I posted a video last night of someone cooking burgers at a Five Guys and I said I could never do that. Even though I said "I am not putting such work down…just saying that it's something I couldn't do," I got one e-mail from someone who thought I was saying such work was beneath me. Not at all. I was just saying I couldn't do it the same way I couldn't fly a plane or play hockey or remove someone's gallbladder. Even if the best teacher in the world trained me, I couldn't fly a plane or play hockey or remove someone's gallbladder.
That correspondent was woefully underestimating my incompetence. When I was in high school, a couple of my friends had paper routes, bicycling around some neighborhood and flinging newspapers into bushes. My total inability to ride a bicycle even precluded me from something like that.
When I say that I became a professional writer because that was the only thing I thought I could do, I'm being about 97% serious. Yes, I have occasionally worked a bit as an editor and a director and a producer and even an artist but those jobs were all extensions of writing jobs I had. I never got hired by anyone for one of those positions without first being engaged as a writer.
And I also received a number of e-mails asking me if I'd ever had a job of any sort before I started working as a writer. The answer is no and here's a story to go with that answer…
I graduated high school in June of 1969. In the months prior, my parents "suggested" I try to find a summer job to fill the time before I started college and, perhaps, help subsidize that higher learning. I put that word in quotes because it was a bit more serious than a mere suggestion.
They were well aware that I was determined to make writing my life's profession but I don't think they had any sense of how possible that might be. Neither did I but we were all pretty certain that it could take quite a while to make it start paying. It might also have turned out to be yet another item on that long, long list of things I just plain couldn't do.
Several weeks before Graduation Day, there was some sort of Job Fair announced for one Saturday out in Santa Monica. It was open to all in my age group and my folks "suggested" I attend. Since I didn't drive, I took a bus out there, arriving about a half-hour before it was scheduled to open…which, as it turned out, made me late. Everyone else seeking a summer job — including at least a dozen of my classmates from University High — had lined-up hours before. I wound up waiting four hours before I could (ever so briefly) see one of the counselors they had there.
Fortunately, I struck up a short-term friendship with a lady my age who was just ahead of me in line. Conversation helped pass the hours and at one point, she held my place while I ran down the block to a McDonald's and brought us back lunch.
While we were dining — if you can call it that — one of my classmates passed by us on his way out. He had a referral to interview for a job at an A&W Root Beer stand. That was the kind of jobs they had available and as the afternoon wore on, I began to think that maybe I could have put those four hours to better use by eliminating the middle men; by just going to fast food places and filling out employment applications. I could have started with that McDonald's down the block.
Eventually, it was my turn to sit with one of the counselors, a harried man who looked like he wanted to get in line and see if he could land a less stressful job than the one he was doing. He asked me what skills I had that might qualify me for something on the lists he had — lists that, he said when I asked, that he wasn't allowed to show me. I told him, "Well, I'm not bad at lettering so I was wondering if you had something in the field of sign painting."
I didn't think that was so outrageous but he reacted like I'd said I wanted to pitch for the Dodgers or replace Sean Connery as James Bond. He gasped and said, "We don't have jobs like that!" He began studying his lists, going over and over them, shaking his head and moaning. Finally, he spotted something and announced, "Ah! This looks like something you might be suited for!" And without telling me what it was, he filled out a little card, thrust it into my hands and then called for the next person in line to come take my seat. I was done.
Wandering out, I looked at the card and the first thing I saw was the address. It was out in Downey — a good 26 miles from where I was and a pretty difficult place to get to by bus. Continuing down the card, I saw that it was an upholstery company and I was to go in and interview for the position of Apprentice Cutter, which paid $1.30 an hour.
My mind flashed, as it usually did and still does, on old jokes. It instantly called up the one where an Agent calls a Performer and says, "I got you a great booking. It's in Philadelphia and it pays $100 but you have to pay your own transportation both ways and also secure your own lodging." The Performer replies, "But it'll cost me more than $100 to get there and back and to rent a hotel room!" To which The Agent says, "Hey, there are some jobs in this world you have to save up for."
I lingered outside the Job Fair to wait for my new friend — the one I met standing in line. She too had a referral card. Hers too was to take a network of buses to Downey and try to land a gig as an Apprentice Cutter for $1.30 an hour. I asked her if she was going to actually go there and she said, "Hell, no. I've been thinking of printing up flyers and putting them in every mailbox in my neighborhood, asking if someone needs cleaning work or baby-sitting or something like that."
We exchanged phone numbers and pledged to keep in touch. Since neither of us made good on that pledge, I can't tell you how she made out. I can tell you that I tossed my referral card in a trash can. Instead, I went home, redoubled (or maybe retripled) my efforts to sell my writing services and, two weeks after graduation, sold three articles to a local magazine. I've been doing variations on that now for around 53 years and nine months.
It has not all been fun. It has not all been lucrative. For the most part though, I've been pretty lucky and pretty happy…which is not to say there haven't been times when I get to wondering if that place in Downey is still hiring. As I've learned in the past 53 years and nine months, there are some jobs in this world you have to save up for.