I arrived with the Great Depression—and I guess that and my father’s work ethic are what have driven me all my life. I found jobs everywhere—but always returned to my beginnings. 

Unemployment in the U. S. reached 25% as the Great Depression hit its peak in 1933. By the time I was 12 years old (early 1941) it still was 15%. Today it is 4.9%, the lowest in many years. Individuals such as Donald Trump, however, continue to rant about “creating jobs.” Although Republicans in general tend to skirt around the subject, as facts favor President Obama—despite their ongoing attempt to thwart every detail of his agenda.

Some facts are: “Bush lost private sector jobs over the course of his eight years (the Wall Street Journal declared it the ‘Worst Track Record On Record’ on jobs), while Obama has created a net of 11 million private sector jobs during his presidency, and more than 14 million if you start counting after the Great Recession Bush handed Obama technically ended in mid-2009.”  Check here for the whole story:

https://ourfuture.org/20141208/bush-vs-obama-on-the-economy-in-3-simple-charts

The Wall Street Journal is about at far as possible from the “liberal mainstream media” Republicans continually whine about—makes it even more difficult to for them to deal with this subject. Bush lost 482,000 private-sector jobs over his 8 years, Obama has created 14,386,000 jobs.

And as for corporate profits? They rose from 460.2 billion to 671.4 billion under Bush—but from 671.4 to 1,636.7 billion (that’s $1,636,700,000,000) under Obama (as reported for his first 7.5 years).

So the well-being of not only the work force but also that of corporations improved tremendously under Barack Obama, despite obstinate obstruction from a conservative Congress. So why on earth did the American public elect a crude, self-serving lout such as Donald Trump as President? (Well, the popular vote actually was a few million short, but he weaseled his way in nonetheless.)

PART 2 — Meanwhile, everyone my age likes to talk about the old days; and I like to reflect on my own job experience, among other things. I’ve been earning a few bucks one way or another for 75 years. It’s in my blood . . . my father’s ethic. He spent his earliest years on a ranch in a remote section of Alberta and wound up raising a family here in Port Townsend during the Great Depression—building our homes, raising our food.

When I got my first bicycle at age 12 early in 1941, I soon hit for town and got myself several after-school and weekend jobs—two in yard care for old widow ladies and the other assisting the city librarian both indoors and in grounds upkeep.

Soon I got a better job, chopping wood and filling a big woodbox every day for a working mother whose daughter was in my 7th-grade class. It paid me $3.00 a month. 

Before long I was a carrier boy (the only one in town) for the Seattle Star. As that paper was folding, I moved on up to the lusher Seattle Times downtown/uptownroute—and extended it to include Fort Worden (which was very active then during World War II). I set pins at the Fort Worden bowling alley; I caddied at the local golf course.

As my sophomore school in high school opened in 1944, I was hired at the Port Townsend Leader for 40 cents an hour as a printer’s devil after school and weekends. Being only 15, I went to Superior Court to get a permit to work around such dangerous things as presses, molten metal, a metal saw, power paper cutter, etc. 

But that job wasn’t enough, and come June, at age 16, I went to work full time at the local paper mill—90 cents an hour and time and a half for overtime. I finagled a 72-hour week there during one pay period. Then it was back to school—and back to the Leader (now 60 cents an hour). Next summer, same thing—mill at $1.10 in the summer, then back to the Leader (during my senior year). 

Part of the next summer went without gainful employment as I trained aboard a destroyer in the North Pacific with the U. S. Navy Reserve (which I’d joined during high school). But soon it was off to school at WSU in Pullman. There I worked as a dining hall busboy, a printer on the Pullman Herald, ghost-wrote term papers for 10 cents a word (had a typewriter)—or just edited and typed for a penny a word. 

I dropped out a couple of years later. I think it was along in there that I picked cherries somewhere in central Washington during an aimless wanderlust interlude. Home beckoned the strongest, and then came a two-year period during which I worked locally as a janitor, as a truck driver, as a Safeway store clerk—before returning to the Leader as a full-time printer (I also worked nights for a time for the competitive Jefferson County Herald). Then, thanks to Selective Service, I became a member of the U. S. Army when the Korean War broke out (and the Navy politely discharged me from the reserve when my 4-year hitch was up with them a few months later). 

In the Army, I worked a bit on the side—while I was stateside—and was an on-the-ground pollster for a national firm. Then it was back to school at UC Berkeley. Odd jobs there included being a psychology department test subject (in search of ESP), monitoring and recording radio talk shows on behalf of national advertisers, typing address labels for a neighborhood newspaper . . . 

In late ’54 it was promptly back to the Leader, journalism degree in hand. There I also made a few stray dollars from articles in the Seattle P-I ($50 a page in the Sunday magazine section), as a “stringer” for Associated Press and a contributor to Marine Digest magazine. Then it was time for a change and back to California early in ‘58 to publish my own paper there, before being lured back to the Leader late in 1960. Another 28 years passed before, with wearied spirit and no financial incentive in the offing to salve indignity, I finally left there for good late in 1988. Then came the only time in my life that I was actually unemployed (and no, I did not draw unemployment)—until I reached minimum Social Security Age a couple of years later. 

I eventually turned to writing my books of local history. I self-published those and have had a certain income from them for 16 years. How’s all that for a work career? Of course, I had a working wife all the way from the Berkeley years of 1953-’54—but that’s another story. 

I’m happy to have been home for keeps the past 56 years—and, as this blog indicates—I still maintain a contributing connection with the Leader, 72 years after first working there.

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My oddest paying job? Right here in Port Townsend about 50 years ago, writing a brief for a disbarred lawyer appealing for reinstatement. I charged him $30. But he was beyond redemption.

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