Working!

Somewhere down south in May during our vacation - I know how to work one of these!

As regular readers of this blog have probably noticed, I've been absent for the past few days.  "What happened to Ron?" you might ask.  Then again, you might not ask but I digress.

So here is where I've been....WORKING!  Yep, I'm working full-time again,  Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.  Well, maybe not FULL-TIME (like five days a week) but four days in a row is enough to knock me for a loop.  Especially in the middle of the summertime tourist season.

Good Old Ron, he can always be depended on to fill in for all the absences caused by the life dramas of his co-workers.  That's the way it has always been that way my whole adult life.  No complaints here though although at times I haven't felt appreciated for plugging these absences and keep the business running wherever I happened to be working at that time.  I'm glad I have a job.  I'm glad I'm alive.

I've been working since I was ten years old when my Mom sought a job for me as a paper boy.  Daily I delivered sixty Philadelphia Evening Bulletins and about ten or twelve local papers.  I also delivered the Sunday paper which usually required two trips home to load up on newspapers.

Over the years since then I've had such jobs as (in this chronological order) mowing lawns, orchard picker, meat market clerk (the real meat market - not the other "meat market" which came years later), shoe salesman, dishwasher, waiter, soldier, hotel night auditor, clothing store salesman, accounts payable clerk, trust remittance clerk, trust operations supervisor and manager, bank project reconciliation manager, gardener, trust operations manager, trust operations consultant, and now to take me to the Finish Line.....hotel front desk clerk.

Not for me the privilege of having mommy and daddy pay for my college education (I joined the Army and went to college on the G.I. Bill).  Not for me the privilege of having mommy and daddy pull strings to get me a plum job.  No folks, all my jobs I got the hard way by asking and proving.  On my own folks, by the bootstraps and yes, I'm still and liberal Democrat and not one of those crazy assed Right Wing Republican Nut Jobs.

Now, at the grand age of seventy (of which I am very proud), while all of my peers are NOT WORKING and enjoying the fruits of retirement, and whose major decision of the day is deciding what restaurant they're going to feed their face that evening; Good Old Ron is still working.  Folks, that's just the way I'm made.  So while they're all lazing around, getting fat I'm staying fit and trim both mentally and physically by still getting my ass out the door every week and doing real work.

Again, I am not complaining.  I am glad that my Mother put me to work when I was only ten years old.  It's like Bill said "You HAVE to work Ron, you would go crazy if you didn't."

Now, granted if I had many more weeks like I had last week with the constant inflow and outflow of the guests in the hotel and all their needs, I WOULD go crazy.  "Do you have a pool?"  "Do you have any playing cards at the front desk?"  "What time is checkout?" "Can I get six in that room?"  "What time is breakfast?"  "How far is Annapolis?"  And all the while the phones are ringing from folks who waited until the last minute seeking a room for the weekend.

Caller:  "I know this is last minute (do you think?),  but do you have any rooms this weekend?"

Me: "No, we don't have any rooms this weekend.  We're full."  

Caller:  "Do you know where they do have rooms and how much and what are those rooms like?"  

Me:  "No, I don't know where they have rooms and what those rooms are like.  Perhaps you should CALL THEM and find out. "

Yes folks, it's been THAT kind of week.

I'm supposed to only work two days this week (we'll see how that goes) and then next week it's another FOUR DAYS IN A ROW.

I'm looking forward to fall folks, really looking forward to fall.  Get those kiddies back to school and have life return to normal around here.

Self-portrait of me at Rehoboth Bay

"You're Getting a Job"

Me and my trusty bicycle with basket that helped me deliver thousands of newspapers  1951-1956

The year was 1952. I was ten years old.  I was the oldest of the three sons of Ike and Betty Tipton.  Ike, my father, was a transplanted hillbilly. He came to Pennsylvania from the western mountains of North Carolina with his eight brothers (two more would be born in Pennsylvania) when he was ten years old.  He and his brothers were to work as migrant farm labor for his uncle Don Byrd's farm in southern Chester County.

My Mother was the youngest of a family of Pennsylvania Quaker descent.  Her Mother died when she wasn't quite two years old.  Both my parents had a hard upbringing.  Neither had an easy childhood.  Both began working before they reached their teenage years.  I was to be no exception.

I came home one day from school and my Mother told me "You're getting a job.  You're going to be a paper boy."  Uh....okay.  What did I know?  We were poor and lived in the poorer section of town.  My father was a long distance truck driver, exempted from serving in the military because of his three sons being born in 1941, 1943 and 1944.  Mom, at that time, was a stay-at-home Mom with her hands full taking care of three rambunctious boys.  Any woman knows that three sons can be a handful.  My brothers and I were no exception.  We kept her busy. 

I wasn't asked if I wanted a job, I was told.  I didn't even think to protest.  What I did know was that I wasn't getting an allowance like most of my classmates and that my brothers and I didn't wear shoes during the summer months off from school because it was too expensive.  I would be earning MONEY.  I knew that.  Up until this time I earned a a nickel here and there running errands to the grocery store for my relatives who lived in the same apartment building we lived in on Washington Avenue in Downingtown.  Once in a great while one of my uncle would give me a whole quarter for running an errand to the grocer store.  Now as a paperboy I would be earning BIG MONEY....up to $5.00 a week!

She told me a Mrs. Lindermann would come over to our second floor apartment at 120 Washington Avenue to explain to me what I had to do.  Mrs. Lindermann arrived on a hot and humid August night (no air conditioning in the Fifties - we didn't notice).  She told me that I would pick up my newspapers (The Philadelphia Evening Bulletin) at the Sam Charles News stand, which was located on Lancaster Avenue, the main road through Downingtown.  This was only a few blocks away from where we lived in the center of Downingtown.  I would also be deli-vering a few copies of the local newspaper but the bulk of my deliveries would be the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin, about 60 copies.  I would pick up these papers after school. 

My Mom, Mrs. Lindermann and my brother Isaac looks on as Mrs. Lindermann scoops up my weekly take - leftover newspapers on chair to left - 1954

She gave me a small, black, hand-size three ring binder.  This notebook contained a monthly grid of individual sheets of the customers I was to deliver the newspapers too.  Each sheet had the customers' address and which paper was to be delivered to them.  There was also an amount listing what I was to collect from the customer once a week.  She turned over this notebook of customers' names and addresses to me.  At ten years old I had my first Real Job.  I now had responsibility.  I felt grown up.  It felt good. 

I was a paperboy from third grade until I entered ninth grade, from ten years old to fifteen years old.  Believe it or not the main reason I quit the paperboy job was that I thought I was too big to ride a bicycle.  Remember, back in the Fifties only kids rode bicycles. 

I can honestly say from my vantage point now, that paperboy job was the best job I ever had in my life.  The best.  I was on my own, I was out in the fresh air, I got to meet and interact with people (which I love and do to this day as I do at my part-time job as a hotel front desk clerk), and I made money.  If there was any downside at all (and I didn't and never did consider it a downside) was that I didn't have time for the extra-circular activities at school.  While the rest of my classmates were spending their allowances and getting into trouble or just being bored, I had something to do after school, deliver papers.  And oh the experiences I had delivering those newspapers, something which I will write about in future blogs. 

I don't have any pictures of me delivering papers but I do have a picture of me on my bike that I delivered newspapers.  My trusty, dependable bike that got me through many a day; hot, cold, windy, snow, rain. 

I am so thankful that my Mother gave me this lesson early in my life to teach me responsibility.  She is gone now but her lesson has stayed with me for the past sixty years.  I am working now, albeit part-time.  I will work until I can no longer function either mentally or physically.  I know of no other  way.  Mom trained me well. 

Thank you Mom, wherever you are.  I have no doubt she will have a job waiting for me when we meet again in Heaven.

Mom and me Mineral Springs, PA - 1942 - she already had plans for me to go to work