When I was 12 years old I asked my father for an allowance. Without hesitating he said “sure”. The next thing I knew I had a part-time job at a body shop a few blocks from our house, across the Des Plaines River in suburban Chicago. Apparently, I had to work for my allowance and it was going to come from someone else. In a previous post entitled “The Body Shop” I talked about my excellent experiences there and lessons learned. In addition to that job, I had my paper route, selling mice to snake owners, painting cars and of course a seasonal lawn service or snow removal service. In fact, most of the kids in the neighborhood had multiple jobs. The kid I inherited the paper route from moved to bagging groceries at the local grocery store. He was old enough to be allowed to work indoors for more money rather than schlepping newspapers around on a bike in rain, wind, snow and hail. My father told me it “built character”. Getting 2 cents a newspaper (the retail price of the Tribune or Sun-Times was 25 cents and the dispatcher received 6 cents a newspaper to deliver them) didn’t feel like “character building” inasmuch as cheap child labor.
Nonetheless, after a few years I transferred the paper route to some other poor 10-year-old shmuck whose parents wanted him to build character. Nowadays I see older men drive around in cars leaving the newspapers closer to the edge of the driveway rather than on the front porch like we had to do. I don’t see any 11-year-old kids riding around in the dark throwing newspapers anymore.
One Summer into the late Fall I worked as a caddie at our local country club. The club at the time had no golf carts whatsoever and relied on caddies alone. In fact, that course became one of the last to adopt the use of golf carts in Illinois. When the days started to get shorter after Halloween, golfers would still try to come out and get at least 9 holes in. The club had a cutoff time to go out to prevent people from being on the course in the dark and try to get caddies off the course before dark. The golfers were welcome to carry their own bags, but few did so here we were left haggling about going out on the course after the cutoff time. It often meant good tips and it was only 9 holes. The risk was you were going to be late for dinner, get it from your mother for being so and be that much farther behind to get going on homework.
Still, you were outside on a golf course in the Fall with a little wind and chill and leaves falling in front of your feet and could listen in on what the local businessman thought about the Cubs, Bears, politicians and their wives or girlfriends. And that was worth something.
But of course, 9 holes of golf, short of playing with glow in the dark balls and miner lamps, was not enough. The solution was simple –
9 holes, 2 balls.
Each golfer would play “18 holes” by hitting two balls on each hole and we would still be in by dusk at 7. For the older caddies this was already automatic before I learned it but as folks walked up from a long day at the office at 5 PM – the caddies would think – 9 holes, 2 balls.
Like any job, whether it is a paper route, painting cars, caddying, or practicing pathology, one has to learn how to compromise and find solutions when issues arise. There are times when you don’t have enough people or enough time to have the ideal situation so you work with what you have. Flat tires on your bicycle can kill your paper route until you fix the tire. In the meantime, you carry a bag and hoof it. In the caddie business, you walk half as far for twice as much at the risk of hearing about being late from your mother. Life is a series of trade-offs.
Without the paper route I would not have met Mr. Evans, one of our neighbors who was retired from US Steel and collected rocks. Over the years before his passing I learned as much from him about hard work, compassion, taking care of what you have and collecting.
In pathology, the people you train with and work with “in the trenches” on a daily basis for years and years become more than colleagues.
They become people you go out to the golf course with and tell the starter after 5 PM — 9 holes, 2 balls.
