Reflections on the Last Three Months

I am amazed by the all the good things that are in my life, meeting a number of friends that were made earlier in the past years was certainly one of the highlights.

Isn’t it always true that one comes away from a gathering with memories that really can’t retold with the same sense of gusto and flavor. Somehow a lot gets lost in the translation. For example, I was always under the false idea that a working, tight sphincter was a good thing. Go figure. You had to be there in order to get the true meaning and understanding.

Ron Wiker wanted to unveil the newest fashion trend of the year at the KDA Baltimore conference, but was unable to get the items there for the necessary "show & tell" in time. His is a great idea whose time has come, gone, and, you guessed it, come back again as one of the newest and potentially the hottest fashion item of all. It’s a clothing trend that you might want to blow off at first, especially when you hear what it’s called. But, don’t be a nay-sayer until you’ve listened to his whole story.

This time of the year is always special as family members and obligate duties during the Holiday Season take precedence over the normal mundane things of our daily routines. Thanksgiving is our favorite holiday and I’m always eternally thankful for Mary, my wife, and our family.

And this year I’m especially thankful for the simple things that I take for granted every day like the inventions and modernizations that make our lives different from those of our relatives a few generations ago. I think back to the many jobs that I had at one time or another over the last sixty years. Whenever our conversation today gets around to jobs, one of my children looks at me with amazement and says "You never told me that you did that!" Most of these jobs have either changed beyond recognition or just don’t exist anymore.

We were a rich family growing up in a western suburb of Baltimore; we just didn’t have any money. I remember the following and I know I’ve forgotten some:

Making the mix from scratch, then hand cutting and frying doughnuts in our basement; boxing and selling them for 25 cents/dozen plain, 30 cents with sugar.
The weekly grass cutting for the neighbors done from age 6 to 14 with a push reel mower.
Picking both red and black raspberries and selling them for thirty cents a quart in the neighborhood.
Raking leaves and then the smell of burning oak leaves.
Waiting for snow to shovel; then sleigh riding and ice skating during winters colder than now.
Directing cars and traffic for the church services on the street with three churches every Sunday from 7:30 AM until 1:00 PM, irregardless of the weather, for seven years.

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Counting thousands of parts in hundreds of bins for inventory at the Ford Tractor dealer, a ten day job for two years over the Holidays.
Working with my Dad making 400 pound batches of the 28 different kinds of cake mixes he manufactured; then boxing them in 5# labeled boxes, putting them into 30# cartons and delivering them to schools within 100 miles of home.
Unloading, every week, the five hundred, 100 pound bags of flour in cloth flour sacks from hot trucks in the hotter summer, with clothes stuck like glue to my back. I used to be able to carry two of those bags with ease: today I can’t carry a five pound flour bag from the store without using two hands.
Selling women’s stockings "Door to Door" for Realsilk Hosiery Mills of Indianapolis, Indiana: a great job that paid commissions only if a sale was made. I did that from age 15 to 17 and had four people working for me, so I got an override on their sales. Things were different then: Fuller Brush, Realsilk, and Encyclopedia Britannica were only sold that way, and people would invite a salesperson into their homes.
Working as a stevedore on the docks in Baltimore one summer; I had to stretch my age a little for that one as well as others.
Driving a truck and having my own Coca~Cola route for three summers. I got that job after I watched another stevedore lift and drop a Coke machine over the side of the dock; it hadn’t worked for over a month. I got the Coke job by telling the route supervisor that I could make them money by servicing machines in places where it was either too hot or too dirty for the regular drivers.
A "Floor Walker" for Hutzler’s Department Store in Baltimore for four years in the evenings and on Saturdays.
Working as the assistant to the Dean of Men at Loyola College whenever I didn’t have a class; a glorified secretarial job that let me get homework done in between answering the phone and odd jobs like delivering mail. Sixty-five cents/hour added up during those hours from 8 AM until 5 PM, except for class time.
Stocking shelves at night in a Food Fair, and taking the steel wool to rub off the inked price of coffee to change it every other day.
A ski bum at the Yodeler, a ski lodge in Stowe, Vermont for one Christmas holiday. Bus tables and wash breakfast dishes, stock up and split firewood until about 10, then ski at Mt. Mansfield (lift tickets were 35 cents) until 3 PM, back to the lodge to bus tables and dishes after dinner.
Delivering US Mail for the Post Office during the Christmas Holidays for four years. That was a great part time paying job.
Graduated from College in ’64 and took a job working in the bottling room at the American Brewery in Baltimore where we bottled American, Old Frothingslosh "the pale stale ale with the foam on the bottom", and Fort Pitt beers. I worked the 3 PM to 11 PM shift and looked for a "real job" every morning.
After three months I started as a reporter with Dun & Bradstreet, and bought my first car, a ’55 Chevy.

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We never had a TV in the house while I lived at home. I used to tell the College Economics Professor that the Government paid our family not to have one, like they paid some farmers not to grow crops. We grew up listening to the radio: I still like it.

As I read this over, I wonder where I was headed with it in the first place. The idea was to say how different life has become in the time from only two generations ago when my Grandfather came, scared, to America, steerage class, from Ireland. He thought he would die on the boat. Look at transportation: I was 16 when the Beltway was still a 2 lane idea: now at 60, it’s crowded with 4 lanes to the point that it’s a parking lot almost every day.

Change, that inevitable fact of life: Why do some folks have the compulsion to be the first on record to establish completely trivial scientific facts and cast out previous generations just to be the new leader.

Home Doctor’s calls vs. HMO referrals.
Minerals and rocks vs. NANO science.
Vapor locks in a straight six vs. Hybrid engine cars.
Polio vs. AIDS.
Cell phones vs.the first dial phones vs Aunt Catherine, the operator.
Respect for others as common courtesy vs the Beltway Sniper of ’02.
Did you ever wonder just how hungry that guy was who ate the first oyster?

My point in all this is that life is like a card game: make the best of whatever hand you’ve been dealt by heredity, play within the rules made up by society, but choose what cards you want to play. Artificial intelligence is no match for natural stupidity.

I feel like I’m in the front seat of a roller coaster laughing and screaming with my hands up in the air, all the way down. It’s a great ride, but it’s changing, just like yours. Laugh at your self: there’s nothing funnier. Remember, you don’t have to be sick to get better: the best is yet to come. Stop trying to improve or change yourself and enjoy life.

I’ll bet you that you can’t name either the last two Miss Americas, the last winner of the Nobel Prize for Medicine, or the country Idi Amin was from, but you can name the grade school teacher and one important person who has made a profound influence and difference in your life. Go ahead, make that difference in someone else’s life too.

We all will have one thing in common: the dash on the gravestone between the years born and died. What matters is how we spend those years. Go ahead and show the appreciation that you feel, and love the people in your life, and try to understand how they feel. You never know what year will be behind your dash.

Ron: when are you going to start to sell those bell bottomed shirts? I wear a 17-35 with a 42" bell.

John Coakley 12/1/02