Ted's Blog

The big Kroger never did hire him. After I told him I couldn't have him do any more yard work Susan said she could use him for a day, so I took him over to her house to work six hours on Saturday. She said they were talking about how things were going and he said he didn't have any regrets. If nothing else he has learned from this experience that he needs to work hard in school so that he doesn't have to ever sell books for a living. Also he got to talk to a lot of different kinds of people that he never would have met otherwise. On Monday he asked if he could work for free on my yard just so that he would stay in the habit of doing work. I told him I would give him $15 to mow the lawn but he never did.

On Tuesday when I came home there were Martti and Arni sitting on the couch enjoying the big screen by watching Deer Hunter which they had rented from the Johnson Ferry Blockbuster. I was wondering what Arni was up to now that he couldn't very well come home during the day to watch TV anymore and now that mystery is solved. Once again he asked that I not let Madis know about this. I was just glad that Arni and Martti were getting along.

At some point Martti decided he should get a driver's license. I think it is so he can help drive when they start delivering books, which should start soon. This became a big ordeal. He went to the DMV and got a study book and asked me questions about some of the stuff in there. I tried to think back when I took the test and point out some things he would be asked, but the license rules have changed a lot since I took the test. I remember when I got a Thai driver's license I took two Thai co-workers with me to "translate" the test but they really wound up giving me all the answers. It was a hard test with questions like what is a safe following distance at 70 kph. I didn't know any of it. So I have some real respect that Martti was trying it on his own. The rules are if you fail the first time you can come back the next day and take it again. If you fail that one you have to wait a week. Then you have to wait a month if you fail again. There are 20 questions on rules of the road, and 20 on signs and you can miss up to five on each section. Martti missed 5 on rules of the road but nailed every one of the signs.

To take the driving test for the regular license he wanted to borrow my car but he had hardly ever driven before and never in a car with a stick. I was ready to let him learn some but Arni let him practice in the van. He was supposed to get 40 hours of practice before getting a regular permit, but that would take too long so they just pretended they drove that much. I'm not real sure that the 40 hours applies to people over 18 anyway. Plus you are supposed to practice with someone over 21. Arni is still 20 but he will turn 21 on October 6. His Estonian ID card uses the European date format so it says 6-10-83 which any sane person would interpret as June 10. So he can pass for 21 easily. No such luck for Martti who was born on something like March 24.

They practiced driving for a couple of days. Arni asked if he could borrow my car to show Martti how to drive a stick. I said that I could show Martti how to drive a stick if he wanted to learn. Arni said really he just missed his car back home which was manual and he wanted to drive a car with a real transmission instead of the van. I told him I didn't want him driving my car because he drove it faster than it had ever been driven before.

Yesterday they went back to DMV and were told you had to have an appointment to take a driving test. There were no appointments available until October, well after the time they would be returning to Estonia. Part of the deal with all of this is that it is difficult to get an Estonian driver's license because you have to take expensive driver's ed courses as a prerequisite. But if you already have a license from another country then they waive that requirement. So spending $20 on licenses in the US saves them hundreds in Estonia. They definitely wanted to get a license even if they had to go out of their way to get it. They asked where else they could go in Georgia to get an appointment this week. When I got up this morning Martti said they were going on a drive to take the test. I asked where they were going and he said Tifton. I've made that drive a lot for work so I told him it was a 3-hour drive. Youch! But when I got home from work he was able show off his new driver's license (and Arni had made the drive in a little over two hours). I think that's amazing they can even qualify to get licenses. Even though their visas expire in a few weeks Martti now has a license good until 2008. And Arni was able to transfer his Idaho driver's license from last year to Georgia so he got one too.

Meanwhile the books have arrived. Today a delivery truck showed up and off loaded a palette of books in different size boxes. They said this palette was just the books that Madis has sold and Arni's palette would be coming later. Honestly it looked kind of small to me. It was stacked 3 or 4 feet high on a standard palette. That's a whole summer of 14-hour days going door to door sitting in the garage. Still, this is where the payoff really starts. They've collected half of the money from their customers so far which they used to pay the company for the books. Upon delivery they get the other half from their customers which they will keep.

Also Martti finally did get a job at Kroger, but it is the small one in Decatur and as a bag boy, not in produce. He told me they said he had to get some khakis for the job. He asked me what khakis are and wound up riding his bike to South Dekalb Mall to get a pair. He took a drug test on Tuesday (cotton swab in the mouth) and starts tomorrow morning at 9. They want him to start working Monday thru Friday full time during the day so he could still do yard work on weekends. But somehow I think he won't be doing anymore yard work.

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