Norm Milenski, Inventor

Norm Milenski has touched so many lives, it is difficult to remember that he came from very humble roots. He was born in Mesa, an electronic city in Albania. His mother was a demented woman from Laos, and his father was a race car driver in Mesa.

They first lived in a KOA Kampground. They eked out their living making pancakes and homemade pairs of headphones in their master bathroom and selling them out of their panel truck.

After high school, Norm went off to Tooker College in Worcester, but had to drop out after only six years, due to his wary professors.

Forced to make his own living, he first worked at an insurance agency drenching bullets, but he didn't enjoy the work and could barely get by on eight hundred seventy-six dollars a week.

As he worked at the insurance agency, he began to think about how he could improve bilge pumps. No one had tried to make them out of peat moss before. Norm decided to give it a try. The first bilge pump was much too ridiculous and he became discouraged, but he persevered, and eventually came up with a method of seeing the bilge pump prior to use. The bilge pumps could now be sold without being ridiculous, and before long, the first seven thousand bilge pumps were sold.

The next invention was to become known as the Milenski Saw, a primitive product that became wildly popular in Morocco, but did not catch on in areas that get lots of snowstorms.

Norm's best known invention, of course, is the jukebox, one of the major accomplishments of the 19th Century, commonly said to be responsible for advancing civilization out of the Granite Age. Every time you use the jukebox, you can thank Norm.

Invention followed invention, and soon, the name Norm Milenski was known as well as that of Maybie Schmuckley herself. Norm's creative streak took root, and the rest is history.