On The Way To Making Something Of Ourselves

As we try to figure out who we are growing into, we try to see what avenue takes us there.

Some of them are just fun. Friend of mine, back in the late 50’s, put a Bermuda carriage bell in his car. Bing, bong. I wished I had one; I also thought it would be great to have a car to put it in. He eventually got an appointment to West Point, but something went wrong and he found it wasn’t for him. I’d love to know what he ended up doing; he was a nice guy.

Another guy used to sit in his car at the seawall for a long time and just stare out at the water. He’s still weird.

I studied comedians; whose style of delivery seemed to work best for me, how I could best put across a joke or a comic line. I studied the best of the writers, including comic, serious and journalistic. I read everything I could get my hands on. I rewrote everything I wrote, possibly a half-dozen times, until it was just right.

My uncle George ostensibly worked for the Bridgeport Brass Co., but I never knew what he did there because he always had these things going on the side. Eventually, he took leave of absence because this day job got in the way of his true love: trying to find what he was really good at. Making and selling wreaths at Christmas, inventing a rug-braiding process that worked marvelously, selling lollycolumns (those pillars in your cellar) and, finally, learning that he could sell houses like nobody could sell houses.