Disco Daddy. John on a 2005 postcard
Starting a business is the fun part. And today it couldn’t be easier. I Googled “starting a business” and there’s “About 209,000,000 results”.
But in 1985, when John and I started dating, there was no Google. Psshhh… the Internet was something straight out of the Jetsons. Even books on the subject of being an entrepreneur were rare. It was another couple of years before Paul Hawken wrote my favorite, “Growing a Business“.
When I met John, he was supplementing his pottery business with a regular substitute teaching job, and I was working part time as a waitress while attending Sul Ross State University. But a few weeks after I graduated, a car accident left me with a broken ankle, and put an end to my job.
I was pretty useless laying flat on my back with a cast that ran from my toes up to my thigh hanging in a sling that John had hung from the ceiling in the middle of his living room. He could do no wrong in my mother’s eyes after that.
And when he left to go work in his studio each morning, I had plenty of time on my hands, so I started reading his “Ceramics Monthly”. From that magazine I discovered “The Crafts Report” which educated me about running a craft business, and from that publication I learned about “Sunshine Artist” which listed hundreds of art shows around the U.S.
But when I talked to John about going to art shows, he was dead set against it. The oil bust and the savings and loan crisis of the 80’s had taken their toll on luxury goods in our far west Texas area, and on John’s attitude towards making a living with his artwork.
A few weeks before the accident, John turned 30. He was more than ready to put his M. Ed. to use. The problem is that Alpine is small and very very remote. With a university here (as well as families who have been here for generations), teaching jobs often go to those with better connections or to those whose husbands have jobs at the Border Patrol, at Sul Ross, or some other fine institution.
John didn’t, as he was always told by his old high school art teacher, get her job when she retired. Unfortunately she didn’t get any say so in the hiring. He was devastated when he found out the school board had hired someone else for the highly coveted position.
But I know in my gut that had John gotten that job, he’d of never quit. He’s responsible like that. The security of a regular paycheck and the benefits provided would have kept him from taking chances. Like so many artists, he would not have had the energy to be creative at the end of a long day. And that would have been a tragedy.
I remember like it was yesterday… the evening John came home with tears in his eyes after hearing the list of newly hired teachers announced over our (at that time) one and only radio station, KVLF, “the voice of the last frontier”. John’s name was not on that list. I will never forget how helpless I felt at not being able to get up to hug him.
But the next day I did something better; I fought back. I scooped up all the applications, scooted myself throughout our tiny house in search of photos of his work, filled out the forms, and signed “John T. Davis” on the dotted line myself.
