MY FIRST JOB EVER. MY LAST JOB EVER. Pts. 1-3

My first job ever

I worked for a Mr. Clyde Pickens, and my sole role was to pull up weeds growing in his caladium fields. (If you’re not familiar, a caladium is an elephant ear type plant, about the size of your average baseball cap, and available in a myriad of different colors).

I was 14 or 15 at the time, and spent a couple of hours after school each day, and all day on Saturdays walking down the rows of multi-colored leaves, pulling up weeds from around the foot tall plants, and dropping them in a bushel basket.

Mr. Pickens, (God rest his soul) was, to put it bluntly, a cheap skate. I mean, my fellow student-workers, and I were paid all of $1.15 per hour. And while my employment there was a full half century hence, I surmise he was as much as robbing us of 50 cents an hour.

Each and every day, when I returned home from work, my mother required me to come in the back door, and strip down to my skivvies on the screened in porch. She sometimes accused me of looking like a member of a different racial group since the caladiums were planted in muck; and during the course of my workday, I could not help but be covered with it.

Did I mention my employer was a cheap skate? (Yeah, I thought I did). His entire crew walked out when he announced we were being cut to $1.00 per hour.

Over the next couple of decades, I was employed in a myriad of vocations. So much so that I joked with one of my counseling interns that I was the recipient of, “The Most Multitudinous and Menial Vocations in This or Any Other Universe Award.”

I mean, to give you the slightest flavor…

Laborer – Plant Nursery. Laborer – Phosphate Industry. Sales Representative – Grit Newspaper. Vending Machine Attendant – Winter Haven Hospital Café. Soft Drink Pallet Stacker – Coca-Cola Corp. Janitor – Southeastern Bible College. Personnel Clerk – U.S. Air Force. Minister. Insulation Blower – Long since forgotten company. Utility Hole Digger – Washington, D.C. Subway System. Manager – Kinney Shoe Corp. Personnel Clerk – Brown & Root Corp. Personnel Clerk – Maryland Air National Guard. Personnel Clerk – Florida Army National Guard. Personnel Clerk – U.S. Army Records Center. Personnel Clerk – U.S. Air Force Finance Center, Pentagon. Asphalt Laborer – Long since forgotten company. Short Order Cook – McDonald’s Corp. Driver – United Parcel Service.

Immaturity Incarnate

Pt. 2

Pastoral Counselor – Area Churches. Adjunct Professor – Southeastern University. Published Writer. Human Resources Manager – Jeff’s Concrete Construction, Inc.

Oops, sorry. I guess I was “on a roll.”

In spite of the title of my fictional award, (and as you might have noticed) not all of my vocations were menial, and some required some degree of intellect, and training. However, if you conjectured that none of my former professions offered me any particular security, or wealth in abundance, you would have it just about right.

In retrospect, perhaps my first wife’s decision to “kick me to the curb” afforded me enough involuntary insight to break free of, well, me, and the necessary impetus to ‘grow up.’ It would certainly seem so.

(God knows, it was about time).

Fast forward four decades of living and breathing and moving and being, and I find myself nearing a rather important milestone.

In my comings and goings with family, friends and clients, I sometimes find myself musing,

“I’m 30…as long as I stay away from mirrors.”

I know it’s a cliché, but “where did time go?”

Yesterday I experienced a rather singular thought.

My last job ever

There is every reason to believe that I am presently engaged in the last job in which I will ever be employed; before I meet my Maker. For you see, at the grand old age of (almost) 70, I not only continue to dabble in the counseling arena, but I am a Human Resources Manager for a local construction company.

(Interestingly enough, a husband and wife duo own the company. Well, I suppose that particular facet isn’t necessarily all that unique. However, they were not only former premarital counseling clients of mine, but subsequently assisted me as leaders in a recovery group which I founded, and not only are Jeff and Ginger very dear friends, but the latter of the two is my spiritual daughter).

Pt. 3

How, after all, do I feel about the notion of my last job ever? Or for that matter, how do I feel about the notion of standing on the precipice of the last quarter of my life expectancy?

There’s a scene in a movie with which I particularly identify.

What a glorious night.

Every face I see is a memory.

It may not be

a perfectly perfect memory.

Sometimes we had

our ups and downs.

But we're all together,

and you're mine for a night.

And I'm gonna break precedent

and tell you my one candle wish.

That you would have a life

as lucky as mine,

where you can wake up

one morning and say,

"I don't want anything more."

Seventy years.

Don't they go by in a blink?

(“Meet Joe Black”)


by William McDonald, PhD. Excerpt from (Mc)Donald's Daily Diary. Vol.70. Copyright pending 

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