LEARNING HARD WORK - Segment 2 (Scroll down for opening segment and earlier chapters)
With all my friends involved
in hard work, and other questionable activities, I focused on developing my
mind. After all, my teachers said it was
one of the most undeveloped regions of the world. I understood why; there was little there to
develop.
I was particularly interested
in the field of statistical analysis. Each
day I would scour the sports pages, as well as the weather page, gathering
critical information that was basically useless trivia. But for those who loved useless trivia, it
was very useful.
I was always trying to share my
storehouse of knowledge with Lester, but fearing a withering attack of sports
scores and weather facts, he would just run home, board up the house, and call
for police protection. He had no interest
in who won an important ballgame, or how many degrees the temperature rose
during a two-minute period in Spearfish, South Dakota, in 1943---(On January
22, 1943, the temperature went from four below zero to forty-five above zero in
two minutes; a world record.)
With my knowledge in useless
information, I was certain I would land a job with a major sports team, or the
national weather service.
While I was waiting for my
dream offer, a scout for the local news service called and offered me a not-so-lucrative,
long-term contract as a paperboy. Being
concerned about my image as a lazy slacker, I was skeptical. What would people think, seeing me out in
public, working? But Mom encouraged me
to take the job. She said it would be
far better than spending the rest of my life as an orphan.
My new venture gave me an
opportunity to develop my throwing arm for baseball by riding around town on my
bike, throwing newspapers onto people’s porches. Only once did a paper take a bad bounce and
end up in a customer’s living room. The
next day I took a bad bounce and ended up in their living room…with money for
the broken window.
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