Life Changes
Monday, October 27th, 2008Life changes, Nothing ever stays the same. So I am about to begin a new chapter in my life. All the chapters leading up to this one have been filled with great memories, sadness, happiness, adventure, mistakes, you know, all the things that make a story great.
Chapter One
My radio career began at the tender young age of 17. I worked from the time I was legally able. My first job was at River Forest Nursing Home. It was run by some sort of Mennonite group. My best friend in High School was already working there and convinced me that we would have “great fun” working together. So my weekends were spent clearing slop off the plates and trays of the residents of the home. First of all, the food that these folks got was nursing home food. For old folks. So it was soft, bland and not very pretty. If you thought it looked bad going out you should have seen it coming back in. I believe these poor souls were so unhappy that they were dumped into “the old folks home” that they took out on us lowly kitchen workers. Napkins were shoved down into the glasses with mashed potatoes dumped in on top of that. It was like a parfait of regurgitated food and paper.
Each tray had a small metal holder, like you would use at a party to designate the seating arrangements for your guest. You would put a pretty little card in the holder and everyone would ooh and ahh over how cute it was. Our card holders would hold the patients name card and all the dietary limitations that they had. After every meal we had to dig them out of oatmeal, eggs, squash, milk, coffee and potatoes again. They were laminated and we had to wash them off and stick them back into the holder for the next go round. I was 16. Not the romantic adventurous job I had in mind for my first foray into the working world. I will never forget the smell of urine and disinfectant that permeated that place.
One of the residents that I will always remember is Ike. Ike was somewhat senile. But he was still a randy old man. He had a cane that he used and anytime a pretty girl would walk by he would take that cane and smack her on the butt. Come to think of it she didn’t have to be pretty. We learned to stear clear from him and cling to the other side of the hall when he was making his way down it. He also had a tendency to let it all hang out on occasion too. If you know what I mean.
One bright spot in my day was talking to one elderly lady who still had it together. I wish I could remember her name. I think it may have been Olive. Both she and her husband were living in the facility. They weren’t in the same room. It seems the Mennonite woman frowned on that. Women in one wing, men in the other. But every waking hour those two spent it together. It was so sweet and it made me dream of having a love that would endure forever.
One thing that I did not want to endure forever was being a dishwasher at a nursing home. So I scoured the want ads. In my little town that would take about 10 seconds. Or less. But lo and behold I found something I thought I could handle. Being a dishwasher…..at the hospital! So I hauled myself up there after school one afternoon and applied. I didn’t have a car and getting use of the car was an act of congress. But the hospital was about a mile or so from school so I could walk every afternoon and my mother or someone would pick me up. I believed that this job would be much better than the nursing home. Wrong. Now when trays came back we not only got the food parfaits but syringes that nurses would forget to dispose of properly. This was before the AIDS epidemic so things were a little more lax. Band aids, Gauze, finger splints, whatever. It would end up on a tray for the dishwashers to take care of.
The hospital was old. The elevators were like something out of a horror movie. Well the staff elevator was. There was nice bright shiny one in the bright shiny lobby for guests to use. I dreaded having to ride that thing upstairs and down. It was dark. The hallway TO the elevator was dark. What was worse was having to go down to the basement to get supplies. Dish washing soaps, towels, cleaning supplies. Another horror movie set. Dark and mysterious. I always thought there might be dead bodies down there. The morgue. But to be honest I have no clue. And since the hospital only had something like 50 beds the chances that there Zombies were running rampant in the basement hallways were pretty slim.
My hospital bright spot was a boy. I don’t remember his name. I remember he was cute. You know, the important stuff. Unlike the nursing home the dish washing area was in a separate room off the kitchen. He and I would have water fights with the spray nozzles. We would laugh ’til we cried and the “mature” women in the kitchen would roll their eyes, shrug their shoulders and then ignore us.
The hospital is where I first learned to wrap baked potatoes in aluminum foil to keep them from drying out. Hey were talking 1976-77 here.
But even then the economy fell and I got laid off. It was back to the nursing home. Part-time. So in what would become a lifetime habit of mine I got a second job working at Jim Vetter Ponitac Buick as a receptionist/bookkeeper. For some silly reason they wanted me to help out with bookkeeping. I had to enter figures into a ledger. Me. The queen of transposed numbers. Then they expected me to reconcile it. Me. The queen of bounced checks. Ok..again. This was before everyone used computers that did all that for you. Needless to say I did all my entries in pencil. Eventually they threw up their hands and just had me on the phones. It was at this time that I had my first clue that I had voice people liked to hear. I would have great conversations on the phone with customers who called and who would tell me how much they enjoyed listening to me talk. I had so many compliments that I thought I always wanted to be receptionist.
So I was working part-time at the car dealership and part-time at the nursing home when the full-time position of cook came open at the home. I was offered the job since I had been pretty much doing all the cooking when I was there anyway. I was just out of high school 17 years old and I thought it sounded like a pretty good move for me but I wanted to see what else might be out there so I checked the help-wanted ads in the paper and saw an entry that intrigued me. Our local radio station, WLKM, was looking for part-time weekend help. Now this sounded like fun. Much better than poached eggs, dry toast and the other “gourmet” dishes I was cooking up. So I drove out to the studio on the outskirts of town and applied for the job.
I was taken into a studio, a mic was placed in front of me and I was given some news copy to read. I recorded it on a reel to reel machine and I was fascinated by the big black board with all the knobs, switches and dials. I loved the sound it made when you clicked the mic toggle switch. “SNAP”. I was hooked.
Amazingly, they took a chance on a 17 year old girl with no experience and hired me. It was a whole new world.
Stay tuned for Chapter 2 coming soon.