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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…

I have become a dedicated lap swimmer. Currently we are at our place at the Wyndham Resorts in Pagosa Springs, CO. It truly is a home away from home, only five hours away from Arvada. This particular resort has a great amenity called the Community Recreation Center. They have a wonderful swimming pool that I am able to use as part of our stay. Each day you must sign up for a time and a lane. Today I got my favorite lane (8) at the 8am start. It’s pretty simple—you sign up for a lane and you get it for…

Two years ago today I lay flat on my back, completely immobile. I found myself at the Kaiser Health acute Covid unit. I had been double vaccinated and had exercised reasonable levels of caution. I was very sick. Maybe only recently have I grasped just how sick I was. No, I was never on a ventilator, or in a coma, but I was sick, real sick. I will skip the gooey details but suffice to say I was completely incapacitated. I have very distinct memories about the whole journey. I remember being cared for by an amazing team of care…

In 1955 my parents took their three kids to see a big hole in the ground. This is where our new house was being built. It was on a very long block at the top of a hill. It was in a classic post WWII housing development. New homes, new schools, new almost everything. I do remember that it was hard for a six year old Mark to comprehend that the hole could become a house. There were many trips in the family station wagon to visit the progress of the building. I was given a very special job. Because…

My mom Pat was a pretty amazing cook. I really did not know how great she was until I left home. Whether it was cooking meatballs from scratch or homemade chicken and noodles, the food was amazing. Once we had a foreign exchange student stay with us on a cross country trek back to NYC, where, he and 800 students would return to Europe after a year in the USA. His name was Tony and he was from Milan. My mom dared to make her homemade spaghetti and meatballs and soda cracker peach pie for his goodbye dinner. “Mrs. Pumphrey…