Thinking about retirement and "looking for something to do that would challenge me," Mr. He liked much of his work, he says today, but passion was in short supply. "When I did my silly stuff around the house, he just looked at me and went back to whatever he was doing.") His adult years found him in a series of jobs: the military, insurance sales, financial planning, publishing, real estate-even a short stint as a ski instructor. (It was a talent, he notes wistfully, that was lost on his father. Pool remembers, at an early age, being able to make his schoolmates laugh. I beg to differ."īorn in Princeton, Ky., Mr. People say you don't get a do-over in life. "Today I'm part of a generation that has literally been given a second chance to live a first life. My father was a pilot in World War II and suffered all his adult life from an injury in a plane crash. "I saw my grandfather, an engineer on the Illinois Central Railroad, turn my age with a body beaten down by his daily job. "I was thinking last night about how lucky I am, at this stage in my life, to have something that really gets me up in the morning," he says. Pool's story-filled with mentors, cheats, hard work, anxieties, setbacks, triumphs and, in the end, much laughter-is both an inspiration and a reminder of just how good, and how expansive, later life still can be. (Most retirement wish lists don't include subjecting oneself regularly to the judgments of complete strangers.) But Mr. Pursuing a career in comedy, of course, isn't for everyone. Pool's act brings down the house, there are still shows like Buford, where he ends the night deflated and nagged by doubts. There's been no big break, no chance encounter with show-business royalty, and certainly no overnight success. For good measure, he spends, on average, a week each month on cruise ships, where he teaches comedy classes. Today, he performs in clubs, theaters, colleges and corporate settings throughout much of the South, playing at times to hundreds of people and clearing as much as $1,000 an evening. Melissa Williamson for The Wall Street JournalĪlmost five years ago, on something of a lark, he enrolled in a class near his home in North Port, Fla., that taught stand-up comedy. Gid Pool performing at the Buford Variety Theater (top), a selection of his jokes (left), and Raymond Chandler who did something else before he became a comdeian or famous
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