Baseball, Boobs, and Blondes
Okay folks, I apologize for my long departure. Seems I was beginning to ruffle a few family feathers- perhaps forcing a few to remember things they'd rather forget, but that's life and as we get older, every road is memory lane. They will have to deal with it. This is a book about work- what we give to it, and get from it. So let's continue.
At fifteen one could work part-time and I wasted no time in locating my next source of income. Having always been a tomboy with a love of baseball, (could not and still can not understand why women must play softball!), an ad for a clerk with our hometown baseball team caught my eye. I landed this part-time job with the farm team (probably why I'm still a Cleveland Indians fan to this day). It was an easy job with good after school hours. My duties were to come in around 5 p.m., type up the team roster and news, and then use an ancient mimeograph to make about a hundred purplish copies. After that, I had to go sit in a little wooden booth out front and sell tickets through about the fourth inning. After then if you weren't at the game you weren't going to be so I just went up in the bleachers and watched the game.
I loved the warm evenings, the swarms of moths around the lights, the slightly sickening smell of hot dogs and fries, and seeing the small crowd get really excited when one of the players made a home run.
Even though I enjoyed the job and actually getting paid by the hour, and even though my boss really liked me because I could spell and he couldn't, the players just walked around the office in their jock straps, or less, and it was a little intimidating, Interesting for sure, but a little unnerving, and since they wouldn't stop, I decided to quit before one of them caught me staring like a deer in the headlights.
Lesson learned....hmmm, I guess wait until you're not intimidated by team nudity to work for a ball club - which I did, but that's later on, so hang on.
Having had one paying official job made it easier to get another one and pounding the pavement of downtown Burlington I soon got a job at one of the original movie theaters. One of the perks of course was watching free movies and hanging out in the cool, dark, theater during the sweltering Carolina summer. Duties consisted of selling tickets in a little booth, then shoveling popcorn, Cokes and Hersey bars until everyone was settled down, after which, I would grab a seat near the back of the balcony and watch the movies.
I saw the original Jungle Book about ten times. I got a little insight into men from a movie - I believe it was Ulysses, - not sure about that title, but it was during a scene between an old man and a young man. They were peeing on a wall and there was a debate between them about how when you're young you can pee really high and when you're old you can't. Later in life, that made sense, but at the time, it just seemed really weird.
That summer, thanks to the half naked ball players and the pissing contest, I began a journey of my own teenage awakening. I met a boy on the basketball court at Hillcrest elementary and we would sit in a big concrete tube on the playground and kiss. A boy I sat beside in the balcony touched my boob, another punky teenager threatened me with a knife in the balcony, and through my work mate at the theater I learned that if you put out with the boss, you really don't have to do much of anything to get paid.
She was an attractive blonde, maybe two or three years older than me, who was supposed to be selling popcorn with me. She spent about an hour behind the counter then the rest of the night she spent upstairs with the young manager. Occasionally she'd pop down to get a Coke or something and smile at me with her blouse hanging out, then back upstairs. I didn't care really because it left me in charge and I liked being in charge. If the porter brought up a bag of popcorn with half a cigar in the bottom- I could just say "throw it out!" and it would be done. I also raided the Hershey bars at will.
But as with all jobs there were was a downside. Saturday morning began at 9 a.m. - what teenager wants to get up that early - when any kid could see a double feature with cartoons in between for six bottle-caps. The most important thing I learned from this was when faced with utter chaos- retreat! A hundred kids on a sugar high translated into endless spitball fights, popcorn everywhere, spilled drinks, and wrassling in the aisles. Just walk away, and unless there's blood, the less said the better.
I stayed with the theater until school began but at least by then I'd saved up enough to buy more than one pair of shoes, a new coat, some school clothes and a few bucks left over for the all-important high school football games. You were no one if you didn't at least show up for the home games.
Lessons learned from this summer job- several. First, men are weird. Second, men are obsessed by boobs and women can use boobs to get just about anything, and third, blondes really do have more fun.
At fifteen one could work part-time and I wasted no time in locating my next source of income. Having always been a tomboy with a love of baseball, (could not and still can not understand why women must play softball!), an ad for a clerk with our hometown baseball team caught my eye. I landed this part-time job with the farm team (probably why I'm still a Cleveland Indians fan to this day). It was an easy job with good after school hours. My duties were to come in around 5 p.m., type up the team roster and news, and then use an ancient mimeograph to make about a hundred purplish copies. After that, I had to go sit in a little wooden booth out front and sell tickets through about the fourth inning. After then if you weren't at the game you weren't going to be so I just went up in the bleachers and watched the game.
I loved the warm evenings, the swarms of moths around the lights, the slightly sickening smell of hot dogs and fries, and seeing the small crowd get really excited when one of the players made a home run.
Even though I enjoyed the job and actually getting paid by the hour, and even though my boss really liked me because I could spell and he couldn't, the players just walked around the office in their jock straps, or less, and it was a little intimidating, Interesting for sure, but a little unnerving, and since they wouldn't stop, I decided to quit before one of them caught me staring like a deer in the headlights.
Lesson learned....hmmm, I guess wait until you're not intimidated by team nudity to work for a ball club - which I did, but that's later on, so hang on.
Having had one paying official job made it easier to get another one and pounding the pavement of downtown Burlington I soon got a job at one of the original movie theaters. One of the perks of course was watching free movies and hanging out in the cool, dark, theater during the sweltering Carolina summer. Duties consisted of selling tickets in a little booth, then shoveling popcorn, Cokes and Hersey bars until everyone was settled down, after which, I would grab a seat near the back of the balcony and watch the movies.
I saw the original Jungle Book about ten times. I got a little insight into men from a movie - I believe it was Ulysses, - not sure about that title, but it was during a scene between an old man and a young man. They were peeing on a wall and there was a debate between them about how when you're young you can pee really high and when you're old you can't. Later in life, that made sense, but at the time, it just seemed really weird.
That summer, thanks to the half naked ball players and the pissing contest, I began a journey of my own teenage awakening. I met a boy on the basketball court at Hillcrest elementary and we would sit in a big concrete tube on the playground and kiss. A boy I sat beside in the balcony touched my boob, another punky teenager threatened me with a knife in the balcony, and through my work mate at the theater I learned that if you put out with the boss, you really don't have to do much of anything to get paid.
She was an attractive blonde, maybe two or three years older than me, who was supposed to be selling popcorn with me. She spent about an hour behind the counter then the rest of the night she spent upstairs with the young manager. Occasionally she'd pop down to get a Coke or something and smile at me with her blouse hanging out, then back upstairs. I didn't care really because it left me in charge and I liked being in charge. If the porter brought up a bag of popcorn with half a cigar in the bottom- I could just say "throw it out!" and it would be done. I also raided the Hershey bars at will.
But as with all jobs there were was a downside. Saturday morning began at 9 a.m. - what teenager wants to get up that early - when any kid could see a double feature with cartoons in between for six bottle-caps. The most important thing I learned from this was when faced with utter chaos- retreat! A hundred kids on a sugar high translated into endless spitball fights, popcorn everywhere, spilled drinks, and wrassling in the aisles. Just walk away, and unless there's blood, the less said the better.
I stayed with the theater until school began but at least by then I'd saved up enough to buy more than one pair of shoes, a new coat, some school clothes and a few bucks left over for the all-important high school football games. You were no one if you didn't at least show up for the home games.
Lessons learned from this summer job- several. First, men are weird. Second, men are obsessed by boobs and women can use boobs to get just about anything, and third, blondes really do have more fun.
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