Think About It. Get a Job.
At age eight my first job resulted from wanting roller skates, the kind you tightened on your shoes with a key hung on a string around your neck. Mother gave me permission but not the money. My sister Lee got out the vinegar and Karo syrup, made popcorn balls, then watched me go door to door selling. Soon I had enough money to mail Sears for my new transportation.
My early retirement prompted a parental version of the New Zeeland country singer’s 1939 put-down, “He holds the lantern while his mother chops the wood.” Seems I wasn’t quick to volunteer for work.
No longer lazy at 12, I got my Social Security card, which I eventually illegally laminated, and tried my hand as a pinsetter in a duckpin bowling alley. Leaping up behind the pit, I managed to miss the missiles propelled by an undersized solid ball thrown with all the muscle a neighboring foundry worker could muster. My card has lasted 73 years longer than that job.
That’s when I began to search for something more befitting the style of a future gentleman. The local paper’s circulation department seemed less dangerous. I wrapped the news addressed APO to American military around the world in 1944.
We recently discussed memory so you may reasonably recall that I might forget some sources of income. A recent count came to over 30 not including at least seven radio stations, one twice, with indentured military servitude interrupting. Deep breath. Radio stations WBAT, WCBC, WONW, WBBQ (while the FBI frightened friends by asking questions for my Top Secret cryptography clearance), WONW(again), WAWK, KVEN and KRUZ along with few TV sources.
When needed, I was a theatre usher, mortgage broker, real estate developer, house painter, call-center trainer, bank founder, tutor, auto salesman, VIP host for Qantas Airlines and more.
One of my favorites was professional pinball machine player. Thirty years before the first “rock opera”, a drug store owner asked me not to share with my friend the free games I won . However, a local game distributor paid me to play their machines so they could adjust them for the regular players. I’m sure by 1975 Tommy was better, but he had the advantage of being at least psychosomatically deaf, dumb and blind.
For most of my adult life, broadcast entertainment and real estate marketing provided the fun and money to pay the piper. There’s not enough space here to tell you why my two sons, years apart, on separate vacations with their young brides were surprised to see their dad in the movie they selected on the hotel TV. For my part, I was surprised that these proper young men would choose to view that kind of film at all. You just don’t really know anyone.
At this point I can’t help but recall a 1958 doo-wop Billboard R&B chart-topping song. If you actually want to make some money, don’t be so picky about your employment. Follow the advice of the Silhouettes. Get a Job. Think About It.