TSOS Tip # xx”Everybody’s selling something.”: A Prelude to being in sales FINAL

The title above is something my dad used to say — It’s true if a bit cynical. It came to me as I was going through storage boxes as i looked for items related to sales …. i realized every job I’ve had included elements of selling — yep.

I ran a “neighborhood bank” — using deposit and withdrawl slips from one of my competitors. i sold shares to friends and family (a common practice for any fund raiser) — my pitch was that since i was young i could hold their money for decades….most deposited and withdrew within days …. so i moved on.

Like any enterprising youth, i was 15, i had two desks (one was actually a kids pool table where i covered the felt with wood — if you look closely you’ll see the ball holes (my poor Dad would shake his head and mumble as he passed by). It was Christmas so the company bulletin board was bedecked in lights. However, it was soon gone as i converted my bedroom to a recording studio. I was more interested in music than banking.

I bought a high end tape recorder and for a while, i would just record off the radio (I had a ross electronics radio with FM, police, fire, and weather bands but the air traffic band provided hours of “UNITED ONE-five-niner HEAVY requests to land”…I’d wait to hear a yes or no. i once heard a pilot request to “abort and go around” and “foam the runway” — i ran out of my tent having no idea where this plane was — and my dad never did figure out what i was talking about)…and when i got a stereo, my cousin suggested that we form radio stations and share music. we had 5 stations at our peak including a German who sent me tapes of Caravan… one of my fav prog rock groups still.

we used small reels to ship — third class: what is that? is there even such a thing?

I ran my station with various features such as my serial, Jim Show of Africa with his colleague Penny Loafer. All was documented in a handbook …. even commercials (always coke)…and we had studio tickets as well — my siblings and their runny nosed friends and cousins would make noise outside my bedroom window — gee, not unlike all the tv shows with glass wall observing areas. Ha! We did a show a week — doors, beatles, creedence clearwater, steppenwolf, herb alpert (my theme song, thanks Mom).

At high school i expanded my technical footprint by being an A/V helper — “A mans got to know his A/V”, my friend Clint FilmStrip — and a cinema class. I signed up for media production at a college — 35mm and we were able to buy super 8mm — sooo much cheaper, and vhs was emerging. i ended up editing and being a host on the campus show (audience of 12?). after working on such film studies as : The carburetor: our quad port friend, and then The steel tipped construction boot: you wear it well, i decided to get all my basic classes and get on with it.

I had to pay for school: i painted houses, managed landscaping teams – leaning out the window of the car every now and then to shout instructions: “green side up”. I was also a letter carrier — mailman. I used to have a scrap of paper with the letter Q in case i was asked what i do.

it was hard working and going to school…and then the first instance of the invisible hand occurred. I’ll write more about that in a subsequent blog.

Here’s how it played out: i was living with some Viet Nam vets (i knew from high school) and apparently they were dealing as well as consuming and one night about 2 am we get a tip that police were in the way — so they give me a metal box with cash & hash and had me run into the woods in the snow, in a t-shirt. i watched and shivered as they came and left — as i wasn’t a full resident they did not know i was involved.

as the great Yogi Berra said,” When you come to a fork in the road, take it.” So I walked back to the house, gathered my things and left for grandpa’s. i asked my dad to let me come back home so i could work and study in a better environment.

The building had a repair area in back, parts warehouse in middle, and parts desk and sales office upfront.

I was such an eager beaver I once got in my truck for a two hour drive to get hydraulics parts to a crew working all night. (Working here was like an elephant vet: large and dirty)… only thing was I left parts behind. Can you say “sheepish” return?

The pay was good, I was getting night classes in… and I learned one of my favorite lines here: “if it’s unstick, we’ve got it!”

So, with my life on a better path after a detour, i visited my cousin one summer evening to watch him play softball on a team sponsored by his new employer, McDonald’s Corporation. They built a major corp office one mile away.

So, the story so far: embezzlement, drugs, federal cover-up, and federal copyright violations, and it was clear that technology was going to be part of my life….

This is all circa 1972/3.
1974 would be very different.