Escapee: Bell Ringing Ain’t Easy

Escapee: One of the roughest jobs I had was as a Salvation Army Bell-ringer, becoming so cold, that once I got back home, I had to sit in front of my forced-air heater for an hour before I finally felt normal. One winter I rang the bell in front of a supermarket located in the northern part of town. The store wouldn’t let me come into the foyer where the carts are kept, to ring the bell. I was forced to stand in sub-zero temperatures with a chill factor that year, bell in hand. Half a year later, I came in to buy some stuff there. Inside the door was a bake sale by some civic group, and THEY were allowed inside the store. I thought about delivering a six-month-late complaint to the store’s manager but it would’ve just fallen on deaf ears, wouldn’t it? Full post below.

Question: How often do you donate to bell-ringers?

Readers’ Advisory: This is a bloggo-saurus. A long post. So if you don’t wanna read it, you can bail out of it now…

Have I had hard times? Oh, that question really burrowed itself into my brain. And what should have appeared in my blog appears here instead. Sorry, folks…

Trying to survive in the ‘80s and ‘90s in Coeur d’Alene was really, really hard. The best I could do was find a part-time job in a donut shop, where I worked 3 and a half years. Once, money got so tight, I went to McDonald’s, spending a $1.00 silver certificate to get a Big Mac. I had virtually no money, and who knew when I would have any, anytime soon? For years, I’d been in and out of apartments because I couldn’t get the rent paid. I moved four times in one year. I tried and tried applying for all kinds of jobs, went out on hundreds of interviews, and always got passed over.

Things improved somewhat in the late ‘90s, for reasons I outlined in my November 21st Atmospheric Ruminations blog. After quitting that job, I spun my wheels for a while before finding a Taxi Drivers job with a really chintzy outfit in CDA. I was lucky to earn $400 a month as a daytime driver. I wouldn’t drive nights; all the creeps and drunks come out after the sun goes down. I had also found a job at a business in the CDA industrial park, but the work, the people and the place were so miserable, that I quit after a couple of months. I then found a similar job at a manufacturing business in Hayden Lake, and I was laid off after 4 days. That place was even worse than the previous job! I found still another such job at a firm just north of Dalton Gardens; that place was so miserable I left after half a DAY. I guess my brain just doesn’t do light-labor-intensive jobs all that well. That employer made their employees stand while performing their assembly-line duties; the boss said employees perform better when standing. Yeah, right, tell that to my Lower Back!

One of the roughest jobs I had was as a Salvation Army Bell-ringer, becoming so cold, that once I got back home, I had to sit in front of my forced-air heater for an hour before I finally felt normal. One winter I rang the bell in front of a supermarket located in the northern part of town. The store wouldn’t let me come into the foyer where the carts are kept, to ring the bell. I was forced to stand in sub-zero temperatures with a chill factor that year, bell in hand. Half a year later, I came in to buy some stuff there. Inside the door was a bake sale by some civic group, and THEY were allowed inside the store. I thought about delivering a six-month-late complaint to the store’s manager but it would’ve just fallen on deaf ears, wouldn’t it?

I don’t know if I’m qualified to say I underwent hard times; after all, I never had to walk six miles to school in cardboard shoes with 16 feet of snow on the ground. I was brought up to Never Feel Sorry For Myself. So what kept me going? I had dreams of trying to ‘make it’ in CDA since it was my hometown. But, I found out You Can Never Go Home Anymore. CDA may be beautiful, but it was sometimes a hard, cold, unfeeling place, and in that regard, will probably not improve anytime soon, what with more and more newbies coming to the area, overcrowding the land, and taxing an already outmoded infrastructure.

I passionately loved CDA when I grew up there. I’d moved away, chasing my dreams (which didn’t work out), and was more than happy to return in the ‘80s. I really did want to make it there. It was a great place to grow up. Gosh, Playland Pier, city park, city beach, Sherman Avenue, the ball fields, Tubbs Hill; so many memories. Every street in that town has a piece of me on it. I walked all over the city as a kid, I rode my bike on almost every street, drove my car virtually everywhere in that town and later on, ran over 15,000 miles on city streets and trails. CDA will always be a big part of my life. Will I ever return there? Probably not.