In a message dated 3/29/99 8:56:50 PM Central Standard Time, fcahill@erols.com writes: << Hey, I tuned for someone in a $800,000 home...check bounced! A charge them for the banks fee, also. -- >> Everybody has their own opinions on things for sure and I do have some kind of liability insurance (I really don't know much about it, it's just another annual bill to pay, I've never used it), but people leave a key for me and the door open quite frequently. Around here, some people never lock their doors. Mine is open during the day and when I'm out for a walk. Sometimes I leave it unlocked at night. In 30 years of tuning pianos, no one yet has ever written me a bad check. Here, you can walk into the first business you come to and find them needing help. You can go next door, they'll need it too and keep going and see Help Wanted signs and even banners waving outside announcing job openings. Sometimes service is slow at certain businesses because they are understaffed. Starting wages are often $7.50 an hour for untrained, unskilled help. There is a piano in 20% of the homes here. Most of them are nice, only a few clunkers. Music is important in the community, at the university, the schools and the churches. I have been here now half of my life, 23 years. I moved here to go to graduate school from my childhood home in Los Angeles. I would never even consider going back there except to visit my extended family at Christmas time and go to the Rose Bowl when our University football team wins the Big Ten championship or if our National Football League team, the Green Bay Packers were playing in the Super Bowl out there. By the way, Madison is a small town, only about 120,000 and maybe a quarter million when you include the surrounding suburbs (which have miles of green space between them). People still complain though but I never do. They think I'm foolish for having left California. The grass is *always* greener, so they say. It *is* greener here than in Los Angeles in the spring and summer which have refreshing rains and spectacular thunderstorms, the fall is more colorful and the winter has beautiful but moderate snow and ice for winter sports. No piano ever stays in tune more than a few months. When I tune my family's pianos in Los Angeles, they stay in tune sometimes for 3 years at a time. How can you make a living with such stable conditions? If I worked in Los Angeles, I'd *have* to tune ET!!! Need I say more? Bill Bremmer RPT Madison, Wisconsin
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