do those jobs. I did mine. And I tried to do it safely and responsibly. That's really what a career is, isn't it? You find a way to make a living. You take care of your family. You show up. You do the best you can. And if you're lucky, you learn something about yourself along the way. That's what pest control taught me. It taught me humility. It taught me that a job title doesn't make you who you are. It taught me how to deal with people. It taught me responsibility. And, yes, it taught me quite a bit about bugs. Funny thing is, years later, people still remember me as the Orkin man. I'm reminded of that every now and then. Recently, while working part-time as a cashier at Walmart, a woman recognized me. She had been one of my customers decades ago. She remembered me. I vaguely remembered her, too, although I couldn't quite place everything. And I'll admit, I was a little embarrassed that she remembered me better than I remembered her. But then I thought about it. Why should I be embarrassed? Those years were a part of my life. They were years when I was working hard, supporting my family and building a career. Another reminder came recently at the gym. I met a young man who had started his own pest-control company. We'd had lunch together at Smokey Pig barbecue, and he had asked me about the business. When I saw him at the gym, we started talking again. I found myself telling him stories. The crawl spaces. The close calls. The mistakes. The funny things that happen when you're walking into people's homes and businesses every day. He was picking my brain. And I realized something. I had become the old guy with the stories. The young man was the one learning from me. For 27 years, I had been the one learning from somebody else. Now I was the guy who had been there. That's a pretty good feeling. And maybe that's why I finally decided to bring that old storage bin down from the attic. I wanted to see what was left. As I went through the awards, letters, coffee mugs, shirts and little pieces of memorabilia, I realized I wasn't really sorting through junk. I was sorting through a chapter of my life. Some things I'll keep. Some things I'll probably get rid of. And some of the more unusual pieces may even end up on eBay, because somebody out there might consider them collectible. But I'm keeping the things that remind me of the man I was back then. The young father trying to make a living. The former newspaper guy trying to swallow his pride. The Orkin man learning his trade. The Ecolab employee building a career. The husband and father doing what he had to do to take care of his family. Today, I'm working part-time at Walmart. I've been there for several years, although I had to step away for a while to help take care of Patty when she became ill. I've returned to a place where I know a lot of people, and it sometimes feels like a big family. I'm at a different stage of life now. I'm drawing Social Security. I'm working part-time. I enjoy seeing people, talking to customers and fellow associates, and making a little extra money. Would I rather not have to work? Sure. But I've discovered that I like being around people. And I like having somewhere to go. Maybe that's another lesson I've learned. We spend so much of our lives working that it's easy to think our jobs are who we are. They're not. They're chapters. Some chapters are short. Some last 27 years. Some begin with a newspaper reporter carrying a notebook. Some begin with a pest-control technician carrying a sprayer. And some begin with an older man standing in an attic, pulling an old plastic storage bin apart and wondering where all those years went. The bin may have fallen apart. But the memories didn't. And neither did the pride. Because when I look back at those 27 years, I don't see a "bug man." I see a husband. A father. A worker. A man who learned to put his ego aside and do what he needed to do. And, after all these years, I'm pretty proud of that Orkin man.