{"id":3290,"date":"2022-06-09T11:20:11","date_gmt":"2022-06-09T18:20:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/?p=3290"},"modified":"2022-06-10T05:11:42","modified_gmt":"2022-06-10T12:11:42","slug":"work-you-love","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/?p=3290","title":{"rendered":"Work You Love"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
John Hudspeth<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

At 76, my friend John Hudspeth took a job as a dishwasher.<\/p>\n

Sounds like a retirement horror story, huh?<\/p>\n

Not really.<\/p>\n

John says the job has extended his life. I\u2019ll let him explain in his own words, but, first, you should know that he didn\u2019t need the work to pay bills.<\/p>\n

After 42 years working for the Texas Department of Transportation and another eight doing stone fabrication, John had plenty on which to retire. Which he did for about four years.<\/p>\n

But the inactivity wasn\u2019t good for him. In his words, \u201cI was an overweight couch potato just waiting to die.\u201d<\/p>\n

Then, in February, his son-in-law opened a new restaurant at Tradewinds Airport in Amarillo (that\u2019s Shelby\u2019s Diner for you local readers). As you know, help is hard to find these days so John volunteered to wash dishes for free. After a couple of weeks, he started receiving a salary (though I\u2019m not sure he cashes all the checks).<\/p>\n

So my friend did it to help family and be around his wait staff grandkids. John says that\u2019s important to him: \u201cI only knew one grandparent and didn\u2019t know him very well.\u201d<\/p>\n

And there\u2019s this: John has always loved airplanes (both his sons became professional pilots), and he gets to see aircraft and talk to some of the pilots every day.<\/p>\n

For you aviation aficionados, there are Beach King Airs, Cessna Citations and an occasional Pitts Special, Extra 360 (designed for aerobatics) and an Army Apache helicopter.<\/p>\n

John says he has lost weight and lowered his blood pressure. Which is not bad considering the two free meals he gets daily. For the record, I sampled one during our interview\u2014sumptuous but I doubt I\u2019d be losing weight with these.<\/p>\n

So it seems a happy retirement can mean doing work you love. If so, my friend\u2019s smile says it all. In his words, \u201cI could be a dishwasher until I\u2019m 100.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At 76, my friend John Hudspeth took a job as a dishwasher. Sounds like a retirement horror story, huh? Not really. John says the job has extended his life. I\u2019ll let him explain in his own words, but, first, you should know that he didn\u2019t need the work to pay bills. After 42 years working […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3290","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3290","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3290"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3290\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3293,"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3290\/revisions\/3293"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3290"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3290"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3290"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}