Original anecdotes, commentary, rumination, and occasional pontification.
JANUARY 10, 2024 – During my sheltered life leading up to the sales job, I’d had little interaction with Black America. What encounters I did have with Blacks were either superficial or not at all instructive. At the superficial end, when I was in kindergarten our family took a road trip to Florida via the …
JANUARY 9, 2024 – My running and skiing marathon phase was still a few years ahead of me, but by 1974 I’d run and skied my share of long distances. The salient features of these sports is that even when you’re on a team, you’re always on your own. You sink or swim alone. The …
JANUARY 8, 2024 – No element of the Southwestern sales formula was a mere suggestion. The daily start time, the evening finish time, the daily door-knocking quota, the get-yourself-across-the-threshold quota, the give-your-pitch quota, the closing quota, the closing procedure, the weeks-end letter to your booster back home, and the weeks-end report you turned into your …
JANUARY 7, 2023 – When I first heard the Southwestern method of finding summer living quarters, I was dubious. As the hours grew on that cold rainy miserable Saturday in Buffalo, I decided the approach to finding housing was nothing short of hare-brained. Yet in the end, it proved to be effective. And who was …
JANUARY 6, 2024 – Late Friday of training week, the sales managers gathered their minions to inform us of our assigned territories. Curious about the Deep South I was secretly hoping—despite full knowledge that the summer climate would be unbearable—that we’d get assigned to some Godforsaken part of Alabama. Since I’d taken a swan dive …
JANUARY 5, 2024 – The week of sales training was about 25% actual sales training and 75% attitude adjustment. The sales part was intense, well-organized, and highly disciplined. It had to be, since the only way Southwestern sold product was by a bunch of callow college students pounding the pavement—and pounding doors along the way. …
JANUARY 4, 2024 – After final exams at the end of spring semester, I parked myself for a week at my sister’s house in Jamaica Plain, just outside of Boston. It would be my last stretch of freedom, I assumed, until summer’s end. If everything worked out as planned, after the sales job I’d return …
JANUARY 3, 2024 – Soon I received the congratulatory word that I was officially a member of Keith Ronck’s Southwestern sales team for the summer of ’74. My friend Mike would serve as my mentor, and in both capacities he called me to gush with enthusiast support. “Act enthusiastic, you become enthusiastic,” he said, leading …
JANUARY 2, 2024 – In the wake of Mike’s visit I mulled over the whole concept of knocking on doors, selling a one-volume encyclopedia with the heft of the huge Webster’s dictionary on the stand in the reference area of the library. It was too big for Mike to have lugged all the way to …
DECEMBER 31, 2023 – (Cont.) One and a half years as an undergraduate business major hadn’t changed Mike one iota—except he was no longer wearing his Interlochen uniform. He was still very much “in your face,” and when I introduced him to a few of my college friends, I could tell that they didn’t quite …
DECEMBER 30, 2023 – In high school I had a friend named Mike. By general consensus, Mike was a pain in the neck but an endearing one, if that dichotomy can be imagined. His high energy could be mistaken for impulsivity, and he was of strong opinions, intensely conveyed. He took special pleasure in watching …
Blogger’s Note: A new mini-memoir series! DECEMBER 29, 2023 – In searching for a new blog series topic, I dusted the cobwebs off my past to see what material might spring forth from cartons in the attic of my memory. Miraculously, some rich stuff surfaced from a tired old cardboard box labeled (figuratively), “SUMMER JOBS …
DECEMBER 26, 2023 – In the context of a musical performance, my dad used to say that greatness lay in the details—not any single detail, he noted, but in the aggregate effect of all the details. “Therefore,” he said, “as a performer you have to get all the details right.” Dad’s musical refinement came as …
DECEMBER 24, 2023 – (Cont.) As my Grandpa Nilsson used to say on this day (out of earshot of other adults, except Dad), “’Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house, not a creature was stirring . . . not even a mouse turd.” Then he’d laugh at his own joke, and as …
DECEMBER 23, 2023 – During the course of my 24-hour stay at the Red Cabin, a dense fog filled the surrounding woods. When I hiked along the lakeshore path, I seemed to be walking along the border of infinity: beyond about 50 feet from shore, the lake itself was completely missing from view. Back in …
DECEMBER 22, 2023 – Today I drove through mist, fog, and rain to our “Red Cabin” on the shores of Grindstone Lake in northwest Wisconsin. Usually the lake surface freezes by Thanksgiving, and by Christmas the ice will safely support any number of recreational activities, from skating, skiing and ice-fishing to cross-lake snowmobiling. Trees of …
JUNE 1, 2023 – We humans are expert at treating life as one big experiment. We often talk about our country that way, as in, the “Great American Experiment,” which, if any aspect of our lives is an experiment, our construct of a nation-state certainly is. In a scientific context, experiments originate from hypotheses, but …
MAY 25, 2023 – (Cont.) Aluminum docks are fine—if you’re installing or removing them: they’re light and easily assembled and disassembled. But I despair over the visual pollution they cause along the shoreline. On more crowded portions of the 16-mile shore around Grindstone Lake, the dominant features are white-painted aluminum docks and huge aluminum boat …
MAY 24, 2023 – (Cont.) Carl and Grandpa eventually grew too old to play any role in “dock-in” day—and thus, too old for the Old Crow that would follow the arduous annual ritual. The dock itself grew old too, of course, and had to be replaced. Dad was now lord of the manor—and harbor master, …
MAY 23, 2023 – (Cont.) What made the cradle so dangerous were the hand cranks. Made of cast iron, they were connected to other cast iron fittings in such a way that by squeezing a mechanism on the crank handle, you could lock the crank in place or release it so you could turn the …
MAY 22, 2023 – (Cont.) What amazed me as much as Carl’s steel driving skill was his ability to line things up so that the holes in the sides of the dock frames lined up perfectly with the holes in the pipe brackets. After Carl had driven the pipes down into the lake bed and …
MAY 21, 2023 – Way back in time, “dock-in” day was an annual ritual in the lake and cabin country of northern Minnesota and Wisconsin. Every family with a rustic, lacustrian getaway had its unique formula, but invariably the affair involved the dock itself—bracketed pipes and wooden dock sections heavier than sin; a steel boat …
MAY 20, 2023 – Today a sister called me to catch up. At some juncture she said, “I’m sure you remembered, but today is Dad’s birthday.” “Yeah,” I said, adding that he would’ve been 101. “Maybe it’s a good thing he didn’t live that long,” she said, light-heartedly. I agreed. Rarely are sight, taste, hearing, …
MAY 18, 2023 – In the early days of my legal career, I dreaded “CLE” (Continuing Legal Education) seminars. Al Gore had yet to invent the internet, so “webinars” didn’t yet exist either. Even “casual Fridays” were a thing of the future. You had to attend all sessions in person and wear your usual uniform—a …
MAY 11, 2023 – Today I accompanied our seven-year-old granddaughter to her three favorite playgrounds. I’d been to each before, but this time the energy level—hers, not mine—was higher than usual. As she climbed twisted ladders, hung upside down on elaborately arranged monkey bars, and zoomed down a long, two-stage, ground-based roller slide—“I’ll race you …