I don’t think I would have been successful at the camp if I had not had the Wrigley Park experience
I tried working for a corner newspaper vendor, selling the expanded (and heavy) Sunday paper for the pay of 50 cents an hour. But Chicago is not called the Windy City for nothing — the strong northern winter winds coming off the lake penetrate your innermost being. Pretty soon I realized that I needed to find a new source of income.
I heard that you could apply to sell soda, nuts, and refreshments from the food concession to the fans at Wrigley Field, the home stadium of the Chicago Cubs, on a commission basis. But there were problems: They only allowed union members to work for them, and even if you could get an exception, they only hired workers over the age of 21. I barely knew what a union was, and I was only 16 — but I was over six feet tall. I persevered and got the job.
All new workers were given “pop” (soda, in our vernacular) in heavy glass bottles which were encased in heavier wooden crates. These were slung over the shoulders on a strap, to be carried up and down the ballpark. Not an easy task. I put on a baseball cap and somehow persevered. I was not a sports fan; my only interest in the game was hoping for a doubleheader so that I would have more time to go up and down the aisles shouting, “Are you thirsty? Get your pop here!”
The next year I transferred to Yeshivah Heichal HaTorah in New York, and the following summer, at the age of 18, I got a job as a counselor in their kiruv camp. The campers were public school teenagers who were literally taken off the streets. The hope was that by the end of the summer, they would be enrolled in a yeshivah. I had never attended any sort of camp — not a day camp nor a sleepaway camp, much less a kiruv camp. But the Wrigley Park experience had taught me that I could do anything.
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