When I left college I moved up to a Polish homestead in Northern Wisconsin, no running water other than a hand pump in the front yard, leaned-over outhouse out beside the \u2018summer kitchen\u2019 and wood for heat. I thought it would be nice not to work for awhile. I\u2019d saved some money from working through college, which tells you college didn\u2019t cost what it costs today. I think my last tuition payment was $250 for a semester. This was the Univ. of Wisconsin \u2013 Madison. That was 1972.<\/p>\n
I know most folks would prefer to jump right into their careers, get a jump with that degree, maybe plan to travel later. You know, when they\u2019d established themselves. Me, I\u2019m not much for procrastinating what seems fun. Work, that\u2019s a different deal. I\u2019d pretty much burned out on work back in college. It wasn\u2019t that I was thinking Retirement at 21, but a Prolonged Vacation seemed just the ticket. Give me time to think, time to relax, time to ponder the Future.<\/p>\n
My next door neighbors, cousins of my wife at the time, were unfamiliar with those kind of concepts. They saw two people, so desperately poor they had to live rent free in an old farmhouse no one had inhabited in decades, pumping their water from outside, burning firewood to keep warm. It was inconceivable to them that we were not in Need. And so Eddie wandered over one autumn day to announce he had set up an interview for me at the local schoolbus company. I said, \u201cGee Eddie, you didn\u2019t have to go and do that\u2026.\u201d But Eddie waved me off. \u201cIt\u2019s the least I can do,\u201d he called as he walked back home.<\/p>\n
This was bad news indeed. Should I call the bus company and decline my interview? Eddie would think — no, he would know — what a shirker I was. I decided to go to the interview. I wore some jeans that were mostly holes, threw on an ugly Goodwill shirt and wandered down to the bus lot, figuring, if I acted strangely enough, looking the way I looked, long hair past my shoulders, they\u2019d make the interview brief and send me home. Easy. Great solution.<\/p>\n
Ted and Wally, the owner and his mechanic, were in their office when I got there between shifts. I allowed as how my neighbor had talked to them about me working here, here I was. I could see they were amused by the sight of me right off the get-go. But as sometimes happens with me, I\u2019m a sociable guy and before long we\u2019re talking about everything from deer hunting to vegetable gardening, politics to TV shows. Even though I didn\u2019t even have a TV. They asked me what kind of business I had with college and I said I studied literature. They looked at me blankly. \u201cBooks,\u201d I said, \u201cfiction. You know, like novels.\u201d Ted shrugged and Wally shook his head. <\/p>\n
I tried again. \u201cLike when you were in English class, those books you read???\u201d Ted laughed. \u201cI never read em,\u201d he said. \u201cFact, I never read any books.\u201d Wally said, \u201cMe neither.\u201d \u201cNone?\u201d I asked, incredulous. \u201cSeriously??\u201d<\/p>\n
Well, they admitted they\u2019d read some \u2018men\u2019s\u2019 magazines and such, but books, no way. As a recently graduated English major, this was akin to finding myself in some backwash of the Amazon. I tried a few more times, thinking they\u2019re having some fun with the new kid, but pretty soon they had convinced me that no, they were basically illiterate and proud of it. I shook my head. \u201cOkay, I need to bring you boys some reading you might like.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen do you want to start?\u201d Ted asked. I thought he meant when did I want to bring them some Tolstoy, but of course, that was how they got their new driver to fill an opening they needed filling. And how my retirement ended before it really got started. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
When I left college I moved up to a Polish homestead in Northern Wisconsin, no running water other than a hand pump in the front yard, leaned-over outhouse out beside the \u2018summer kitchen\u2019 and wood for heat. I thought it would be nice not to work for awhile. I\u2019d saved some money from working through […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[6],"tags":[4494,4495,4493],"class_list":["post-15180","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rantings-and-ravings","tag-books-are-for-dummies","tag-readiin-writin-and-rithmetic","tag-why-read-a-book"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15180","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15180"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15180\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15182,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15180\/revisions\/15182"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15180"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15180"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15180"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}