I once wrote about how David Bowie’s song “Fame” reminded me of the summer job I had right before college. That, in turn, inspired me to reflect on some of my other early steps into the world of work.
Like many suburban lads of my generation, I delivered newspapers and mowed lawns. I described my paper route last time, but didn’t mention the December debacle. Just before the holidays, I had my appendix removed, and hiring a substitute cost me all my Christmas tips. Oh well. As a lawn boy, I used my family’s mower, and because my father was a trendsetter, we had a electric one. I didn’t have to buy gas, but the size of the jobs I could accept was limited by the length of our cord.
In high school, I often took summer classes, so I didn’t get my first summer job until the summer after my junior year. During the summer of 1974, I worked in the elementary school library typing catalog cards. Two memories stand out.
First, because the job did not require my full mental bandwidth, I listened to the radio. And while I remember a few terrible songs, “Billy Don’t Be a Hero,” “The Night Chicago Died,” “Don’t Rock the Boat,” what I remember most was the day when the bad music gave way to the announcement of Richard Nixon’s resignation.
My other memory from that job was a book I cataloged called “A Sloth in the Family.” I talked about that book so much that my girlfriend gave me a stuffed sloth for Christmas which was made by a woman she knew who made stuffed animals for kids in the hospital. I still have the sloth.
My most memorable summer job was the one I had between high school and college, selling waterless cookware and dishes in rural Ohio. Here’s how the job worked. I drove into a little town and found a young woman who looked young enough to be a recent high school graduate. I told her what I was doing and asked to see her yearbook. From the yearbook, I wrote down the names of all the recent female graduates. Then I phoned one of them to find out which of her classmates were single, working and living at home. Those were my prospects. If I was able to make presentations to 10 prospects a week, I earned a salary, but since that was impossible, I earned a commission.
While doing that job, I lived in a hotel in Willard, Ohio, right next to a railroad track with a 6:15 a.m. freight train. Two dollars a night and one set of sheets for the whole summer.
That job had its ups and downs. One Friday while I was making a presentation, a salesman from another company came calling. My prospect sent him away and bought a set of my dishes. On Monday, when I stopped by the office to pick up my check, I learned that my rival had doubled back and convinced my customer to cancel her order with me.
Another time, I stopped by a young woman’s house to make an appointment for a presentation. When I returned, I was met by the woman’s father, who accused me of stealing money from the house and threatened to run me off the road if he ever saw my car. My victory that day was not peeing in my pants.
But it wasn’t all bad, and I still carry a heartwarming memory from that job. One evening, I made a presentation to a young woman who lived on her family’s farm. Her family told me, proudly, that they paid cash for everything, including their new silo.
As I made my presentation, the young woman’s boyfriend hovered in the background. She ended up wanting four place settings of Winter Rose dishes, for $139.60. That was about the least you could spend with us, and we had an easy payment plan.
My customer wanted no part of that, so her boyfriend jumped in his truck, drove home and returned with the cash he had saved to buy her a stereo as a high school graduation present. He counted the cash into my hand, and the deal was done.
That single transaction made the whole summer a success in my book. Financially, I earned just enough to cover my gas, meals and hotel bills, but I got stories that rival the ones my father used to tell about his brief career going door to door selling Tiny Tot Safety Tables. Now that’s priceless.