Mark Mehlmauer
Nov 5 · 1 min read

The more things change the more they stay the same.

I’m old. This means that my father the painter, as in house painter, would’ve described his job satisfaction level, if anyone had asked him, as meh.

Being a member of the generation that survived a major economic depression followed by a global war, life had taught him that although work was hard and not often fun, work was preferable to hunger and/or death.

So you do what you have to do to support you and yours, that’s why it’s called work. You do what you find fulfilling or fun when you’re not working. His idea of fun, besides his kids and professional baseball, was to study advanced mathematics. He was a very unusual house painter.

But having been through what he had been through and lived to tell the tale, he was also a very grateful housepainter. If he came back from the dead he would be amazed that all his work and self-sacrifice had helped to create the world we take for granted.

And he’d be grateful.

Hopefully, he’d like my writing as well, but he would mainly want to know if I had paid my own way, did right by my family, and believed in something bigger than me.

    Mark Mehlmauer

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    I’m The Flyoverland Crank(.com)-I post a new weekly column “featuring the wit & wisdom of a garrulous geezer” every Sunday-Random posts randomly-Have an OK day