Life Was Good To Me

1979 (14 YEARS OLD)5 days ago

1979 - 14 Years Old

As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, because my dad was American, there were areas of my life that were completely different from those of my friends. They were slight differences when you were looking at the big picture, but they were definitely there.

The biggest one was that good-old star-spangled Protestant work ethic.

Even though we were Catholic.

I got my first part-time job when I was almost 13. Delivering one of Banbury’s free weekly newspapers, the Banbury Cake.

On Wednesday evenings, a van would come by and drop off 500 copies, and I would sit in our garage folding them up. Then on Thursdays, after school, I’d stuff as many of them in my bright orange vinyl bag, get on my bike, and start the delivery process.

It wasn’t quite the same as the smiling American kids I saw in films, riding their bikes down sunny streets, to upbeat music, throwing newspapers onto lawns.

We had to put the newspaper through the letterbox that every British house had. It took ages. And by the time I was finished, I was black from the (probably poisonous) ink that had bled from the pages.

And, of course, it was even more of a bastard when it was raining.

And all for the Dickensian sum of about a Pound a week.

That was about $2.

Tinkham had the same job on a different route, but he was fired after 4 weeks of complaints from people on his route saying they weren’t getting their paper.

He had been dumping them in the canal.

But when I was 14, my dad came home with the news that he had gotten me a Saturday job bagging groceries at the commissary on the American military base at Upper Heyford. I would get paid in tips.

I had already experienced getting tips “working” as an altar boy at weddings at our church on the other local U.S. military base, Croughton. But my parents made me save that money, so it was more theoretical than practical.

But it was agreed that the lolly from bagging would be mine to spend.

So it worked like this: each checkout lane had four baggers, and we would bag the groceries, take them to the car and load them into the boot. The tips would be pooled and divvied up equally at the end of the shift.

This was (and still is) a very American custom. In virtually all other countries, you have to bag and carry your own groceries. Like dock workers. So explaining it to my friends was like trying to explain a seated toilet to a Frenchman.

I showed up for my first day, with a sack lunch, prepared for the usual explanation of why I had an English accent. I was in my Elvis phase, so my dress style didn’t stand out too much. And while I didn’t become best friends with the rest of the crew, we got on alright.

Bagging was easy, and with a fairly outgoing personality and a Tetris-like ability to fill the brown bags quickly and in a perfectly organized manner, I did alright.

Americans are generous tippers, although the ones who seemed like officers were not as generous.

I’m not sure if that is actually true – maybe it was just me parroting my dad, who, given the opportunity, would always proclaim that officers were so tight, they squeaked when they walked.

But, at the end of my first shift, our team leader handed me my split.

$40 !!!!!!!!!!!!

That might not seem a lot nowadays, but it was England in the late 1970s.

To put it into perspective, that was about 20 Pounds, and the median wage for a full-time job in the UK after taxes at the time was about 68 Pounds a week.

I was rich.

I didn’t smoke at the time, had a next-to-zero chance of getting a girlfriend, and would have been laughed out of any pub had I gone in and asked for a pint.

Even buying Elvis records, I couldn’t spend all of the money I was making.

But I did make two changes.

1. I stopped bringing a sack lunch and bought whatever I wanted.

2. I pulled a Tinkham for a couple of weeks and then quit the newspaper job.

On our lunch break on sunny days, we would sit on a wall, eating hot dogs and Fritos, drinking ice-cold root beer, and listening to music coming from whoever’s turn it was to bring in his ghetto blaster.

I can’t remember what songs were played, as most of them were shit, but it didn’t matter. Compared to the rest of my life, my Saturdays were a surreal break.

But I do remember one song, and it sort of perfectly summed up how I felt: