Post #28

Thought for the day:

You should always leave loved ones with loving words. It may be the last time you see them.
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We’ve heard a lot lately about kids graduating from high school or college and not having any job opportunities available to them. And not only them but also people of all ages and socio-economic standing. Oh, I see “help wanted” signs at many of the fast food places, but, not meaning to demean those opportunities, for the most part they are not the kind of jobs that offer advancement and a future. Thinking about all of this made me start trying to remember what the job market was like when I was a pre-teen-ager and after.
As an eight or nine year old I earned my allowance by doing things like mowing the lawns (no motorized machines), pulling weeds in our very weedy back yard, and just generally helping around the house—indoors and out. That ten cents a week I got for my efforts was a bargain for my parents. In order to earn a little extra cash I occasionally did the same sort of things (mostly outside work) for some of our neighbors and members of the church. The pay there—five cents an hour—was considerably better than I got for doing the same work at home. The problem was that there weren’t many people in our neighborhood or in the church who could afford to pay for outside help. Nevertheless, the few extra pennies helped keep me in miniature cars and bubblegum.
About the time I turned ten we were visited by a gentleman whom I will call Mr. Jones just because I don’t remember what his name was and because it really doesn’t matter but makes it easier for me to refer to him in the rest of this tale. Mr. Jones was from The Curtis Publishing Company, the publishers of The Saturday Evening Post, Country Gentleman, and Ladies Home Journal magazines. As we talked—he talked, I listened—it became apparent even to my ten-year-old brain, that what he was really there for was to recruit me as a magazine salesman. That was okay, though, because the way Mr. Jones presented his pitch absolutely convinced me that I could be a great salesman and could even work my up to top management in the company, making more money that I ever could have imagined. My mother and dad were both there and, as it turned out, they are the ones who had filled out the card setting up an appointment for an interview. They felt that exposure to other types of employment—real employment—would be beneficial in the long run. I have to laugh as I look back on that “meeting,” because it parallels almost exactly an incident detailed in Russell Baker’s autobiography, Growing Up. The only difference is, neither of my parents tried to push me into anything. I believe that I mentioned this book in an earlier blog; if not, I recommend it here! It’s easy reading, witty, and touching all at the same time.
Well, getting on with this saga, I agreed to be the best representative of The Curtis Publishing Company that ever existed, at which point Mr. Jones shook my hand and pulled from his briefcase a canvas bag that I would use to carry my weekly supply of magazines. At that point it occurred to me that it was just as though he knew all along that I would take the job (duh!). Each of those three magazines sold for five cents a copy, and though I’m not certain, my recollection is that for every copy I sold I got to keep two cents. While the company wanted us to sell every copy we received, they probably knew better than to expect that we’d do that. The SEP was a weekly and I think the other two were monthlies, (my mind is pretty fuzzy about some of the details, though). In any event, those copies that we were unable to sell could be returned without charge but the publisher was not too happy when that happened.
I very quickly learned—within the first couple of weeks, actually—that I was not cut out to be the Curtis Company’s most outstanding salesman, or for that matter, a salesman at all. Despite that realization, I stuck with the job for a couple of years until (thankfully!) involvement in junior high school sports left no time for the grind of door-to-door sales.
Well, that’s the story of my first, real job. It was one of the few available to kids in the 1930s, so I guess I was fortunate to have it. If nothing else, it gave me experience (but then, so does sitting on a hot stove).
In future blogs—if there is a demand for any more of this sort of story telling—I might write a bit more about establishing myself as a non-salesman, but this is enough for now.
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