I was leisurely driving around town the other night when it suddenly dawned on me that almost all of the places where I have been gainfully employed over the years in West Sacramento have been bulldozed to the ground. The first to go was the old Broderick Market, where I had once been a box boy (they actually used boxes back then, not paper or plastic). I was only 15 at the time and my varied duties (in addition to boxing and carrying out groceries) required me to spot and expel wine-stealing bums who lived up on the river and to also provide directions to anyone who wanted to know where the upstairs backroom was located. God only knows what took place up there, although looking back on it now, the words gambling and prostitution quickly come to mind.
As I continued my late-night drive, I passed by where the old West Sacramento Pharmacy building on Merkley Avenue had once stood. It was there that the Bagdazian family had once heroically employed me to deliver prescription drugs in their brand-new delivery truck knowing that I had just received my driver’s license. But it was gone now, too, having been systematically burned to the ground a few years ago as part of a training exercise for the local firefighters.
Anyway, as I drove along, I thought about what a shame it is nowadays that it is almost impossible to drag the youth of this generation away from their friends and their cellphones and their video games and their music CDs and even suggest to them that getting a part-time job might be a worthwhile activity. Not only do they not have the time for flipping burgers, but the thought of slaving away for the minimum wage or their friends actually seeing them doing such a thing seems to make their blood run cold.
Part of the problem of course is that there are simply no longer as many part-time jobs out there for young people as there once was. But parents like me are also part of the problem, having let most of my kids more or less have a free ride as long as they kept their grades up and stayed out of trouble.
As I look back on my youthful jobs, though, I wish there was some way to make the new generation at least consider the fact that getting up off their collective butt and getting a part-time job, any job, might leave them with some of the best memories, and most important lessons learned, of their lives.
For instance, when I was only 14, I spent a blazing hot summer up on West Capitol Avenue cleaning discarded old bricks with a hand ax with my new friend, Jimmy Garcia, and the fun and shared accomplishment the two of us had doing that taught us both that all work is honorable, and that racism only makes sense to fools. And working at the Broderick Market taught me that even the least amongst us (bums and winos) have their own dignity and story, and but for the grace of God, go I. And working at the pharmacy taught me how to be responsible behind the wheel of a car and properly handle money, because I still shudder to think what might have happened to me if I had put a dent in Ted Bagdazian’s new delivery truck or returned to the pharmacy without the proper change.
But maybe the most important lessons of all were the ones I learned as a Sacramento Bee Boy, which was my first real job from the ages of about 10-13. Back then there was no more sought-after part-time job than being a Bee Boy, and lucky for me, a neighbor’s son who had grown too old for the job decided to give me his route. It consisted of Michigan Boulevard, all the streets near and around Westfield Village Elementary School, plus Laural Lane, Rockrose Road, and Madrone Avenue, including the hundreds of apartments on that street.
Back then, Bee Boys not only delivered the papers to their customers daily, but they also had to collect $1.50 from each subscriber at the end of the month and send most of it off to the Bee. And since I lived for going to the bank at the end of the month with my profits (which were all of about $30 if everything went well), I took my collection duties very seriously.
So, there I was one very cold winter night, dressed in my ugly yellow raincoat, with the wind howling and the rain pouring down, out collecting from as many subscribers as I could find at home in the Madrone apartments. After I had gotten off my bike and rested it on the wet ground, I slogged my way upstairs to apartment #11 (I will never forget that number) and just before I was about to knock on the door, I happened to look through the window curtains, which for some reason had not been completely drawn, and there in the front room, on one of those pullout couch-beds, were the man and woman who owed me $1.50 for reading the Sacramento Bee all that month. However, on much closer examination, I could clearly see that for some reasons pretty much unknown to me at the time, they had absolutely no clothes on, and they were also engaged in a whole bunch of activities I had never dreamed of (well, maybe I had dreamed of a few of them).
So, there I stood, eyes and mouth wide open, my wet tennis shoes bolted to the ground, frantically wiping the water away from my eyes as it poured down on my head, trying to figure out if I should go ahead and knock on the door, which was bound to disturb the very energetic couple inside the apartment, or just wait patiently in the dark until they were completely finished. And after giving it a few minutes of very serious youthful thought, I opted to wait, and wait, and wait.
So, to all you young teenage unemployed boys and girls out there who might read this, I am here to tell you that not only can a good part-time job teach you how to be responsible, reliable, hard-working, and good at taking care of your own money, but it can also be a really great way to learn pretty much all there is to know about the birds and the bees.