{"id":5955,"date":"2014-10-06T12:35:01","date_gmt":"2014-10-06T17:35:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/mojo\/?p=5955"},"modified":"2025-07-29T14:18:52","modified_gmt":"2025-07-29T19:18:52","slug":"cadillacs-in-our-dreams","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/blog\/cadillacs-in-our-dreams\/","title":{"rendered":"Cadillacs in our dreams"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft  wp-image-16403\" src=\"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/20201006_cadillac.jpg\" alt=\"An image of a white 1984 Cadillac Eldorado Biarritz.\" width=\"349\" height=\"262\">So when I was 16, I had a short-lived stint at Shoney&#8217;s as a salad bar attendant. I&#8217;ve never worked that hard in my life on a consistent basis. I didn&#8217;t do well for several reasons.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>My trainer was a woman who was ancient when Christ was born.<sup class='footnote' id='fnref-5955-1'><a href='#fn-5955-1' rel='footnote'>1<\/a><\/sup> I felt so sorry for her, working herself to death at this shitty job. Shouldn&#8217;t she have moved up and on by now? She was nice, more inclined toward talking than training.<\/p>\n<p>Anyway, I think I might have been gauche\/crass enough to ask her why she was doing this job. She told me she was saving up to buy her husband a brand-new Cadillac. In cash. The fact that it was <em>for her husband<\/em> gave me pause, but I went with it.<\/p>\n<p>She was almost at her savings goal and she could quit the job in six months. She told me this with the excitement of a kid twitching to get out of his room on Christmas morning to see what Santa brought. Now, to me, that was a worthy but totally overwhelming goal (I had yet to get my first paycheck) and I went about my work, stunned and awed and humbled. That she only had six months to go was a feat of astronomical proportions.<\/p>\n<p>I went home with that tale. My dad sneered. &#8220;Do you want to spend the rest of your life working at Shoney&#8217;s so you can save up to buy a car <em><strong>in cash<\/strong><\/em>?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>We lived in the ghetto. It wasn&#8217;t like we had a dime to our names. I went to bed chastened. Possibly in tears. Because there was something wrong with what he said, but I didn&#8217;t know what, and all I really wanted when I was that age was my dad&#8217;s approval.<\/p>\n<p>I approved of her goal but I didn&#8217;t know why. I kept my opinion to myself.<\/p>\n<p>Her name was Hazel.<\/p>\n<div class=\"footnotes\">\n<p>______________________________<\/p>\n<p class=\"footnote\"><span class='footnote' id='fn-5955-1'><a href='#fnref-5955-1'>1<\/a>.<\/span>&nbsp;&nbsp;Huh. Seems my mentors are <a href=\"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/blog\/buy-a-saddle\/\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">cantankerous old women<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>So when I was 16, I had a short-lived stint at Shoney&#8217;s as a salad bar attendant. I&#8217;ve never worked that hard in my life on a consistent basis. I didn&#8217;t do well for several reasons.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[87,317],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5955","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-money","category-philosophy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5955"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5955"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5955\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16515,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5955\/revisions\/16515"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5955"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5955"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5955"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}