I have written much about my early life as a full time rock musician and the middle part as a motion picture scenic and graphic artist. It does provide me with stories to put down on paper, best as I can remember.
Someone might ask what grand inspirations motivated me into these careers. What lofty visions propelled me?
The answer is… stone cold laziness.
One of my junior high teachers wrote this on my report card:
“Thomas is intelligent, shows talent in several areas but he works very hard toward his goal. Unfortunately his goal seems to be doing as little as humanly possible.”
From the age of 15 when I played my first continuing paid gig at the Golden Bell dive bar just North of Columbus, I began thinking.
Thinking about a glorious life full of achievements?
Hell no. I was thinking, “How can I do as little as possible for the most amount of money to accumulate and build the American Dream?”
Hell no again. My motto was, “If it’s hard, let someone else do it.”
When other teenagers were mowing lawns and bagging groceries for a couple of bucks, I was pounding a guitar on Friday and Saturday nights and taking home as much as a lot of men who had families and houses to pay for.
Which I promptly spent.
Plus, how many jobs would allow you to drink (illegally) and give you free beer?
When I graduated from S.D. Lee and promptly got kicked out of Mississippi State, I no longer had a band or gig and my money was history. And my dad kept looking at his watch and the calendar.
It was off to the employment office, which still gives me chills thinking about it even after all these years. Oh woe is me.
If you added up all my time trying out normal jobs, it wouldn’t have added up to one normal work month for anyone else.
Kentucky Fried Chicken… 3.5 hours. Bosch factory… 3 days. A Columbus garment factory (can’t remember the name)… 6 days. And a long list of others along the same lines.
Then, I followed my girlfriend north to Tennessee for a year or so. Same five minute jobs and outcome.
After being booted out of Mississippi by (Sheriff) M.C. Edwards and exiled to South Florida, I was hired for a job that totally fit my lack of a work ethic. An up and coming hard rock band called Starchild. And then a succession of bands for eight years.
I had developed my only real non-music job skill: graphic and commercial art, mostly using it for promoting bands. Then later as a more sober designer of hand produced commercial signs. I was still quite lazy, but I was paid a lot of money for a few hours of actually working…at something I did enjoy. Probably more than my CPA and lawyer earned.
An accident of fate led me to work in the movie and TV industry for about a decade. I did quite well, but it dawned on me that I needed to be much more shiftless so I phased out that career.
I’m now living life as I was meant to: doing NOTHING but writing a few words now and again. And acting as butler and chauffeur for my Jack Russell, Bella the Wonder Dog.
Work is a four letter word. Laziness is what I strive for.
Thom Caraccio ([email protected]) is a retired musician and retired motion picture scenic artist living in West Palm Beach, Florida who hails from Columbus. He graduated from S.D. Lee High in 1968 and still considers Columbus his real hometown.
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