I had a lot of different jobs over the years. In high school, I worked at Adelphi Mobil gas station. I worked 13 hours each Saturday. Then I would get home at like 10 at night and run to my girlfriend's house a few miles away, and then I'd squat in her basement. I pumped gas at the Mobil station and it was a good job. The owner was a jerk and the mechanic had some kind of plastic thing that he used to have sex with, but all in all, it was good. I put plugs in tires and I hung out with my friends. I learned that working with the public is miserable. Or rather, people are miserable. And if you are blue-collar working, some people act like they are better than you. Makes them feel good with that power over somebody else. As soon as a miserable person would leave the station, we would all be like, what a dick. I worked in the equipment room at the Kinesiology building at the University of Maryland the following year. I was always late because I didn't have my driver's license and I had to get rides. I folded stuff like towels and clothes and I did odd jobs for my Uncle George. He was the Acting Dean. One time he came down to where I was working and he handed me a pair of plyers and was like, go into the locker room on the second floor and take a part of all of the lockers. There were 50 lockers. I swear, I tried my ass off, but I couldn't take apart any lockers, Not ONE. My uncle was probably messing with me by just giving me a pair of plyers to do the job. I was too scared to go tell him I didn't do it, so I laid down and took a nap. I figured I would at least delay the ball-busting that I was gonna receive for a bit. I eventually told him of my failure and later he said. "I had a kid take apart all the lockers. It took him like 15 minutes." I didn't say anything.
Then I began as a grad assistant after college at Gardner-Webb, coaching football, and made $4.25 an hour for working 80 hours a week and only getting paid for 19 hours. I needed some extra income. I'm not bitching, because I loved coaching, but I needed to pay rent and eat and buy Penthouse and Red Dog beer. Broke as hell. Sometimes, I'd sneak into the cafeteria, and this one girl who worked at the front desk used to let me in to eat for free. She didn't have any neck muscles, I remember that about her. Not that it has anything to do with anything, I just remember that about her. I was like, the first time I saw her, I said to my friend Billy, what the hell, dude. That girl has no neck muscles. I felt sorry for her, but she didn't seem to mind. That's probably wrong to feel sorry for her or something. She was just a great girl who happened to not have neck muscles. I delivered pizzas for Tony's Pizza and Cleaners. I had to deliver to trailer parks and yarn mills in rural North Carolina. One guy gave me a beer for a tip. I got stiffed a lot, and I got lost a whole damn bunch. This was before GPS, and the delivery area was like 20 miles away. Tony the prick would be like "Go down and take a left past the brown cow at Mr. Robinson's house and then take a right at the Pantry store and then it is 10 minutes from there around the curve. You can't miss it." One time I went to deliver to a house way back in the woods and there were cameras on the trees on the long dirt road and then there was a silver plated .45 on the counter where they told me to put the pizza. Bunch of guys in there. They were really cool dudes, gave me a tip, and everything. But something shady was going on, for sure. I had that vibe as soon as I turned onto their driveway.
I delivered pizzas forever, it was always an easy job to get.
Not job related but a good story: One time I was down at the Broad River near where I was coaching at Gardner- Webb and I had been fishing with my girlfriend. Didn't catch shit. So we were in the gravel parking lot getting ready to leave and this random drunk guy ran up to us and was like, "Hey man, can you fight for me? This guy took my girl and he won't give her back." I was like, seriously?. The guy talking had to have been around 25 years old, had no shirt on, and had on cut-off blue jeans, He must have weighed 127 pounds He was definitely drunker than Cooter Brown. My girlfriend was saying, "JIMMY! DON'T YOU DARE!" But I wasn't gonna do that shit. Even I wasn't that stupid, and I was plenty stupid. I told him that he had to take care of his own business and he walked away. I wonder what happened?
Back to jobs. I cut a lot of lawns when I was younger. My dad had some older friends who couldn't cut their lawns anymore, so we would throw our mower into the station wagon and go cut the lawns. I cut my aunt's lawn and my neighbor's lawn. I got ten bucks a lawn, which wasn't bad in the 80's. I was a lawn man. I ran over all kinds of plants and shit that I wasn't supposed to run over. I did my best. And then when I was coaching at Gardner-Webb, I cut the game and practice fields.
I had many more jobs: Bouncer, cement work, clearing land, and stuff like that. Good, honest work.
I liked most of the work, some of the bosses, and most of the folks that I worked around. All in all, they were some great experiences and memories.
