Jay from the Blend

Daniel Donovan

10/16/07

Interview Paper

Lei Lani Michel

My father works as a plant manager at a gas refinery, and is on call 24/7, in Chalmette, LA. Chalmette, a rather smaller town right outside New Orleans that has served greatly to the Louisiana community, was unfortunately destroyed by Hurricane Katrina. Since my dad is on call we receive phone calls quite frequently from the refinery on our home phone line. Over the years the same few people are always calling. One In particular sticks out in my head like a sore thumb. A man, as I know him, called “Jay from the Blend.” I can remember accepting calls from him for a long time, so long in fact, I could tell it was him by the sound of his voice the instant he spoke his first words in a gruff voice of exhaustion, which usually were “Hey, which kid is this?” (He said this because they are 6 of us kids). After which he would reply, “This is Jay from the Blend, is your dad around?” after about a year we would just hand the phone to our dad and say it’s “Jay” as opposed to “Jay from the Blend.”
For years, all I ever knew about the infamous Jay Calen, A.K.A. Jay from the Blend, was the sound of his distinct voice via phone line, and that he worked at the refinery with my dad. After all these years of frequently answering his phone calls for my dad, it took an assignment in English 1001 class at LSU to finally get the opportunity to get to know him a little more. So after the Saints game, I went down to the Chalmette Refinery with my dad to get the chance to interview this man I’ve known as “Jay from the blend” all of these years. Before arriving I created an image in my head of what to expect Jay Calen to look like, as well as his work environment and other office features. I imagined a mid to late 40 year-old with a short crew cut with a scruffy looking beard, glasses, and dressed in your everyday office clothes. I pictured a classic office, with chairs, desks, unorganized papers, water jugs with the cone shaped cups, and some sort of decoration.
When we arrived we had to park in the lot by my dad’s office, which was located nowhere near Jay, due to security purposes. My dad and I rode in a white extended golf cart clear across the refinery to the building where Jay was working. When I arrived in his office my dad pointed out who Jay was; he looked to be out fifty five to sixty years old, gray balding hair, cleanly shaven face, and a bit of a belly that extended out over his belt line. He was wearing this very vivid royal blue suit which had a large ExxonMobil logo on the back, with a hard hat, rather large heavy looking black boots, and eye goggles on top of his hard hat. The real image of Jay just so happened to resemble nothing that I imagined. Just as if I were on the phone talking to me, the first words he said were “Which kid are you?” As I shook his hand I replied “Daniel,” and he began to tell me a little about himself
Jay Calen was born September 13, 1951 in the city of New Orleans, LA. He grew up right outside New Orleans in a city called Metarie. He has lived in Louisiana his entire life and according to Jay “There isn’t a better place in America than right here in New Orleans.” Jay’s favorite part of New Orleans is the food cuisine accompanied by the Jazz music. When he was a youngster he always wanted to go into a field related to automobiles or machinery. “I don’t know what it is, but ever since I can remember I have just always enjoyed finding ways to fix things or make them better.” When Jay was a kid him and his father would always go to junkyards to find old car parts, and attempt to get them working on an extra car they had, just for fun. Jay believes that is why he enjoys dealing with machinery and engines so much, due to the time he got to spend with his father. Jay attended high school at East Jefferson High School, after which he immediately started working. His first job was as a mechanic at Big Easy Automotive Repair. Jay commented about this job “I absolutely hated working there, I wasn’t enjoying myself one bit. The only good thing I got from it was to never give my car to a mechanic for repair.” After searching for a week or two he found an opening as a maintenance man at the Chalmette Refinery.
Jay said he fell in love with the refinery from the first day “The people I was working with couldn't have been a better group to work with; otherwise I wouldn’t still be here after 38 years of it. Although there were some days that I would work 24 hours in a row and I thought about just walking off the job site and quitting, I truly did, and still do, love my job.” After about 10 minutes or so of my student interview with Jay I got a pretty good handle on what he was like. He seemed to me, to be a hard working, blue-collar type working man, that didn’t mind having to do a little hard work every now and again to get the job done. He has plenty of proof to prove it as well, by starting out making slightly above minimum wage, working 40 hours a week, and performing tasks that required constant manual labor to where he is now, which is a supervisor in the Blending Department of the Chalmette Refinery, making “light-years” more than he use to, as Jay puts it.
Upon asking him what it was like working in the aftermath of Katrina he replied “In all my years of work at this refinery, nothing was more draining, both physically and mentally, than having to work through the times directly after Katrina. It was absolute chaos trying to get in touch with those who were displaced, as well as trying to get help for those who were suffering from near depression after they had lost everything they ever had.” Jay said he could remember trying to get through to people on their cell phone from dusk one evening till dawn of the next. “Even 2 whole years after Katrina, this refinery still isn’t what it used to be. The number of employees has dropped a bit, the total mind set of many has changed, and things just aren’t the same as they use to be.”
After a couple of minutes, I got to asking Jay Calen if there was anything he would have change about himself, or what he had done over the past years. He replied “I definitely regret not having more of a priority on academics as student in high school. If I could go back and do it again I would keep up my grades and attend a four year University after high school and pursue a college degree. It would have saved me from having to do a lot of hard work, and earned me a lot better of a yearly income than I am making without a college degree.”
So, even though I’m up at college more than I am at home, one time while I’m on a break from school and at home, and answer a call for my dad from guy named Jay, it will no longer be “Jay from the blend,” it will be Jay the guy who enjoys golfing, or Jay the guy who worked very hard to have the position he has now. I have learned a lot from Jay Calen, he has made an impact on me by showing what hard work, despite the seemingly un-performable conditions can bring to someone. Some time in my life I will encounter a situation that presents conditions that are seemingly impossible to succeed in, upon which, thinking about what an individual like Jay was able to accomplish through hard work, and his ability to enjoy the people he is around will provide me a little bit of guidance to persevere through the tough times.