In the not so distant past, as a boy, snow meant money! On days like today in Flint, Michigan with the 2--4 inches of light powdery snow, it meant easy money! Back in the day I would get a buddy and we’d grab our snow shovels and each take one side of the street knocking on doors with the hopes of finding someone to pay us 5 bucks to shovel out their driveway. Then together, we’d shovel them out. Some of our best customers were, widows, older retired men and sometime working men that appreciated our entrepreneurship or were just to lazy to do it themselves.
After doing three of four driveways, we would go off to the corner drugstore to purchase a soda-pop, a candy bar and the ever precious, comic book! Dare Devil was my favorite. For a time I even owned it’s first edition. That was until years later when my mother was cleaning out the attic, and inadvertently threw it away. I still love my mom, but it’s been hard to forgive her for her ignorance in discarding a piece of history!
However, comic books and snow shoveling is not the point of this writing, it’s about the lost of entrepreneurship within our young people. It is self-evident to all parents, single parent of not, that having a child that actively finds a way to self-employ themselves creates feelings of accomplishment, self-confidence and teaches them the value of money.
Are you actively encouraging, or even demanding, your child to find ways to fill their free time productively? I am not saying they need a full time job. I think that education should be a fulltime job for young folks. Yet, as a parent, are you looking at ways to help build character in your child. Think about it.
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Then came the third and, to me perhaps, the most significant period of my life so far, here in America. From the moment the immigration officer at LaGuardia Airport shook my hand and wished me good luck, I again began to see the sunnier side of life. I have made true friends and they have proven themselves when I needed them most. Food and clothing for victims of floods, a group of GIs adopting an orphan and sending him to school, neighbors building a new home for a victim of fire, Community Chest, Cancer Fund, Salvation Army, Alcoholics Anonymous, and a thousand other such acts or associations, all voluntary, collective or individual, left an indelible mark on me. It gave me a new lease on life. I again believe in mankind.
