Hardly Working - Paperback

by Roger Day Bain (Author)

Hardly Working is a provocative, at times comical look at both the pursuit and the avoidance of work by one who wasn't sure what he wanted to be when he grew up, who decides to "retire" in the decade after graduating college to pursue his own version of the American Dream. It is both a social history and a coming-of-age tale that follows a suburban white kid avoiding the pre-programmed path available to him, who grows from jock to frat boy to counterculture acolyte to suburban dad to successful entrepreneur, propelled by music, songwriting, and an appreciation of the absurd.

The author recounts scores of jobs, schemes, trips, capers, and life lessons while navigating the conflict between the need to pay bills and the urge to be creative and free. Peek inside the Hinsdale Golf Club caddy shack in 1960, meet the flange ladies, the Fuller Brush man, the Ace Hamburger Flipper, the Fabulous Johnny A. Slosh to sleep on a waterbed perched in the display window of a leather store in a Minneapolis wino neighborhood. Attend the final Grateful Dead performance at the Fillmore West. Come face to face with an anteater in the jungle ruins of a lost tribe in Colombia, S.A. Be there for the birth of the Barking Geckos in Lawrence, Ks. Take a walk beneath the Wrigley Field grandstand with Chicago Cub Hall of famer, Ernie Banks. Experience the early days of cable TV at Sunflower Cable, where you'll meet Dip Head before he appeared on America's Funniest Home Videos. Taste how it feels to wear a cheap brown suit to an office job you can tell won't pan out. Find out why the author was wearing a dress and playing kazoo for an audience of kids and nuns-while ditching his day job. Witness the world's largest smooth and creamy dildo delivered to an all-boys Catholic High School on a warm spring afternoon in Chicago.

This droll, coming-of-age memoir combines elements of Studs Terkel, Tom Wolfe, Jack Kerouac, and a nod to gonzo journalism. Hardly Working is poignant reflection on the nature of success, a reminder of the career choices we must all make, an example of how to be yourself and live well, how having enough can be more realistic than having it all, how a passionate avocation-guitars and songwriting-provokes a love of life's possibilities, a sense of optimism and finally, the cornerstone of a quirky advertising career.