Saturday, April 19, 2014
Saturday, April 12, 2014
Values and lessons learned
I grew up in a family with Dad, Mom, sister, me, two brothers. My Dad worked hard in his printing business and Mom worked hard as a homemaker and Mother. Us kids were well brought up, knowing that we had parents that loved us and each other. In the 50's in America, I didn't think that it was an unusual thing. Actually, I never gave it a thought as we grew up in a loving home, where Dad provided us a nice home, enough food to eat and enough cloths to keep us warm in the winter (which in Minnesota is difficult at times) and cool in the summer. We didn't have air conditioning in either our home or the car, so we didn't know there was such a thing for a long, long time. Every once in a while we would go visit a school friend of Mom and Dad that lived a harsher life than we had. It was not shocking to us, I don't think, because Mom and Dad were interested in their friendship and now looking back on it, that seemed to be something that "just was". We were taught values such as friendship and what that entailed. We were taught respect and how to act, speak and listen, respectfully. We were taught to appreciate what we had, and that there were others that had more material things, and there were many that didn't have as much as we were blessed with. We were taught to take care of animals (sister Suzanne won a golden Cocker Spaniel on a TV kids show). Goldie was wonderful! She is most likely the reason I love animals today.
Dad had a printing business that was primarily a one man shop until I got old enough to start learning to do things around the shop. My sister Suzanne started working at the shop in the office and over time, my brothers, Uncle and wife Pat, worked with Dad. I think I must have been, at times, a very difficult apprentice, as being left handed in a ambidextrous trade, created several challenges for him. First, being left handed, I had to learn that my right hand was there for a purpose other than to dangle at my side. When I started in the trade, we had hand set type. That means the individual letters (made of lead, tin and antimony metal) were picked out of the type case one letter at a time and put in a device was a small hand-held tray held in the left hand called a "composition stick". The letters were picked up and put in the "stick" with the right hand. The "stick" was held in such a way with the left hand that the left thumb was holding the type from falling over (or out). When the line of type was completed, it was put in a bigger tray and the form or whatever was being "built" was added to. When finished it was taken to a large flat metal table, what was called a Stone. In the early days it actually WAS a stone: flat and even piece of slab used to make up a form or printed piece to be prepared to be inserted into a printing press. To make a boring story shorter, this required the use of BOTH hands—equally. Dad was a very patient person, and I think I must have stretched that trait to the limit. As I progressed in my understanding of the trade, I was allowed to operated the hand feed printing press. That again required both hands as the press was made up of many moving parts and as the operator, needed to coordinate the hand movements 1. pick up blank paper or card stock from a shelf on the press and position it on the platen of the press that has opened up in front of you with your right hand. 2. As you are doing that, your left hand is removing the previously printed piece from the platen. There is a choreographed event happening here, that if well done, you get to keep your hands and fingers from getting caught in the press as it closes together to print the paper just inserted. Sounds dangerous doesn't it? It WAS! It is a printers life. Always a balance between the machine and the operator. There are power paper cutters, small to ultra large printing presses, bindery equipment that has all those pesky moving parts, rollers, joggers, etc. all moving, all the time.
Dad did a remarkable job teaching me the trade. He instilled craftsmanship, quality to the nth degree, pride in our work, even if it was just a sheet with lines on it. It WOULD be straight, dark ink, no variance in quality from the first sheet to the last. Number of sheets consistent, and as perfect as humanly possible. Dad's shop was well known for quality printing. That was in the days before all these copiers that are so readily available now. It was a small neighborhood (not downtown) print shop that had four or five major customer businesses and that kept Dad busy 12 to 16 hours a day, five and a half days a week. When we were young we loved to go to work with Dad on Saturday because it was the one day he would go to the Dixie Creme Donut Shoppe for a mid morning break. Sometimes we would have lunch at "Matts Riverview Cafe" and go home from there. Sundays was church in the morning, and family together in the afternoon.
Dad's training of a trade and of values of work, lead me to a quality of life that I was able to pass on to my kids and now them with their children. Because of Mom and Dad's parenting, my bothers and sister are raising their children with those same values. We were very fortunate. As I have been going through life and experiencing many WONDERFUL things, I have discovered that there are many families that are drastically different than the one we were brought up in. There are families that don't take the time to train their children the proper value system of love, care, responsibility-both personal and family, and the importance of education. I am not a college degreed person. I have some college credits, but that was attained later in my life, but no degree...as it wasn't important at the later part of my work career.
Just as I learned how to take care of my Dad's printing presses and other equipment, I was also learning how to treat people with the same respect as I was taught how to take care of that machinery. Keep the machinery well maintained and it will last longer and preform better. Keep those that you love (your FAMILY) and hold dear to your heart, well fed with that love and physical nourishment, clothes on their back, shelter over their head, train them as you have been trained, they will be a blessing to you and you will be rewarded greatly. The comfort that I have knowing that my wife loves me and my children respect me, because of what I have provided and shown them. In return my life is complete and I am at rest, knowing that even though mistakes have been made along the way, as ALL of us have, the training of my parents has been fruitful and success has been achieved. Thank you Mom and Dad.
Would I do anything different if given the chance for a "do over"? There are a couple things, perhaps that I would have done differently, but I can't go back, although I would give almost anything to go back and rethink it. That is not possible though. What I have learned though is: Don't be hasty in your decisions....think about them first...then move forward.
First and foremost: LOVE GOD, love your family, love your Country, then yourself.
Enough for now.
Keep singing, keep smiling, keep laughing
Blessings,
Gary
Dad had a printing business that was primarily a one man shop until I got old enough to start learning to do things around the shop. My sister Suzanne started working at the shop in the office and over time, my brothers, Uncle and wife Pat, worked with Dad. I think I must have been, at times, a very difficult apprentice, as being left handed in a ambidextrous trade, created several challenges for him. First, being left handed, I had to learn that my right hand was there for a purpose other than to dangle at my side. When I started in the trade, we had hand set type. That means the individual letters (made of lead, tin and antimony metal) were picked out of the type case one letter at a time and put in a device was a small hand-held tray held in the left hand called a "composition stick". The letters were picked up and put in the "stick" with the right hand. The "stick" was held in such a way with the left hand that the left thumb was holding the type from falling over (or out). When the line of type was completed, it was put in a bigger tray and the form or whatever was being "built" was added to. When finished it was taken to a large flat metal table, what was called a Stone. In the early days it actually WAS a stone: flat and even piece of slab used to make up a form or printed piece to be prepared to be inserted into a printing press. To make a boring story shorter, this required the use of BOTH hands—equally. Dad was a very patient person, and I think I must have stretched that trait to the limit. As I progressed in my understanding of the trade, I was allowed to operated the hand feed printing press. That again required both hands as the press was made up of many moving parts and as the operator, needed to coordinate the hand movements 1. pick up blank paper or card stock from a shelf on the press and position it on the platen of the press that has opened up in front of you with your right hand. 2. As you are doing that, your left hand is removing the previously printed piece from the platen. There is a choreographed event happening here, that if well done, you get to keep your hands and fingers from getting caught in the press as it closes together to print the paper just inserted. Sounds dangerous doesn't it? It WAS! It is a printers life. Always a balance between the machine and the operator. There are power paper cutters, small to ultra large printing presses, bindery equipment that has all those pesky moving parts, rollers, joggers, etc. all moving, all the time.
Dad did a remarkable job teaching me the trade. He instilled craftsmanship, quality to the nth degree, pride in our work, even if it was just a sheet with lines on it. It WOULD be straight, dark ink, no variance in quality from the first sheet to the last. Number of sheets consistent, and as perfect as humanly possible. Dad's shop was well known for quality printing. That was in the days before all these copiers that are so readily available now. It was a small neighborhood (not downtown) print shop that had four or five major customer businesses and that kept Dad busy 12 to 16 hours a day, five and a half days a week. When we were young we loved to go to work with Dad on Saturday because it was the one day he would go to the Dixie Creme Donut Shoppe for a mid morning break. Sometimes we would have lunch at "Matts Riverview Cafe" and go home from there. Sundays was church in the morning, and family together in the afternoon.
Dad's training of a trade and of values of work, lead me to a quality of life that I was able to pass on to my kids and now them with their children. Because of Mom and Dad's parenting, my bothers and sister are raising their children with those same values. We were very fortunate. As I have been going through life and experiencing many WONDERFUL things, I have discovered that there are many families that are drastically different than the one we were brought up in. There are families that don't take the time to train their children the proper value system of love, care, responsibility-both personal and family, and the importance of education. I am not a college degreed person. I have some college credits, but that was attained later in my life, but no degree...as it wasn't important at the later part of my work career.
Just as I learned how to take care of my Dad's printing presses and other equipment, I was also learning how to treat people with the same respect as I was taught how to take care of that machinery. Keep the machinery well maintained and it will last longer and preform better. Keep those that you love (your FAMILY) and hold dear to your heart, well fed with that love and physical nourishment, clothes on their back, shelter over their head, train them as you have been trained, they will be a blessing to you and you will be rewarded greatly. The comfort that I have knowing that my wife loves me and my children respect me, because of what I have provided and shown them. In return my life is complete and I am at rest, knowing that even though mistakes have been made along the way, as ALL of us have, the training of my parents has been fruitful and success has been achieved. Thank you Mom and Dad.
Would I do anything different if given the chance for a "do over"? There are a couple things, perhaps that I would have done differently, but I can't go back, although I would give almost anything to go back and rethink it. That is not possible though. What I have learned though is: Don't be hasty in your decisions....think about them first...then move forward.
First and foremost: LOVE GOD, love your family, love your Country, then yourself.
Enough for now.
Keep singing, keep smiling, keep laughing
Blessings,
Gary
Saturday, April 5, 2014
One more "Career" to add to the "many".
The year was 1974 and I had about 6 months of Tropical Fish Keeping as a hobby. We lived in South Minneapolis and there was a nice little Aquarium Shoppe in nearby Bloomington that we (Pat but mostly me) were relying on to get our hobby on with a firm foundation. As we had, to use a lousy pun, just gotten our "feet wet" in the hobby, I was in the Shoppe, learning and loving the hobby, when I was asked what I thought about being a manager of an Aquarium store that they had just bought that was located on the other side of the city. Seems it needed someone that could build it and since the two brothers that bought it had their hands full with the "south shop", they evidently liked my enthusiasm and offered me the job which included Pat as well. I went home, told her of the offer and after discussing it all night, took them up on the offer. We had full reign of the store, with putting in what we felt was needed (within reason of course) and were responsible for the purchasing of the live stock and hard goods, wages, rent, and utilities, and they would pay the taxes that businesses accumulate. THAT was a great offer and we drove up north of the city to a place called "ROBINSDALE" and started a new life as managers of The Fish Pond. It was fun, but scary at the same time. Eventually, we moved closer to the North Side of Minneapolis, that cut our travel time to about 10 minutes to drive to work.
The first time we saw the store it was pretty bleak with a store full of empty (except for the water and gravel bottoms) aquariums and empty walls full of empty product hooks. Within a few weeks that store was packed with not only aquariums full of fish, but customers full of excitement and, at times, packed shoulder to shoulder wanting to have tropical fish in their living rooms. What a great time that was!
We had three kids at the time and Pat would be home seeing them off to school and day care, while I would get across town and get the fish fed, tanks cleaned and things ready for Pat to come up by about 8:00 or so. She would get the register ready and we would have breakfast a couple doors down at "Merwin Drugs" as they had a wonderful small eatery that fixed great breakfast and lunches. The store opened at 9:00 and off and running we would go. Pat would leave about 3:00 or so to be home when the kids got out of school, and I would get home after the store closed at 9:00pm and after I fed those that needed some overnight "snacks".
Being new to the hobby ourselves, it just so happened that there was a resource available that I used quite a lot to serve our customers with their fish choices. Auto parts stores have those catalogs on a vertical rail type thing, kind of like books on tracks. We had the tropical fish version of that book. It had the names, temperament, feeding habits, bad habits (fin nipping, etc.) size that they grew to, temperature and condition of the water, and lots more of information. I used that resource a lot! By doing that with a customer, they had the confidence of not throwing their hard earned money away on buying a fish that would eat what was in their aquarium already or vice versa! That would have been quite discouraging to say the least. We never sold a tank and related equipment and the fish at the same time. They had to get the fishes home set up and ready with right ph, temperature and looking good before they brought the fish home. So that meant Saturday was a pretty big day for us, but Sunday afternoon was quite often a HUGE Day! Since we had to feed the fish anyway, we opened at noon on Sunday until four or five. At times, it was shoulder to shoulder with customers waiting to be helped, or standing in line while Pat would check them out!
As I remember it, the store front was only about 20 feet, or so, wide, and the showroom floor was about 50 or 60 ft. long with a back room for storage, cleaning tanks, and a bathroom and small area for the kids (on Sunday afternoon) to play when people were in the store. They could come up front when the crowd was minimal. They loved selling fish too! Small people, especially ours, are pretty smart!
Our "hard goods" wall. This was an aquarium only store. Except for one private story, no rodents, snakes or birds....Tropical Freshwater FISH only. Ask me about "Grover".
There are a lot of stories that come to mind, like the time our 12" black piranha "Killer" decided to vacate his 15 gal, extra high aquarium rapidly when I was showing a customer what a piranha looked like close up. Seems it was a little too close because as Killer decided to leave, he popped his lid, even though there was about 2-5lbs of rock on it, and slid down the customers leather jacketed arm to flop wildly around the carpeted floor. Somehow the customer vanished like a light was flipped off ... that quick...and his wife and small child too! I shouted to our part-time worker in the back room to bring out the step stool while I scooped Killer up with 2 - 12" nets, stepped two steps up the stool and dropped him back into his home. The nets were shredded along with my pounding heart! Killer was alive and well after about a week healing in the darkness and quietness of a paper wrapped tank so nobody would spook him again. I fed him 6 goldfish every night as normal, and he and his blood red eyes fully recovered to thrill those that came in to see him once again . . . with more rocks on on his tank lid.
We had fun while we were there, but with everything else it seems, this was but a season in our lives and we moved on after a while when the store was sold to new management because one of the brothers passed away and the remaining brother had just completed Law School and we refocused on other important things. So we moved on and still look back fondly on our time, serving people who loved what we did and made a lot of friends and had lots of positive experiences. There are many more stories I could tell, and may some day or if we see each other, over coffee and a donut some day, I love to talk about a hobby that is wonderfully diverse in the many styles and types of fish and other aquatic creatures to explore. Bet you never saw a Freshwater Stingray! I hand fed one I had in my store. Ask me about it, it's a good story.
God has many creatures, big and small. He has given them to us to take care of and to protect.
Keep singing, keep smiling and keep laughing
Blessings,
Gary
The first time we saw the store it was pretty bleak with a store full of empty (except for the water and gravel bottoms) aquariums and empty walls full of empty product hooks. Within a few weeks that store was packed with not only aquariums full of fish, but customers full of excitement and, at times, packed shoulder to shoulder wanting to have tropical fish in their living rooms. What a great time that was!
We had three kids at the time and Pat would be home seeing them off to school and day care, while I would get across town and get the fish fed, tanks cleaned and things ready for Pat to come up by about 8:00 or so. She would get the register ready and we would have breakfast a couple doors down at "Merwin Drugs" as they had a wonderful small eatery that fixed great breakfast and lunches. The store opened at 9:00 and off and running we would go. Pat would leave about 3:00 or so to be home when the kids got out of school, and I would get home after the store closed at 9:00pm and after I fed those that needed some overnight "snacks".
Being new to the hobby ourselves, it just so happened that there was a resource available that I used quite a lot to serve our customers with their fish choices. Auto parts stores have those catalogs on a vertical rail type thing, kind of like books on tracks. We had the tropical fish version of that book. It had the names, temperament, feeding habits, bad habits (fin nipping, etc.) size that they grew to, temperature and condition of the water, and lots more of information. I used that resource a lot! By doing that with a customer, they had the confidence of not throwing their hard earned money away on buying a fish that would eat what was in their aquarium already or vice versa! That would have been quite discouraging to say the least. We never sold a tank and related equipment and the fish at the same time. They had to get the fishes home set up and ready with right ph, temperature and looking good before they brought the fish home. So that meant Saturday was a pretty big day for us, but Sunday afternoon was quite often a HUGE Day! Since we had to feed the fish anyway, we opened at noon on Sunday until four or five. At times, it was shoulder to shoulder with customers waiting to be helped, or standing in line while Pat would check them out!
As I remember it, the store front was only about 20 feet, or so, wide, and the showroom floor was about 50 or 60 ft. long with a back room for storage, cleaning tanks, and a bathroom and small area for the kids (on Sunday afternoon) to play when people were in the store. They could come up front when the crowd was minimal. They loved selling fish too! Small people, especially ours, are pretty smart!
 |
| This was a 100 gal aquarium in front of the entrance door....hard goods on left wall, aquariums along the right wall |
Lousy quality pictures, but WONDERFUL memories of customers who became friends.
 |
| Facing to the back of the store, this is the right hand wall. The aquariums had two double (back to back) rows coming out into the center of the store. More 10 gal tanks with guppies, and small fish along the back wall. |
There are a lot of stories that come to mind, like the time our 12" black piranha "Killer" decided to vacate his 15 gal, extra high aquarium rapidly when I was showing a customer what a piranha looked like close up. Seems it was a little too close because as Killer decided to leave, he popped his lid, even though there was about 2-5lbs of rock on it, and slid down the customers leather jacketed arm to flop wildly around the carpeted floor. Somehow the customer vanished like a light was flipped off ... that quick...and his wife and small child too! I shouted to our part-time worker in the back room to bring out the step stool while I scooped Killer up with 2 - 12" nets, stepped two steps up the stool and dropped him back into his home. The nets were shredded along with my pounding heart! Killer was alive and well after about a week healing in the darkness and quietness of a paper wrapped tank so nobody would spook him again. I fed him 6 goldfish every night as normal, and he and his blood red eyes fully recovered to thrill those that came in to see him once again . . . with more rocks on on his tank lid.
We had fun while we were there, but with everything else it seems, this was but a season in our lives and we moved on after a while when the store was sold to new management because one of the brothers passed away and the remaining brother had just completed Law School and we refocused on other important things. So we moved on and still look back fondly on our time, serving people who loved what we did and made a lot of friends and had lots of positive experiences. There are many more stories I could tell, and may some day or if we see each other, over coffee and a donut some day, I love to talk about a hobby that is wonderfully diverse in the many styles and types of fish and other aquatic creatures to explore. Bet you never saw a Freshwater Stingray! I hand fed one I had in my store. Ask me about it, it's a good story.
God has many creatures, big and small. He has given them to us to take care of and to protect.
Keep singing, keep smiling and keep laughing
Blessings,
Gary
It's SATURDAY FUNNIES time!
A woman ran a red traffic light and crashed into a man's car. Both of their cars were demolished but, amazingly, neither of them was hurt.
After they crawled out of their cars, the woman said, "Wow, just look at our cars! There's nothing left but, fortunately, we aren't hurt. This must be a sign from God that we should meet and be friends and live together in peace for the rest of our days." The man replied, "I agree with you completely. This must be a sign from God!"
The woman continued, "And look at this, here's another miracle. My car is completely demolished, but my bottle of wine didn't break. Surely God wants us to drink this wine and celebrate our good fortune." Then she handed the bottle to the man. The man nodded his head in agreement, opened it, drank half the bottle and then handed it back to the woman. The woman took the bottle, immediately put the cap back on, and handed it back to the man.
The man asked, "Aren't you having any?"
She replied, "Nah. I think I'll just wait for the police."
HAPPY SATURDAY!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)