Financing Demolay

 

 

When I started going to High School I had a part time Job at the Oregon State Department of geology . l did odd jobs around the office , including making the Oregon Gemstone and Mineral sample kits the Department sold to the public. The Kits came in two sizes Regular and Large ..I believe the regular size contained 24 sections each with a different Oregon Mineral or Gemstone , and the large with 36 . Each sample ahd its place and in each place was a brief description of the Sample . ON the inside lid of the box was a map of Oregon showing where the samples could be found. The Geology Department offices were on the top floor of a ten story building in downtown Portland . From our vantage point we could see the Willamette river the Ross Island Bridge , Mt Hood , Mt Adams and Mt St Helens . The view was breathtaking . In the foreground I could make out part of Benson High School and the Portland general electric Complex where my Dad worked .

There was a large storage room in the office that held a significant amount of rock samples ..and I would go into the storage area and select a sample then with the aid of a hydraulic rock crusher break it into sample size fragments suitable for the sample kits . I had my own little Laboratory and work area , for this service I earned $1.00 an hour . Occasionally I would be allowed to go into the " field " with some of our Geologists who were mapping and searching for Mineral and Oil deposits . I worked weekdays after school , the bus from Benson would leave me off just a block from the office . Even in those days Portland had an excellent transportation system . Usually I would be picked up by my father on his way home from work . I believe it was on the Bus from Benson that I met a young man whose name I have forgotten who told me about a better paying job at a place called Cromwell Tailors . Cromwell Tailors still did some tailoring , but their largest revenue source was in Men's Formal wear rental . Proms , Weddings were the biggest markets .

I was hired at Cromwell Tailors the beginning of my Sophomore year . The pay was more than three times that which I received at the Oregon State Department .

 I began in the Shoe department .  

 I polished shoes ..lots and lots of shoes . Sorting shoes , cleaning shoes , sorting again , polishing shoes , applying shoe black to the soles , sorting them , setting them into the proper bags for the weekend orders. Appropriately the "shoe department " was in the basement . of the business ...there were about 3 or four of us working in that area . Two of us went to Benson the other two went to Wilson High . We would sit downstairs polish shoes and discuss , homework , girls , more home work and more girls . It was in the basement of Cromwell Tailors that I first heard of the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings , and where i began to realize what I was missing at Benson High School . You see Benson did not have any girls ....it must have taken me 2 years to figure that out. But in that first year at Cromwell I realized something important was missing from School. And then my initiation into Demolay confirmed it . I was earning money but no girlfriends to spend it on . A change was a coming ...but I did not see it coming .....the course of the stars had been mapped out and I a pawn in the great confluence of the cosmos was about to be sent in orbit around a different High School .