Basic

Jack of all trades and master of none. That is what my Grand-father used to say. But I always thought that he was master of many trades and I reaped the benefits because he taught me many of the things he was good at. I always admired the many skills he had. He was the night watchman at one of the local stone quarries and lit the lanterns that were on top of the buoys for a five mile stretch of the Mississippi river in front of Buffalo, Iowa. He did that for the United States government for 30 years. He built his own boats that he powered with old car engines. He sat in front of his bay window all day in the wintertime and tatted nets that he set out in the Mississippi river to catch fish that he cleaned and put on ice and distributed out in the country around town. And I got to drive his 1925 Essex. That always pleased me.

But that is not what he taught me to do that has pleased me to this very day. He always did his own paperhanging and in his older years he couldn't get up and down on the step ladders very good so he taught me the tricks of the trade of hanging wallaper. I caught on very quickly and before long I was getting calls to do it for others. And I got $3.00 a room for performing the task. I continued to work at that job even after I worked all day at the Farmall tractor works. Ethel and I would paper a room in three hours in the evening after I got home from work. She would paste while I hung the paper. I could hang a ceiling in about half an hour.

Then two years after we were married my parents said I could build a house on the spare lot that they owned. So my grandfather and I built a two story frame house and moved a summer kitchen over from my parents home and attached it to it for a five room dwelling. As I remember the lumber cost was $500. So through this beginning I became a proficient builder. I did carpentry work throughout my years that I could be active.

My first actual job was working in the Farmall tractor factory grinding camshafts. The limits were 2/10 of a thousandths of an inch. That's a pretty close tollerance. I got the job because my father was an excellent machinest and friends of his thought that maybe I could catch on in a hurry. I guess I did, for I did precision grinding for nearly ten years.

It was during a recession that our first child was born and me without a job. So my mother and I started a home bake shop. I did all the bread, doughnuts and the sweet rolls. My mother did the pies and cakes. I even had racks in the back of my 35 Chevy to deliver the goods. But thankfully the recession didn't last too long and I got back in the factory again.

Another job I got into was painting houses. I would contract to do the job and hire other men to help me. One time I had hired our pastor, John Baxter to help do one of the jobs and while working on it, he said, "Earl, I think you can do about anything." My response was, "John, I think I could do anything if I set my mind to it." His immediate reply was, "How about preaching?" I said, "Oh no, not that." Strange as it may seem a few years later I felt the call to enter the ministry. That was an immense step to take and I had to have the full support of my wife. She willingly consented. It meant leaving an income of $5,000 per year for one of $1,000 plus, a parsonage, and starting college at the same time. No easy decision, but that's what we did. And we stuck with it for a total of 39 years.

While I was pastor at Noblesville, I was invited to come to Earlham college and supervise the construction of the Stout Memorial Meetinghouse on the campus. I was promised that Earlham would see that I could complete my college work and get my degree. I did that and pastored at Williamsburg, Indiana at the same time. I not only supervised the building of the Meetinghouse I layed all of the cement block for its foundation. And after the bricklayers were gone I layed the brick for the baby wing extension. No small feat in itself.

Not all of the 39 years were in pastoral ministry. For I was invited by the Five Years Meeting of Friends to come and serve as the Executive Secretary of the Board of Christian Education. I accepted the invitation and did that for 7 years. During that time I was on the National Council of Churches Board and had the privilege of attending gatherings all over the United States and even had one meeting in Bermuda..

After six and half years all of the heads of the departments were notified that there would not be jobs available for all us when the change was made from 7 Boards to 3 Commissions. I was too near the time of retirement to think about leaving my home in Dublin and had always been interested in trying my hand at printing. I had been responsible for the printing of all the Sunday School curriculum that we produced and I talked with our printer about getting into printing. He was very helpful and sold me the press that he had started his business with. After having it repaired by the company repairman I tinkered with it and finally got it going. I was now in a new field and needed a name for my sideline business. I decided to delete the G and Z from my name and call it PRINIT PRESS. Thus began another phase in my life. I did this in the evenings and early mornings before going to the office.

Meanwhile at the office I ended up with several jobs. I was manager of the Quaker Hill Bookstore and Friends United Press. Somewhere along the line the name of Five Years Meeting of Friends became Friends United Meeting. The Bookstore grew in volume of sales and Friends United Press put out some 60 volumes during the 10 years I was manager.

The Prinit Press operation expanded almost too rapidly to keep up with. I had my grandsons working after school and weekends. Then when I retired from the office I worked full time printing. By this time I had one grandson working full time and the other two part time since they were still in school. I had a neighbor lady working, doing negatives and collating, and had a full time typesetter. I kept this up for a year or two and then took my grandson into partnership with me.

Soon it was time to sell the business to Bob and work for him as needed. And spend the winters in Florida. We did that for nine winters.

Interestingly enough all three grandsons are in the printing field in some form or other.

I was then needing another hobby so I took up carving. At first I just carved Santa Clauses. I would rough them out in my shop, which had all the necessary machines needed and then would put a towel on my lap and carve in the evenings while watching TV. I probably carved over 2,000 Santas and sold or gave them away. But then the urge was to do larger pieces, so I would go and take a class for a week at a time. After my emergency surgery and the strokes following, my carving days were over.

Now I spend nearly all of my time at my computer, sending and answering E-mail, composing my web pages in the morning hours. During this time Rosalie is reading. In the afternoon 3 days a week I have therapy after which we do a crossword puzzle together on the computer and play a couple of games of Euchre. Then in the evening we play scrabble, more Euchre, Bridge or Free Cell until it's time to go to bed.

So you can readily see that the computer has been a real God-send to me, as I'm confined to my wheel chair.