I knew this guy named Mike “The Hammer” who, as the story goes, didn’t earn his nickname because of his carpentry skills. The Hammer was a regular at the driving range I worked at as a teenager. The driving range was on First Avenue in Forest Park, Illinois. It was across the street from the Maywood Racetrack, a dumpy 1950s era harness racing track that was populated by lowlifes and losers and run by the Mob … and guys like The Hammer.

Over the course of the two summers I worked at the range, Mike sort of took me under his wing. He liked my golf game and told me later that he respected the way I looked him in the eye. I never told him I was scared out of my mind and kept a steady eye on him so as to know when to run.

Mike took to hitting balls in the stall next to me after hours. He was a hell of a golfer and had good tips to offer. In between our chats about putting and curing a slice, Mike would talk to his “associates.” I always kept my head down during the chats he had with his menacing pals, but I picked up that he also served as a mentor to his business partners. He offered advice on how to grease the Zoning Commission, who on City Council was friendly, and generally steered his minions down the right – or seemingly, wrong – path.

During the spring of my senior year, a friend and I decided to start a small business. We got a peddlers license (per the advice of The Hammer) and began spray painting fresh new addresses on the curbs of Oak Park, Illinois. We’d paint the address number in the morning hours, take the afternoon off, and then come to collect “contributions” from the citizens after they’d returned from work. Business started off slowly with a lot of doors slammed in our faces and even a threat of a law suit.

The Hammer insisted we weren’t doing everything we could to “close the deal.” He said, “You’ve got to advertise! I tell all my guys, early to bed, early to rise; advertise!” (Mike seemingly began every other sentence with “I tell all my guys” or “So my guys tell me” and my favorite, “I knew a guy in prison who used tell me …”)

Mike suggested we print up 5,000 bright flyers explaining that we were local kids performing a community service to raise money via donations for college. We not only did that, but we took out a full-page ad in Oak Leaves, the local newspaper. It cost us one block’s worth of work.

Over the next few weeks we put a Day Glo pink flyer on every house in town and raked in thousands of dollars, especially after the ad ran in the paper. Not only were we raking in the cash, the entire town was thanking us profusely for performing the task nobody had done in years. One cute old lady on Euclid Street told me, “Now I know where I live when I drive home.”

Back at the driving range, The Hammer was both pissed and impressed. “I hear you’re doing pretty well with our plan over there in Oak Park, eh? When am I going to see my cut of that stack of cash, Matty?”

Thankfully, I avoided seeing The Hammer in the weeks before heading off for college. I kept his cut of the cash – but I’ll always remember the lesson he taught me about advertising. Early to bed, early to rise; advertise … then get the heck outta town!