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SteveDallas · 10-23-2005, 05:18 PM

My earliest memory of my dad's job was that he did some kind of desk stuff at a local fishing tackle wholesaler. At some point when I was about 8 or 9 he started going on the road selling stuff for them. He then left this job and became the western NC sales rep for a tackle company based in Charleston, SC. He eventually ended up doing the same job for a similar company from Alabama after the Charleston company went belly-up. (I remember him saying that his last paycheck bounced. I'm not sure if he ever collected the money or not.)

During these times, he did a lot of driving around to places that were almost all within a day's round trip of our house. With some exceptions, the accounts were small bait shops and marinas. (For a while one of the companies was the suppier of bicycle accessories and parts to Kroger mega-supermarkets, and so he would stop in there to top up their supplies of horns, inner tubes, and pumps and straighten up the displays.) I occasionally went with him and, in my youthful naivete, initially wondered what the heck he got paid for as I hung out watching him chat for an hour or two with the owner of a fishing hole that wouldn't have looked out of place as a Dukes of Hazzard set. Of course, these visits were always concluded, seemingly as an afterthought, with orders for fishing rods, lures, and whatnot.

At some point in the mid 90s this dried up too, and he ended up working at one of the larger of his accounts, a bait store owned by a guy whom he had known for ages.

When that ended with the friend's retirement and liquidation of the store, there being nobody willing or able to take it over, Dad went to work as a janitor for the local school district.

The point of this very long and winding story, is that he told me it was the best job he ever had. Of course he was working for the state, so he got state employee fringe benefits, but apparently he regarded showing up and cleaning up kids' puke for a steady salary plus benefits & vacation time as superior to selling casting reels on commission.

10-23-2005, 05:18 PM	#11
SteveDallas Your Bartender Join Date: Jan 2002 Location: Philly Burbs, PA Posts: 7,651	My earliest memory of my dad's job was that he did some kind of desk stuff at a local fishing tackle wholesaler. At some point when I was about 8 or 9 he started going on the road selling stuff for them. He then left this job and became the western NC sales rep for a tackle company based in Charleston, SC. He eventually ended up doing the same job for a similar company from Alabama after the Charleston company went belly-up. (I remember him saying that his last paycheck bounced. I'm not sure if he ever collected the money or not.) During these times, he did a lot of driving around to places that were almost all within a day's round trip of our house. With some exceptions, the accounts were small bait shops and marinas. (For a while one of the companies was the suppier of bicycle accessories and parts to Kroger mega-supermarkets, and so he would stop in there to top up their supplies of horns, inner tubes, and pumps and straighten up the displays.) I occasionally went with him and, in my youthful naivete, initially wondered what the heck he got paid for as I hung out watching him chat for an hour or two with the owner of a fishing hole that wouldn't have looked out of place as a Dukes of Hazzard set. Of course, these visits were always concluded, seemingly as an afterthought, with orders for fishing rods, lures, and whatnot. At some point in the mid 90s this dried up too, and he ended up working at one of the larger of his accounts, a bait store owned by a guy whom he had known for ages. When that ended with the friend's retirement and liquidation of the store, there being nobody willing or able to take it over, Dad went to work as a janitor for the local school district. The point of this very long and winding story, is that he told me it was the best job he ever had. Of course he was working for the state, so he got state employee fringe benefits, but apparently he regarded showing up and cleaning up kids' puke for a steady salary plus benefits & vacation time as superior to selling casting reels on commission. Last edited by SteveDallas; 10-23-2005 at 05:21 PM.