Nena still cries when she thinks, realizes that her mother didn't love her and her father was incapable of expressing whatever feelings he may have had.
Even more puzzling to Nena is that I had a nearly similar situation, but I'm not bothered by it in the least.
I left home at 16, largely because of a tyrannical father. My mom, while not abusive in any way, actually permissive, was self-absorbed.
Yet, I admit that whatever I may have needed psychologically in terms of reassurance, support, belief, even guidance, that I may not have gotten from parents, I did receive from an assortment of characters in my early life.
I frequently, intentionally use the phrase "stifle, stymie, squelch" that I learned from my unique Uncle Joe. Someday, I will profile him.
Tonight, George Pringle is on my mind. As much as anyone, George gave me self-confidence and taught me to think out of the proverbial box. He had a Robin Williams level sense of humor, leaving everyone around him in total stitches.
A phrase he always used with me feigning mild disagreement:
"Jim, Are you serious or delirious,
psychotic or neurotic,
hydrocephalic or microcephalic?"
George Pringle, a 32 year old savant, separated from his wife, diagnosed as manic-depressive, taking regular electric shock treatments, playing boogie-woogie on the piano for hours to settle his mind, was my first boss.
He had printed business cards for ABC Maintenance, a janitorial company with no accounts. The cards named George Pringle and Lanny Smith as owners, but Lanny had already bailed and, at 13, I was Lanny's replacement.
When we approached the manager of Kent Electric, a large office adjacent to an even larger warehouse, the manager called me "Lanny" because of what was written on George's business card.
George nervously explained the purpose of our visit. We had a janitorial service and wanted to bid on maintaining their tile floors.
The manager, keeping a straight face, responded:
"Mr. Pringle, in case you haven't noticed, our office is not tiled. We have a concrete floor."
George, always quick on his feet, responded:
"Yes, that's exactly why we're here. We want to bid on tiling your floor and then maintaining it."
"OK. Give us a bid."
George paced around the building for few minutes, scribbling something in a notepad, then handing something to the manager.(George, in making bids, always pretended to do mathematical calculations on a notepad while thinking about what he wanted to charge. In truth, he'd made up his mind seconds after seeing the job. Typically, his bids were low, underestimating the difficulty level of the job.)
As we walked back to George's car, he asked me:
"Have you ever laid tile?"
"Me neither, but we're about to learn how."
That was the beginning of my "employment," just barely a teenager, with ABC Maintenance. George wanted his business to start with "A" to be nearly first in the phonebook. ABC, he explained was an acronym for "always be clean," a phrase he found clever.
We tiled Kent Electric, quickly honing our skills. I discovered when we got to the edge, you could take a tile, butt it up against the wall, marking it for the exact cut needed.
George bid on jobs while I went to 9th grade classes at Meridian Junior High School.
We won the bid for janitorial service at Shaw Drugs in Renton, that city's biggest drug store.
We got at Shaw's after closing. George had the key. It was an old-fashioned drug store with a large soda fountain area fronted by metal stools.
George had made his own floor buffer/scrubber using a piece of heavy sheet metal, drilling holes to attach a 1/3 horsepower washing machine motor, two pulleys to reduce the speed and a scrubber brush. It had not worked that well in early test runs.
The scrubber had no handle. The operator had to totally bend over and hold for dear life on the quarter inch steel plate holding the motor, pulleys and round, wooden scrubbing disc. He brought rubber gloves to protect against electric shock.
The drug store had large glass-enclosed cases that went down to the floor, making the slightest wrong movement with our homemade buffer a financial disaster.
George told me to plug the extension cord into the wall when he gave the signal. Leaning over, wearing rubber gloves, he braced himself for the power turn on.
As soon as I plugged in the extension cord I heard a scream. The machine had veered directly into a glass case, but no glass was broken.
"Do you want to try it?" George asked.
I put the gloves on and bent over while George plugged the cord in. The "buffer" spinned fast, too fast, but I kept control by moving it slightly up and down. I scrubbed one aisle after another with this amateurish prototype, totally bent over, holding steel immersed in sudsy lather.
Then, with clean mops, we rinsed off the suds, dirt and old wax.
We read some magazines while waiting for the floor to dry and then re-waxed.
"Whew!" George said as he locked the front door of the drug store.
"You were a big help tonight, Jim"
George paid me $1.25 per hour. Good in math, I would calculate how, by employing me, George actually made more per hour than he would have without me, a subtle case for job security. George would flip the dial for some faraway station playing boogie-woogie, blues or jazz as he drove me home.
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| '47 Dodge Coup |
George was a horrible businessman, but a great friend. He lived with his rich parents in an eclectic home with round walls, door knobs hidden door knobs and an indoor swimming pool. In his parent's minds, he had "two strikes," a failed marriage to a crazy woman and a brief departure from sanity into a religious sect. They thought I was a "good influence" on George. Did they know I was 19 years younger?
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| '52 Kaiser Henry J |
His parents drove a mint condition, two-tone Kaiser Henry J for years, but paid cash for an American Motors Rambler in 1962. After a month of driving the Rambler, they described it as "trash" and went back to their Henry J.
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