Spinning More Stats by Grandpa Jim

This could be a penultimate (next to final) post...

Some of you may recall that I posted a memoir about how many times Jean and I have moved in our 61 years together. My point was that you can do all sorts of things with statistics. (One could “spin it” to appear that we moved every six months!)

It brings to mind that, having nothing else to do, I got to wondering about all of the “jobs” I’ve had. It turns out that I can spin this to appear that I’ve had 77 in my 81 years! (Take away four years as too young, and I switched jobs every year!!!) (Take away four years for military, 18 for education, and 26 more for retirement, and it spins out to almost a new job every five months!

Now nobody is going to swallow that, of course. Why? Because many were summer jobs, many were very temporary, many were held at the same time as others, and finally, many were merely parts of other positions. For example, I was a signalman in the navy, but when Japanese planes were in the vicinity, I became a gunner. I was a teacher of speech and English at the same time, but it can be spun to look like two jobs.

While a student on any level, I held 10 summer jobs that I can remember, and maybe more. I also held 10 full-time jobs in one 18-month period after discharge from navy, 1948-1949. (I was trying to find my niche, and it can be spun to look like changing jobs every 1.8 months!)

Most fun for me was writing a movie review column for a weekly newspaper while also teaching. Second most fun was as radio announcer one summer between school terms. The two most boring were as factory worker, where my sole duty was to install screws into the bases of record players, and as an “editorial artist” for the Chicago Sun-Times. (One of my early posts here dealt with that job and creating the headline for Babe Ruth’s death.)

My most “under-qualified” role was as an “editor” of a fifth grade Sunday School magazine for the D.C. Cook Publishing Company. (I got it right out of the navy with only an 11th grade education. It took the boss and me almost three months to reach the correct conclusion.) Most “over-qualified” was the job above, at Sun-Times, where I had the same qualifications and only needed 5 of the 11 grades.

The hardest physical labor I ever did was shoveling coal. A friend and I were hired to unload a freight car full of coal as students at U. of I. (This was one of those jobs that inspired me to finish college.) Similar to this was an occasional day or two loading hay into the barn for brother Chick, but this doesn’t count…it was sort of “volunteer work.” (When you are 14 or 15 and ten years younger and six inches shorter, all work for a brother is voluntary.)

The most fascinating, was a three-day job as a form of industrial espionage in a summer role between teaching semesters. Years later, I had a one-day “spying” job at O’Hare Airport. I had to count passengers as they boarded a plane and report to one of that airline’s competitors. The most gratifying “moments” came when the announcements were made that our CHS plays (“Our Town,” and “The Diary of Anne Frank”) had won the sectionals and would be advancing to the state finals, 1960 and 1961.

There was one job I could have been tempted to trade for teaching. It was a summer job in 1957, working for a dairy in Iowa. My role was as a supervisor of stores (like outlets.) These stores sold ice cream, such as cones, sundaes, malteds,, and bulk, etc., but only for warm months. My duty was to make sure all of the clerks (mainly high school girls) were on duty, to purchase supplies, like the cones, fruit, paper goods, etc., and to make bank deposits. My office was my car, and my duties required no more than five or six hours per day at a salary quite comparable to teaching. The job was free of almost all stress, required a “teaching-like” relationship with the girls, and a very pleasant boss to work with.

And then there were a couple of things I did that were semi-hobby, semi-work, while also teaching. I’ll save these for later posting.