50 Years on the Job

Imagine going to work, finding just the right job within the company, and staying with that company for fifty years.  I know someone who is reaching that milestone this month.George is the morning announcer for a radio station in upstate New York near the village where I grew up.  This April, George and his loyal listeners are celebrating his fiftieth anniversary.  

I owe a lot to George.  As a teenager, I’d listen to his program as I got ready for school every morning. Mom may have been the one to get us out of bed, but George’s morning program kept us on task to finish breakfast and meet the school bus.   

When I decided to pursue broadcasting as a career, I visited him at the station occasionally.  Those visits eventually led to the station manager hiring me as a part time announcer during my college years.

George started at the radio station in much the same way I did.  He worked part time for a while before being offered a full time job.  He played rock-and-roll records on the air in the afternoons, and then was promoted to middays where he switched over to country music in keeping with the station’s format back in the days before stations picked one type of music and stuck with it all day long.

Eventually, George moved into the coveted morning slot and that is where he stayed. He endured two changes in ownership, heart surgery, cancer treatments, and dozens of brutal northern New York winters.   

He is a survivor, but more importantly, he is able to have his passion be his life’s work.

In my book Grown Up, Going Home, I interviewed George for one of the chapters.  The book is about my experiences growing up in the 1970s in a rural upstate New York village.   I felt as though George, while not living in my hometown, had come into nearly every house with a radio in it within its broadcast range.  He told me "Every day is different.  There's a great deal of satisfaction in knowing we'll have a different adventure every day.  It is hometown radio, and it made me want to spend my whole life right here."

Some of those adventures about hometown radio include using a snowmobile to get to work on more than one stormy winter morning, trying so hard to hold back a laugh when a coworker would play a practical joke while live on the air, or handling the many calls from listeners who observed a deer in their backyard or lost a pet.

"People come up to me and say do you remember broadcasting my cat was missing several years ago?” he muses.   “Maybe I don’t remember, but they do.  The little things like that have made it all worthwhile.”

Over my thirty-plus years as a working professional, I have averaged about four years at a particular job before moving on to something I thought might be bigger or better.  The longest I’ve stayed at any job was ten years, although I hope to at least match that number with the position I’m currently in.  I admire the folks who have stayed on at one company and built satisfying careers in their professional journeys.

It’s remarkable that anyone would still be working at the same company for fifty years.  While I can’t imagine what that would be like, I’d be the first one to tell you I would have done the same thing had the right job brought the same level of satisfaction that it has to George.

I congratulate George on this accomplishment.  He has been a gentleman and a great role model. It has been a pleasure knowing him.

Steve Newvine lives in Merced.

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The Pink House in Town

photo by steve newvine

My grandparents lived in a pink house on the same street as my parents’ home in a small village in upstate New York.  To my family, Grandma and Grandpa lived down the street.  To anyone else who knew them, they lived in the pink house in town.I’m not sure why the small two-story home was pink.  One family legend has it my grandfather got a good deal on pink slate shingles.  That’s plausible given grandpa’s penchant for squeezing every last cent out of each one of those hard-earned dollars that came into the household. 

Inside the house was the center of our family life in the sixties and seventies.  The front room, or parlor as my grandmother occasionally referred to it, was lined with chairs and a daybed.  Overhead was a fluorescent light which offered a harsh well-lit view of our faces and the rest of the room.  I can still hear the clicking sound of the light fixture when the switch was flicked on

 This was the room where all the conversation started.  The latest news about family members, updates on unusual things seen or heard in the area over the past few days, and a weather report were among the topics brought up for discussion.

 Eventually, the conversation shifted to the kitchen where a teakettle would be on the stove warming up, a jar of Maxwell House instant coffee would pass among the adults at the table so that everyone could adjust the strength of their beverage, and a box of donuts that came from the bread section at the grocery store would be opened.  Topping all this off was the jar of peanut butter.  Spreading peanut butter on a donut was as much a part of life for me growing up as going to church on Sunday.

 The pink house was across the street and one house down from the local school.  We passed the house when we would walk to school, so my grandmother could see us every day.  On the last day of the school year, I’d stop in along with some of my cousins to show Grandma my report card and prove that I once again passed all my classes and would be heading up to the next grade in the fall.

 Calling hours when my uncle Billy and my grandmother passed away were held in their home. We celebrated birthdays there.  Grandma and Grandpa celebrated their fortieth and fiftieth wedding anniversaries with parties at that house.  Later milestone anniversaries were held at their winter home in Florida.

 After my grandparents passed away, an auction was held to sell off the possessions that were accumulated over the seventy-plus years of a life together.  I think the auctioneer, along with my dad, and others who attended were surprised when several of the grandchildren started to bid on some of the items.  It seemed as though each one of us wanted to hold on to some piece of that home.  It truly had been a part of our lives.  

 My nephew bought the house from the estate, and changed the color.  It’s no longer the pink house in town.  He and his wife have made a lot of changes and that’s a good thing.  They have made it their own just like my grandparents made it their own many decades earlier.

 The pink house still generates a lot of fond memories about growing up in a small town. 

It’s forming new memories with a younger generation keeping it in the family. 

Steve Newvine lives in Merced.

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