When we were kids, there was a lot of focus on what you were going to do "when you grow up." But I don't think it was anything like as intense as it is now. Even by the time I was cruising through College I was still giving no thought to plans for the future whatsoever. Maybe it had something to do with rootlessness. By the time I matriculated at Colorado College in C. Spgs. I had gone to three other colleges and I was still a sophomore. I did take a year out during which time I spent about 9 months as an inmate labor supervisor at Detention Camp 13, 1250 Ensenal Canyon Road, Malibu CA. I ran a crew of 12 convicts all of whom were older than me. We busted rock and worked on the road grade. There was only one time a guy threw an ax at me -- is that lucky or unlucky? I guess lucky, he missed. Anyway even when I was back in college and therefore naturally more "Mature," I still can't remember having a single thought about career or future or the like. By the spring of my senior year the big concern was the military draft. This was before they started the lottery. Everyone was eligible. I thought I'd be rejected because I'd injured my hand and three fingers didn't close properly. They saw things differently and declared me 1A, so I wrote them a post card that I was a birthright Quaker and a CO. They believed me, and they should have, it was, after all, true, so they made me IO (Conscientious Objector). By this time I had gotten into Temple law School but there was no deferment for me so I had to drop out and go to NYC and get an Alternative Service job. I became a case worker/investigator for the Welfare Dept. Spent the next two years in Ft. Apache, Bronx and Bed Sty, Brooklyn. Sometime in the middle of all this I got married to Kathy Welsh. We had a baby, Eliza, pretty soon after that but didn't worry about things too much as long as we made ends meet. Wait a minute, come to think of it, that means we worried a lot. I was a cab driver, waiter, firewood cutter, maple sugar boiler. And then along came another kid, Lukie. In 1970 I saw in the paper that this TV quiz show was looking for contestants. And needing a wind fall because my car had blown a head gasket on the NJ Tpk, I applied. They called that night and told me I was on the next day. I had never even seen the show, let alone played the game. That's why I lost. Still I won $600. the exact amount of my car repair.
A day or two later the production company asked me to come up and run through a pilot they were developing. They were paying like $50 and I was, ah, between engagements. So anyway while I was there the producer of the TV show I had been on saw me and invited me to his office. "That story about the maple sugar you told on the air last week sounded like a stretcher." " Uh hugh. Well, If you're asking if the Sugar House is a lifetime appointment, you're right. That's a no." "Okay, so why don't you take a job here. We have an opening on the writing staff.
And just like that I had a profession and I guess a career. Anyway I've never made a buck doing anything but writing copy ever since. About 3 years later NBC moved the entire Quiz show biz to Cal. They wanted better looking audience members/contestants. The head of Daytime TV said the people of NYC looked like scum bags. At that very time someone on PEI in Canada told me they had a fully outfitted summer theater that the former producer quit on and that if I would run it they'd let me have if for $500 for the summer.
YaHoo! For 4 years I hired about 25 people every summer to act, build sets, stage manage, run the box office etc. etc. Wild and wooly. But what a great time. And believe it or not, the shows were really good. Somehow we also broke even -- more or less. In the winter I got a job as a news reporter for the main PEI daily paper "The Guardian". Mr. Hancock, the publisher came down to see me as Stanley Kowalski and was back stage after the show to talk. He was just about of offer me the job when this GD actor named Sebastian stepped out of the back stage shower. It was directly behind me. "Hi, everybody! Anybody see my towel?" For some reason Mr. Hancock offered me the job anyway. Living on PEI was great. I really loved it. Just constant adventures and high jinx and fun people. One weekend, about 4 years into it, Kathy's parents drove up and took her and the kids for a "vacation" back in PA. A week or so later I called and asked when she was coming back. "We're not. We moved. We now live in PA. You are to wrap things up and come down here. We don't live on PEI anymore." Maybe she saw living up there with a different set of opticals from myself.
Once again it was as tough locating a job in Philadelphia as it had been in NYC. Finally I ended up writing direct mail promotions for sleazoid insurance companies. Things got better as I went along. After about two years I got a job writing for t