January 2009
9 posts
Random Tales
At the age of eleven I discovered free travel. I lived in Mineola, New York. The Long Island Railroad ran thru town, and this was at the time before automated gates existed at railroad crossings. Each crossing had a little hut next to it and a man came out and put the gates up and down so traffic wouldn’t be hit by the train. In the winter, there were little heaters in these huts that kept the...
Good ideas must be coupled with ease of execution
Two things are at work here. First people are creatures of habit and would rather not learn a new behavior. Second, the lowest common denominator plays a role. For an idea to work and have an impact on society it must have the capability of adoption by a large portion of the public. Once an idea is adopted, complexity can increase and the maximum productivity of the idea will be achieved. ...
more early years
Once our summer vacation was over I had to find myself a different job. Somehow, I ended up working as a house cleaner. I guess it was all those floors that I scrubbed for my mother that qualified me.
Initially, I cleaned the homes of the Faxons and the Schumackers. Both of these familys lived in Garden City which was a pretty wealthy neighborhood, but not far from the church manse where we...
Creativity is making the usual, unusual
It seems to me that creativity comes in two forms. The first is that brilliant flash of insight that changes the paradigm. The second is the long trek that uses learned competence to see or do things differently. Pianists that spend years perfecting their skills can take a piece of writen music and transform it into somthing the original composer had never envisioned. Ben Franklin figures out...
more early years
After visiting the lake, we would head off to see my other grandparents. They lived on a farm in Buskirk, New York. The farm was about three hundred acres and worked by my cousins, the Mosleys. They mostly grew hay and corn on the land and let their herds of cows graze on many of the other pastures.
My grandparents had other homes in Redding, Massachusetts and in Pasadena, California and kind of...
more early years
I was able to keep that paper route for a solid year. I lost it the next summer. Each summer my parents would pack up my brother and me with several suitcases of clothing and head off to visit our grandparents. We would spend two weeks with my Dad’s parents, Alder and Ester Nord and then two weeks with my Mom’s parents Payson and Violet Pierce. These four weeks contain some of my most...
THE BEGINING
I think I first started working when I was about 10. It was at that age that I discovered that my allowance was insufficient to satisfy my cravings for the things that people sold in stores. I remember asking my Mother about this dilemma and she said that she couldn’t or wouldn’t enlarge my allowance. That left some sort of work as the only option.
Mom did not like the job of washing the...
Work is important to me. I have had 39 jobs in my...
These are the things that I have done. I will talk about one of these jobs each day for the next 39 days.
JOBS
Paper boy
House cleaner
Carvel
City tree trimmer
Asplungh tree surgeon
Stouffers bartender
Building exterior pointer
Shoe salesman
TWA
Reservation agent
Gate agent
Assit mgr-Ticket Office
Quality assurance Representative
Budget Analyst
Reg Mgr quality assurance
Director quality...
