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Double Lives

The Source

There’s nothing wrong with picking a single occupation and following it out for the rest of your working life, but some of the most interesting people I’ve known are those who have led double lives. They pursue one life in the daytime then do a mild version of Jekyll and Hyde when the sun goes down. I have a quite delightful former student who’s the mother of three sweet daughters and during the day this gal helps staff a health food office, selling nutritious and low calorie food along with conducting workshops on weight loss. In a recent chat she told me that she’d taken a new part-time job as the waitress in a restaurant featuring mounds and mounds of fried fish. She said it’s a bit weird to spend the day showing folks how to trim their waistline then spend her nights mouthing things like, “Would you like fries with that?” and “How about some dessert?” Bottom line: both jobs make her happy. I once met a Methodist youth leader from Decatur who led his teenage charges on youth retreats during the day then hurried back home to grab his instrument and play in country-western taverns at night. My friend said that both jobs had their particular joys and since neither paid well the Bible and the banjo fit together nicely. I told him about the many nights I’d have to rush home from a honkytonk gig to play the piano for church. It’s a doable thing and I assured him that He’s a God of forgiveness. . . and perhaps even country music. And I can well remember the brouhaha that erupted at Triopia many years ago when a school board member discovered that one of our female elementary school teachers had taken a job as bartender to supplement the peanuts we were being paid that year. She was immediately called into conference with the superintendent, a man who I think purposely drove extra miles on the way home to keep from even passing a barroom. He asked her if it was true that she was serving drinks at night and she admitted that yes, she’d found it necessary to take on another job to stay alive. The administrator firmly advised her that although there was no law against it, her future employment as a fifth grade teacher was now in question. We pitied the poor girl. She needed the money and it was a clean and well-run tavern, but she quit the night job. Trying to soothe her fear when she came out of the meeting I reminded her that her grandmother would have been fired from her teaching job for the simple sin of getting married. Perhaps one of the strangest juxtapositions of occupations concerned a friend of mine named Mick. I met Mick when I was asked to march with the Illinois State Police bagpipe band in the State Fair parade. For what it’s worth, the State Fair parade is a killer. It’s always in the heat of August and it’s often held during a rainstorm. . . and at that time it was five miles long. That’s a long, long time to blow your brains into a bagpipe. Mick was the head piper for the State Cops and a regular patrolman during the day, so it was a shock when I attended a performance of The Pirates of Penzance at the Springfield Muni Opera and saw that he was the lead dancer. I couldn’t believe it was six-foot-three Mick up there dancing so I looked at the program to check my eyes and saw that Mick was the choreographer for the show. . . surely one of the few State Trooper/Choreographers in the nation. I guess that any man who can wear a Scottish skirt in public for five miles. . . . Other assorted mixed matches of occupations: word has it that the publisher of The Source newspaper once spent some time as a coroner. Perhaps that’s where they got the phrase, “You’ve got to kill that story.” Some attest that Lakes and Parks Commissioner Bruce Surratt was once an actor, but having seen him onstage myself I would deny that. Lisa Musch, our new Chamber of Commerce chief was once one of the finest dancers in the area. Tom Glossop, the recently retired chief at County Market has eyes set on the Nashville recording circuit. Two of the area’s finest singers, Nathan Carls of Beardstown and Rick Barger of Pittsfield both spend their daylight hours as carpenters. But of the cross-occupational folks I’ve met few compare to Mark, a fellow I ran into at Six Flags west of St. Louis. During the day he was a gun-slinging actor on the streets of the amusement park, nighttime found him play King Henry VIII, a carousing monarch at the Royal Dumpe Dinner Theatre and on Sundays? In his pulpit as a Baptist minister. If variety is the spice of life then some folks just love the hot sauce.