My Dad (Bucky) had a career that involved numbers. I have chronicled Bucky's quest to become baseball player which dominates the perception of him. The baseball dream ended when I was born in 1940 and he had to get a real job just like the rest of us at age 20.
My earliest recollection is that he was hired to do accounting duties by the Borden Cheese Company in Plymouth. The world was at war in the early 1940's so nothing was permanent. Our family got transfered to Green Bay by Borden for a year before my Dad went into the military service.
In 1946, Bucky came home from the Phillipines and I think got his job back in accounting with Borden. The military had a program that paid for college called the GI Bill and my Dad went to school at Lakeland (it was called Mission House). Bucky's Dad died in October of 1946 so the management of the City Club fell on his Mom (Myrna). Over the next five years, plans would be made for Bucky and brother Bob to take over running the City Club. Myrna moved out and the Bucky and Bob took over. It was a strained relationship. It failed. Bob went on to be a pilot for TWA and Myrna moved back to take over the City Club.
And my Dad went off to pursue a career in accounting. He was about 1 year short of getting his college degree. He got Myrna to invest in a truck (sort of like a milk truck with front sliding doors). It was franchised through a company called Cun-O-Car. The truck was outfitted with countertops, calculating machines and a machine that did ledger sheets. The idea was that he could drive his truck to the job site (companies and individuals) and he had all the tools necessary be a full service accountant.
The Cun-O-Car concept fell through but he developed strong relationships with several clients. One was an oil company in Sheboygan Falls and another with a prominent mink farmer. I remember the mink farmer had trouble paying Bucky so they gave him a mink pelt neck scarf for my Mom on Christmas. You can't eat a mink scarf.
He then got Myrna to remodel the "side dining room" at the City Club and he opened an accounting office. It was a base to operate from but not many "walk-in" clients.
Eventually, Bucky started doing the accounting for the Plymouth Foundry. That evolved into becoming General Manager but he never lost his responsibility for the books. That is the position he held when he died in 1957.
Bucky was always good with numbers. He could perform many functions such as multiplying and dividing in his head. He insisted on knowing batting averages of baseball players carried out to four decimal places. We would play games mentally converting baseball fractions to decimals and argue about who was right.
So you see, Bucky was a bookie. His life revolved around numbers. The great irony of this whole story is that Bucky failed miserably managing his own finances. Go figure!
The lesson Grasshoppers is that society tends to label us by our career path. My Dad's path was pretty clear. What is yours?
Love,
Dad