"I'm 52 years old, and in all my years..."

[Mark Padgett]

Back sometime in the early 90s, I worked a MS boys holiday tournament at a local HS gym that had two courts - one standard HS size and the other was what you would call MS size. The games were 20 minute running halves and they started one hour and ten minutes apart. On Friday night, I worked three games starting at 6:00. On both Saturday and Sunday, I worked four games in the mornings starting at 9:00 and four games in the evenings starting at 5:00 (including the "championship" game at 8:30 on Sunday night), so I had both afternoons to rest up and eat. A lot of my games were on the MS sized court, but not the last four on Sunday night. If I remember correctly (and at my age, that's not a given) the games paid $12 each, so I made $228 for the 19 games - in cash!

Needless to say, all my partners and I worked "convenience mechanics".

Oh yeah, we got as much free soda pop as we wanted. I must have downed at least 12 bottles of Diet Pepsi that weekend. Good thing the bathrooms were right next to the courts.

BTW - when I got home late on Sunday night, my wife said, "You home already?"