Pieces of my past, part 1 (long)
Apr. 26th, 2026 12:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jim_pI often believe that I am The Least Interesting Man In The World. That I am less interesting than literally any other man on the planet. This came to a head when I started dating (or trying to) and suffer failure after failure when guys who seemed to have less going for them than I did were still landing partners. To this day, even though I have a lifetime of stories to tell there's still the nagging feeling that nobody wants to hear them because I'm Just Not That Interesting.
I think I first got this feeling when I was in a Boy Scout storytelling circle, and realized I had pretty much nothing to share. The reason for this was at the time my life was pretty limited. Other boys were talking about the time they went fishing, or went out on their dad's boat, that sort of thing. I had school (which nobody in the circle wanted to hear about) and the rest of my life was taken up by the family business, which I was forbidden to talk about.
The reason I could not talk about the family business was because my parents operated from home in violation of zoning laws. They were paranoid that somehow word would filter back to the authorities and they'd be shut down (they were the original "Laws for thee but not for me" folks).
So now I'm going to spill the tea with a vengeance. My parents, Ronald and Norma Paradis of 607 Harbor View Boulevard, Somerset, MA operated a business with machinery out of their home in violation of zoning laws. They were in the direct mail business, and our basement was full of 1960s-vintage machinery for addressing and stuffing envelopes.
Here is one of the machines: a Phillipsburg Inserter. It could automatically stuff up to four inserts into an envelope, seal them, and count them. Stacks of outer envelopes and inserts went in, and stacks of stuffed envelopes came out.
Being a homebased business started on a shoestring, my dad bought used equipment and tinkered with it to get it working. Boy, did he tinker. This thing was constantly jamming and acting up, and so he had to twiddle with various adjustments to get it to behave. I still own the very screwdriver he used to do the tinkering. He was constantly angry, on edge, and cursing up a storm about this.
One day when I was maybe five years old, I had a friend over, and I told her "We have an inserting machine. It's always broken". My mom overheard this, dragged me aside, and laid into me about how we were never to talk about this to anyone. I was just trying to make conversation and mom shut that down. The message was clear: don't try to make conversation in case you accidentally spill the tea.
Being a small family business it consumed our lives. I was frequently dragged in to do various tasks for the business, from hand-stuffing envelopes for small jobs, to operating the addressing machine, to operating this very inserting machine, to operating even bigger machines that I'll talk about later. Of course, having an underage child operating industrial machinery like this was its own brand of illegal, which my parents emphasized was yet another reason to not breathe a word about it to anyone. I didn't get an allowance, I got paid for the hours I worked in the business.
So here it is, the inserting machine that I was forbidden to talk about, for everyone to see (this picture is not the actual machine; it's a newer model for illustration purposes). If you want to see one in action take a look at this short video. This is the kind of story that *could* have made me interesting back then, if only I was allowed to tell it. Which I'm doing now.
Part of me wishes I could go back and drop a dime on my parents...
I think I first got this feeling when I was in a Boy Scout storytelling circle, and realized I had pretty much nothing to share. The reason for this was at the time my life was pretty limited. Other boys were talking about the time they went fishing, or went out on their dad's boat, that sort of thing. I had school (which nobody in the circle wanted to hear about) and the rest of my life was taken up by the family business, which I was forbidden to talk about.
The reason I could not talk about the family business was because my parents operated from home in violation of zoning laws. They were paranoid that somehow word would filter back to the authorities and they'd be shut down (they were the original "Laws for thee but not for me" folks).
So now I'm going to spill the tea with a vengeance. My parents, Ronald and Norma Paradis of 607 Harbor View Boulevard, Somerset, MA operated a business with machinery out of their home in violation of zoning laws. They were in the direct mail business, and our basement was full of 1960s-vintage machinery for addressing and stuffing envelopes.
Here is one of the machines: a Phillipsburg Inserter. It could automatically stuff up to four inserts into an envelope, seal them, and count them. Stacks of outer envelopes and inserts went in, and stacks of stuffed envelopes came out.
Being a homebased business started on a shoestring, my dad bought used equipment and tinkered with it to get it working. Boy, did he tinker. This thing was constantly jamming and acting up, and so he had to twiddle with various adjustments to get it to behave. I still own the very screwdriver he used to do the tinkering. He was constantly angry, on edge, and cursing up a storm about this.
One day when I was maybe five years old, I had a friend over, and I told her "We have an inserting machine. It's always broken". My mom overheard this, dragged me aside, and laid into me about how we were never to talk about this to anyone. I was just trying to make conversation and mom shut that down. The message was clear: don't try to make conversation in case you accidentally spill the tea.
Being a small family business it consumed our lives. I was frequently dragged in to do various tasks for the business, from hand-stuffing envelopes for small jobs, to operating the addressing machine, to operating this very inserting machine, to operating even bigger machines that I'll talk about later. Of course, having an underage child operating industrial machinery like this was its own brand of illegal, which my parents emphasized was yet another reason to not breathe a word about it to anyone. I didn't get an allowance, I got paid for the hours I worked in the business.
So here it is, the inserting machine that I was forbidden to talk about, for everyone to see (this picture is not the actual machine; it's a newer model for illustration purposes). If you want to see one in action take a look at this short video. This is the kind of story that *could* have made me interesting back then, if only I was allowed to tell it. Which I'm doing now.
Part of me wishes I could go back and drop a dime on my parents...
