Second in a series
Re “Conundrum for Assistant Super: Auto Repair or Accounting?”
Fresh out of the military almost 40 years ago and faced with a daunting choice of following one of two career paths, auto repair or accounting, a mature Mike Reynolds was asked what a young Mike Reynolds knew about cars?
“Nothing,” said the School District’s still-new Assistant Superintendent for Business Services.
“So I turned to my wife and said, ‘Let’s do accounting. That sounds pretty good.’”
Otherwise these late autumn days, Mr. Reynolds might be lying on his back in a drafty, perhaps dank, garage repairing the broken down cars of people who work in this School District.
Amidst chuckles in his brightly illumined second-story office without a car in sight – the only wheels were big wheels – Mr. Reynolds said, “This is a true story,” springing ahead slightly.
Truth, Continued
“All of a sudden, like, businesses started hiring me to do their books just because I was in an accounting class. This is another true story. At a restaurant where I was eating with some people, I said ‘I am doing accounting,’ and they said, ‘Do our accounting.’ I said ‘Okay.’”
The blossoming of Mike Reynolds, young man in search of a permanent gig, just happened?
Mr. Reynolds still looked a little taken aback by how he kind of, sort of, launched a long, successful run.
“Like most best fits,” he said, reaching for a plausible explanation, “some higher power knew the direction I needed to go.
“It all just…
“That was it.
“Before you knew it, I was doing accounting all over the place.”
He just woke up one morning and was in the right place?
In a society that values, no, demands rigorous planning, Mr. Reynolds smiled at such a remote idea.
What were his life interests? Had he thought about what he wanted to do with the last 80 years here?
“That was way too far ahead,” he said, pixieishly. “I was just out of the military, and that was way in the future.”
Making a U-turn
Born in Los Angeles, Mr. Reynolds grew up in the Riverside area community of Mira Loma, from the age of five.
His most abiding memory: “It was very poor. If you ever have heard of Norco (pop. 27,063), to us that was going to the big city. I was very impressed with it.
“Mira Loma was like the poorest part of Riverside, which wasn’t that affluent to begin with. Our family was my mom, my grandmother and my brother, who is five years younger than I am.”
(To be continued)
