Driving around town yesterday, I heard this NPR piece by Maggie Ryan with Little Rock Public Radio about the senseless, soulless cutting of 90 federally funded Job Corps centers run by contractors across the country, which would end the program for 21,000 students and make some 20% of them homeless.

The story brought to mind my own Job Corps experience back in the late ’70s, when I returned to Cincinnati (where I had previously done seven years) for some unfinished business (which I have detailed elsewhere).

Once I got to Cincinnati, the ex-fiancée was like a sign I once saw on the door of a London pub: Free beer tomorrow.

For six months, it was maybe next weekend.

In the interim I did two things.

The first was to find a paying job, which I did with the help of my friend and former downstairs neighbor, Earl Brown. He steered me toward a guy he knew at the local Job Corps center who was looking for a Supervisor of Recreation.

I made my way to the city’s West End and the Job Corps’ Romanesque Revival building, which happens to be Stop 91 on the Queen City Tour: “Designed by Samuel Hannaford and built in 1898, this was once the Convent and School of the Sisters of Mercy which was started by the Nine Sisters of Mercy who came to Cincinnati from Ireland in 1858.”

The interview didn’t go all that well: He thought I was underweight and overeducated for the position. But I eventually wore him down and wound up with the job.

And thus I became the night supervisor of what the Job Corps laughingly called its Recreation Center – a pool table, a ping pong table, and a few scattered card tables.

Upon my arrival, I replaced – and I use the term loosely – George Wilson, former starting center for the University of Cincinnati Bearcats basketball team (six-year average: 5.4 points, 5.2 rebounds per game) and former NBA journeyman (seven-year average: 5.4 points, 5.2 rebounds per game).

George Wilson was nothing if not consistently average.

During the orderly transition of power on my first night in the rec room, Wilson was the one who was 6’8″, 225 pounds. I was the one holding The Annotated Alice in Wonderland.

(In my defense, the Job Corps personnel guy – they weren’t called Human Resources whatevers back then – said all I had to do was sit there and make sure the guys didn’t kill each other. Or you, he muttered under his breath.)

I realized within minutes that there was no way I could survive in the rec room as The Guy Sitting Around Reading. What I needed was to legitimize myself in the eyes of the Job Corps corps.

Since my pool table chops were less than stellar, I headed to the ping pong table, buoyed by a decade of paddle-to-paddle combat in the basement of The Big House in Windsor, CT, where my folks moved after 20 years at 89^th and Third in Manhattan.

My three brothers – Bobby, Jimmy, Terence – and I played endless games of ping pong in that basement (a.k.a. Spideyville), where we traditionally repaired for adult beverages and etc. around the oddly swaybacked table.

Consequently, my ping pong debut at the Job Corps was an unqualified success, seeing as I beat all comers. We then shifted to the pool table, where they all beat me in return.

Result #1: We were even.

Result #2: I never brought The Annotated Alice in Wonderland to the rec room again.

That didn’t keep me from going through the looking glass, though. . . .

(The other thing I did was find a whole bunch of publications I could freelance for.)

Back at the Job Corps . . .

Kool Aid took a step back and let his eyes wander across the pool table. That was odd, since there were only two balls left – the cue and the eight – and they were lined up straight toward the corner pocket.

Tall thin and kinetic, Kool Aid stepped back up to the table.

“Five rails!”

Kool Aid smacked the eight ball at an angle and sent it careering around the table – one rail two rails threefourfive – until it came to rest pretty much in the middle of the green felt surface.

It was a ridiculous choice, but a great ride.

(That was the choice too many Job Corps participants seemed to make in life as well. If only someone could have convinced them to take the straight shot every once in a while, they pretty much wouldn’t be in the Job Corps.)

Things are different now, as Maggie Ryan reports.

Samantha Reyes enrolled in Job Corps because she didn’t have any other option. She was interested in going to college but couldn’t afford it. She heard about Job Corps and joined a program in Little Rock, Arkansas, last August.

Reyes decided to become a certified nursing assistant. Like Reyes, most Job Corps students are between the ages of 16 and 24. They take classes to earn their high school diploma, driver’s license or learn skills to prepare for a range of careers. Job Corps also provides free housing, meals and health insurance. The whole program is free, meant for low-income people without other options.

That’s a helluva lot more than Kool Aid was getting 50 years ago. And a helluva lot more to lose. Now – unless the federal courts step up to save the program – many of those Job Corps students are back to . . . what?

Five rails?

That’s no kind of shot at all.