Friday, October 17, 2008

Walk This Way

Thirteen years old and we used to walk for miles!!!!When your only transportation was a pair of Lil' Abner workboots, you put in a lot of leg work around town! We didn't mind.....heck, we were young, ambitious, and maybe more than a little unsensible.....
There was Joe T. He was maybe a couple of years older, and Whoo Hoo EMPLOYED. That's right, he had an honest- to- God paying job. Yep....he was the official Supermarket Cart Collector around town!!!!! That's right, in all it's glitz and glory....He was PAID (granted minimum wage was probably around $2.65 and hour---but he was PAID!!!!!!
Of course, just because he was the ONLY one of us from the Cleveland Avenue crew working, didn't mean we were gonna let him go it alone....No sirree...if one of us was going to have to traipse all over creation searching for the elusive FoodTown shopping carts, you were certainly going to have a posse go with you!!!
So, here we would be on a Friday or Saturday night walking up to TSS shopping center, down behind school #2, and always you could find a submerged cart waiting to be drudged from The Creek! Come winter snow or spring rain, we would faithfully walk the perimeters of our fair town collecting and pushing a line of supermarket carts back to their rightful resting place behind the Food Town market.
Granted, there would be some kind of soul warming $2.00 cheap pre mixed beverage involved with a classy name like Night Train or Tango, but we'd have done it sober. Hell, most times we did. Yeah, you can't find good help like that any more....
And every time I go to the super market and notice those cart corrals and signs urging you to please return your cart YOURSELF, I think of the poor unemployed youth of today, not even given the chance to earn their own way, while making life time memories......And then I remember that MY kid is still looking for the perfect $100.00 per day, don't have to do much, attendance optional job. Well, if he ever DOES find it, I'm sure he'll be immediately promoted to management, in which case I can only hope he hires me!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Do you know??? I did not know this about you? I had no idea that there were errant shopping carts littered through town that needed collecting? Further, I hadn't a clue that you were collecting them. Wow. Don't you love the internet?
P.S. I know Joe T. though, don't I? *wink*

Anonymous said...

I miss my Lil Abners!!!! I wonder if they still make those.....