Oh, no, Watters! You've done it again!! You've gone and made me remember a story about Harold Dies...
When I was a new boy, green as grass, I was assigned to the King's County Congregation (the "other one" that met in the Bethel Kingdom Hall besides the Brooklyn Heights congregation). On one particularly hot and sultry summer night at the end of the service meeting the Congregation Servant (Harold Dies) stood up to make an announcement. His face was serious and we all knew that what was coming would not be pleasant. He looked around, slowly opened a large manila envelope, pulled some materials from it, and laid them on the podium. He picked up a poster and held it up for all to see. It had a drawing of a rather obscure cartoon character and the words "Dick Dastardly" under it. It also had Harold's name in large letters at the bottom. I had seen the ads on the back of the Cheerios boxes at breakfast. You could send in maybe a buck and a few box tops, fill out a form and get a personalized poster, membership card, and some other junk, possibly a decoder ring and some other stuff like that.
Harold explained the terrible act that had been committed by some...dare I use the word..."dastardly" Bethelite. Someone had evidently filled out his name on the form and now he, Harold Dies, Congregation Servant had his own name--imagine that--on a Dick Dastardly poster! He got out a dictionary and read the definition of "dastardly" to the congregation and followed it up with a mini-service talk about how terrible it is to imply that someone was a fan of someone named Dick Dastardly! He spoke of the need for respect for Jehovah and his Servants. On and on it went. The outrage! The shame!
I was seated in about the middle of the Hall, and as I listened, I could hear sounds a row or two behind me: the unmistakable sound of suppressed laughter, punctuated by the very slight choking sounds made by someone who was on the verge of losing control. As the talk went on, the sounds began spreading. I was terrified that I might be the one who would lose control. If I did, who knows what punishment might be in store for me? I bit my lip and put my head down, as if in silent prayer for the repentance of the beastly cads who would do such a thing.
I could never figure out why a guy like Harold, in charge of something having to do with the Society's finances, would apparently be so dense as to not realize that if he had just thrown the stuff away as soon as he got it, the guy(s) who sent it would never have even known whether or not he got it. But as it was, he maximized their investment. Doubtless few Bethelites in history ever got so much entertainment out of one dollar. Thank you, Harold!
Ah, the good old days...
Tom
Warren Schroeder from Bethel on Freddy, Kline and the apostate books!
by Dogpatch 501 Replies latest jw friends
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Tom Cabeen
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Gamaliel
This can never top Tom's "Dick & Harold" story, but it reminded me of my own cereal boxtop story, however lame.
In 1980 everyone at my table knew I was leaving to get married. Betty Crocker TM was offering free silverware sets in exchange for box top points from GM cereal boxes. The idea wasn't new, of course, as we all knew that there were other Bethel couples who would surreptitiously rip the tops off several boxes during the final prayer. The competition was fierce, but my table got up a small task force for a few days, and left me with enough Betty Crocker TM points to get 8 full place settings, along with various and sundry steak knives, soup spoons, serving spoons, etc. Enough for a 40-pound box of high quality (stainless steel) silverware, all delivered to 124 Columbia Heights. Betty Crocker TM had a "one-offer-per-family" rule, which I worried would be invoked against me, since we all had the same building address.
Within a couple weeks I recall a related breakfast announcement about being more careful when tearing off the cereal boxtops so that the packages could be re-used to consolidate the partially empty packages.
(Some [un]settling of contents may have occurred during shipping and handling -- not to mention fighting over boxtops with Sister ...[so-and-so]...)
Greg -
Dogpatch
cab sez,
I could never figure out why a guy like Harold, in charge of something having to do with the Society's finances, would apparently be so dense as to not realize that if he had just thrown the stuff away as soon as he got it, the guy(s) who sent it would never have even known whether or not he got it. But as it was, he maximized their investment. Doubtless few Bethelites in history ever got so much entertainment out of one dollar.
Former Circuit/District Overseer Floyd Kite used to tell us, "Half of us are here to test the other half."
I made sure I was in the right half. No one be runnin tests on me, fool!
Cab, I just had this laughter of yours in the back of my head, and the only text that was attached to it after 30 years was "Harold Dies." I knew it was worth something! Couldn't remember. Somewhere in my Quak's Bethel scrapbook there is a Harold Dies cartoon, "waerin' ties, makin fun of Harold Dies" or something. I think the demons have hid it somewhere, they always pull this on me!
On the most efficient use of yer $14 at Bethel, pretty cool. That's a good topic: how Bethelites save $$$. C/mon Greg, Warren, Barb, what is yer best $$$ story? Don't have one myself offhand.
Randy
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Tom Cabeen
Ok, here is another HD story which Gloria reminded me of. I had completely forgotten it.
Rick Hudson was a very funny guy who set at our table. He worked in composition. He was prematurely bald on top, but had plenty of hair on the sides. Ricky was always trying to do something funny. One day he went to the barber for a haircut and on a whim asked the barber to style his hair like Bozo the Clown. The barber did it, making the hair stick out over his ears on the sides. He went back to his department, expecting all the guys to say "Hey Bozo", but instead, they said, "Harold Dies!" Needless to say, Ricky quickly combed it back normal.
Tom -
wschroeder
" On the most efficient use of yer $14 at Bethel, pretty cool. That's a good topic: how Bethelites save $$$. C/mon Greg, Warren, Barb, what is yer best $$$ story? Don't have one myself offhand.
Randy "
Greg and I have a family history and not much changed when he reached Bethel. Greg still has all his Bethel allowance money to this day!!! Just ask him... it's how he put his kids through college :-)
I tried my damn best to spend mine the first day. A half-gallon of Breyers Strawberry Ice Cream, and a Pint of Haagen-Danz Rum Raisin, from the commissary. I could do both in one sitting. Then off to the deli to find a couple of the most expensive foreign beers I might stumble upon. Fortunately, on payday, you didn't have to feel as guilty about not sharing with your roommate(s) because we were all doing the same thing.... hedonists that we were.
Warren -
Gamaliel
Randy,
You asked for some of the money management tricks for living at Bethel on the 50-cent-per-day allowance. (We got our subway tokens separately to get up to our respective assigned congregations. But tokens were only something like 25 or 35 cents back then.)
Funny how I never even noticed how poor I was. They gave me 4 years seniority for pioneering right off the bat and I guess I thought that was the primary medium of exchange.
Was it Drew Wasco who stamped people's names on the cover of a deluxe NWT for a few bucks?
There was sometimes a small "green handshake" when you gave a public talk in another congo. I never got much more than travel expenses, but never thought to turn it down, either.
For a car to use, I started a Bible study with a nice family in the Bronx, and borrowed theirs a couple of times.
Some bros would use the photography equipment and the darkroom on off-hours to handle wedding photography, enlargements, etc. I never thought that was right at the time. But I know there were a lot of money-making opportunities, especially for construction trades.
One thing that worked for me was to invite my brother Warren to sell all his belongings (including part of his business that went for several thousand as I recall) and come on up and "share" in the good work going on at Bethel. After that, I got all the Breyer's ice cream pints (from the commissary) that a young guy could hope for.
Greg -
Tom Cabeen
OK Randy, about money...
I was one of those (evidently in the minority) who actually got along on what the Society gave Bethelites. Shortly after I came to Bethel, my parents went into the Circuit work, so they had nothing to send. Later, after we got married, Gloria's folks also didn't have any extra cash. Maybe two or three times they sent us $10. Also, being the obedient type, I didn't G-job, except for one time, which I will now tell you about.
My roommate (and best friend at the time) was Steve White, overseer of the Electric Shop in the factory. He got a job installing wiring a Kingdom Hall in the Bronx for A/C. (It is still there. You can see it if you look up when you get onto the Cross Bronx Expressway traveling south on I-95.) It was summer, of course, and it was hot. He supplied the brains, I supplied the grunt work. We worked our butts off for a very long weekend on the project, and made $250, a small fortune to a Bethelite in the late 1960s.
We hadn't been paid for the job yet, when Steve decided he had to run to Manhattan to pick up something for the electric shop from an electrical supply company there, rather than submit a requisition and wait for Purchasing to deliver the thing. So he took one of the Society's cars and went to lower Manhattan. He couldn't find a place to park, and he was "only going to be a minute or two", so he took the chance and double parked with the flashers on. Of course, the ever-vigilant New York's Finest ticketed him and had his car towed away. The rest of the day and night was a nightmare that did not end until, like the unforgiving slave of Jesus parable, Steve had "paid the very last penny." Getting the Society's car back, including the ticket, towing fee and parking charge on the DOT towaway lot cost him exactly $250.
That was my first and last G-job, as I was too busy with other "legitimate" Society work. But I remember many months when Gloria and I had less than a dollar to our name by then end of the month.
Tom
PS for the uninitiated, the G in G-job means "Government". I am not sure where that came from, but Richard Wheelock told me that. I would be interested in how outside work got that name. -
Gamaliel
Tom,
On the origin of "G-Job" I don't know the true origin but the following looks about right:
I'm picking and choosing from someone's comment on another site/forum: http://www.waywordradio.org/discussion/episodes/g-job/page-1/post-261/
"I worked as a contractor on many military and government projects and when government projects had “deep pockets,” there were always more workers than needed on a job. Many workers had lots of time on their hands and so would pursue their own personal projects or fabricate things related to their particular area of expertise (electronics for example). When anyone referred to these projects it was called a “G Job” which was short for “Government Job”, a sort of cross between a cynical remark and a code word for those who didn’t know any better such as a new “green” boss or a family member or friend. I suspect that this phrase was more common in the 50s to 70s when a lot of government money was available..."
The above idea seems pretty reasonable, but maybe there's another angle on it, already implied. Government jobs are notoriously the most easily "abused" jobs. "G-men" always had a lot of freedom to act like they weren't really on the job. When you want to get a fellow politician in trouble you can always find out that they once picked up their son from soccer in a company car, or found some busy-work for the maintenance men by having them work on the boss's personal house or boat. Government jobs are often so poorly managed and supervised that people can pull off multiple full-time salaries. Lawyers for school systems in NY & LI have been recently caught billing up to 5 simultaneous full-time salaries from multiple school systems and had managed to hide it for many years.
The problem with all of the above is that the actual "Government Job" is what allows for outside jobs. You are asked to assume that the phrase later got tacked on to the outside job only, and not the actual primary job.
Greg -
Dogpatch
The commissary!! Totally forgot about that, the den of sin! Breyers and pecan pies. Only possible through the donations of kind Black people, who had all the money and we had none, so they kept us happy.
I was, in effect, Black for 6 years, a total honkie in East New York (Linwood Congregation). Used to get harassed, robbed and have bottles thrown at us going htrough the projects late at night. Had to take the #2 train to New Lots (end of the road!) often alone (elder crap).
One night I was walking through and several 13-yr olds pulled a gun on me (most crime was in that age range, as they couldn't be prosecuted) and I gave them $10 (hmmm.. Breyers for Friday, my one movie a month, and several pieces of pizza, what was the name of the pizza place by Cadman Plaza? Anyway they got my $10 watch, too. My clothes were a joke, I used to wear this stupid Light-colored suit because I had no money or style. :-))
One of the kids came up to me just as they were leaving and APOLOGIZED for taking my money, as he went to church! I almost died laughing (later, of course).
Warren sez,
Greg and I have a family history and not much changed when he reached Bethel. Greg still has all his Bethel allowance money to this day!!! Just ask him... it's how he put his kids through college :-)
I hope you guys aren't still wearing hand-me-downs, sick! :-))
R
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Dogpatch
Greg sez,
Funny how I never even noticed how poor I was. They gave me 4 years seniority for pioneering right off the bat and I guess I thought that was the primary medium of exchange.
worth about $5 adjusted.
R