Nov 13, 2025 By Nick Jacobs 4 min read

Primarily because I loved my work, my retirement plan involved a black zip-up bag. In other words, I never wanted to retire. I just wanted to clock out one last time and have someone else do all the paperwork. Unfortunately, my main client recently DOGE’d me, which takes us back to a much earlier standard of living, but that’s OK. What is not OK is that now, I am only one client away from the inevitable: watching daytime television, and the slow decline into a life filled with elastic waistband sweatpants.

I’m hoping I’ll never have to fully retire because, quite frankly, I have zero hobbies. No golf, hunting, fishing, scuba diving, or pickleball, and the last thing I want to do is hang around a bunch of old people and talk about our ailments. Since I don’t relish the thought of clipping dog toenails, my dream of becoming the king of pet grooming is out of the question.

My wife and I have decided to make TikTok videos as our side hustle, and so far, we’re only 244,500 followers away from making money. At this rate, I should be able to cash out just in time to pay for my black bag.

Back in the day, I worked for some people who proudly bragged that our area offered some of the lowest wages with the worst benefits in the entire United States. I can still hear them saying, “Come work for us! We don’t pay much.” So, if I wanted to make sure I had enough cash to help my grandkids have a better life than I did, working after 65 was my destiny.

We weren’t dirt poor as kids, but we knew about scrimping. My dad had been a fireman on the railroad when his train got hit from behind by another train. He spent two years flat on his back in bed recovering, and during that time, we became very well acquainted with government cheese and powdered milk. Anything beyond hamburger and chicken a couple times a week was a special occasion.

When Dad got back on his feet, things improved a little, but I was always looking for spending money. My Aunt Mildred became my fairy godmother. She owned a tiny store that sold everything from canned goods to bologna. From the time I was 8, she did three things that changed my life. She gave me her son Jack’s drumsticks, turning me into a musician. She handed me his paper route. And she hired me to burn cardboard boxes in her backyard every time Acey’s Wholesale made a delivery.

Those extra dimes often burned holes in my patched blue jeans, and I’d use them to buy Double Bubble bubblegum for a penny a piece. My jaw looked like a baseball player’s cheek but was stuffed with that Double Bubble.

Then came the incident, a lifetime memory. One day, while walking along my paper route, a group of kids visiting their grandparents jumped out of nowhere, tackled me, and one of them pried that wad of gum right out of my mouth. I was dazed as I watched them split up my gum like it was pink gold.

It wasn’t until years later that I realized how poor those kids must have been. Sure, my town only had one baseball that was held together with enough electrical tape to make a mummy. My ball glove came from the S&H Green Stamp store, and our used car’s tires were more bald than the wise man figurine in our Nativity set. A big night out was Dad driving us to the slag dump on Route 51 to watch flaming metal roll down the hill like fireworks.

But through it all, I can safely say this: I have never, before or since, heard of another kid being mugged for Double Bubble.

Nick Jacobs is a resident of Windber.