Merle Sneed - Father of the Century

Excuse Me, But I Have The Shirt To Prove It. I'm off work tomorrow, which feels mighty good at the moment. I also received my yearly allotment of work shirts from my employer today which is mighty depressing, because it seems like opening the bags commits me to working for them for another year. I was listening to a podcast today and the podcaster was talking about a job he had working in pizza business located inside a gas station. He was too old to be working there and he was embarrassed when other people found out about his job. He said that one day when he was taking out the trash, some kids started yelling at him and calling him a big loser, so he claims that he lied to them and said he was collecting cans out of the trash because that seemed like a more prestigious job than making pizza in a gas station. That reminded me of an incident that happened in about 1979. When oldest son Sneed, who is now a highly trained medical professional, earning far more money than his old dad ever dreamed of, was about 6 or 7 years old, I bought him his first new two-wheeler. It cost $27.95 plus tax from Fedco, which was a discount chain store. Fedco was owned by the Price family, who later founded Price Clubs, which is now Costco. Isn't that fascinating? Son Sneed left the bike lying on the sidewalk in front of our house and it was stolen. Since I was making about $150 per week in those days and the lovely Mrs. Sneed was a struggling college student, this was kind of a big loss. I decided to teach him a life lesson by making him earn the money to replace the bike. I couldn't have him do chores because I would have to pay him which would have defeated my motive and he was too young to put to work in a real job, so I hit upon the idea of making him collect aluminum cans, that we could recycle for cash. And since he was only about 6, I had to go collect them with him. Not a really thoroughly thought out plan, in retrospect. We began to collect cans and collect them and collect them. At a 15 cents per pound it takes a lot of cans to get to $27.95. Our back porch was soon piled high with bags of sticky smelly can, oozing black goo, stinking of stale beer and attracting armies of ants and swarms of flies. Again, not a really thoroughly thought out plan. One day, when I was off work for the Veteran's Day holiday, I took son Sneed to a park to search the trash for aluminum treasure. As we went from barrel to barrel, we came to a ball field where two drunk a-holes were sitting in the bleachers drinking beer. I tried to pretend they weren't there staring at us with drunken smirks, but they soon began to make snide remarks about us. When I didn't respond, they started in on the kid about how his old man was a loser, because he had to make his kid pick through the trash for cans to support the family. This from a couple of idiots drinking in the park in the middle of the day. I told son Sneed to ignore them, but they persisted. Finally, I decided that I had enough of their foolishness, so I went over to where they were sitting and told them that he was earning money to replace something he lost because of carelessness and I would appreciate them not interfering. I think having a small child in tow kept me from being pummelled by two drooling drunks, but perhaps my firm tone and manly demeanor, gave them pause. What? It could happen. Well, after several weeks of collecting cans, we loaded them in the back of our very fine 1976 Plymouth Volare wagon, perhaps the worst car ever built, and hauled them to the recycling center. Our haul was worth $12 or about nothing per hour. I ask the guy how much if we also threw in the Volare and he lowered the price to $11. I'll be appearing here all week. I wound up kicking in $15 bucks and we replaced the bike. Let's see, I exposed my small child to the drunken rabble, dug around in filthy garbage containers like a crazed raccoon, smashed, bagged and hauled one zillion dirty cans and kicked in $15 cash from my own pocket, just to save $15 bucks. Yup, a standard Merle outcome. I'm not sure if son Sneed learned any lessons beyond learning that his dad was a bonehead, but he turned out to be a great son, fine husband and terrific father, so I'm taking the credit. He is a success despite me. Merle. P.S. I once made him apologize to a store manager about something he and another kid took from the store when he was also about 6. The other kid's folks said their kid wasn't there when the item was stolen and even if he was, he didn't take it and even if he did take it, my kid probably made him. The other kid got off scot-free. To this day when this incident is remembered at Casa Sneed, the part most remembered is that I made son Sneed shoulder all the blame and Kevin didn't even get in trouble. Things in this blog represented to be fact, may or may not actually be true. The writer is frequently wrong and sometimes just full of it. Tag: Daily Life Personal Finance Humor