Going Home Again

The bike path where I drove to McDonald’s is gone. Grass now covers what used to be a well-formed path where my old Schwinn rode. Pancakes always tasted better AFTER the paper route was done.

I still remember the names of some of the neighbors on the paper route: the Christmases (I was devastated when one of the Christmas daughters ran over my bike with her car while I diligently collected the bi-monthly dues.) Thankfully, the Christmas girls were all very cute. This made the crushed mass of tangled steel and metal a little easier to tolerate. Most importantly, they did buy me a new bike.

The Vogelsangs’ husband was a real stickler for getting his paper right at 5:30am. I rubbed the sleep out of my eyes and powered my bike down the street to ensure his delivery was my first of the fresh morning. This is where I learned responsibility: barreling down the middle of Elm Street, snow drifts on either side in mid-January. Thankfully, for every ‘Vogelsang’, there was a ‘Jungert’; the Jungert family was always appreciate, welcoming and generous with tips!

The hometown streets where I sprinted and trained for many soccer seasons all look narrower now. Sometimes my brother was my companion; other times, I flew solo. He never really liked the endurance runs. My brother preferred the lunge, push, pull of weightlifting or the short burst from a sprint.

Now, as I jog past the soccer fields where I grew up many decades earlier, the turf, shrouded in fog, awaits the next generation of youngsters: the hive of children chasing after a white and black checkered ball. These children won’t be delivering papers in the early morning. That job was a duty from yesterday that shall never return. Now a man in an old car tosses the paper onto the driveway at 4:00am.

The lessons:

• Never forget your roots
• Make memories today that will last a lifetime
• Tell stories

What is your business doing to remember its beginnings? Is there a story that needs to be told that will help you tell your message to your prospects? If properly done, these facts will be remembered more than the price and type of widget that you sell.

Until next time,

Dan Naden