Working "Off the Books"

Many free enterprisers probably started out working off-the-books. The tax department was none the wiser, and what the taxman didn’t know, he couldn’t collect.

Going back a few decades, say to the 50's, we discover that the so-called nuclear family wasn't all Ozzies and Harriets. Many people had to struggle to make ends meet. My dad was one such person.

Dad was a pretty fair backyard mechanic. He bought old cars and got them running (at least long enough for the buyer to drive a few miles away), then sold them through the local classifieds. He also did a little bootlegging on Sundays. At that time, beer and liquor stores were closed on Sundays.

The Sixties and Seventies weren't much different. Not every kid was able to wallow along through life like Beaver Cleaver or Opie.

Who remembers Marlon Brando portraying a bad ass biker in The Wild Ones? Hardly anyone, maybe, because he smoked cigarettes. More of us remember The Fonz, a cool Harley biker, who was everyone's "go-to" guy (and he didn't smoke.) But, be mindful, bad ass bikers in the form of outlaw bike gangs are now a major component of organized crime in Canada and the U.S.

How about the Beatles, exponents of Sixties sweetness, light, and universal love? And the Rolling Stones -- hard, coarse, raunchy. Except for the odd commemorative album or concert, The Beatles are now just Golden Oldies, wisps of maudlin nostalgia. The Rolling Stones? They're still in our face, a reminder that we have become a harder, coarser society.

So what's the point? The gap between dreams and reality has become filled with more than restless sleeps. It's more the stuff of nightmares.

Yet, people still find ways to make ends meet. Ignoring the law continues to be one, but the scale and prevalence of the possibilities have increased. Now it's no longer once in a while, it's every day. And the usual response? A shrug and the ubiquitous comment, "Whatever."