Learn the Value of Hard Work, Imagination, and Education

Don't condescend to unskilled labor.
Try it for a half a day first.

--Anonymous

My dad had very little formal education. He was the oldest boy in a large farm family that rented poor quality land, and his dad wanted him working in the fields and the barn rather than sitting in school. Since grandpa was on the school board, he was able to interfere with dad's education. By the end of fourth grade, dad didn't attend very often. By the end of eighth grade, he stopped going altogether.

As a result, dad couldn't qualify for very many jobs. Doing simple paperwork was beyond him. Small in size, many people were reluctant to hire him for laboring work as well because they didn't realize he was exceptionally strong. But finally dad found places where he was accepted.

Dad worked hard to earn a living for us. Five nights a week he loaded and unloaded mail and freight from trucks and trains at the Santa Fe Railway. After eight hours of that work, he immediately went out to mow lawns and perform other gardening tasks during the day.

Around sundown, he would take a bath, eat a light dinner, and snooze for a few hours before waking up to do it all over again beginning at midnight. Some nights he would have to take a load of grass clippings and brush to the dump and laboriously pitchfork and shovel the refuse off in total darkness before he could go home to eat dinner.

On the weekends, he would have the "luxury" of eight hours of uninterrupted sleep. He lived in a perpetual daze brought about by sleep deprivation.

For a few years, he did even more. Realizing that he had some time available on Saturdays and Sundays when many people didn't want him to mow their lawns or do other types of gardening, dad got a job delivering furniture for a local store. This upped the hours he worked each week to over 100. He was exhausted all the time.

I was very proud of my dad because no one could keep up with him: I wanted to be just like him. I begged dad to let me work for him in the lawn business . . . but I insisted on being paid. Otherwise I felt it wasn't a real job. Dad went along with that because he had always resented the way his father had kept all of his earnings when he lived at home on the farm.

By the time I was three I could take a large basket of grass clippings from a mower and empty it into the back of the truck. At that age I could use hand clippers to clean around sprinklers and push a broom a little, too. I would work for him as much as I could after school and on Saturdays.

As I grew older and larger, I eventually learned to do all of the gardening tasks. He would also take me with him for some furniture deliveries and would pay me to help him even though I was too young to be hired by the furniture store.

Dad was often expected to single-handedly carry a refrigerator up six flights of narrow stairs. I would take a little of the weight and steer the top of the refrigerator in the right direction. I was also pressed into tree-cutting duty, even though I was deathly afraid of heights. With my tiny frame, I could go to the very top of the tree, saw off branches, and tie on the ropes we used to pull the tree over after cutting the roots.

While my sister, Anna, and I were growing up, mom stayed at home and drilled us in the need to accomplish as much as possible. We owed it to God and other people to make the most of our talents.

I'm sure that one reason she felt that way was because of how hard my dad had to work. But my mom also realized that she had missed out on an education, having stopped going to high school when she was sixteen to work as a waitress at a lunch counter. She was determined that we were going to get an education and make good use of it.

Working with dad provided an education that my mom didn't know about. He could spot problems a mile off and devise ingenious ways of accomplishing things with virtually no resources.

While other tree trimmers employed boot spikes, special belts, extension ladders, cherry pickers, and chain saws, we did it all with hand saws, a rope, and a rickety 6-foot ladder. If that ladder didn't reach the bottom branches, dad or I would shinny up the trunk until we got to the first branch that would hold our weight.

Our safety gear was that the one in the tree would tie a rope around his waist, loop the rope over a strong limb, and drape the other end of the rope to the ground where the other one would hold on tight. We often broke each other's falls that way, avoiding broken limbs and fingers.

My idolization of dad's hard work got me into trouble sometimes. When I was about five, our minister came to Sunday supper after church services. Noticing that he seemed to only work from 11 a.m. to noon on Sundays, I helpfully asked him when he was going to get a real job for the rest of the week. My mother never recovered from her embarrassment over that childish query.

Dad and mom had a weakness beyond their limited educations: They couldn't figure out how to think about spending money to gain some advantage that might be turned into more money. Fortunately, I was fascinated by numbers. While other kids day dreamed, doodled, or drew cartoons when they were bored, I loved to write out geometric progressions.

The way that numbers soared as the progressions continued filled me with awe. Compounding was my thing.

Here's an example of a problem that had my dad confused. It took him almost eight hours a week to take his loads to a dump, pitchfork and shovel the loads out, and go home. Most of the time was spent unloading the evil-smelling remains that had been rotting for days.

While at the dump, he would stare with longing at the dump trucks as their drivers dropped off huge loads in only a few seconds. Forty minutes later dad would still be digging away.

He often talked about how great it would be to own such a dump truck. But such trucks cost a fortune.

Years later, he heard about a company that could install a lift on a half-ton pickup truck. The price for the lift and the installation was about a $1,000 . . . a fortune for a man who earned less than $10,000 a year.

What dad was missing was that the lift would probably last more than 20 years and could be reinstalled into another pickup truck for about $150. The lifetime cost of the lift would probably be about $65 a year including maintenance.

That expenditure would save my dad about 250 hours a year of work for which he made no money. I pointed out that if he could find additional paying work that would provide 25 cents an hour of income he would be financially even . . . and if he could earn $1.25 for one of those weekly hours now spent forking out loads, he could reduce his work week by four hours.

He looked at me in amazement; my mother challenged my thinking. I don't think they ever understood the point, but they could tell I thought it was right.

About a week later, we owned a new lift on our pickup. Actually, that lift lasted over 50 years and produced tens of thousands of dollars of added income due to my dad being able to take on high-priced work that required hauling away heavy loads.

It was one of the few business investments my parents ever made that had a high return. I still admire that old lift whenever I see it, working like a charm after more than 45 years.

I became a financial guide for our family, on the lookout for financial opportunities. Since the time when I was a child, I located opportunities that earned or saved them most of their net worth such as other labor-saving equipment and a revolutionary paint that eliminated the need to repaint our house every few years. I also encouraged them to buy more houses. Houses in California were sure to go up in value, and they did.

What lessons can you learn from the hard work, imagination, and education that you've observed?