Let me introduce you to Kinsman Hall's prestigious job list. Each job was aimed at being a way that a resident could make a positive contribution to Kinsman Hall by aiding in the daily operation and upkeep of the house and grounds. The service crew's primary duty was to keep the house clean. People on the service crew would make 30 minute runs throughout the house emptying ashtrays and garbage cans and cleaning up any unsightly messes they might find. They dusted, swept, mopped and cleaned the public area rooms used by everyone. Each aspect of Kinsman Hall was branded by certain ways of doing things that was specific to Kinsman Hall itself. For example, the service crew members were taught to fold their grocery-sized paper bag used to collect cigarette butts and garbage in a certain way. The top of the bag was folded over twice forming approximately a two inch rim around the top of the bag. This was done to reinforce the top of the bag so it wouldn't rip so easily while carrying it around on the 30 minute service runs. Toilet paper rolls in the bathrooms were also folded in a particular way. The loose end of the rolls were folded under to form a V shape. I suppose this was done just for aesthetic reasons and to teach a person to pay attention to small details.
The kitchen crew prepared the meals, served the food to the residents in a cafeteria style manner, did the dishes and kept the whole kitchen area sanitary. Cleanliness was highly stressed. We adhered to it not only for health concerns, but it also acted as a form of discipline. A pot scrubbed once would most likely pass anyone's inspection, but the same pot scrubbed fifty times is above reproach. A floor washed with a mop might be clean, but the same floor scrubbed with a toothbrush several times is clean enough to eat upon. The dishpan was the worst job one could have on the kitchen crew because you stayed wet most of the day and each person in the dishpan suffered from a horrible case of dishpan hands. Staff aid was probably the best position to have, but it was the most demanding also. Staff members could have special items cooked and served to them whenever and wherever they wanted. One can only imagine how a staff aid might feel like an indentured servant. Staff members ate separately from the rest of the house. Their tables lined the front of the dining room and were set as if the staff members were dining at a 5 star restaurant while the rest of the house ate from metal trays.
The grounds crew kept up the maintenance on the outside and the surrounding grounds. During the winter they kept the snow shoveled from the roofs on the staff members mobile homes and throughout the year they disposed of all the garbage we generated. During one period when there was a severe septic/ sewerage problem they had to maintain the outhouses that had been built to use until the problem was resolved. Like everything else the residents just took it in stride and adapted to whatever the current conditions dictated. I'm sure there would have been much more bitching and moaning about the outhouses than there was if the problem had occurred to the middle of winter, but the septic tank gods looked down upon us with favor and didn't make us sit on a freezing toilet seat in the middle of winter.
The laundry crew washed, dried and folded clothes. Each person's clothes would be bagged in garbage bags and tagged with the resident's name. The bags would be delivered to the resident's rooms in the dorms and put away when the house went to the dorms at the end of the day. During the septic tank crisis all laundry had to be hauled to the small laundromat in town and washed there. Not only did it cause a hardship regarding manpower and time involved to wash the clothes elsewhere, but it was also much more expensive to use a coin operated laundry than to wash the clothes at the house.
The commissary crew was never comprised of more than a couple people and sometimes it was just one person. They ordered and maintained all the inventory used by the residents and staff. Most people at Kinsman Hall were smokers and cigarettes were provided to all residents who smoked. An extra bonus regarding smoking was being able to smoke the brand that each resident preferred, but each smoker was only allotted one pack per day. Candy was ordered and kept closely guarded in the commissary, but candy was never given out to the residents unless it was given to them by a staff member. The only staff member who routinely gave away candy was Dean Jr. In his typical goofy demeanor, he would drift through the house giving his favorite females candy. His routine always reminded me of the pied piper, but whenever I saw him coming I always went the opposite way. Sure, I wanted candy, but I didn't want it bad enough to have to beg for it or make a fool out of myself just to satisfy my sweet tooth!
The construction crew headed up all the various works in progress. All projects were started with the best of intentions, but while I was at Kinsman Hall I never saw any project completed. At best, some smaller projects were "almost" done, but everyone knows "almost" only counts in hand grenades and horse shoes! The new almost done Kinsman Hall gave the once quaint hunting lodge the appearance of being in a constant state of disarray. The future of Kinsman Hall and its expansion to house more residents depended upon a multi-million dollar grant that never came to fruition. Yes, lack of money was the real reason why projects weren't finished as expected, but many of us wondered why the projects were ever started without the money being there to finish them. To me, it seemed like a lot of poor planning mixed with too much wishful thinking. Instead of doing things in a more sensible, organized way that would have set a better example for the people Kinsman Hall was supposed to be helping, "the almost done" philosophy seemed to touch everything Kinsman Hall related. The philosophy followed many of us, "unfinished" residents when we left Kinsman Hall with a feeling of not really being prepared to return to life outside our safe surroundings.
The watch dogs of Kinsman Hall were referred to as "expeditors." They were responsible for continuous headcounts to account for everyone's whereabouts all the time. They also were responsible for dispensing stress to the department heads and ramrods to get the house functioning more efficiently when things didn't appear to be moving at an acceptable pace. Expeditors weren’t really considered a typical crew even though the positions were all filled by older residents. It was more a position of prestige and power than a job and the most memorable thing about any expeditor was the clipboard each one would carry with a headcount list attached.
The head expeditor was called “Shingle.” The Shingle was the highest non-staff job a resident could hold. This job was reserved for the few deemed worthy of the position. The Shingle position was always filled by some resident badass, who was great at delegating authority and who never hesitated passing out “stress” where it was needed and when it was needed. Becoming Shingle might be equated to enlisted personnel working their way through the ranks to becoming a Master Chief Petty Officer in the Navy. While being over all other enlisted people on board a ship or at a particular command, the Chief is also an enlisted person and not a commissioned officer. It's considered a position of both power and honor. Anyone familiar with the Navy knows it's the Chiefs who really run things in the Navy and without a good Chief nothing gets done right. The position of Shingle can also be compared to the shingles on the roof of a house. Shingles top a house sheltering it from weather and other elements. In many instances the shingle was the buffer between residents and staff.
There were miscellaneous jobs like night watchman, fire marshal, a garden crew and a position for the front desk to answer incoming phone calls. People babysat the staff member’s children, did clerical and secretarial duties, stayed up at night to watch the dorms so no one would split and some people did special projects like reupholster furniture with donated fabric. Everyone worked from morning until late afternoon when dinner was served with a break for lunch. Those exempt from a normal work schedule were those who worked at night or those who cooked meals.
There were various levels of hierarchy within each department/crew. Going through proper channels was a must in order to get permission to do anything from arranging a doctors/dentist appointment to just setting up a time to talk to a staff member one on one about something. Crews were broken down into a chain of command that went from the peons at the base the pyramid who were the worker bees and the majority of any crew. The next step up the ladder was called "ramrods." They were the residents who actually ran the various crews. Over each crew was a resident department head who worked directly under a particular staff member. Each crew varied in size, yet had the same type of hierarchy in place. The exception to that were the smaller crews like the laundry crew, the commissary crew and the garden crew. Those crews worked directly under a staff member do to their size.
Stress was the glue that kept everything together and supposedly made things run smoother. Anyone might find it difficult envisioning this rather strange concept at work. How can increased stress motivate people to work together as a cohesive unit? Logic might dictate just the opposite to be true, but somehow people banded together when times got rough and the work got done regardless of what the job might be. Stress was an integral factor in keeping the Kinsman Hall machine well oiled and working properly. Stress originated at the top and trickled down to the workers who felt its effect the most. Logic might lead a person into believing a great crew wouldn’t have much stress thrown its way, but that wasn’t true. Stress was given as part of the program. It was like the air we breathed or the food we ate. It was just part of our everyday life. Stress could be implemented on various levels, but to give anyone an adequate depiction of what stress is and how it worked, it’s best to start from the bottom and work upward.
My first job assignment was on the kitchen crew. What I basically learned from washing dishes all day and keeping the kitchen area clean besides the fact that dishpan hands are a real pain in the ass was that there was little time for socializing and getting to know anyone. With that said, many memorable friendships started in the dishpan and I'm sure anyone affiliated with Kinsman Hall has their own dishpan story to tell. Not only was it my duty and responsibility to do my assigned task, but it was also my duty and responsibility to make pull-ups to my co-workers to help make them aware of their bad behavior. A pull-up was never given to anyone in a higher position on the Kinsman Hall food chain. That would have been considered disrespectful and grounds for immediate discipline. Workers gave co-workers pull-ups and it was the simplest form of implementing stress. For example, a typical pull-up might sound something like this scenario:
Bernie, Steve, Nancy and I are hard at work in the dishpan area. Nancy accidentally drops a sponge on the floor because she wasn't watching what she was doing. According to Kinsman Hall standards, Nancy was probably daydreaming about negative things like life on the streets. In reality, she was probably checking out Bernie’s ass instead. To make Nancy aware of her bad behavior, any one of her co-workers should say, "Nancy, you just dropped a sponge on the floor. You wanna get a grip on it?" Nancy's reply to the pull-up should be a simple "thank-you" and nothing more.
It might be easy to see how pull-ups might lead into some rather colorful tit for tat sessions among crew members and instead of the proper response being used, a person might get something much harsher instead like “fuck you." Any deviation from the Kinsman Hall standards would lead to a punishment called a "clean-up" which was given by staff members. The punishment process was called a "haircut" in which a "clean-up" was then given to the guilty party as a penance for their offense. I have to admit some of the punishments were very creative and I often wondered if the staff members didn't stay up late at night brainstorming to come up with ways to break us down through the use of absurd bullshit and what often times seemed like sick mental torture.
The four types of bans a resident could be placed on were:
A “social ban” restricted a person from being able to socially talk with another person or people. The people involved in this type of ban were only able to talk about work related topics. For example, this type of ban might be used if two people who work together on the same crew had broken a rule together, yet the incident wasn’t something too serious or these two people were spending too much time together and needed to “spread their action.” Instead of using a harsher ban, staff might feel that they still needed to communicate with each other about work related issues, so they would be disciplined by having a social ban placed on them for a period of time.
A “function ban” restricted a person from being able to talk about work related topics with another person or people. The people involved in this type of ban were only able to talk about social related topics. This type of ban was generally imposed on people who engaged in “tit for tat” pull-ups that bordered on creating a very hostile work environment. Instead of doing job changes and separating the two people from each other, staff would first impose a function ban so the two people couldn’t talk to each other about anything work related. Staff hoped that this type of ban might help the people involved bond socially and work through their problem.
A “social/function ban” restricted a person from being able to talk with another person or people. If the people involved in the ban needed to communicate with each other, the communication had to go indirectly through a third party. This type of ban was imposed when nothing else worked and two people needed to be kept from communicating with each other. Once in awhile, there were people who simply couldn’t get along with each other no matter what was done or sometimes regardless of what the rules governed two people formed relationships that made them inseparable. Everyone may have been expected to follow the rules, but no amount of therapy or disciplinary tactics would make two people like each other or stop liking each other. Sometimes in order to maintain the peace, a total time out was needed. Sometimes in order to give the relationship time to cool off a little, a break was needed. People seeking candidacy into Kinsman Hall who had friends or relatives already in the program were immediately put on this type of ban. The idea behind placing this type of ban under those circumstances was to discourage any dependencies to form. Staff wanted a candidate to form new relationships instead of continuing old, unhealthy ones.
An “existence ban” restricted a person from acknowledging the existence of another person or people directly or indirectly. Eye contact, saying the person’s name and any form of communication were completely prohibited during the course of the ban. This type of ban was usually imposed on “couples” or friends or anyone who had gotten chummy enough to form outrageous negative contacts.
Not only did bans vary in type, but they varied in the number of people they involved and their duration. The number could be as few as two people or as many as involving the whole house. The length of time bans were imposed depended totally upon the circumstances. I know bans were viewed as a therapeutic tool because they were suppose to help people form healthy relationships instead of dependencies, but I always thought bans were used and abused far too often. They were a tool that could be easily given rather than addressing the real problem that existed. Sometimes a “time out” only made the problem worse or made the two people want each other more.
Much of what was done was aimed as a control tactic to modify and help change bad behavior or what was deemed as bad behavior. Humiliation was used to weaken the ego/spirit to gain control. This was not only used by people in authority, but was encouraged during groups by our peers. This type of action can be seen throughout various religious groups (the Amish, for example) throughout history when they would banish people from their community for committing unforgivable offenses.
When Dean's phonecall came into the Main Area, Kevin Wulff recalls, "When weather permitted there was always something that needed to be done outside. On this particular Northern Maine summer day, Dean Hepper was hard at work at the trailers. When he called down to the house asking Mike Morra to send up a couple of spades what he got wasn’t exactly what he had in mind. Keep in mind back in the early 1970’s people didn’t adhere to the rules of what would later be considered politically correct. Even so I doubt that would have affected Mike Morra's decision to send Greg Muldrow, Larry Hoover and Jerry Hoover, our only black residents at the time up to the trailers to help Dean with his project. Mike rarely passed up the chance to pull a prank on anyone...Dean included. Mike was all about the punchline and couldn’t wait to pull one over on Dean! I can’t imagine the look on Dean’s face when the spades arrived. Of course, Mike made sure each of them had a spade in their hand just like Dean had requested when they left the house. What a sight for sore eyes that had to have been and I can only imagine what Dean said to Mike later behind closed doors!