Tim McGregor:  

I got out of Long Beach State with a BA in Economics in 1975. My first two years at Coast I was a history major but I felt that, as a novelist in the making, I could not afford to work as a professor of History in an ivory tower but needed to be in the world to find out what the world actually was and the Econ degree would be the meal ticket that would allow me to work all over the world. I started right away with a rough and tumble import company at LAX where the staff consisted of promoted truck drivers without much formal education but who were masters of the import business. They initially scorned me as a "college boy" but I had been working for a paycheck since I was eleven years old and I had an outstanding work ethic. I made believers and allies out of this crew and they trained me well in the arcane art of dealing with US Customs and when I was given my own office in Miami after one year in Los Angeles, it was a fond parting. When I got to the Miami office, I found the corporate malaise and the stink of corruption and a dull tropical torpor that pervaded the staff and management convinced me that I did not want to be a part of this company any more. As my going away gift to them I cleaned up the office, streamlined all the systems, hired quality people and when, after eighteen months, the paper flow and money flow were smooth, I accepted a position in Quito, Ecuador as marketing manager for a small manufacturer's representative company located in the heart of Quito's commercial district. It was not a peach of a job, but then my real job was to develop as a novelist so I asked myself the simple question; "What would Hemmingway do?" and Quito was my next stop. I sold building materials for straight commission and did quite well but after having to continually take my employer into the hospital to surgically remove my commission checks from their hand (it was that bad), I accepted a job with an architect friend to manage a night club they were building. Here is how it happened, I was looking at the drawings with the investors and checking the doorknob requirement because that was one of the things I sold and pointed out; "The customer flow from the front door intersects with the waiter traffic from the seating area which will cause a built-in problem slow down and disrupt the client experience." They asked me how I knew this and I told them I had worked my way through school as a waiter and bartender and had a fair understanding of the business so they hired me as manager. I worked both jobs for a while and got exhausted and quit the selling job and relaxed by working the club at night and running a 10-K every day and I got strong again. When, in 1981 the Peruvian Air Force sent their French made Mirage jets screaming over the skies of Quito at 1,000 feet, the annual war was on. Ecuador and Peru contested some territory in the Amazon and in February of 1981 the so-called "Paquisha War" broke out and the head of the group of investors that owned the club and were my employer...Expand for more