Name of Tip: Get Something to Carry You Through Life
Name: John Edward Thuman, 61
Description: Get something—anything—in your hand to carry you through life. My something is a broom, which I use to clean houses and yards on Saturday mornings. I spray a house with a water hose, clean the inside, cut the grass, trim the bushes, and rake the leaves out of the yard.

Instructions: Find what you can carry through your life; see what’s all around you, on your side, and behind you. You have to do something to stay alive in this world. You can’t sit around, look, and cry for what you need to be doing. When you walk out your front door, you are on a mission.
Learning: I was born in the 60s. Back then, it was different from today. When I was a little boy, I walked down to the corner of the road, a broom in hand, and started cleaning up the streets and sidewalks. People would wonder what I was doing. What is that little kid out doing, cleaning the sidewalk? After cleaning the streets, I looked around at the sidewalk and the bushes. If the bushes weren’t clean, and there was paper in the bushes, the birds would be tweeting. The other kids my age wondered what I was doing, so I told them I was going down to get the earth ready. I had to clean the earth for the birds. The birds were tweeting, “Come over here and pick up this paper. I don’t need this paper by my house and home, and I don’t need this in my nest.” Picking up that broom saved my life.Story: In 1962, I was a little Black kid cleaning up on the corner, then going to the store to spend my money on chocolate cookies. My mom gave me the money my brother got from the welfare checks. She said, “Here’s a quarter; go down to the store and buy you something with a quarter.” The store gives you a whole bag of cookies for a quarter. I ate those chocolate cookies at the store. You can’t do that now; you could buy a roll of cookies, and it would cost you a dollar or two.