I often get asked “What, exactly, do you do, Jersey Mike?”

This past Tuesday, I worked the load in and load out of WWE Smackdown with IATSE Local 19 in Baltimore. The gig was at the 1st Mariner Arena and was an 8AM call. That meant our crew had to leave the carpool spot at around 6AM to beat the traffic. The load in went an abnormally long time (the full eight hours) which meant the drive back to Harrisburg was more tedious than necessary- what with the rush hour traffic and all. The load-out was a 10:30PM call, which meant leaving Harrisburg again at 8:30 to be back on time. At the end of the day, I got into bed at around 3:30AM.

And my compensation? A couple hundred bucks.

Wednesday morning, I woke up, made a pot of coffee, checked my Facebook, Twitter and blog stats and scrambled some eggs. After the dishes, I sat down and finalized my September calendar at The Abbey Bar. I sent out a few offers for some tasty shows, bugged some agencies for some unattainable shows that I know I have to be patient on and started working on a calendar for another venue I picked up. At some point in the day, I got a phone call from a guy in a band who’s band mate had a tiff with me earlier in the week. We smoothed it out.

That’ll yield me a couple hundred bucks for the week.

Next week, I’ve got two independent sound gigs booked. I don’t even know who the bands are, but I’ll mix em well. They’re for a banquet or a reunion…I’m not sure. That’ll find me around a hundred and fifty bucks richer.

Over the years, I’ve had more one-off-type gigs than most people will do in a lifetime. Although not all of them have made me a fortune (clearly), I’m fairly sure I’ve been socking away some education that’s not found in a textbook or a classroom.

For example: three winters ago, three friends and I decided it would be a great idea to sell Christmas Trees on a vacant lot on Front Street. “West Virginia Trees, dude! They’re the best!” I told my partners. Sure, the trees were gorgeous…but in the end, we were overpriced for the neighborhood. It seems there’s a large market for twenty dollar trees in the city of Harrisburg…but not many residents were keen on dropping fifty bucks or more for a nice, seven foot Scotch Pine. (We took about a hundred leftovers to the incinerator)

Three summers ago, a friend and I spent thirteen days at the end of June in an Exxon parking lot in Grantville selling TNT fireworks leading up to the Fourth of July. Although we were there for upwards of eighteen hours a day, we walked with about thirty five hundred apiece at the end of the run.

I was an Ice Cream Man for all of forty eight hours in the summer of 2007. That might have worked out better had I not gotten the ice cream truck towed from outside the The Brewery.

Hot Dogs, Ice Cream, Christmas Trees, Fireworks…they were all fun and experience gainers in their own respect…but probably the most educational “job” I’ve ever held was right out of high school.

I had bailed out on community college and my Mom was bugging me to get out of the house and start earning. So I opened the classifieds and browsed the “driver” section. Eventually, I landed on an ad that screamed “Rock and Roll to the tune of $1000 per week. No suits, no ties, no wimps.”

And for the next seven years, I traveled the continent selling house-speakers out of the side of a Chevy Astro Van. Toronto, Hartford, LA, Orlando, North Jersey, Long Island, Boston, Nashua New Hampshire, Brattleboro Vermont…nowhere was safe.

At first, it was great. I was barely twenty years old and making pretty good money…but eventually, my conscience caught up with me and I bailed. Landing here in Harrisburg just before 9/11.

What’s next? I’ve always said if this rock and roll gig didn’t work out that I’d finally open that bagel store…time will tell.

But for now, I’m happy with this grind of hustling for the next gig. It builds character…and character goes a long way.