MEMORIES ARE MADE OF THIS...

My old friend and fellow blogger, Grumpy (grumpy-olddog.blogspot.com), recently wrote a blog about a summer job which he hated, and this blog triggered memories of my summer jobs.

My grandfather in 1899 bought control of an underwear company in our small town in the midwest, and for 75 years my family was active in that business until I sold it to a conglomerate in the early seventies. My father and his brother as kids worked in the company, and later my father became President of the company in 1934 and ran it until he retired in 1956---to be replaced by my older brother.

My father had three sons, and all of them worked at the factory as teenagers in the summer. My oldest brother was the one who became President after our father. He really did not plan on going in the family business; our middle brother was the one always interested in the business and probably the most natural businessman of the three. Unfortunately, he was killed in World War II and never got the chance. My surviving brother left the company in 1968 and a partner and I bought control of the business from my father and ran it until we sold the company.

Back to the summer jobs, I have some great memories. When I was sixteen, as the young hormones were raging, I had a crush on my first girlfriend, and one night we headed for one of the local parks where we indulged in some heavy necking and petting---to use old-fashioned terms. The next evening, at the dinner table, my father quietly turned to me and said, "Did you have a nice time in the park last night?" I almost dropped my fork , blushed and stammered. Typical of a small town, one of the employees was walking in the park and spied my girl and me behind a bush, told her foreman, who told the plant manager, who told my father---a sort of Tinkers-to-Evans-to-Chance gossip double play. Moral of that story: get out of town if you plan to play. a lesson I never forgot.

Another funny remembrance was, about a year later, I had endured a very late night but managed to get to work on time at 7:30 a.m. By lunch time I was exhausted and decided to take my box lunch and curl up in the stockroom where bags of knitted cloth were stored. The bags on the lowest shelf made a wonderful bed. I promptly fell asleep. I was awakened by the sound of voices and spied two sets of shoes from my low vantage point in the bins. A very familiar voice said, "I hope we're not disturbing you. but you are supposed to be at work---it's after one." The shoes belonged to my father and the plant manager and the sarcastic voice was, of course, my Dad.

Later that same summer the girl friend and I, on a particularly hot and steamy (weatherwise and personalwise) midwestern Sunday summer night, were parked by the local lake. We impulsively decided, hot as it was, to go skinnydipping. Afterwards, I took her home, earlier than normal because she had to go somewhere with her parents early the next day. I got home and walked from the garage into the kitchen where my parents were having a late evening snack. We chatted for a few minutes and then I announced that I better get to bed because I was going to have a particularly busy work day on the Monday and bid my parents good night. My father answered, "Good night---and, by the way, your t-shirt is on inside out." How do you follow a line like that? I simply slunk up the stairs.

This is the stuff of youth and memories in a carefree time.