You could say Monday will be Larry Slessler’s first independence day in 61 years. the first he hasn’t been working or going to school — or both — since he was 10 years old, that is.
“Yeah, I will be celebrating double independence days on Monday,” says the 71-year-old Medford resident.
This past week was his last as a program manager at the Job Council, where he had worked 22 years.
“That was the longest I’ve ever done anything,” he says. “I really loved that job and the people I worked with.”
He is quick to stress he did not retire. He was downsized, a victim of the ongoing budget crunch.
“This is the first time I’ve ever been laid off,” says the Vietnam War veteran. “I’ve never even collected unemployment.”
He stops talking for a moment to ponder the fact he is no longer a working stiff, that he doesn’t have to get up Tuesday morning to head off to the trenches.
“You know, I really don’t know if I’m going to like this,” he confesses.
He figures he has had 31 paying jobs over the years: dishwasher, landscaper, bucking hay, unloading box cars, drive-in theater attendant, fruit picker, caddie, house painter, pizza parlor manager, ranch hand, waiter, short-order cook, military intelligence officer, coach, teacher, veteran’s outreach center representative.
And that’s just the tip of his employment iceberg.
“You name it — I’ve done it,” he says.
Slessler, a 1957 graduate of Medford Senior High School, hails from a blue-collar background. His father was a printer at the Mail Tribune; his mother a nurse.
“They were both heavy in the work ethic, old German-Lutheran types,” he explains.
His first job, which received their blessing, came after a neighbor who worked at a Medford fruit-packing house mentioned that his workplace should have a concession stand for employees.
No dummy, 10-year-old Larry sped off to the plant on his bicycle.
“I sort of conned them into it,” he says. “But they were happy to do it. They had a place I could set up a concession stand.”
His stand offered candy, coffee and sodas.
“I remember wondering to myself, ‘How much should I charge for this stuff?’ ” he says. “Coke cost me 90 cents a case. There’s 24 in a case. I sold it for 10 cents a pop. it was a decent profit margin.”
His childhood business flourished for two summers.
“Then our neighbor — he was a foreman or something like that at the plant — figured out how much money I was making,” he says. “For a little kid, I was doing pretty well. So he got a family member to take it over.
“Yeah, the success killed me,” he adds. “But for two summers, it was a great gig.”
His next business venture was his own lawn-care business catering to folks going on summer vacation.
“I was always doing something to earn money,” he says, adding that his mowing paid $1 to $1.25 a lawn.
When he was in the eighth grade, he plunked down $5 from mowing lawns — with his parents’ permission — at Medford Lamports Sporting Store as the down payment for a gleaming new .30-06 Remington deer rifle.
“I paid it off that summer with a lot of sweat equity,” he recalls of the $105 rifle, noting that no one paid any attention when he walked home with it over his shoulder and with a box of ammo in his hand.
“Today I would attract a SWAT team,” he quips.
Once he got a driver’s license in high school, he began working as a van driver delivering flowers.
“My parents were such strong Lutherans that I was not allowed to even be in the same room with Catholic girls,” he says. “That was verboten.
“So when I had to deliver a bunch of bouquets over to the Catholic church I was scared,” he adds. “When I went in, I expected a bolt of lightning or something.”
He wasn’t struck, although he may have been smitten by one or two of the young lasses.
Another memorable job was working as a pond monkey at a local sawmill. That’s the person whose job includes walking on logs in a mill pond while pushing them into the mill with a long pole.
Sure enough, he took the plunge the first day. “They all cheered,” he says of his co-workers.
The job he enjoyed least was feeding the dryer in a plywood mill in Eugene while a student at the University of Oregon.
“The logs would come in wet and they would peel them for the plywood,” he says. “You would feed that dryer by putting those sheets on a conveyor belt all day. it was hot and so monotonous.”
He graduated from the U of O in 1961, majoring in history with a minor in literature. He joined the Air Force as an intelligence officer, rising to the rank of captain and serving two tours in Vietnam, where he received a Bronze Star.
He later earned a master’s degree in education from what is now Southern Oregon University, and became a teacher and coach.
The proud grandfather who has always enjoyed fishing, hunting and reading but not golf — “hate golf,” he says — plans to take the next two months off.
After Labor Day? He figures he will roll up his sleeves and go back to work, likely as a volunteer.
“I’m just not a person who can sit around and grow pansies and be happy,” he laments.
Reach reporter Paul Fattig at 541-776-4496 or email him at .
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