Author: lyftingmeup

I graduated in May of 1971 with a degree in sociology and history. I had no plans for my future. My draft lottery number was 350 so I missed that “opportunity”. I was working at the ambulance service when I heard that there was a social worker position open at the Enid State School. I will try to briefly describe what that institution was like. It’s important to recognize how far we have come in the last 50 years, in the worlds of developmental disabilities and mental health. Enid State School sat on a square mile of prime farmland just…

My longtime administrative secretary at South Broadway had a collection of sayings and metaphors that were straight out of her homeland (Nebraska). Chris Vitt, who just retired after 26 years of serving in the trenches of “life behind the curtain” of church life, had a way of putting things into perspective. Currently it is minus 6 degrees at 5 in the afternoon on Saturday. As I look out into the dusk of frozen tundra, I can hear Chris’s voice saying “It is colder than Billy Hill”. I would ask “Just where is Billy Hill”? She would reply with exactly the…

Well, after a three week hiatus I am back. I will pick up writing about my vocational journey after the first of the year, but today I want to honor the brief but beautiful life of my youngest brother, Don. Yesterday on December 22nd, he would have been 65 years old. He only made it to 20. Don was killed in an automobile accident on St. Patrick’s Day 1979. I will skip the tragic details. I was nine years old when Don was born. I’ll never forget going downstairs from my bedroom to find a message written on the dining…

My first experience selling at people’s door steps came in the late 50’s and early 60’s. We were blessed in Pueblo with a great YMCA summer camp in the Greenhorn Mountains, SW of Pueblo, called Camp Crockett. It was a kid’s paradise where everyday you could ride horseback, shoot 22 caliber rifles, practice archery, take hikes, make leather comb cases and be free of parental influence. Every April 100’s of kids would sign up to sell Duran Thin Mints door-to-door throughout Pueblo. My dad was a master salesman and he made sure that we followed in his footsteps. Where I…

I had been working for about two months at my ambulance job when I got a phone call from Tom Poole, who was the business manager at Phillips U. He asked me if I could come in and see him, giving no indication of what he wanted. My mind went to ‘I was in trouble for something’. I was in charge of bringing all the entertainment to Phillips in my job on the Student Senate. I suspected that he was going to ask me to stay within budget, which was $25,000 for the year. Bringing talent was always a crap…

Shortly after I turned 21 in 1970, a college friend went to work at the local ambulance service. I remember thinking, “What would Rick know about saving people’s lives”? Enid Ambulance service provided all the ambulance work for three hospitals and a handful of mortuaries. It was staffed by firefighters on their days off and college students from Phillips U. One day after a conversation with Rick about his ambulance work, I casually asked, “Are they hiring”? “Actually Mark, one of the fireman is retiring next week and the owner asked me to look around for his replacement”. Well, I…

I am back to reflecting on the long list of jobs that have both paid me and shaped me. I could probably also make a list of all the things I said I would never do, that I ended up doing. After my stint of making piston in 1968, I swore I would never spend another day on an assembly line. I was also never going to: work in the local church, have anything to do with dead people, quit drinking, live in the country, live in the suburbs, run a marathon, become vegan and write a blog. Those are…

Pardon the change of plans, but you will have to wait to hear about my life on the GM assembly line in1969. Today I am going back to 1953 and my Fourth Birthday. I was born on July 2nd and so I believed that the July 4th holiday was for me. Somewhere in my archives of 8mm movies, there is a five minute segment of my best birthday party ever—a FIRECRACKER themed backyard celebration. I had a firecracker cake, two blowup wading pools and about 20 kids running around on a gleeful sugar high. That day I received one of…

Welcome to my second job. I came home from my freshman year of college. It was good to be back to Colorado but I soon became aware that I had changed a whole lot more than Pueblo had. I left Pueblo a proud member of the Young Republicans, and returned after a year of an incredible education at Phillips U., and the ongoing turmoil of the Viet Nam War. I had a student deferment, while many of my East High classmates found themselves in the midst of rice paddies and gunfire. I was driving a 1956 Oldsmobile that I had…

For the next few weeks I will be taking my readers on a chronological 60–year journey on the jobs I have held. Perhaps this is a result of my four months of full retirement and my reflections on all of the various ways I have made money. I hope not to bore you with the meanderings of a geezer, but rather, to give you a glimpse into the varieties of jobs I worked, and what they taught me about life. Here is the list of what I will be sharing in the next weeks: 1964-67–Indentured Servitude at Cleaver Carpet Center…