This is the table. Mahogany. We never placed junk on it; it was for eating special dinners and important stuff.

For about a year, shortly after we moved to the city, Dad had a Pure Oil gas and service station. While I wasn't knowledgeable or strong enough for auto repair, he did find a couple of jobs for me. One was passing out advertising handbills door-to-door throughout the station neighborhood. My sister and I were rewarded umbrellas (the giveaway we were advertising) for days of labor. While we coveted the umbrellas, we also learned to value our labor a little higher in the future!

The main job, however, was bookkeeping. Yes, an eleven-year-old helped keep the business books — right there on this dining room table.

Entering figures into columns, sitting there hour after hour, adding and re-adding to make sure everything balanced, ate up many an evening and weekend. My calculator, the “Addiator” was a far cry from the ten key I later learned in high school.

But I did the books and really didn’t think much about it until several years later. Out with a friend one evening, I ran into Leo, one of the mechanics who’d worked at Dad’s station. In our conversation I mentioned doing the books, and Leo reacted with surprise, “Oh, I thought Howard’s wife did them!” Obviously, Dad had let him think that. Oh well, the work didn’t hurt me, and I learned a thing or two.

And now that’s what I do at work every day. My boss wouldn't be shocked to learn that my training came in childhood at our dining room table through the hands-on, just-do-it approach because, about 40 years later, I learned Peachtree in his office the same way!

Commit to the Lord whatever you do, and your plans will succeed. Proverbs 16:3