Well, it’s been a while since I’ve written anything, which isn’t a good thing…

So, as I passed the local gas station and its adjacent car wash, I saw a man out in the cold drying cars… and was reminded of where my experience of “work” began.

As a very young child, we got a very simple idea from my father… ‘If you want something, work for it.‘ He had a very effective image for conveying the notion, which was reminding us (usually in a lazier moment) how he shoveled coal as a kid during the Great Depression.  In hindsight, a pretty effective (and conveniently unassailable) example to have in his arsenal… but it worked, and you really couldn’t argue with it.

The result was that, from a very early age, when it came to getting the things we needed, there was a clear understanding that we’d end up working to earn whatever the money was.  Certainly the times were different, but for my brother and I, this translated into us grabbing a bag of old towels my mom kept around in our utility room and walking down to the local car wash (about a half mile away), and we’d spend hours drying cars.

The image seems a little surreal these days, because I can’t imagine young children doing such a thing (I was in grade school when we started), let alone walking over, crossing a major street, and doing it on their own, without their parents sitting close by to make sure they were “safe”.  Unconscionable.

In any case, go we did.  Every year for several years growing up, it was our primary means to make the money we needed for Christmas presents.  As the youngest two children in a family with eight kids, our only practical option was to pool our resources and buy gifts for our siblings and parents.  So, as the holiday season would approach, we’d get together a plan for everyone’s gifts, develop a basic budget (sometimes the budget would precede the gift ideas), and then we’d be off to the car wash to make the money we needed… in the Winter, in the cold, and in the snow.  The good news was that, given Chicago Winters tend to be awful, there was generally going to be a number of cars, and therefore the opportunity to make a few dollars was relatively good as long as we were willing to show up with some dry towels and wait for people to let us do the work.

I suppose that’s the first lesson we learned at the Car Wash… It takes the right conditions.  All the motivation in the world would not have mattered without the environment being conducive to doing the work in the first place.

The second point was pretty equally important… It helps if you have a goal.  In our case, I’m not sure that we would’ve been so motivated to brave the conditions if there wasn’t the imminent necessity of the upcoming holiday shopping.  I doubt most kids would characterize the experience as particularly “fun”.  It wasn’t.  It was, however, expedient and necessary if we wanted to have something to put under the tree.

The third, fairly obvious point in our case… It helps when you have a partner… Beyond the practical matter of either of us being too young to probably go on our own, the experience of sitting in the cold for hours by yourself would probably have been more miserable without my brother slugging it out with me.

The last couple lessons would require a little explanation…

In the first case, I remember people who would get out of their car, inspect the work we had done, point out imperfections, examine the towels (asking if they were ‘dry’ enough), jam our finger into some crevice the car wash could never have cleaned in a million years, and so forth.  In most cases, these were people who gave you 25 or 50 cents for the entire thing.  In hindsight, what a ridiculous situation when you remember we were little kids in grade school just trying to make an honest buck.  Lesson four… There will always be people so focused on getting a “good deal” that they become completely unaware of their surroundings and behaviors (and not always to their credit).

Finally, I remember being at the car wash in the middle of summer, where a guy driving a Trans Am asked me to help him put his roof panels into cases he had in his trunk (taking the “top down”).  He just needed an extra pair of hands… and I didn’t mind.  He gave me $4.  I remembered being so excited, because the most I think anyone ever paid us was about $1.  I remember the experience nearly forty years later.  Final lesson… Sometimes that extra little effort turns into a lot of reward.

While I didn’t set out to write anything particularly profound today… it does seem to me that there is some fundamental truth in the experiences we have in life.  Goals matter, having people on the journey with you matters… and there are times when those with whom you will interact will both inspire and disappoint you… the point is to show up and keep things in perspective.

At a time when I feel some reflection and introspection is needed, perhaps this was a good place to start.  Back at the beginning.  From here, we’ll see where the road leads next.

– CJG 03/01/2015