I used to earn some money caddying, but it started
interfering with my lost weekends, so I took my first real job stocking shelves
at the local A&P grocery store during the week. I started at $1.05 per hour, which I didn’t
realize was minimum wage until they raised it to $1.25 per hour a month or so
later, because the minimum wage was raised.
Actually, I had worked from age 12 (paper route) to age 17 when I joined
the Army. I caddied from age 14 to 17
and worked at the A&P for a few months before enlisting. When we lived in Massapequa and later rented
in Bethpage, I caddied at the Bethpage public golf course. When we moved to Inwood I caddied at a nearby
private country club. I guess only the
pros use caddies these days. In my day
we had a few “cart pullers,” as we derisively called them; hardly anybody used
an electric cart. I don’t recall whether
they did not exist or were just too expensive compared to using a caddy.
At Bethpage I think the minimum was $2.50 or so for one
bag. I do recall that $3 for a single
and $6 for a double, including tip, was on the low side, while $4 and $8 was
considered good. Between waiting around
in the caddy yard to get out, and then caddying 18 holes, I basically spent all
day to earn $6 to $8. But for a kid with
no bills and no responsibilities, that was good. Cigarettes cost 25 cents a pack in those
days, a cheeseburger was 35 cents, and beer was $1.25 a six-pack, so two days
of caddying on the weekend set me up pretty good for the week ahead. The other point, though, is that when some
speaker brags that he has worked since he was 12 years old, I can truthfully
say, “Well, so did I.”
When I enlisted, I indicated I wanted to be assigned to
the Corp of Engineers, where I might learn something useful for eventual
civilian employment. The draft sergeant
was of course very accommodating – there was just this minor matter of passing
the aptitude test. What a joke! A lack of common sense shows up glaringly in
an engineering aptitude test. For some
reason, I always remembered one question that I got wrong (out of many): There was a drawing of a river flowing in a
certain direction, going around a bend, and they asked which bank of the river
would erode quicker from the constant flow of the water, the one on the inside
of the turn, or the outside. Even if I
had never heard of centrifugal force, intuition probably should have led me to
see that the outer bank would receive the most force and erosion (“wear and
tear” in my vocabulary). I was probably
visualizing rounding first base, heading for second, where you want to keep the
turn sharp and not drift out toward the outfield grass. It slows you down if you allow yourself to
drift to the right. Actually, I don’t
know what I was thinking. Long story
short, I was assigned to the infantry (common foot soldier).
I wonder how many Christmas mornings Bobby went ahead and
assembled a complex toy while I was still trying to understand the
instructions. When I read instructions,
evidently written by a technical person, I get hung up on some of the
nomenclature that seems deliberately vague or subject to more than one
interpretation. Just this past weekend I
was trying to light a barbeque where the instructions said to light the main
one first. But there were three knobs,
all the same size, and none of them labeled “Main.” I can only guess they meant the middle
one. (I also suspect it doesn’t matter
which one you light first). But why
don’t they say “middle one” or else label the correct one “Main”? And then there are assembly instruction
words like “grommet.” Where in the world
did they come up with a word like that to describe some little thing? Even a word like “washer” can distract
me. We know what it means to wash
something. We have washing machines and
washrooms, but why would a little round thingy be called a washer? What were they thinking? Then the instructions say that before
starting, I should match the pictures and descriptions of all of the parts
against the bag of parts that came in the box.
I have to go by the pictures, since none of the words were included in
my high school reading assignments.
When I first saw the wide-spread, out-in-the-open use of
“the male end” and “the female end” to describe various hardware items, I was
scandalized. I glanced around the store
to see if there were women and children in the same aisles as me. (There were!). I’m pretty sure this would
never have been allowed back in my parents’ day. Women probably don’t even blush now when they
take such items to the checkout counter, or when they ask for help finding the
“male/female adapter.” The instructions also tell me to read all of the
warnings, and to read all the instructions all the way through before
beginning. I suspect that if something
goes wrong and I have to return the product, they are going to look me in the
eye and ask, “Well, did you read the instructions all the way through to the
end, including the safety warnings?” If
I say “Yes,” they may test me on the spot and know that I am lying. Alas, the world of inanimate objects always
had it in for me. I am much more comfortable in the world of ideas than in the
world of physical objects.
A little off the subject but in a similar vein, it really
bugs me that so many written advertisements have what I call “undefined
asterisks.” A recent one was a cruise
with “from $7,899* double occupancy.”
Nowhere was this * defined or discussed.
This is so common place that I suspect we have all come to accept that
it is like a ‘wink’ that says something like: “We, the advertiser, and you, the
consumer, both know that the conditions under which this price applies are so
onerous and unlikely that you can count on paying more than this. Our lawyers insisted that we put this * in to
avoid legal exposure caused by anyone who actually believes that this price has
meaning.”
I also pay way more attention than I should to
advertising slogans partly because I am aware that the advertiser has paid an
agency maybe millions of dollars for their ideas and for the air time and they
come up with things like these actual advertising slogans from the 1950s:
“Ivory Soap: 99 and 44 100th percent pure,” or “It floats.” Cigarettes: “LSMFT – Lucky Strike means fine
tobacco.” Morton’s Salt: “When it rains
it pours.” That’s it? Do these things mean anything? The message I get is that they have no real
value proposition or way to differentiate themselves from the competition, so
they are saying something that is literally true, but makes no difference. Are we supposed to make the mental leap that
other brands of cigarettes do not use fine tobacco? By the way, does “fine”
mean high quality or finely ground?
Then there are advertisements for products like gasoline
or detergents that say that there are “none better.” That of course leaves the possibility (the
literal probability) that there are several competing products that do equally
well – just none that do better. What
about products that say they do “more” or “better”, but they never say more or
better than what! The implication is
that they do more or better than their competition, but they are not saying
that. (They probably would be sued or fined if they did). I remember when Avis started advertising, “We
are #2, but we try harder.” Harder than
who or what? The implication, again, is
that they try harder than whoever is #1 (and we all knew that Hertz was
#1). But of course they wouldn’t say
that. The targets of the advertising
(us) brought our own assumptions to questions like: #1 or #2 as measured by
what? In what way does Avis try harder?
Is it noticeable? Does it benefit
me? Oh, the curse of having a literal
mind!
Young people have never been bombarded with television
ads encouraging them to smoke and drink.
In my day, TV presented these glamorous women and macho men enjoying
their cigarettes and recommending that we do the same. Smoking was made to seem not only acceptable,
but highly desirable. It was the same
with whiskey. These wealthy-looking,
intelligent-looking, sophisticated-looking men and women made the drinking of
hard liquor seem like a really smart thing to do. The scene was as far away as possible from the
image of the wino waking up in the gutter, which is where whiskey will lead
some people. In
the 1950s and 1960s, cigarette brands were frequently sponsors of television
programs that ran in prime time. One of the most famous television jingles of
the era came from an advertisement for Winston cigarettes. The slogan "Winston tastes good like a cigarette
should!" proved to be catchy.
Another popular slogan from the 1960s was "Us
Tareyton smokers would rather fight than switch!"
which was used to advertise Tareyton cigarettes.
America's first regular television news program, Camel News Caravan, was
sponsored by Camel Cigarettes and featured an ashtray on the desk in front of the newscaster and the Camel logo behind him. The show
ran from 1949 to 1956. The ban on liquor advertisements is actually a
voluntary ban by the major TV networks and their local affiliates. Industry watchdogs are still saying that it
would be a mistake to start treating distilled drinks as just another commodity
to be sold on-screen, since they have a greater concentration of alcohol than
beer or wine and pack a stronger punch. But we are seeing more and more
exceptions creep in, such as for Jack Daniels Whiskey, Bailey’s Irish Cream,
and Seagram products.
There were about 250 “men” in boot camp with me in Fort
Dix, New Jersey, in the fall of 1961 and winter of 1962. I say “men” because
that is what they called us, but we looked and felt so young it was almost
laughable. I am very proud of the fact
that I had the highest score in the PT (physical training) test among the 250
or so, and also that I earned the expert badge in the light machine gun. In 2012 (fifty years later), I placed the PT
high score trophy on Justin’s dresser in High River. The expert badge seems to have disappeared.
Looking back, I see that I won these things by listening
to the instructors, understanding and internalizing what they were saying,
mentally rehearsing my performances and, perhaps most importantly, not knowing
that I couldn’t do it. I never
understood why others did not do the same thing. I didn’t have the common sense to realize
that most of them did not have the mental ability to do so. It never occurred to me that maybe my high
school guidance counselors were right, even after I learned that my IQ score
had come in at 132 (not genius, by any means, but considered “gifted”). Among that group of 250 young men, none of
whom would have been considered college material, an IQ score of 132 may have
been the highest.
Just to show off for a minute, I recall that there was a
lengthy policy or regulation posted on the wall, and for some reason I bragged
to one or two of the guys in my immediate bunk area that I could probably
memorize the posting in a few minutes and recite it from memory. They challenged me, and I did it. They were amazed. I can still do that, although I am generally
too lazy to go to the effort. I do not
have a photographic memory, by any means.
I have to put my mind to it. Just
a few Christmas’ back I wanted to demonstrate to Brianna what our minds are
capable of, so we read “The Night Before Christmas” together and I told her that
on Christmas Eve I would recite the entire poem from memory. I did that, and I think her Dad, Jim, was
even more impressed than she was.
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