It's a good life by Megan Douglass Randi Pappa laughs about being in a job where she"counts paperclips" and keeps things in a very orderly fashion, working as a bookeeper. She findsthat her job description and her personality couldn't be more opposite. Somewhere between 9 and 9:30 a.m. most days, a delicately built red‐headedwoman with the perfect posture of an equestrian strolls across the wooden front porch of the small gray house that serves as the office for the PeoplesBuilding Co. in Hubbard. Accompanying her is her dog, Quincy. As bookkeeper for Jack and Marty Wohlgamuth, brothers and co‐owners of Peoples Building,Randi Pappa has worked here for the past eight years. "I have a real aversion to time and schedules and demands that I be somewhereat a certain time. I'll hear Marty say on the phone to people 'Well, why don't you come in anywhere between 9 and 9:30. Our office girl will be here then.'" Shelaughs about the way her bosses joke around about her laid‐back attitude toward schedules. She explains that she can get away with showing upwhenever she does because, "They know I have a lot of responsibility. They always had two or three people doing it before I came." Peoples Building is a company that builds horse barns from Illinois to theCarolinas. Their projects range from "the real ordinary, ramshackle little barns for someone who doesn't have much money," to the "extravagantly ridiculousshowcases for people who are pathetically wealthy." They also own Frito‐Lay warehouses and other storage houses which are already built and are simplyrented out. Randi takes care of all the behind‐the‐scenes business. Randi sees few people at work besides her two bosses and the truck driver,Chaz, who often has lunch with her in her "Copacabana" room—a tiny room in the back of the building she took the liberty of decorating with an inordinatenumber of house plants. "They're used to be ferns growing wild all around, but they got out of control," she says. She has also "Randi‐fied" her office withplants, nature pictures and photos of her horses. Since the builders are all contracted crews, Randi never deals with them, nordoes she deal much with the clients in her office. She's alone for most of the day and that's exactly the way she likes it. "I'm a loner. I don't want to deal withthe public," she says. Through the back doors walks a man with a big grin wearing work boots and aflannel shirt. Randi introduces Chaz and explains his job here. "He drives the lumber truck and picks up all the materials. He has a CDL. He goes, whetherwe're in North Jackson, which is where we're working now, or if it's in North return to web‐exclusive portraits... Carolina, he goes there. Sometimes we have to rent a big truck. He takesmaterials wherever we're building," she says. Chaz's booming voices chimes in, "And I take care of all the animals," he says ashe scratches behind Quincy 's ears. On that note, he and Quincy run outside for a play break. Randi works at the center of this business, keeping the paperwork organized,balancing their five checkbooks, talking to clients over the phone and collecting rent. "I have to go back and do the accounting, do profit and loss statement onrandom jobs from the year 2000 to the present. I have them all done, except for the last two years, I have to finish up. And then getting the tax returnscopied and ready to go," she says of her work load for the day. Randi fell into this job quite by accident. She and her husband ran into Jackand Marty, old buddies of her husband's, while out one day eight years ago. At the time, Randi had a month off from her old job as an assistant at the SharonHospital, working with autistic children. Jack and Marty were in a tight spot because their mother, who ran the office, had to leave for a while to take careof their sick father. Randi agreed to help them out for that month before returning to the hospital. "I was planning on going back after the month wasthrough," she says. After the month had passed, however, Jack and Marty asked her to stay,offering her better pay than the hospital and health insurance, which she would have no chance of receiving at the hospital. " It was a problem because myhusband's self‐employed [as a truck driver] and so we had our own private health insurance and it was extremely expensive. And I did the math anddecided to stay here with Peoples Building Co." When she first started, she had no one to train her. She admits that she messedup a lot in the beginning and that her "training" was simply trial and error. "I was often making mortgage payments out of the wrong account and makingdeposits into the wrong account," she says of her confusion over the business's five checkbooks. "I just started digging through and I'd say 'I don't even know how to do a 941 taxpayment,' so I'd look back and see how it was done before and figure it out and write notes to myself. Actually, the only skill I came in here with is I'm a hell ofa typist," Randi says about those first days at Peoples Building . She sits at a desk that is covered with neat piles of paperwork. She shufflesaround some papers and explains her setup, "I actually cleaned everything up, because it looked so trashy. When I'm diving into something, I got piles of papereverywhere, but I know where everything is. I know what I got going on. So, if they ask me for anything, I can stop and do it and still know where I'm at." Randi finds it odd that she works at a job like this one. She does not think in alinear fashion about time, numbers, space. She does not think about time in half hour intervals, nor does she care to wear a watch or know what the "real"time is. Her thoughts shift from this life to past lives in an instant, and yet she lives fully in each moment. As she evaluates these traits of hers, she laughsabout being in a job where she "counts paperclips" and keeps things in a very orderly fashion, dealing with numbers for most of the day. She finds that herjob description and her personality couldn't be more opposite. "It's a good job," she says, "it just surprises me." In many ways, though, she can understand why she gets along with the job sowell. She likes to be alone, she gets to wear her blue jeans to the office and bring her dog with her to work. She likes that she doesn't have to "dedicate alot of my salary to my wardrobe, to what I look like." Most importantly, she makes enough money to take care of her animals. "It's not my passion, but itfunds my passion," she says of her job. During her lunch break, she'll sometimes run down the road to her barn tounwind with her horses. She and her husband built the barn recently, with the guidance of Jack and Marty. It is constructed from wood left over from barnsthey built for their clients. Taking good care of the environment and her horses is a top priority for her. "We were so happy with the fact that we were usingmaterial that would have otherwise been burned or discarded, so we thought we were doing a great service, recycling materials. We tried to be veryconscious of the materials we were using," she says proudly. The barn houses three horses: Karma—a spunky mare and Randi's first horse,Bodhi (short for bodhisattva)—a gentle old quarter horse/walking horse, and the newest addition to the family, Indigo—a small Tennessee Walking horse whoserves as Randi's trail buddy. The barn also houses a gazillion stray cats who seem to know about Randi's free handouts. The smell of horses, hay and wood fill the barn. The sound of the rain hittingthe roof, the clomping of hooves and the munching of hay are the only sounds here. A lovey‐dovey kitten, who is new to the barn and doesn't yet have aname, jumps up onto Indigo's stall door. Randi pulls her off and warns her of the dangers of getting stomped. She doesn't listen and jumps right back on, toocurious to heed safety rules. Randi pulls her off and reluctantly agrees to hold her. She reclines in her lawn chair with the kitten crawling all over her. This is Randi's life and she loves it. "It's a good life," she says. "We don't haveany big desires to have this big house, just a little house. All we want is to enjoy life. I don't think life is about a job anyway. It's not about that," she saysdreamily as she speaks to the kitten. She works four days a week at the office and spends the rest of her time here,at the barn, or on the trails with her horses. She finds it sad when she sees other people her age who are still spending all of their time working, ratherthan having a life. She sees a lot of people hoarding their money for things she doesn't understand. "You're 55, when are you going to start living?" she oftenthinks to herself. Randi is passionate about this topic and feels remorse for those who haven'tfound their happiness like she has. She has a pretty clear idea of what she wants out of life and what she thinks she's here for. She has an idea about herdeath, too. "I don't want my tombstone to say, 'Here lies Randi, she had a big house and a shiny car and, boy, was her house clean.' I just want it to say'Somebody said 'Go, girl.' and she did. She lived her life. She had a life. She had dirt under her finger nails and wore cowboy boots.' I just want to be out of thebox and not a cliché." return to web‐exclusive portraits...