Chapter 34: Junior Achievement

In the financial world of adolescence, there are four classes of species: carnivores, herbivores, omnivores, and scavengers. The kids who busted their asses at every opportunity to earn money were the alpha-carnivores. My friend Brian was one of them. When it snowed anything over a quarter inch, he would hustle from one job to the next until he either ran out of daylight or snow to shovel.

Brian was a boy for all seasons. In the spring, he would help dig gardens and do general yard work; summertime, he would mow lawns, and in the fall he would rake leaves. He turned the calendar into a cash cow, and he milked it for all he could get.

His sister lived her life as his polar opposite, a plump herbivore who grazed endlessly on her generous allowance. At lunch, she often used a twenty dollar bill to purchase a twenty-five cent sandwich.

Most of my peers were monetary omnivores, making ends meet as beneficiaries of parental socialism while also hunting down dollars in the capitalist world of free enterprise. They had real jobs pumping gas, flipping fries, or stocking shelves.

I prowled the landscape like a scavenger and did what I must to acquire money. Asking my mother for an allowance was a non-starter.

“This is my money, and you’re not getting any of it. Go get a job or something,” Joyce would scold me whenever I asked for cash. After a while, I stopped asking.

My mother loved handbags, and she had a pile of purses in the attic that would’ve buried a Volkswagen, antenna and all. Joyce also relished drinking and when she drank she would forget she had stashed money in her handbag. The forgotten purse hibernated in the attic.

The mountain of handbags was a treasure trove of hidden wealth, and I counted on finding cash or coins whenever I went mining. Occasionally I would luck out with a ten or twenty dollar bill. I didn’t consider it as stealing. I thought of it as an involuntary allowance.

Essentially I scavenged my way through school. Checking the coin returns of pay phones at the bus station became part of my daily routine. I joined the other kids as we circled the banks of payphones lining the walls of the terminal like a flock of buzzards. One day I hit the jackpot and walked out with around ten dollars in quarters.

My mother’s purse pile and payouts from pay phones were not dependable sources of income and most of the time I was flat broke. I needed a job.

Some kids excelled at delivering newspapers and turned failing paper routes into serious money makers. Not being one to follow the crowd, I turned eighty loyal Telegram & Gazette subscribers into thirty-six annoyed customers. I failed to appreciate my part in the ritual of providing a timely delivered newspaper to accompany the morning cup of coffee.

I paid for every newspaper I eventually delivered. My job was to get my money back from my customers. Easier said than done. Some folks faithfully settled each week, rain or shine. Others became payday phantoms who played hide and seek when I knocked on their doors. I often saw them hiding in the shadows, pretending not to be home when I rang the bell or rapped on the window.

The most exciting customers lived in apartments and boarding houses. Collecting from them was an adventure. Customers answered attired in everything ranging from evening gowns to next to nothing.

One Saturday morning a gentleman greeted me in a half-open, grungy looking bathrobe, a wide grin, and nothing else. The guy was a piece of work as he wobbled from side to side and blinked in the early sunshine.

“Whatta you want, kid?” He scratched his groin and looked at the carrier bag slung over my shoulder and the daily newspaper in my hands.

“You need ... BURP ... money?” Beer cans littered the floor, and he smelled like my mother did after a night on the town.

“That better not be my husband,” a fuzzy blonde female muttered from the couch as she kicked off her covers and attempted to rise.

I let out an involuntary gasp; she was not wearing any clothes. She took a step, turned and paused as she looked into my staring eyes.

“Oh, fuck,” she groaned, and her breasts bounced as she flopped back down onto the sofa and started to snore.

“Err, I need three dollars and fifty cents,” I stammered as I blushed and averted my gaze.

“I don’t got no money. Wanna come in and look at my naked girlfriend, and we can call it even?”

“Uh, err, um, I’ll collect next week,” I nearly tripped over myself backing away from the door. I knew what curiosity did to the cat. No way was I going to accept his sightseeing invitation.

The next week I found an eviction notice pinned to his door. A neighbor told me he had gotten into a fight with some guy over a girl and then had skipped town. Address unknown. Debt unpaid.

Half of my weekly earnings went to cover the costs of unpaid subscribers. If I reported their delinquency, I would lose a customer, and if too many readers went south, I would be out of work.

Most of whatever money I had left after covering for slackers went into the cash register of the corner store to clear my tab from the previous week.

Essentially, I was working for free. I was on a financial hamster wheel, running as fast as I could to stay in one place.

“Get in the car. You need to learn how to run a business,” my stepfather advised after watching me flounder financially on an ocean of I.O.U.s.

Several minutes later my stepfather dropped me off at the front entrance of the newly opened Junior Achievement (JA) center in downtown Fitchburg.

“Tonight is start-up night, and I want you to learn how to run a business. Find a sponsor, join a company, and get involved,” Richard instructed me as he handed me a five dollar bill.

“What happens if I don’t want to get involved?” I asked in return. I wanted to weigh my options. Was the punishment worse than the reward?

“Trust me; you don’t want to know,” Richard frowned and shook his head as his stern voice warned that disobedience was not an option.

Taking my turn in the lobby, I blended into the crowd of teens milling around looking for a company to join. I hung back and took my time selecting which group of kids I would choose as business partners. I wanted to avoid voluntary spending any more time than necessary in the company of assholes.

In the end, I joined a dozen nerdy classmates gathered around a four-foot diameter circular saw blade emblazoned with the Simonds Saw and Steel Mfg. Company’s corporate logo.

I wasn’t joining a company; I was merging with the least annoying group in the room. I recognized most of the kids around the sponsor’s sign; we were all casual acquaintances.

I didn’t know any of them well enough to call a friend. However, none of them were adversaries. We were all in the same boat: we were socially awkward outcasts from high school society.

Once registration was complete, we shuffled into a newly remodeled conference room which smelled of sawdust and fresh paint. Adorning the walls, like stations of the cross, were dozens of inspirational posters picturing well-scrubbed faces of teenage entrepreneurs with their eyes aglow from the brilliance of an unseen future.

The organization’s mission was to fight the spread of communism by teaching the joys of capitalism to the tycoons of tomorrow. JA was to the business world what Little League was to the universe of professional baseball, a training camp for future industrialists.

“Welcome to Junior Achievement’s Business Program. My name is Robert Mullins, and I am the executive director of the Fitchburg JA Center. Tonight is the first night of your new business, and our job is to help you organize and run that business,” Mullins said as he introduced us to Brian Wilks and Wendy Wheeler, a couple of young executives from our corporate sponsor, the Simonds Saw and Steel Manufacturing Company. They would serve as volunteer advisors and counselors for the duration of the program.

Mullens had recently graduated from the Harvard School of Business, and this was his first job. Adorned with a crew cut and dressed in a maroon blazer, black slacks, and wearing a pair of brown wingtip shoes, he wore the costume of the typical business executive like a uniform. His personality was as stiff as his starched white shirt.