The First Pilot At Ground Zero Recalls His First Jobs

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All you can stream with Zumo Play. This is Lee Habib and this is Our American Stories, the show where America is the star and the American people. To search for the Our American Stories podcast, go to the iHeart Radio app, to Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. On the morning of September 11th, 2001, Peter Braxton was the first military pilot in the air over the burning Twin Towers in New York City. It was his first day on the job.

Here's Peter sharing some stories from a few of his first jobs, including those before and after serving in the Air Force. There's a, like a pitch and putt golf little thing with a little ice cream and miniature golf and driving range. And I don't know, I think like high school, my girlfriend or something like that got me the job and we're both working there.

I mean, this is before, I don't know, they had tractors picking up golf balls. So I used to go out there and scoop them up with a little scooper on the driving range and then run over to the ice cream shop and, you know, try to make a twirly ice cream cone or, you know, and I, I'd eat the mistakes. I was a kid, I was 14 or something like that. So I lasted a little while there, but that's a seasonal job, right?

So you can't do that in the winter. So then I worked at, I applied for, I got the job at Burger King and I lasted three weeks at Burger King. And the reason I lasted three weeks is I was like bored. I was, my brain was atrophying. I was making these burgers in the back and fries. And they were like, oh, I'll just promote you to the window. You know, the drive-thru. I was like, no, no, I don't do that. Like, now, I thought the cashier, do you want to be a manager? I was 16 years old.

I was like, no, no, no, no, no. It's hard work actually. I mean, I don't know if people understand this.

This is labor. I mean, I mean, it's lunchtime. I mean, these things are flying off the, you know, the buns are going everywhere. The burgers are flaring up and, you know, you're running out of cheese. And obviously, it's fast food.

So you got to synchronize. You got to drop the fries and then the alarm goes off. And it's, I was like, I don't know if this is, right? Like, I don't know if this is where I was built to be. I didn't last three weeks at that place. It was, that's the issue.

That was it. It was grueling work. You had to be perfect. People get upset. They're spending $3.99.

They want every penny of value out of that stuff. That's hard, hard work. You got to be there on time. It gets pace, hectic. People, you know, expectations, unmet expectations communicated or not is the root of all conflict.

If the burger doesn't show up without the pickles or whatever, this conflict, this expectation isn't met. I think it was a good lesson. And I learned about people, you know, people. So I got a job at a grocery store as a bagger. And this is back in the day where they like tip you a buck or something like that. This was in 1991, I don't know, 1990. And I remember this woman came in furious because I put the bananas on the bottom of the bag and, you know, she had brought them home and you know, these dollar 98 bananas were smushed. They were, they weren't, they weren't, they were deformed.

And I mean, God, my face and it was like, I'll buy you a banana tree. I'm sorry. Like I didn't, I apologize. I wasn't, you're right.

You're right. I'm sorry. And I remember they like put me on like punishment. So my punishment was to return all of the things that people don't buy and go find where they're supposed to go back on the shelf. And I did that for a while and you know, in Rome, New York, it snows a lot.

And you know, one night we have this snow storm and nobody was coming. I mean, it was just like, why is the store open? And so they, you know, Pete, you're going to go out and shovel, you know, the sidewalks and clean them off. And I was like, well, why isn't Bethany doing that? Like, you know, no Pete, you're going to go shovel the sidewalk.

So I go out and I shovel the sidewalk at this grocery store and I'm like, well, where am I going to put all this snow? And I covered Bethany's classmate from high school, her car up in snow. And I thought it was the funniest. That was like king of the hill, right? Like it was the funniest thing.

I just buried her car in snow. And we were, I mean, if she ever hears this, she'll remember this. And she started laughing. Yeah, she was, she was like complaining, laughing, crying all at once. And Bettina, if she's around, she was like the manager. I mean, I was 16.

Bettina couldn't have been 22, but I thought she was like 48, right? Like she was in charge. She's like, you're going to go clean off her car and you're going to clean it all.

I was like, all right. So I went back out in the snow storm, cleaned off Bethany's car. I cleaned off Bettina's car. I cleaned off my car.

I mean, nobody was coming into the store. You have two hemispheres of your brain for a reason. One is more logic and math. There's art and creative thinking. And for me, I kind of felt like my, I don't know if it's left brain or right brain, but the creative thinking side was kind of atrophying a little bit. And so I remember walking out, I was at Credit Suisse and I walked out and it was a suit tie, you know, the whole Swiss banker look. And I was, I walked by this art store and I looked in it. It was like a movie.

I stopped. I looked in the art store and I went in, I bought these big canvases, huge, like, you know, I don't know if they're four by sixes or something like that. And I never painted anything, but I hung the canvases up.

And so I remember, you know, I guess the party trick with, you know, I'd maybe if I brought a date home to cook her dinner or something like that, you know, they'd see the canvas, you know, some would say something, some would say like, Oh, you don't see it. You know, you don't see the art. There's nothing on it. I mean, there's nothing on this thing.

I just never got around to doing it. But what I did do to kind of fulfill that was to cook. So I like to create things and here's the good news.

You get to eat it. And a terrific job on the editing production in storytelling by our own Greg Hengler and a special thanks to Peter Braxton for talking about his first jobs, including those before and after serving in the Air Force. And the one before just made me laugh because my first job was at Roy Rogers and I lasted a very short time because it is brutal work.

It's like an assembly line and it's 110 degrees and people are screaming at you all the time. The story of first jobs in the end, that's what this really was and work in general and what we learned from it and some of the things we don't learn and especially what we really learn what God's made us to do. Peter Braxton's story of his work before and after his service in the Air Force here on Our American Stories. Here at Our American Stories, we bring you inspiring stories of history, sports, business faith and love stories from a great and beautiful country that need to be told, but we can't do it without you. Our stories are free to listen to, but they're not free to make. If you love our stories in America like we do, please go to our American stories.com and click the donate button.

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