actual mansion I lived in, pic taken from shore
I had just earned my Master's Degree, living on $100/month for a couple years. Towards the tail end I had to eat at a free food line inside a homeless shelter several times a week. Yup, that poor. Frantically working on my thesis all summer (writing code line by line for the SPSS program which ran on a 'mainframe' in the computer lab, looking for patterns in the data for weeks; fun summer). Broke & jobless with a degree few heard of (Industrial/Organizational Psychology; it's for business not therapy).
Attempted to move back home with ma whilst job hunting. Ma informs me that my sister, who's personality disorder apparently hit full throttle the 2 years I was away, 'didn't feel safe' with me there. What that actually meant was even in our 20s she couldn't handle our ma's attention on anyone but herself. Thanks ma. Thanks sis. Let's focus. Broke, jobless, nowhere to live. But I did have one thing going for me besides an obscure degree: motivation to get to work. I'm lazy in some ways but work ethic isn't one of them.
In college I worked 2 years in a nursing home, as a certified nursing assistant. About half in the Alzheimer's ward, taking direct care of the patients. But the point is I knew how to take care of the elderly. My step-ma's bestie was an RN who happened to part of a team of onsite RN's caring for a very (very) wealthy person in the last stages of that disease. She was a direct heir to the Kimberly-Clarke company. She married a lumber baron way back, they were still together. Yes: paper & lumber. Get it? As to the 'Mr.' the problem was his mind was going, he no longer could drive, and the family needed someone to look after him. Go on his walks in the woods with him (he returned bloody from a recent walk). Not a role you can put in the want ads, not in this wealth bracket. So word of this got back to me along with a phone number to the estate administrator. We'll call him Curtis. I rang up Curtis out of the blue and pitched myself.
He invited me in for a chat, which I did. I don't recall the specific conversation but I'm sure I talked about my certified nursing assistant (CNA) background and that I could help out the nurses also with lifting the wife in & out of bed if needed. We drove out to the house, an immense mansion in an exclusive part of the western burbs of Mpls on the shores of Lake Minnetonka (Prince, anyone?). The next door neighbor's lived some of the Daytons, owners of big dept store chain, famous name in MN. Anyhoots, Curtis showed me a part of the house, a 3 room apt, apparently the servants quarters. He wanted me to live there (which of course was the job: nonstop safety for 'the mister'). Also to drive him to the office each morn where he read his mail for a few hours.
He told me the job was essentially nonstop; I would get off 2 days a month. Ergo, I had to live there, and be onsite most of the time. I also had to dress in a full suit every day (in the Mr.'s world, men wore suits, women didn't drive, for real). So the big question came up, he asked me what I wanted for salary. I said $750 a week. He actually did a sort of spit take when I said that. For a nonstop job, 28 days a month, I thought that was a steal, but he said he had to run it by the Mr. The offer arrived back, $660/week which I accepted. This included free board of course, living in the big mansion. Not sure why a family worth tens & possibly hundreds of millions couldn't swing my original ask, but who knows. I moved in shortly after. Not much to move as I didn't own much, a small stereo (Klipsch Heresy speakers, anyone? Still own them) and some duds.
So then I met the staff. I was now part of the staff. There were two part time maids, one quite old & cranky, and a far nicer younger maid. There was a day cook for brekky & lunch, and the dinner cook. For each of the 3 daily meals, the Mister & Missus ate at a formal dining room, being served by the cook, who did the dishes after, etc. The day cook listened to rush limbaugh all day, the 1st time I ever heard him. The eve cook I became friends with, she was great. Cool hubs also. And her sister, a fashion industry hipster newly arrived from NYC took some shifts. She & I got chummy also, for a few months. I turned her on to the NYC street musician Roger Manning and we caught him live 1 night in Mpls. Somehow I ended up playing foosball with him after midnight, after his gig when he was waiting to get paid, inside First Avenue (where purple rain was filmed). He played the Entry, for you Mpls music fans. Anyhoots, track down his music.
The 'old maid' and I got into it one day early when I was making mac & cheese on the stove (hey, I lived there). My crime was eating it direct out of the pan, no separate bowl. There were several people in the kitchen, apparently summoned to witness my behavior. Here's the kicker: she was literally banging on the counter, shouting at me 'You can't eat like a student anymore! This is the REAL WORLD!' For a couple decades now I've noshed on the absurdity of that last part. Living in a giant mansion, surrounded by staff, nurses, gardeners, etc, is the 'real world.'
The family had connections to the MN Orchestra. Ergo, most every Friday night, for the 8 months I worked there, I saw the orchestra. Occasionally now I listen to Beethoven. Mostly it's Gorecki #3 (I own four versions). Anyhoots, we would drive into the parking ramp downtown to Orchestra Hall, and on the 2nd level, literally next to the entrance, would be a guy waiting for us, with a pylon reserving our space. Nice, no? At one show I chatted up a grad student, we'll call her Martha, in the adjacent seat. Super smart, studying for physics or chemistry or similar hard science. Interestingly, she was a virgin, but I helped her out with that (in the mansion no less). So rare to spot them in the wild.
Sidebar, on literally my first day on the job, I drove the Mr. to the Mpls Institute of Arts for a private reception/fundraiser for the super rich. At the entrance was the main Director, and also the Dayton patriarch greeting us. They shook my hand. I had been living off my Amoco credit card for months, buying a tuna sandwich at the nearby gas station every other day, prior to this. That was my 1st day!
Anyhoots, 8 months there, a different world. Recruited a college buddy to replace me, so the transition went fine.
Oh and one last thing: my last nite there, I told the Mr. I was leaving, had been a pleasure, all the best, etc. He looked at me and literally said 'who the hell are you?'