I started my window cleaning business back in 1981, when my son was only 8 months old. At that time, I was 22, and unemployed in a town that was over 100 miles from where I had worked last. I had been a route salesman for a bread company in Clearwater who was promised a transfer to the Gainesville, FL area. When I moved my family out here, I did not realize that I was about to be punished.
I had been working for Merita Bread for almost a year when I got in trouble with them. As a route salesman, I was responsible for placing our product in grocery stores, removing the stale, and billing those stores for what was actually sold. There was also an unsaid duty. I was expected to cheat my customers by over- charging them, or by not giving them stale credit. My boss would short me, and I was expected to steal it back! This shortage was usually about $50 per day. This happened to all the other sales- men, who told me to go along, and make it worth my while by stealing more than the boss was stealing, thus clearing a profit for myself. That's what they all did. So, I went along for awhile. But I considered myself a "good" thief, because I only stole enough to break even with the boss.
It was at this time that I had a real reckoning with God. I didn't like what I had to do to stay with the company, but I don't know if that is what got me thinking about my immortal soul. As far as I can tell, it was a full page ad in the St. Petersburg Times that declared Jesus Christ was coming back and the end of the world was near that actually got my attention. The ad said he would be judgment-ready in June of that year (1981). Well, I didn't know He was coming AT ALL, let alone in the next few months! I did some real soul searching, and it only took me about 24 hours to make my decision to follow Jesus Christ because I believed He really was the Lord. I started scaring my wife with all this talk about death and judgment, and we both called on Him together in our bedroom. No one was there to walk us through it, or pray with us, so we had to truly rely on the God we prayed to, and no one else.
When I went back to work the next day, I made a decision to put this stealing behind me, and tell my boss he wouldn't be getting any more ill-gotten-gain from me. Let me tell you, they went ballistic. I had already confessed to some of my customers what I had been doing, so their reaction didn't bother me. But they weren't finished. A couple of months later, when I naively thought it had all blown over, I asked for a transfer to the Gainesville area. And they were so helpful! They arranged everything, I moved, and they pulled the job out from under me. So, I was soon working any kind of job I could find: baling hay, picking watermelons, digging holes. These jobs are all honorable enough. but they cannot support a family! Neither could any of the hourly wage jobs in North-Central Florida.
We were poor, but we still had faith that God did not save our souls to make us miserable. If our poverty was doing some good in the world, we could have accepted it, but it seemed contrary to so many promises in the Bible that God would provide not only our basic needs, but that He made a way for us to have abundance. It also seemed that I was going to have to find something to do that would constitute my end of that bargain. I remembered seeing a man clean windows for one of my many employers. He was self-employed, working for each of the tenants of that particular shopping center. I thought, "I could do that!" I had no idea what I was getting myself into, but I went out to the local Ace Hardware store and wrote a bad check for my first squeegee. I felt like Jack coming home with the magic beans when my wife found out what I was going to do. As a matter of fact, she bet me I wouldn't make $20 the first day.
The next day, I got everything I needed strapped onto the back of my motorcycle and rode into town, some 40 miles away. I had enough gas to get into town, but not enough to get home. I didn't know any- thing about this business (or any business for that matter) and walked up and down University Av., going from shop to shop. Not very many people said "yes," but by the end of the day, I had made $21. I put a buck in my gas tank, went home, and triumphantly spread out twenty one-dollar bills, declaring, "there! I'm in the window-cleaning business!" Well, Cindi is a good sport, so she accepted the results. I've learned a lot since that time. One of the biggest things I've discovered is this: If you really want to serve people, you'll never be unemployed again...
Don is 42, and a native of Troy, New York.