The 60’s

Growing up in the 60’s ( part 2)

I went to catholic school in the 60’s from 1st to 6th grade -
Yup- catholic school with nuns and all, the runs that cracked your knuckles with a yard stick if you did something wrong.
I walked to school , about 3 miles , that’s right walked to school at the tender school grades of 3rd to six grade - down hill to get there and uphill to get home. We could cut through the woods , my grandmother lived in an apartment on the back street of the school and I would visit her every once in a while. She was my dad’s mom from Portugal and spoke English but preferred Portuguese. She was certainly old school, she had a wash tub in her apartment complete with a wash board.

After school I would help my friend with his paper route and he would pay me by stopping at the penny candy store in between our route, we would also buy pea shooters there and a box of peas for an all out war. They had all the favorites, waxed lips, sugar straws , candy dots, and of course baseball cards.
We biked everywhere too and we use to put the baseball cards on our bike wheels with a cloths pin that smacked the spokes to make it sound like a motor ( or so we thought).

When we went anywhere my friends dogs always came with us, back then you never put dogs on a leash and you certainly never picked up their poop.
We spent hours especially in the summer sitting in each other’s back yards playing cards, poker, high low jack and rummy , when we weren’t playing cards we were throwing a ball around or playing a pick up game. If we weren’t playing cards or sports we were building forts in the woods, up in the trees or on the ground.
We never played in anyone’s house, we were always outside somewhere.

Growing Up

I am 63 and white - born 1957 and of Portuguese decent, my parents were born in America.
My Mom was born in 1924 and Dad was born in 1918
My grandparents came from Portugal- both sides born between 1892 and 1895.

I was raised middle class I guess , I know that both my parents worked and we had food in fridge and snacks , we had our own house - 3 bedrooms , small, I had two sisters and they shared a room. We had enough money for the basics and we looked forward to Christmas because that was the only time a year we received toys and new outfits. We would get new pants and shirts on our birthday and Easter too but that was it, pretty much no buying the rest of the year.
My mom would would third shift in the mills so she could take care of us during the day.

You get the picture- we didn’t have much and my parents worked hard but growing up I never complained because I just thought that was life for everyone- except the Kennedy’s ... whenever someone would talk about vacations or buying stuff my mother would say “ we are not the Kennedy’s” - growing up in R.I. and New England the Kennedy’s were thought of as royalty.

We had one TV in the living room -  , no one had two TV’s that we knew at least, it was color and it had a thin backing to it with tiny holes so to help keep it cool back there and  if you looked through the holes you could see all the tubes lit up, it even had a bit of a smell to it. TV back then had basically three channels and a lot of shows were still in black and white and no such thing as taping a show, you watched it at the time it aired ( we had a TV guide book every week) or not at all.
We all watched the same shows , as a small child I remember watching Lassie with my sister and me and my sister would run to the TV at the end of the show because Lassie would sit and put up one paw for you to shake it . We watched Andy Griffith , Gilligan’s Island , the Rifleman, Superman, Daniel Boone my mother the car, my favorite Martian , Mr. Ed and on Sunday night we all gathered to watch Bonanza.

Growing up back in the 50’s and 60’s we played outside all the time, till the 8:00 whistle blew- the fire station a few miles from us would sound a very loud horn every night at 8:00 and when you heard that you high tailed home or your mother would hang out the front door and yell your name.
You played in the streets and in the woods and would knock on your neighbors door who had kids you played with and say “ can Johnny come out and play?”
We played catch for hours, sat on the front steps and picnic tables and in the summer pick a ripe tomato out of one of the backyard gardens and wash it off with the garden hose and eat just like an apple- delicious!
We built tree forts and forts on the ground, we played cowboys and Indians and I had a coons skins hat ( a hat with fur from a raccoon that had a raccoon’s tail in the back) like  Daniel Boone so once and a while I pretended to be him with a pretend rife. We did a lot of pretending back then , with guns or Tonka trucks ( big heavy toy metal trucks ) or just played hide and seek in the neighborhood or biked around.

My family never talked politics or asked how your day went at the dinner table, we barely talked to each that I remember and never heard I love you or hugged, yet we felt like a family and knew our mother I loved us, my dad was a different story, he worked hard but would stop on his way home every day at the Holy Ghost , a Portuguese club/ bar, he would have few shots and come home and start yelling- he was an alcoholic. I kinda felt bad because as I got a little older I could see him early in the morning before he went to work and sober and he was a different guy and I could see even as a kid that he was two different people he struggled with the guy that drank.

Part 2 - growing up in 50’s and 60’s on another post ... stay tuned ...
Same bat time ...same bat channel ( that was from the Batman show on TV back then)

The Value of a Name

The Value of Your Name

A good name is more desirable than great riches. Prov. 22:1

Your name is your most valuable professional asset. It is worth far more than your degrees, position, or title. Yet it’s astonishing how many trade their name, values, and reputation for shortcuts, easy money, and promotions.

In other words, too many suffer long term stains for short term gains. It happens most to those who do not prepare. They pay little attention to reading, self-reflection, meditating, and planning. They just do it. A very dangerous proposition. 

Those who trust in their ability to be agile over preparation fool themselves. Abraham Lincoln said, “You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.” Sooner or later, your preparation or lack thereof will shine through. True agility performs from a trusted stage or better stated, foundation. Agility is not a virtue. It is a skill that is only as good as the character it is built upon.

For example, you know you are heading into a tough week. You hope things go well but you still haven’t realized that hope is not a strategy. You have failed to rehearse what you are willing to do and say and what you are not willing to do or say. Under stress you say something you wished you hadn’t; you did something you wish you could take back; you promised something you cannot or do not want to keep. You’re in a mess and then it happens, you have tarnished your name.

The words fast-paced and agile are cool and shiny in today’s marketplace. We even have agile training and many job ads fish for those willing to work in a fast-paced environment. The attractive idea of being agile falls down when in reality it is a cleaned up version for knee-jerk decision making. The adrenaline-rich culture of fast-paced expectations fall down when it is camouflage for a cultural cancer that threatens a person’s emotional, intellectual, physical, or relational health. 

Beware of cultures that devalue people and the kind of environments that cultivate growth and health. You alone cannot transform an unhealthy culture. Eventually, you will be the one depreciated to a point where you have forgotten what matters most - your name.

What’s true for us as individuals is also true for our companies. Today, we call it branding. Though we employ people to strategically establish our company brand; in real time, it has already happened. Our name is known far beyond a logo or a Jingle. It is known by what we do and how we do it. The company name is despised, ignored, or trusted.

You’ve probably heard that trust is the speed of business. What that phrase actually means is that trust increases the speed and profit of business. When you’re trusted, you have a good name and an amazing advantage for profit. 

We can say much more on the topic of profit but this article was not conceived for that purpose. Let’s state a short platitude until we can revisit this topic another time. Financial profit is the child birthed from a clear mission that meets the need of the customer. The company mission is the middle name of the company brand. If you have a good name, it will lead to financial profit in the long run.

Many reading this article have made mistakes and as a result, tarnished their name. We’re human and mistakes is what we do. Now what? 

A good name and a solid brand can be restored. It requires making amends. Do what you need to do to make things right. It is the work of reconciliation; literally, setting a broken bone. It requires honest intention, attention to detail, and follow through. In the end, sincerity and consistency restores. Don’t cover up your mistakes. Don’t cheat others. Don’t take short-cuts. Do what needs to be done and then some. Take time to think and work on you. You are a valuable asset to this world.

Finally, always remember how long it takes to establish your good name and how quickly it can be destroyed.

Letter to grandkids

Hey there grandkids,
At the time of this post your ages are 12 years,old, 4 years old and 4 months old.
Today is June 12th, 2020-
First off I love you and enjoy each one of you and love seeing the world through your eyes and love your smiles and innocence of life in general, and I love watching your parents enjoy each day with you ! We are very lucky and surely blessed !
When you look back at the Trump years look at June 1st 2020 , the past 3 years has been such an eye opening experience for me and a very scary time.
I watched as people followed a man who’s only goal was to sow hate and divide, he rose to power because of so much unrest in our country, especially in the middle class and our leaders and politicians doing nothing to help address equal pay, health care, poverty and so much more that effects all of us. People were sick and tired of hearing the same old promises from our elected officials so they wanted to look outside the Washington Insiders- I get it - but they went for the PT Barnum of our time, the guy who had zero character or substance- that is what scared me.
He has done and said so many reckless things through the years I will leave it to you to research them all, everything from mocking the disabled to dishonoring war hero’s and veterans but on June 1st 2020 I witnessed “live” what a dictator does ! There was a peaceful protest in front of the White House and at around 6:15 that night it started to turn ugly and here’s the thing he wanted us to see it , he had called for a speech in the Rose Garden for 6:30 so the cameras and the media were all there.
At around 6:15-6:30 the military and the police shot tear gas and rubber bullets into a peaceful crowd , people were running and screaming and all because Trump wanted to take a walk down the street for a silly photo op in front of a church.
This was chilling to me because this country was founded on freedom of speech and everything this country stands for revolves around that , without our right to speak out and protest we are no longer a democracy.
These protest were about blacks being killed by police and pushing back on racism and hate and equal rights, there were some unruly protest in previous nights but this was a peaceful protest.
I watched it all unfold before my eyes and to me it was the moment that will stand out to me because millions saw the same thing and those that still followed this guy seemed ok with this whole scene and that is very very scary.
I asked those to just look at this one sliver of time and not spin it or discuss or debate anything else - just this one moment in time but his followers were ok with it.
That showed me just how dictators rise to power elsewhere.
As I write this I am certainly hoping that in our elections in November 2020 we can once again get back on the road of a democracy but also hold our elected officials to action.
I was born in optimist and I do believe that everything does happen for a reason.
I leave you with this - do not ever become sheep- do not follow others - make up of your minds, ask questions and always follow your heart.
We are only visiting this planet for a very short time so do not spend it hating others, hate will weigh you down and you will never truly find happiness.

Not Me

I grew up with alcoholism -
My father was an alcoholic, my uncles were alcoholics, when my sisters grew up they both became alcoholics, as I got older many friends and other family members were , and still are, alcoholics.

One of my sisters tried to fight it but ultimately went back and died from it , all the others except for maybe one or two friends would never even admit to it .

The sorry thing is if you suffer from this disease you will never have a chance of getting better until you admit that you have it, that you are an alcoholic- you first must look in the mirror.

The other very sad thing is until you look in the mirror and admit what you are - all of the people around you will also suffer, especially your family and loved ones and co- workers because they can see you need help and you are destroying not only yourself but your whole life and there is nothing they can do.

I see racism the same way -
I have family and friends that are racist- they show it every day in what they say or do or who and what they support but they will never admit to it.
No, they do not come right out and say certain things in my presence because they know I do not agree with them so they kind of play around the edges and say certain things that certainly let people know where they stand.
I had a very good friend who I worked with for years and one day we were at a conference and a black motivational speaker got up to talk and my friend automatically got up from his seat and said this n—- is not going to tell me anything. I was totally flabbergasted. I knew this man for years and had no idea.I was also friends with his two sons, who later revealed their true colors too.

Don’t get me wrong way too many racist are proud of who they are and say it out loud but my dealings with them up here in R.I. and in my circle do not say it out loud and many would never even admit that they are, they will always say something disparaging about the other guy, they NEVER look in the mirror.
And by never looking in the mirror they can never get help or ever get a chance to see things from the other side, meanwhile they are suffering inside and hurting those around them.

I try not to judge others , I see them for who they are and contain my involvement, if given the chance for honest dialogue I will always embrace those conversations.

Our true Judge will be there in the end for all of us.

Look in the mirror-

True story

True story-
In the late 80’s and for the next few decades I worked for a household good mover, when I started it was about a 7 million dollar company and when I left it was over 200 million. So needless to say I witnessed a lot of changes.
I was in operations/dispatch , I planned the jobs on our drivers that ran the entire United States. At our high we had approximately 150 drivers in what we called our permanent fleet, in the perm fleet our operations department planned all the loads and had daily contact with all the drivers , remember this was long before cellphones and computers.
 The perm fleet consisted of drivers that were owner operators , they ran as their own business and had their own LLC , actually pretty much like any other business responsible for claims, taxes, insurance etc the only difference is thier business is on wheels.
In the perm fleet was also drivers that drove for a particular agent in the country that was affiliated with my Van Lines, the difference there was the agent owned the truck and trailer and equipment and was responsible to pay the driver, we paid the agent, they paid the driver.
Because the Van Lines and I were located in Rhode Island there were times that I dispatched drivers and would rarely meet them, example a driver May live in CA and I may dispatch him work from CA going to TX and then when he delivered everything I would dispatch jobs going back to CA.
The make up of our drivers in the perm fleet ran the gambit , big, heavy, short, skinny, black, white, owner op and agent drivers and everything else in between, even gay before people talked out loud about it.
I rose in the ranks and eventually ran the entire domestic operations and I took my responsibilities seriously, we moved military members, FBI, civilians, National Account’s like Hasbro and relocation Realtor’s , everyone wanted to move in the summer when kids were out of school so every year there was a mad dash from May to September and we moved thousands of people every week and even every day.
 Drivers could make a very good living for themselves , making on there 1099 from $200,000 to $400,000 and more a year so there was a lot of competition for loads, some had more weight and miles which paid more, each move was weighed once loaded on the trailer and at the end of a trip the Van lines settled with the driver or the agent.
How we chose who received  what loads was easy to us, we preferred to load the guy that we knew would be where he said he would be and we knew he was professional with how he handled the customers belongings and was polite and helpful to the customer and knew how to handle his finances and logs.
That was essentially it, that is what we cared about and how we chose certain drivers for loads.
Now during that time I was accused by everyone of being biased. There was a hotel near our office that most drivers stayed at called the lucky 8 and from time to time Iwould stop in to share a beer with a driver and share a laugh and story and during some visits the driver would outright accuse me of favoritism. The white driver would say I favored the black drivers,the black driver would say I favored the white, the agent driver said I favored the owner op and so on, crazy right.
All I cared about was taking care of the job and making dates and satisfying the customer ...period.
Sometimes because I never met some drivers I had no idea if they were white black big or short, and I did not care.
The Van lines would help some drivers out with loans so then the word was those were the drivers we preferred because we wanted our money paid back, again - wrong- no one in dispatch was even privy to that and once again we had a job to do - make dates and satisfy our customer.

So YES we did have a culture of favoritism in my operations, we favored those that did their job !!
Simple- if you work hard and people can trust you to consistently do your best you will rise.

Looking back everyone was paranoid about everybody else because they were scared someone was going to take something from them and all along all they had to do was apply all that energy to improving themselves and their work and the rest would have taken care of itself.

The moral of the story is just worry about YOU and what you can do be better at your job and how to just be an overall better person - and stop worrying about the other guy.

Freedom

I cannot believe what I witnessed live and right in front of me on TV the other night.

I was watching a live broadcast of a peaceful protest in front of the White House and within minutes it took an ugly turn, the military and police started to push the crowd back with tear gas and rubber bullets , people went from standing and chanting holding up posters to running and screaming .

And why -

Because the incumbent President wanted to walk out in that street to have a photo op holding up a bible in front of a church.

It sounds so unreal to even write never mind to witness live. It something I have seen happen in other countries, countries ran by dictators.

This country is built around democracy and our constitution and our idealism of Freedom and Freedom and opportunity for every American! In order to sustain these ideas we must be able to speak out and protest when we see wrong being done. 

Just stop for one minute and think about it- do not spin or talk about what someone else did or might have done and just look at this one sliver of time - peaceful American citizens protesting their rights were gassed and shot at by OUR military and police ! I never thought I would witness it in my lifetime, I saw video of this back in the 50’s and 60’s in the civil right movement but I had naively thought that was all behind us- it is not.

But in this case it was our President that directed this attack - an attack on American citizens!

Never - Never in our history has a President taking such action and for what ? A photo Op -

I do not have to agree with everyone and we all have our views but we all have the right to express our views and live the life we want.

Freedom for All and Freedom of Speech 

Make Believe

I can exist in a broken environment
I cannot exist in a make believe environment

What I mean by that is I can learn to live with people I do not agree with either in my personal life or in my work world but that said I need to also be able to express my opinions and with that be able to do what I do without fear of repercussions toward me or others.

Growing up my father was an alcoholic and I said it out loud once and was scolded by my mother, I knew he had issues and by not at least saying it out loud it would never have any opportunity to change or at least discuss it.
At the work place I had a boss that was very abusive to others, not so much me but everyone around him and me and by not saying anything to those in power I felt complete complicit.

If we can’t voice out loud what we see and disagree with we are forced to live in a make believe world and that I cannot do , when we hide our head and live in silence we begin to die inside and we will never truly exhale.

I do not like confrontation and I coil at environments that create yelling and anger and much of that I attribute to growing up in that house with a verbally abusive alcoholic, by everyone staying silent he never had a chance to address his issues and the family never had a chance to address their issues and years later both my sisters became alcoholics themselves.
I watched both my father and one of my sisters die piece by piece because of that disease and presently watch my other sister still struggle with wet brain and drinking.

I do not like confrontation but I do speak out and voice my opinion and if I can conduct change I stick it out and try to do so , more for those around me then even for myself.
If I feel as if I cannot conduct change I leave that situation so not to live in that make believe world.

Change is difficult
Honesty is difficult
But if it comes from the right place - change and honesty is absolutely necessary!