Countdown to our 35th Anniversary in May
The Good Old Days
By Allen A. Raymond, Publisher

As I look back over the first 18 years of my career – I suppose you could call them the good old days? – it is quite clear they were merely on-the-job training for what I would do with the rest of my working life.

When I first entered the world of work, I paid 10¢ for breakfast, 25¢ for lunch and 35¢ for dinner. Breakfast included a glass of orange juice, a doughnut and a cup of coffee.

That was in 1945, and I suppose one could say those were really the good old days. I'd just graduated from the University of Michigan and here I was in New York City, the land of my dreams. I had abandoned my engineering training for an entry-level job in the world of publishing and I was on top of the world.

Time marched on, my $200-a-month starting salary – and I thought it was pretty good – grew over time, and I was happy.

I'd left the tiny room I'd rented in New York's famous Greenwich Village (for $5 a week), and moved to Connecticut. I became an advertising salesman for a magazine publisher, and eventually a sales manager.

Those were exciting years for me, and comparable, I think, to the experiences of a teacher, where each year is more exciting and challenging than the last.

My career, unlike yours, would eventually take me around the country in my sales role with a major educational magazine and book publisher.

But then, of my own free will, spurred by a sudden unhappiness in my job, I took an abrupt turn in my career (many called it a wrong turn). I decided to seek the Republican nomination for Congress in my Connecticut district. It was an aberration, which my dictionary describes as "a deviation from a right, customary or natural course of action."

But the Pennsylvania Dutch put it more succinctly..."We get so soon old and so late smart." Amen to that.

When that little political diversion didn't work, Patricia Broderick and I – we'd already worked together at my previous job – decided to launch Early Years (now Teaching K-8), a magazine for elementary school teachers.

Our first issue appeared in May, 1971, and once again I found myself – just as in 1945 – trying to make ends meet.

I'm a quick learner, especially when my back's to the wall, and it wasn't long before I knew how to find motel rooms for $30 a night, while simultaneously mining the Yellow Pages in the city I was visiting (I was there to sell advertising in our magazine), in search of a rental car company with lower prices than others might charge.

In those days breakfasts cost more than 10¢, so I was delighted when motels began offering free continental breakfasts.

I flew at night to save money and to prevent travel from cutting into my workdays. Sometimes that didn't work too well, like the Sunday night I spent at Kennedy Airport in New York City, waiting for a replacement part so the plane I was about to board could make it to Chicago before dawn.

As teachers, you have days like that, days when you think, "this won't work" – but it does. And then, if you like teaching as much as I like educational publishing, you'll smile...and so will I.

Allen Raymond is the Editor/Publisher for Teaching Pre K-8.