This post starts with today and is varied between current time and life experiences from way back to today.
Being old I know what I don't know. I have nothing to prove at this point in life. There is more past than future. I no longer have a job to go to. I should be able to sleep as late as I want every day, only I can't sleep for more than 7 hours, often less. I don't have boundless energy, can't drink all night as I once could. There is no longer a host of goals I care to accomplish or travel to foreign lands. As of late, no exciting adventure planned. My one thing I like most of all to do is this I am doing at the moment, writing.
The car below is a 55 Studebaker, like the one I bought at 16, the only difference is the paint scheme.
Being young was so much different for me. To me being young was from 16-55. At 16 I was on top of the world, had a job, a car, a girlfriend and the future was boundless. At 17 I was working in a garage, thinking I would become a mechanic and in my free time, tuning up cars at home. That dream ended the first time I went into a radio shop and saw all the test equipment and parts there. From then on all I wanted was to repair radios.
Not long after that a navy recruiter came into the garage and started talking to me. I remember his words from 56 years ago. He asked if I wanted to be doing this for the rest of my life. I shrugged my shoulders, not knowing how or where I would go to learn how to repair radios. The recruiter said it was fine to continue here, but if I passed a navy aptitude test he could get me into electronics and I would have a job where my hands and clothes wouldn't get so dirty every day. I don't know how he could have hit the bulls-eye so perfectly when he mentioned electronics, but he did. I suppose he had never been aboard an aircraft carrier or he would have known working on a flight deck there are no clean hands, it is a dirty, greasy, grimy job working on planes and even worse being on the flight deck crew that moves planes around or hooks them up to the catapults or checks hydraulics or loads bombs.
Soon after our talk I went and took the navy aptitude test. I qualified for any aviation maintenance job I wanted. I was ready to sign up, but I needed parental permission to sign at 17 and that flew over like a lead balloon. Mom and dad both refused, so being the hard head that I was I told them, "fine as soon as I am 18 I am signing up and getting out of here."
That is what I did on my 18th birthday. The funny thing is, had they let me sign up at 17, I would have been released the day before I was 21 and likely never stayed in as long as I did and probably went back to pumping gas, fixing flat tires and repairing brakes on cars. By signing up at 18 I had a 4 year tour and by then the navy wasn't so bad and there was a nice re-enlistment bonus and more advanced training on the table. I had a wife, a baby, some debt and signing up again sounded good.
At 28 I had the training, experience and skill to leave the navy and have my own radio shop, but no one was repairing radios, so I took a course on TV repair before I left the navy and went into TV repair. Within a 3 year period not enough people were having TV's repaired because they weren't breaking down with solid state devices in them and TVs were so cheap to buy that it made more sense to get a new one with more features. More than half of my business was installing antennas or repairing problems with down leads. I made a large part of my money repairing CB radios.
The picture above is our daughter Annie on Coronado beach in California.
At 31 it was off to California with big dreams. I didn't get the job I thought I would, but probably got a better one and made good money at it and had a lot of great friends, some are still friends today, 32 years after I left there.
At 42 I realized a goal that I wanted since I was 8 years old; I finally had my farm. After clearing the pasture of weeds and thorn trees I got my first cows. Then followed with more cows and we added sheep and a tractor with a brush hog (giant lawn mower). Later we started raising goats, by far the best animals to have.Things were good. We had an acre and a half garden and all the critters to care for. Joyce and I both had full-time jobs and still did everything else on the farm.
Long about 55 it just became more than we could handle, so we sold all the animals and the tractor and went into forestry. That was a lot less work and even more rewarding. Then at 62 we retired and now just relax and enjoy life. It has been a good run so far and I hope we continue for many more years.
Copyright Bill Weber 2019 and beyond.
The car below is a 55 Studebaker, like the one I bought at 16, the only difference is the paint scheme.
Being young was so much different for me. To me being young was from 16-55. At 16 I was on top of the world, had a job, a car, a girlfriend and the future was boundless. At 17 I was working in a garage, thinking I would become a mechanic and in my free time, tuning up cars at home. That dream ended the first time I went into a radio shop and saw all the test equipment and parts there. From then on all I wanted was to repair radios.
Not long after that a navy recruiter came into the garage and started talking to me. I remember his words from 56 years ago. He asked if I wanted to be doing this for the rest of my life. I shrugged my shoulders, not knowing how or where I would go to learn how to repair radios. The recruiter said it was fine to continue here, but if I passed a navy aptitude test he could get me into electronics and I would have a job where my hands and clothes wouldn't get so dirty every day. I don't know how he could have hit the bulls-eye so perfectly when he mentioned electronics, but he did. I suppose he had never been aboard an aircraft carrier or he would have known working on a flight deck there are no clean hands, it is a dirty, greasy, grimy job working on planes and even worse being on the flight deck crew that moves planes around or hooks them up to the catapults or checks hydraulics or loads bombs.
Soon after our talk I went and took the navy aptitude test. I qualified for any aviation maintenance job I wanted. I was ready to sign up, but I needed parental permission to sign at 17 and that flew over like a lead balloon. Mom and dad both refused, so being the hard head that I was I told them, "fine as soon as I am 18 I am signing up and getting out of here."
That is what I did on my 18th birthday. The funny thing is, had they let me sign up at 17, I would have been released the day before I was 21 and likely never stayed in as long as I did and probably went back to pumping gas, fixing flat tires and repairing brakes on cars. By signing up at 18 I had a 4 year tour and by then the navy wasn't so bad and there was a nice re-enlistment bonus and more advanced training on the table. I had a wife, a baby, some debt and signing up again sounded good.
At 28 I had the training, experience and skill to leave the navy and have my own radio shop, but no one was repairing radios, so I took a course on TV repair before I left the navy and went into TV repair. Within a 3 year period not enough people were having TV's repaired because they weren't breaking down with solid state devices in them and TVs were so cheap to buy that it made more sense to get a new one with more features. More than half of my business was installing antennas or repairing problems with down leads. I made a large part of my money repairing CB radios.
The picture above is our daughter Annie on Coronado beach in California.
At 31 it was off to California with big dreams. I didn't get the job I thought I would, but probably got a better one and made good money at it and had a lot of great friends, some are still friends today, 32 years after I left there.
At 42 I realized a goal that I wanted since I was 8 years old; I finally had my farm. After clearing the pasture of weeds and thorn trees I got my first cows. Then followed with more cows and we added sheep and a tractor with a brush hog (giant lawn mower). Later we started raising goats, by far the best animals to have.Things were good. We had an acre and a half garden and all the critters to care for. Joyce and I both had full-time jobs and still did everything else on the farm.
Long about 55 it just became more than we could handle, so we sold all the animals and the tractor and went into forestry. That was a lot less work and even more rewarding. Then at 62 we retired and now just relax and enjoy life. It has been a good run so far and I hope we continue for many more years.
Copyright Bill Weber 2019 and beyond.
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