Jaxmyth

Jaxmyth was a three piece Blues / Rock band that I got involved with through Ben. The band consisted of Robert Peterson (Bobby Soxx - Guitar and Vocals), Corky Dunford (Bass Guitar), and Aaron Carson (Drums). Ben worked in a restaurant with Corky or Aaron, I am can't remember which. I went to see the band for the first time at Cross Street Station in Ypsilanti. I love the band, and also really loved the bar, but i'll save that for another post. Ben had become friends with the guys, so we started hanging out with them and helping at their gigs. Neither Ben or I were old enough to drink, but since we were with the band, none of the bars ever asked for ID's.

Ben really go into being the roadie for the band, and I started managing the band, or trying to. After managing them for a while, I studied for the test, and got a license as an entertainment agency. I called my business Karnopp Productions (because I am so creative with business names), and I started trying to get more gigs and represent other bands. 

I once asked Bobby where he came up with the name Jaxmyth. He explained that all three of them used to live in Florida, and they all worked at the same hotel. They all worked for the same manager who's name was Jack Smith. He said that he was a real blowhard and was always yelling at the staff and especially them. One day they were all sitting around the pool on their time off, and Jack came over screaming at them because they weren't supposed to use the pool, and that it was for the guests. As he stormed off, Corky said, "We should name our band after him just to fuck with him". So what started as a Joke ended up becoming their band name. 

I got several gigs for the band in the Detroit area, and they already had several regular gigs they were doing. One of the more interesting gigs was at The Old Miami on Cass in Detroit. It was a Vietnam veterans bar. The customers were always really cool with us, but they weren't guys you wanted to mess with. There was also a lot of firepower behind the bar, so it wasn't a place any of the local thugs would want to mess with either. I liked it when the band played there, but it was a pretty sketch area of town. 

Another gig that was kind of interesting was the Gods Children Motorcycle Club. Aaron's dad had been the president of the Detroit Highwaymen when he was a teenager, so he had some connections in the MC community. This particular gig was a party that the Gods Children were throwing, so there were a lot of other clubs there. It was quite a crowd. At one point one of the club members talked to me and he told me if anything broke out, Ben and I were to stay out of it, their guys would handle all the security. I was good with that, I had no interest in doing security with a group of bikers. 

In actuality, it probably was one of the safest gigs we played. There was one incident that occurred, but it was taken care of very quickly, and no one seemed to bat an eye. During one of the sets, one of the Gods Children guys sat in with the band playing base. It turned out that back in the day, they guy had been the base player for Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels. While he was on stage playing base one of the bikers in the crowd crossed the barrier and was trying to sing in the mic. The guy was obviously drunk, the bass player took his bass and jabbed the head stock right into the other bikers head knocking him out cold. Before I even knew what was going on two other members of the club were dragging him outside. That was the only incident the entire evening.

After going through all the work to get my license and start my business, I really wanted to grow and do bigger things. Booking local bars was fun, but it wasn't going to pay anyone's bills. I started calling Saturday Night Live. I would sit in my apartment working to get enough courage, then make the call. I kept leaving messages for the talent agent at the show, and it seemed like I would never get through. Then one day I called, and I was ready to leave another message when the guy came on the phone. It turned out he was from Ann Arbor originally, and still came home often in the summers. 

I don'e remember his name, but I ended up sending him a demo tape, and we talked again a few weeks later. He had listened to the tape, and he said it was okay, but the band overall wasn't anything special. He did like the lead guitar playing though. Bobby played lead guitar and sang vocals. The talent agent said he didn't care much for the vocals, but he liked his guitar playing. He told me to get in touch with him again before the summer, and we would come up with a date and time where he could come see them when he was in town. 

The band wasn't as excited about the news as I was. I don't know if they didn't believe me or what, but I kept pushing. When summer came, I talked to the agent, and he suggested that we do an Open Mic night in Ann Arbor, and he would check them out there. I told the band, and I got it all scheduled. When the day finally came, I couldn't find any members from the band anywhere. This was the time before cell phones, so I was going to each of their houses, I called the bar thinking they were there, but no one showed up. The night came an went, and Jaxmyth never showed. 

I ran into Bobby a couple of nights later at Cross Street Station. I asked him what the hell happened, and he said they had gotten invited to a party, and they decided to do that instead. He said the open mic night was a waste of time, they were never going to be on SNL and it was stupid to even think that was a possibility. I was furious, and I told them I was done working with them. 

I shut down my business. I had started and stopped my first business before turning twenty. When people complain about how hard it is to break into the music industry, I just laugh. From where I was standing, the music industry wasn't the problem, it was the musicians. I am not saying that it is easy to make it, but so many musicians think if they are going to make it, they will need to be discovered. If you have the talent, you still have to do the work of marketing yourself, and working the business. 

I was pretty bitter about the way my relationship with the band ended. I didn't see much of Bobby and Corky after that, and couple of years later the band broke up and Bobby moved out west and Corky moved back to Florida. I saw Aaron a number of times because he stayed in Ypsilanti. Bobby got ALS and died on March 31st, 2017. After hearing about Bobby, I tried to find Aaron and Corky online. I found Aaron'd Obituary, he died on March 5th, 2014. I don't know what happened to him. I believe Corky is still playing in Florida. Ben passed away May 7th, 2013. 

Robert Peterson (Bobby Soxx) - Obituary

Aaron Carson - Obituary

Ben Lewis - Obituary

Ypsi Adult Education Tool and Die Class

In high school I took a tool and die class at Ypsilanti Adult Education for high school credit, and I really enjoyed it. The two instructors were really good and knew a lot. There were segments on the lathe, mill, grinders, and welding. We made a number of really cool projects and I still have several of them. The shop was in the old Ypsi High school on Cross Street which is now an old folks home. The floors had been updated in the shop, but there was another room across the hall that had the original wood floors designed for holding really heavy equipment. 

After I graduated, Ben was still struggling to get through high school. I suggested he take the machining class to get some extra credits since it was available on Saturday morning. The instructor of the class asked me if I would be interested in being an assistant instructor. With my experience as a mechanic, and my work at Barfield, plus being in the class before, the administrator saw no problem with me being an assistant teacher. Ben took the class both semesters that year, and I assisted in the class throughout the year. 

This was my only attempt at teaching, and I would say it doesn't run in the family. My dad's students always said he was an amazing teacher. I am sure Ben would not have said that about me. I tend to think I have related information in a clear and logical manner, but people always look at me with a glazed expression. Even today when I go into a meeting, I think I have explained a technical concept at a general level, but typically my boss will have to then translate it even more. If Ben hadn't been a friend, I don't think anyone in the class would have ever wanted to to have anything to do with me. 

 I really did love working with metal. Working with wood takes a certain amount of artistic ability where working with metal is all about mechanics. You adjust cutting speeds based on the material you are cutting and the size of the cutter. These are simple calculations, and making the cut is done my turning a dial. Turning something on a wood lathe, you have to have a steady hand and you actual hold the cutter, so I prefer working with metal, but it is very expensive and hard to do in a home shop. 

I can't remember if Ben every graduated high school. We fell out of touch shortly after he took the machining class. We would run into each other at different times over the years, but we were never really close friends again. I did run into one of the instructors again years later after Forrest was born, and I was surprised at how old he had become. It really is amazing how fast life goes by.

My Time at Barfield Mfg.

When I turned 18, I got a job working through a temp agency at Barfield Manufacturing. I started on the afternoon shift on the assembly line. At first I really hated the job. Part assembly is the most boring work I have ever done. The hours seemed to drag on forever. As I got to know my co-workers it became a little easier since I could at least talk to people, but even that was pretty limiting. I needed the job though, so I stuck it out. 

The way the temp agency worked, you had to work for them for six months, and then if the company wanted to hire you, they could without paying a penalty. At the six month mark, I got hired in as a full employee. This gave me a bit of a raise and benefits. Once again, I had my own health insurance, and once again it was better than what I have today. I also moved to the midnight shift.

The midnight shift was pretty cool because we did a lot of changeovers when we were switching out the parts that we make. I volunteered to do any changeover, and I got to the point where I could do all the setups better than anyone else. Of course there weren't many people who wanted to do changeovers because when the machine was down, it was like an extended break. I liked doing anything that wasn't repetitive. 

I had very few interactions with co-workers outside of work when I was at Barfield. I remember going to a couple of parties, and I would go out for beers with a couple of the guys every now and then. I did however work with a woman name Micki Chavis. We worked together for several months, and I really liked her, and I eventually asked her out. We went out on a couple of dates, and they went pretty well, but things never worked out. We ended up on different shifts, and just didn't keep in touch. A couple of years later my friend Steve told me he knew her, and that she had been murdered. She had been stabbed to death by her boyfriends ex-girlfriend. I had always hoped I would reconnect with her. 

The supervisor of the midnight shift ended up transferring to another department, and they promoted a guy that was just a little older than I was to the new shift supervisor. Since I was able to do all the changeovers, I got along well with him because that was supposed to be a big part of the job. He spent most of his time in the office and really didn't do anything. I assumed I would eventually get his position, but when the upper management decided to get rid of him, he told them that he was too young for the job, and they decided they were going to bring in someone else. 

At the same time, two operator positions opened up in the cold heading department where bolts and screws were made. I applied and me and one of the other guys got the job. Unfortunately the other guy who applied started two days before I did, and in the union world seniority trumps everything. We both started as operators which meant that we kept and eye on the machines, checked the parts against a blueprint, coordinated moving full parts bins and raw material. 

The next step up was the position of Setup B which meant you could setup the machines for different sized bolts, and perform adjustments when the bolts would start to drift out of spec. To get promoted, you had to be able to do a setup on each of the types of machines. There were four different models. Three of the models were American made, and there were two really large machines that were Japanese. One of the models was from the late 1800's and had been converted from an overhead belt drive to an electric motor. This machine was nicknamed the "Pig", and it was the hardest machine to setup and keep in tolerance. 

When we were hired for operator positions, the goal was to get us trained for setup, so we could be promoted because there were no setup B operators. I worked really hard to learn every machine as quickly as I could. I really wanted that promotion. The other guys name was Ross, and he tried really hard, but he just didn't have the aptitude for it. My time working on cars and doing setups on the assembly line made this work very simple for me, but Ross had no previous experience, so he really struggled.

Unfortunately, since Ross had started two days before me, he had seniority, so I couldn't get promoted until he got promoted. I was really frustrated by this, and it is my biggest complaint of unions today. I think the seniority system is complete garbage, and I would never work in an environment like that again. It finally got the point where I was doing the setup B job, and I was fixing all of Ross's setups, and they finally decided to promote both of us, so I could get my promotion. This really did work out in my favor because there was no competition for doing setups. Ross was more than happy to keep doing the boring operator work and let me do all the setups. 

There were three other guys in the department. The guy I worked the most closely with was  Tim who was a Setup A, and he is the one that I learned the most from. There was also the supervisor named Dave who used to be a setup A before he became the supervisor. I didn't learn as much from him because he was doing more supervisor duties than setups. There was also a guy across the aisle who did bushings. He was technically in our department, but we didn't work on his machines and he didn't work on ours. I don't remember his name, but he was a Master Setup which just means that he was a setup A that had been there for over ten years.

One of the really cool parts of my job was that I got to work closely with the machinists. Since I had taking classes in machining and also assistant taught at the high school adult ed program, we had a lot in common. When doing a setup, I would often have to go to the machinists and have them change the angle on one of the dies or grind more clearance on one of the cones. If they were busy, most of them would be happy to let me use the lathe or grinder myself and make the modification. 

There was one time I went in to get a change made, and everyone in the tool room was at lunch. I took my die, set it up on the lathe, and went about making the changes myself. One of the maintenance guys who worked in the tool room walked in and asked me what I was doing. I explained that I needed to make some changes and no one was around. He knew that I often did these things myself, but he had recently been elected as shop steward in the union, so he filed a grievance against me. I ended up getting written up and had to be a part of a big meeting with the plant manager where it was explained that I was never to do a job that was no in my job description again. After this incident, I hated the UAW and everything it represented. I hated that they took union dues out of my check every week, but then turned on me for purely political reasons. 

When people talk about unions, it is usually a political discussion that is really abstracted from any real world experience. Very few people that I have ever debated with have ever worked in a union. I understand why the unions exist, and I think they have done a lot of good things for the working class. The biggest problem I see is that they haven't evolved. Instead of trying to protect the weak employee at all costs, they should be working on training and incentive programs. They need to get rid of the seniority system and work on adding value to both the workers they represent and the companies where those workers work. Like everything else that is politically charged, this situation will never change which is fine, I will never work in a situation where someone else negotiates anything for me.

I had been taking classes at WCC part time while working at Barfield, and my dad suggested that I quit and go to school full time. I really didn't want to quit, but I also didn't want to spend my whole life making bolts, so I put in my two weeks notice. I was immediately offered the job of Setup A if I would stay. Ross had quit a while earlier, so there was no issue with him anymore. I declined and left to continue my education. 

There is no way I would have wanted to work in a factory my whole life, but I am really glad I had the experience that I did. As my career changed over the years, I have been involved in a lot of manufacturing processes where my previous work gave me additional incites into how to improve processes. I didn't stay in contact with anyone after I left, and the factory has long since closed. 

Sheraton / Delphines

When I was sixteen one of my dad's students, Steve Zammit, got me a job at the Sheraton Inn in Ann Arbor as a dishwasher for Delphines restaurant which was located in the hotel. I went in for an interview and was hired on the spot and literally started as soon as the interview was over. My friend Ben went with me to the interview and was waiting out in the car for me. He ended up having to get a ride home from the hotel since I was working late in the evening. 

Working at the Sheraton was my first real job where I punched a clock, got a paycheck, and even had health insurance. Ironically the health insurance that was provided back then was much better than the insurance I pay for today. The chef that hired me was named chef Muse, but he wasn't there very long after I got hired, so I never got to know him very well. His replacements name was Chef Ferante, and she ran a really tight ship. 

Chef Ferante was a really attractive woman, and being sixteen, I really enjoyed working for her even though she was tough. I learned a lot from her, and I was able to moved up from being a dishwasher to being a prep cook part time. I still had to do dishes the rest of the time, but at least there was some variety, and I was learning some pretty good life skills. I remember in one employee meeting she made a comment that I remember and I have used many times throughout my career. She said that if someone gets good service at the restaurant, they might tell a couple of close friends about their experience. If they get bad service, they will tell anyone who will listen. That was such a true statement, and something I would later tell my employees when I owned a restaurant.

I really enjoyed hanging out with the cooks, and I became friends with a number of them outside of work. As was the case through most of my high school years, most of my friends were much older than I was. It was kind of fun hanging out at the bar across the way and going to baseball games and things like that. 

I had some issues with my grades getting lost in my Junior year in high school, so when I started my senior year, I wasn't able to start on time because I didn't have enough credits to stay enrolled. By the time the school figured out where the mix-up was, I was about a month behind. I told the chef that I really needed some time to get caught up, but she couldn't give me the time off. One night I got stuck working a banquet by myself that was going to run until early morning, and I also had to get an assignment in. I ended up with my only choice being to quit the job. I remember driving home with tears in my eyes because I really liked working there, and I hated quitting the way that I did. 

Working at the Sheraton gave me a solid set of cooking skills that I use to this day. Restaurant work is hard work, but it is also very rewarding. I often say if you want to get a true understanding of Just In Time inventory, work in a restaurant. There is nothing more just in time than inventory that goes bad in five days. 

Dixboro Gas Station

When I was in high school, my friend Lisa started dating this guy Tony. I had just started driving, and I was always working on my car, and Tony worked with a guy named Bill Smallwood who was the head mechanic at the GM Proving Grounds. Through Tony and Lisa, I got to know bill pretty well. 

Bill worked at GM during the day, but in the evenings, he would work on cars in his own garage at his house. He would buy cars that had mechanical problems, fix them up, and then sell them. Since he never put the titles in his name and only took cash for the cars, this was a pretty lucrative side business for him. 

I started working with Bill every free moment I got, and there was never a shortage of things to work on. At times his driveway looked like a mini junk yard. He was always bartering with the local junk yards to get parts for one car or another. Often times he would trade a shell of a car for an engine to put in another car. He would do just about anything mechanical on a car except for rebuilding transmissions. He would do some work on a transmission like replacing a clutch, pressure plate, and throw-out bearing, or replacing a torque converter, but rarely would he go any further than that. Other work he would farm out to a transmission shop that he had a relationship with. 

I learned a lot from Bill, and he loved to teach. I used to ask him questions I knew the answer too just so he could have the opportunity to teach me something. Even if I knew the answer, there was usually a new nugget of information in the explanation that I didn't know. Bills garage was heated, so we worked on cars year round, and he had a huge assortment of tools. I really learned a lot from Bill and I got to know a lot of people in Dixboro as a result. 

Dixboro was a small town just outside of Ann Arbor. Through Bill I met Jim who owned the Dixboro gas station. In my senior year in high school, I worked for Jim at the gas station. I pumped gas and was a light duty mechanic. I did mostly oil changes and basic maintenance, but there were times I got to work on an engine too. I remember one time changing a timing chain on a Dodge pickup owned my one of our plowing customers. 

Once I finished high school, I ended up getting a factory job, and spent less and less time in Dixboro. The skills that I learned working with both Bill and Jim have served me well my entire life. I actually don't care about cars at all. I don't look at a car and think it would be cool to have. A car to me is a tool that gets me from one place to another, and if it can carry me and my bike and kayak, then it is a cool car. What I liked about cars in high school was fixing things that were broken. I love taking a problem breaking it down into small pieces and figure out where the failure is. To me working on a car or fixing a server computer are basically the same skills. Fixing things is what gives my life purpose.

Herb David's and other Teen Year Jobs

My first real job was working at Herb David's Guitar Studio. I can't remember exactly when I started working there, but I think it might have actually been before I was fourteen and old enough to work. I was definitely working there when I was fourteen until I was sixteen. I had been taking guitar lessons there for a little while, and one evening after my lesson, Herb asked me if I would be interested in working for him. He had a kid that had been doing cleaning and stocking, but he had quit. I was exited to the opportunity to get a real job and stop delivering papers in the morning. I started working for him when he still had his space on State Street in Ann Arbor. 

My official title was "The Kid". My job description was to do whatever Herb wanted me to do. One of my main duties was keeping the place clean. I had to dust all the guitars, clean the kitchen, bathroom, and lesson rooms, vacuum everywhere. I also had to move stock from the basement, take repairs to and from the shop, and run all kinds of errands. Whether it be shopping for bathroom supplies, getting things from the hardware store for the shop, or taking the deposit to the bank, I kind of did it all. I also helped customers with questions about guitars when the sale people were busy.

In 1982, Herb bought a house at the corner of Liberty and 5th avenue, and we moved the business into there. The basement was where we stored the new stock guitars, the first floor was the sales area, the second floor was where the lesson rooms were and Herbs office, and the third floor was the repair shop. It was really a nice layout for the shop. 

I really enjoyed the job and working with all the people there. Herb was really a tough employer though. He would do a white glove test on all the rooms, and he always found a piece of molding above a door or window that I had missed. Getting paid was always a challenge. Pay day would come and I would go to his office to get my check, and he would decide that was the best time to do an inspection, or he would have an errand he needed run, pretty much anything to delay giving me my check. Inevitably, I would get my check and run up the street to the bank and get there a few minutes after 4, and they would be closed which would mean I didn't have any money to do things on a Friday night. 

It's funny, but getting paid has been a problem that has recurred throughout my professional life. I have had a number of managers who will sit on time sheets or invoices without signing them for weeks delaying my paycheck over and over. I remember one manager taking almost three months to sign and an invoice. Situations like that have made it feast of famine over all my years as a consultant. I have been really fortunate in the past few years to have good managers who really put a priority on people getting paid for their work. 

While working at Herb David's I also had a couple of other jobs too. There was the paper route in the beginning, but then a pet store opened in the mall near my house called Scamp Pets, and I got a job there for a while. Tom was the name of the owner, and he worked around my schedule at Herb Davids. He was really a nice guy and it was quite a contrast working for him verses Herb. I did stocking, cleaning the fish tanks and other cages, and sales. He had one of the old manual cash registers, which weren't all that old at the time. Credit cards were still swiped manually, and we had to call in for authorizations if it was over $20. Checks were still the most common way to pay for things, so it really was a different time. 

I am not sure how long I worked at Scamps, but I think it was less than a year. Tom's son started working there in the evenings to help out, and he ended up hiring another girl to run the cash register. It was hard to him to keep working around my schedule at Herb Davids, and since I was going to school downtown for high school, I decided to keep working at Herb's and leave Scamps. Shortly after that, Tom got really sick and ended up having to sell the business. My friend Ben Lewis' mom bought the store, and ran it for a number of years. Tom died very shortly after selling the store.

Prior to turning sixteen, I had one other job that I only held for a couple of weeks. My friend Brad had gotten a job at SEMCA which stood for Southeast Michigan Consumer Alliance. it was telemarketing job selling a discount card that was accepted in quite a few businesses in Ann Arbor. Since I was only fifteen, I had to get a work permit which is really the only reason I mention this job since I didn't work there long enough for it to matter. 

Getting a work permit meant going to the Ann Arbor Public Schools administration building. I talked to a woman and she started filling out the permit, but at some point she said she couldn't give me the permit because the company didn't carry workman's comp insurance. I really didn't understand why that was a problem since all I was going to do was use a telephone, but the woman wouldn't budge. As she was walking away from the counter, I looked around and reached over and grabbed the work permit pad that she had left half filled out, and I took it. At school the next day, I had one of my friends who had good handwriting fill out the work permit and sign it with a fictitious name. 

It took less than two weeks to realize that commissioned telemarketing was not the job for me. I learned very quickly that I had a phobia of talking to strangers on the phone. I had a script that I was supposed to read from, but I typically started stuttering and rarely made it through the script. I also didn't know in advance how much people hate telemarketers. Being hung up on was actually very polite compared to some of the responses I got. I can't remember if I actually quite or just never went back, but I do remember worrying about the work permit. The form stated that once an employee quit, it was supposed to be returned to the Ann Arbor Public Schools. I am pretty sure that never happened, at least I never heard from them. 

I have always enjoyed working, and even when I had crappy bosses, I still learned something from the situation. Every experience, especially those in my younger years, molded me into the person I am today. My work ethic and tolerance were shaped by these early jobs, and with each subsequent job I became more skilled in one way or another. All experience is learning, and even if it doesn't seem like it at the time, everything learned helps you in the future.  

Paper Routes

When I was young, all I ever wanted to do was get a job. I liked having money to do things and buy stuff, and I really wanted to make my own. I mowed lawns, and I did other things like sell vegetables from the garden along with metal pipe I found in the woods. 

In fifth grade I got my first paper route. It was a Detroit Free Press route, so the paper was delivered in the morning, and the route was pretty spread out because most people got the Ann Arbor News. I can't remember the kid I took it over from, but I think he was the older brother of a friend of mine. Being a morning route, I had to get up in time to have all the papers delivered by 7 am. This eventually meant that I had to get up at 4:30 am to get them there on time. 

In the summer time, the paper route wasn't bad because I could ride my bike. I had baskets on the back and one on the handlebars. For most days, I could fit a lot of papers in each basket, so I didn't need to restock as often, but Thursday and Sundays were brutal. On Thursday you had the additional ads that needed to be inserted in the paper, and on Sunday the paper was thicker in general, plus you had to insert the comics and ads in each paper. The Sunday paper was too thick to take on my bike, so my dad and I built a large wagon to carry the papers in. 

In the winter time, I would ride my bike if the roads were clear of snow, but it was often pretty treacherous. The rest of the time I would have to walk the entire route which was several miles long. When the sidewalks were covered with snow, it was extremely difficult to deliver papers. If the weather was particularly nasty, my dad would usually help me with my route. 

By the time I was in junior high, I had expanded to five routes and was delivering papers everywhere north of Plymouth road and west of Green road. It took me hours every morning to get the papers delivered, and I was always tired. Delivering the papers was half the battle, the other half was collecting from the customers. 

Being a paper boy really meant that you owned your own business. Basically the paper company was providing you franchise services. Customers could sign up for the paper and pay a set price via the company, but then everything else fell to the delivery boy. I would deliver the papers, bill the customer, collect the money, and then pay for the papers. Whatever was left was mine. One of the problems was that if a customer didn't pay, it came out of my money. It was a lot of work to keep track of who had and hadn't paid. There were bonus's if you sold new subscriptions though. I actually earned an Atari video game system by selling enough new subscriptions. 

By the time I started high school, I had another job at Herb Davids, and I also worked at Scamp pets for a while, and even a telemarketing job for a couple of weeks. I was ready to be done with delivering papers. My dad had been helping me more and more as the routes grew, and he ended up taking over the paper routes when I stopped doing it. I never quite understood why, but he said it was a nice way to make some tax free cash, so he continued delivering the papers for several years after I quit. 

Looking back on it now, delivering papers was one of the hardest jobs I have done in my life. Considering I was only ten years old when I started, that was a ton of responsibility to take on at that age. Considering I was still swimming until seventh grade, my days were packed with the paper route, school, swimming, and almost no free time at all. I definitely learned a lot from the experience. Understanding how a business runs in elementary school is not something most kids have any idea about. Forrest got this same kind of experience because we bought a restaurant when he was ten, so that is probably why we are so alike when it comes to working. 

These days there really aren't any newspapers, and if there is home delivery, it is not done by children anymore. I am not sure if that is a good thing or not. I think having elementary school age children getting up at four in the morning is probably detrimental to their education and social development, but on the other hand it builds a strong work ethic and an appreciation for what it takes to make a dollar. I would say the paper route was really significant in defining my work and business sense.