Painting

Painting and mowing grass were my first two jobs in life. I started off on both ventures pretty young, although I can't remember which one came first.

It all started at home, on Golf Road. As soon as I could handle the riding mower I was cutting all the open areas while my Dad took the push mower around all the trees and edges.

Every summer it seemed the wood deck behind the house and the "barn" (a shed where we kept an odd assortment of stuff), needed painting and that became my job too.

These jobs did not put cash in my pocket. But they were part of me earning my keep. My Dad wanted to teach me responsibility. It worked. To this day I always want to do my part. Just ask Barb, Alyssa and Charlie. If I don't cook dinner I always do all the clean up work. "I have to work for my dinner," I say.

Both assignments, mowing grass and painting, did turn into paid assignments through the years though.

Mowing grass led to taking care of a couple yards, one being my grandparents. It was my very first paying job. I used almost every penny I earned to join the Columbia House Music Club, you know that deal where you get 11 albums for one cent and then you have to buy eight more at regular club price over time.

I had the largest collection of music among anyone my age in Myerstown.

Immediately after graduating high school I was asked if I'd like to spend the summer painting the outside of the high school. I have no idea how this came about. But I immediately agreed to do it. Although I did find some sour irony in the fact that even though I graduated, I still couldn't get away from the high school.

So my first full-time, 40-hour a week job, was painting.

It was a task I had already been thoroughly trained for by my Dad. No shirt, lots of sunshine, a portable radio, prepping the surface, nice even coat, easy-going work I enjoyed. Hey, I'm a simple guy. I enjoyed painting.

Painting the high school was a little more complex than painting my parents' wooden deck. It involved scaffolding. We painted the metal beams all around the school. It was fun though. My partner and I worked hard and took pride in our work. But we also took a break or two to stage air-guitar concerts from the scaffolding.

We also had access to an old, beat-up, stand-up style delivery truck. I loved to drive that piece of junk. I taught my work mate to drive the manual transmission beast with no seats. But after one drive, and bouncing the side of the truck off the inside of a railroad underpass, he had enough.

One day though the superintendent of the school grounds called us to the school's sewage treatment plant, along with the two school janitors.

When we got there we were shocked. I mean we were mouths open, chins resting on the ground shocked.

The superintendent of the grounds was at least 20-feet down in the sewage pit. He had two buckets tied to ropes. One bucket at a time would be dropped into the sewage where he would fill it up with disgusting sludge, then a janitor would pull it up and dump it into the back of the superintendent's pick-up truck.

We were there to take the place of the janitors.

For two-hours it was the most disgusting thing I had ever done in my life. I remember asking the man in charge if they had big trucks with vacuums to do this kind of stuff. And I remember him telling me that they did, but he wanted to take this stuff home to spread on his garden.

Yuck! You've gotta' be kidding me!

Well my partner and I decided that at first break we were marching into the business manager's office, the man who hired us, and demanding an end to this insanity. Either we would go back to the painting we were hired to do, or we were walking.

It was the most disgusting thing I had ever done in my life. It was wrong. It was stupid.

"You're doing what?" the business manager asked. He was shocked too. He told the superintendent of grounds that we were working for him the rest of the day. He took us water skiing.

Today I go back to painting, as I start priming the two main living areas of our house. It's long overdue. We've wanted to get rid of this dark green color ever since we've moved in. It makes it feel like a dark cave and we want to lighten things up.

I enjoy it. I enjoy the feeling of accomplishment, being able to step back at the end of the day and see the finished product. I'll keep the shirt on. But the shoes will come off, and I'll be in bare feet, so I can tell if I step in any wet paint. As always with painting, the music will be playing.

It keeps me active and brings back a lot of fond memories of painting decks, barns, schools, and even that couple miles of chain-link fence I painted one summer around the pharmaceutical plant where my Dad worked.

It's not rocket-science. But than it's not emptying a sewage plant by rope and bucket either. It's work perfectly suited for a big goofball like myself.