My father will be 90 years old in January of 2025.
For years he has told a story that dates back to the early 1950s when he was in his mid-teenage years. During the summers he would leave his home in WV and travel by himself to Cleveland, OH, to look for work.
The story he often tells begins with him walking from manufacturer to manufacturer in downtown Cleveland and asking about a job. These potential employers would ask him all kinds of questions, of course. He had no skills. No experience. No resume of any kind. He wasn’t even finished with high school at this point. He was just a young guy looking for work.
During one of these interactions, they would ask him, “do you know how to operate this machine?” pointing to some press or factory machine of some sort. In telling this story, my dad laughs here and says, “I always said, ‘sure!’ even though I didn’t know what they were even talking about! I believed I could always figure it out as I went along.”
I’ve heard that family story for decades now.
Recently, I was reading the Bob Thomas biography on Walt Disney and the author relayed a story of a young Walt Disney. It was 1918 and Disney was 16 years old. He had lied about his age, dressed up in his father’s suit, and gotten a job with the post office in Chicago delivering mail.
Usually he was able to ride along with others on the mail trucks or even was able to ride free on the streetcars to deliver the mail. But, one day, his boss came to him and asked if he could drive an 8-speed truck.
Before that moment, young Walt had only driven a 2-speed work truck around a farm, not on the roads. And, certainly not on the bustling city streets of Chicago.
Walt immediately said, “Sure!” He spent the next few days lurching from stop to stop all around the city. But, eventually, he got the hang of it.
Our culture may downgrade the value of older folks. With rapidly advancing technologies, with changing societal norms, with new ways of doing just about everything, we can sometimes wonder what we can possibly learn from members of past generations.
One lesson I feel certain we can learn (and re-learn) from our elders is to step up, even when we may not feel completely ready. It’s to say, “yes,” to opportunities. It’s to have confidence in ourselves even if we don’t have confidence in our skills. It’s to look for new challenges. It’s to make do when we don’t have.
And yes, I’m sure of that.