Let's Call It a Wrap!

 

This is in response to the StoryWorth question: Did you have a job while you were in high school?

I remember for certain that one of my first jobs was while I was in high school. My friend Norma West worked at Dairy Queen in Shelbyville one or two afternoons a week. Wartrace did not have much of a job market, at least back in the ‘70s, early ‘80s. I guess that Norma must have mentioned that DQ was needing help. The pay wasn’t good but supper was free. The thought of a “free” hot fudge sundae or even a chocolate-dipped cone for dessert was like a carrot held in front of a horse…or maybe a mule, in my case! I applied and got the job.

Now back then, the DQ employees wore a little red, two-sided apron that was open on the sides. You slipped your neck through the center and the back fell over your back and the front fell over your chest and it snapped together at the side. The manager at Dairy Queen said that we could each get one extra apron at no cost if we wanted one. So I told them to go ahead and order one more for me.

Well, when I went in to pick up my paycheck, and my new apron, I saw that the cost of the apron had been deducted from my paycheck. I only made about $1.60 an hour so I doubt that there was much paycheck left. I told the manager that the price of the apron had been deducted from my check and it was not supposed to be but she said that I had to pay for it. I put the apron on the counter and told her that I would not be needing the apron. I expected reimbursement and I would not be returning to work.

 

 

So, my job ended because of a kind of “wrap” but I learned something from this job. I discovered that employees cannot always believe everything that they are told by their employers. So, that was my first job experience and I learned a valuable lesson as well as getting the occasional free sundae!

Now, the next two jobs, I can’t really recall if they were while I was in high school or college so I will tell you about them just in case.

My next job was a summer job at Potts Farm Processing. It was in Wartrace so it wasn’t far from home. The Potts family ran a little meat processing business. Local farmers would bring steers, hogs, sometimes their goats, to be slaughtered and processed.

There was a concrete room with a drain where the animal was slaughtered and butchered. Fortunately, I didn’t have anything to do with that part of the processing. Although looking back, it would be good to know how to cut up a beef or hog into its various cuts. As it is, I can’t even cut up a chicken without making it nearly unrecognizable.

So after the animal was butchered and processed, the cuts were brought up front to me. I would put the various cuts onto trays and wrap them on the film wrapping machine and label them before they were put into the cooler. I rather enjoyed this job. I like the Potts family and the folks that I worked with, and that made it a nice place to work.

My third job that could have been in high school but more likely during college was a summer job at Empire Pencil Company in Shelbyville. Shelbyville had several pencil factories and back in the day was known as “Pencil” City. I worked during the 4:00-12:00ish shift in the evenings. This was the same shift that Dad worked at Eaton Corporation. Eaton and Empire weren’t that far apart so Dad and I carpooled to work. I drove him to Eaton and then went on to my job at Empire. I’d pick him up after our shifts.

I worked on a line that packaged the pencils onto their cardboard tray and then wrapped the whole in cellophane. Sometimes my little group would work on a line that put erasers or sharpeners into blister packs. Now, this was a summer job and of course, the factory was not air-conditioned. It did have huge industrial fans directed at us as we worked on the line and those fans sure felt good!

It was there at Empire that I was introduced to the idea of “productivity” bonuses. If your line was running really smoothly, you just might meet the productivity assigned to that task. Often that productivity level seemed a bit out of reach even without any loafing. If you met that productivity level, your team would get a bonus. I remember that sometimes we would be running really close to the productivity level assigned and we would all work like we were putting out a fire. A few times, we actually made it!

Working at Empire taught me some things too. I learned that jobs often use carrots to tempt their employees. The carrot at Dairy Queen had been a free sundae at supper; at Empire, it was a little extra cash. Even driving to and from work taught me something. When I hit a pothole while driving, I learned that it never gets old for Dad to say, “I noticed that you missed one a ways back; do you wanna go back for it?”

I went on after finishing MTSU to go to the Physical Therapy program at UT Center for the Health Sciences. While there, we learned how to care for wounds and dress them. While learning this in PT school, I thought about how my life had kind of come full circle. I had wrapped meat, gone on to wrapping pencils, and “now” I was back to wrapping “meat” (no disrespect meant). Maybe I was a mummy maker in a former life!     

Life's Lotto

 This was written in response to the StoryWorth question: Have you ever won anything?

 

First, I want to say that I see two main ways of winning something. The first way is winning something by chance; kind of outside any effort made on my part, aside from maybe throwing my name in the hat. The other type of winning something is winning through some real effort that I have exerted to win.

I can recall a couple of times where I won something by chance. Both times I won something from work and both times I did not jump up and down for joy. Once, I won a pair of sweatbands to put on my wrists to wear during exercise. I am not even sure how they are used as I don’t usually have sweat dripping down my arms onto my hands when I exercise. I tend to have sweat dripping down my face, my back, my bosom, my belly,  but I don’t recall that much sweat on my arms aside from my armpits. I suppose that wrist sweatbands are useful to reach up with your wrist to wipe your brow but wrist sweatbands make me think more of a person in blazingly white tennies wearing a cute tennis outfit with a tennis racket in hand. I am more of a pull my shirttail up to wipe my brow even chancing to expose my bra in the process kind of gal.

The other thing that I won from work was a poinsettia. Now, poinsettias are not one of my favorite flowers at all. They are okay at Christmas but I am happy for them to fade away after the holidays. That is probably what my poinsettia did; it likely faded away soon after making it home. So those are two examples of me winning by chance, and unfortunately, I wasn’t too grateful for them. I was afraid that my good luck quota had been diminished by winning things that I didn’t really want.  

Now one time when I was in high school, our science club had a turkey shoot as a fundraiser for a trip to Oak Ridge. I don’t imagine that today, a science class would be able to have a turkey shoot on school grounds but back then, school-sponsored turkey shoots were not uncommon.

So, pieces of paper with a big X drawn on them were printed off and strung up on a line. Participants stood behind a line and shot toward the target with a shotgun. The one where a piece of shot had gotten closest to the center of the X was called the winner and won a turkey.

I had not planned on participating but sometimes a person would pay to shoot and then get someone else to shoot for them. Someone paid and then asked me to shoot. I am not sure why but perhaps they thought that the kick from the shotgun would kick me on my butt. Now, I had not really shot a shotgun many times at all, but I had shot one a time or two. I knew that a shotgun kicked and I knew that you had to hold the stock snug against your shoulder or you might experience a harder kick. So I shot the shotgun. Not only did I stay on my feet, but I won the turkey! Now that was a sweet win.

Another reeeeeeeally sweet win that resulted, at least in part, from my efforts, came in Junior High. I was on the basketball team and we had a game against Shelbyville. Shelbyville was kind of an arch-rival for Cascade. They were the largest school in our county and I don’t think that we had beaten them in recent history. They were like a Goliath to our David.

Well, it was the night of the home game playing the Shelbyville Golden Eaglettes. That night, David picked up a stone and we beat old Goliath!!!!!! Stanley Cup winners, Super Bowl winners, NCAA champions had nothing on our school’s Junior Varsity girls’ basketball team that night! We were beyond ecstatic. Folks miles away in Shelbyville likely heard our roar that night!

Winning the game had certainly been wonderful but the most wonderful thing was how proud our coach was. The next day when we went into the gym for basketball practice, Coach Skelton had balloons taped to the walls of the gym with posters that he had made taped everywhere. I still remember a couple of the posters; “Defense, defense is our line. We hold below 29!”, “Defense, defense are these three; great defense provided by Grubbs, Smith, and Lee!” I still remember the glow of the win but even more, I remember the glow of making our coach proud! So that is an example of where my own effort was partially responsible for winning.

Now, this last example of winning was not a win for me. In fact, it wasn’t really a win at all but it was special. It was back in 2003. We were looking for a new vehicle. Our van was on its last leg. The AC was history and it was getting unreliable. We decided to look at Toyota Siennas. We were all at the lot looking at all of the cars trying to decide what was the best that we could afford. Roxanna saw a little silver Corolla that she fell in love with.

So we went home to study if we could afford to get what we wanted. Mohammad said that he really wanted to be able to get the little Corolla for Roxanna. Her 17^th birthday was coming up and her birthday was on the 17^th. That made this birthday very special to my husband and he really wanted to be able to get that car for her. We did some more studying and figured that if we were careful, we would be able to manage it.

So, we decided to do it but before we went back to get it, right before Roxanna’s birthday, the doorbell rings. I look out the door and see the Toyota salesman on the porch. I open the door and he has an advertisement placard with people jumping in the air with excitement due to owning a Toyota. It had an easel back and balloons attached. He told us that he was there to inform us that our names had been placed in a drawing the day we had visited the dealership and Roxanna’s name had been drawn as the winner of a new car. The prize was a little silver Corolla just like the one she had wanted. Roxanna was so excited. She looked at the car and looked at me and said, “Momma, it is just like the one that I loved!”

 

Of course, Roxanna had not really won the car, and I knew that we were going to buy it for her but by the time the salesman left, he had almost convinced me that she had won the car. You see, Mohammad had arranged this little surprise without even telling me. I imagine that he knew that I am not an actress and would have been so excited myself that I would have given the whole thing away. So, that was a fun time when my daughter “won” a car that she hadn’t really won. My husband loves surprises like that. Of course, most of his surprises are not that whopping grand!

So, this little story tells about some of my wins in life.  Now, I consider my biggest wins to have been totally outside of any effort that I exerted, or even could exert. When it comes to my family, I am a winner. I have the most wonderful parents and other family members; and I have been blessed with some absolutely wonderful grandparents, great-grandparents, great-aunts, great-uncles… When it comes to family, God made me a winner!

 

 

I am also a winner because of the place I was born. I was born in a country with many freedoms. I could have been born in a country without freedoms, an authoritarian country where fear of torture or death for non-compliance was the rule and not the exception. I am pretty certain that I would have been toast!

I am a winner because God allowed me to be born in the United States of America. Now the USA is not perfect, but as of yet, the people have the power to try to make it more perfect. I can pray that we avail ourselves of that right and make it so.

In conclusion, my biggest wins have been gifts from God.