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RETURNING TO NEW YORK for the summer was out of the question. It was spring of my freshman year, and I wasn’t about to acquiesce to my parents’ wishes, not after the whirlwind of college life that included an introduction to pot and dating non-Jewish girls from small Midwestern towns. I didn’t give much thought to what I’d actually do. Maybe meeting girls taking summer school in The Grill or driving all the way to Miami and party, party, party.
But when summer came around, these compensatory fantasies of an unsure 19-year-old proved elusive. The days passed slowly and I was desperate to find something to fill the time. Perhaps feeling guilty for having my college experience paid for and yet not returning home, I mulled the possibility of getting a job. I never worked in high school, despite my parents’ urging. They said I was spoiled and needed to learn the value of a dollar.
Every morning, I’d read the Chicago Tribune to see how the Yankees were doing. To get to the sports pages, I had to leaf through the classified ads. On one especially cheerless day, I found myself scanning the available jobs.
One in particular jumped out at me. I remembered how, as a kid, I’d race home on my bike to catch the Good Humor ice cream truck jingling on my block. The company was looking for a driver. Weary of the summer doldrums, I applied and got the job. It paid $2 an hour for an eight-hour day.
When I arrived at the truck garage, I was instructed to put on a white uniform and strap on a belt with a metal coin changer. I was given a map with my route highlighted by a twisting yellow line. My area was on the south side of the city, far from the university up north. An ice cream bar was 15 cents which, I was told, is quince (keen-say) in Spanish. One of the guys had already loaded my truck since it was my first time out.
Accustomed to the smooth stick shift of my silver 1965 Corvette, I struggled with the truck’s clunky gearbox. After an hour or so on the road, I became aware that the sound of my arrival didn’t attract the bustle I’d imagined.
There was a mother waving from a window high up in a poorly maintained apartment building. Next, the sweaty brown-skinned back of a man in black shorts and bare feet, stooping to change the rear tire of a badly damaged red pickup. Now, a girl in a T-shirt running up with her quince in one outstretched hand and the other pointing to the toasted almond ice cream bar painted on the side of the truck.
About midway through the steamy afternoon, a Mexican boy maybe age 10 or 11 walked up and just stood by the truck door all glum. When I looked down at him from my seat, he began to cry. In between sobs, he said his brother had been injured the day before in a car accident and was taken to the hospital. He didn’t ask for anything and was turning to leave.
“What’s your name?”
“Santiago.”
“Santiago, do you have a favorite flavor?”
“Chocolate mint, Mr. Good Humor man.”
I opened the freezer door and pulled out a box of a dozen chocolate mint bars. “Take this back to your mom and tell her I hope your brother will be okay.” As I drove off, I dropped $1.80 of my own loose change into the metal holder. Almost an hour’s worth of work.
The route completed, I returned to the garage and handed the coin changer to the foreman. As I was changing back into my street clothes, he tapped me on the shoulder. “Steve, you managed to bring in $48 in a tough neighborhood. Not much money left over for ice cream around there. Back tomorrow?”
“Sure, Mr. Dugan.”
That night, I felt the need to call my parents. I told my dad the whole story, from feeling a little lost to taking the job and what I saw on the route.
“We didn’t know why you chose not to come home, like your friends, but I’m thrilled you’ve been working. It’ll make your mother very happy.”
“Dad, some people have a really hard life.”
“Stevie, they put you in the barrio. The regulars don’t want to go there. No money in it. You’re the rich college kid. They figure their family needs the money more than you do.”
“Dad, I think I’m learning the value of a dollar.”
“I hope so, Stevie. Don’t go around like a big man just because you grew up on Long Island. The world’s got a lot to teach you. Hope you’re planning to come home for Thanksgiving. We’d love to see you.”
“I will, Dad. You can tell Mom.”
Steve Abramowitz is a psychologist in Sacramento, California. Earlier in his career, Steve was a university professor, including serving as research director for the psychiatry department at the University of California, Davis. He also ran his own investment advisory firm. Check out Steve’s earlier articles.
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Steve, I enjoyed this remembrance. Those early summer jobs do tend to stay with you. I likewise grew up in a very insular part of town and it was my summer jobs in high school which first showed me what life was like elsewhere—a part of my education I’ll always remember.
Our families and neighborhoods are so insular. Much of college education comes from outside the classroom. Coming from an almost all-Jewish high school, I was thunderstruck to learn that I was in a distinct minority. My parents drank hardly at all and never beer, so you can imagine how it was when I realized it was a social charm. My first date was “liberated” well before her time and insisted she pay for her part of our dinner. I was confused (and threatened) by her request and could only watch as she went about doing the numbers and counting out her cash. I learned that not all women would be as docile as my mother, nor should they be.
Steve, thanks for an enjoyable article. I think there is a lot of value in these early jobs. You learn a lot about others as well as yourself, and what you like and don’t like. It also feels good to earn your way. One summer I worked in a commercial refrigerator factory in the parts department. The supervisor had worked there his whole career and made it known he thought college, and college kids, were a waste of time. After 2 weeks of being criticized, I found a much better job. Motivation comes in many forms!
It’s great that the experience has stuck with you all this time.
I have come to think that alienation can be the mother of motivation. For the lucky and alert ones like yourself, this is true for our jobs. So many people hunker down in unsatisfying jobs for decades, when with a little hustle and fortitude they can look elsewhere. Often career achievement is blocked by a threatened or jealous boss. I had to leave a gratifying job once I had to accept my director couldn’t handle my success. Haven’t we all experienced that frustration somewhere along our career path?
Steve, has it ever crossed your mind that Santiago may remember that moment to this day? How his mother reacted? How it felt to see a Good Humor truck for the rest of his life? His grandchildren are probably sick of hearing the story, accompanied by a lecture on kindness. (“Oh, God, here comes Abuelo’s ice cream story again!”)
Moments of kindness make profound, lifelong impressions. You’ll never know how much you may have impacted him. Think about that and smile.
Mike, thank you so much for that sensitive comment. I think that the impact and appreciation may only be realized later in life. So many adult children who once vilified their parents or minimized their role in fostering the kids’ financial acumen later come to appreciate what has been given to them. As a teenager, I scorned my father for making me feel his business was as important as I was. He once said “you may think I’m an idiot now, but when you’re older and have your own children, you’ll think I was a genius.” Quite an exaggeration, but I often think of my money training as I go about fulfilling my financial responsibilities.
Steve, I’m hard-pressed to think of a better way that you could have spent that summer “vacation”. Sometimes, when we mix things up a little, we acquire life-long lessons that we couldn’t possibly have gleaned in any other way. Serendipity at its finest!
I confess I once sold encyclopedias (remember them?) door-to-door. After several weeks of pure futility, I finally landed a sale. The next day my supervisor called and told me the mother who had said she wanted them for her son, had bailed. so I would get no commission. I accepted my ill fortune, when a few days later the regional director called to tell me I had been scammed. My supervisor had met with the woman and made the sale himself! I ultimately got my just reward, but I learned to be vigilant.
Great story Steve. The life ripples from my first job effect me to this day.
I wrote the sports page for my high school newspaper, a role i relished and fit my interests and strengths well. My first “real” job was as the sports columnist for a small suburban newspaper close to college. But after I penned my first article, finals rolled around and I went AWOL. When I returned to my office a few weeks later, I found a note on my desk saying “you’re fired.” Apparently, editors who have obligations to fulfill are not as forgiving as my mother, who tolerated my disappearances when “helping” her plant the azaleas. I guess we all have a career not taken, and sports writing is one of mine. I often fantasy myself writing columns about the the role of race and sex in sports.
My first real summer job – a lifeguard at a city municipal swimming pool in Burlington, NC. This was where people went to swim if they weren’t members of the YMCA (visible from the lifeguard stand) or the country club. It taught me a lot about racial divides and equity differences. Not all the lessons were immediate, but they resonate with me still today.
You were so fortunate to have that experience and that it informs your social judgment even today. My first “real” job was at a university psychiatric center oriented to community mental health. I worked in a rural setting where people were struggling just to make ends meet. I learned how financial issues influence psychological well- being. I also saw that poverty is not exclusive to one race and that women were assigned low status and poorly paying jobs. These observations, like you said, have stayed with me.
That experience helped groom you for a career in psychology. Thank you.
So interesting you said that. I actually majored in social psychology before transferring into clinical. That direction would have involved study of the influence of culture on personality. Very observant of you!