My five-years-older brother delivered morning and Sunday papers. I lived for the day I turned eleven, so that I could do that. Up at 3:30 or so and delivered. That was fine, but the collecting was a real drag.

The day I graduated from 9th grade, as a friend and I walked away from school, he said, "Why don't we get a job for the summer?" "What? Who'd hire a couple of 13 year olds?" He said, "Haven't you heard? There's a war on, and the grown-up men are away in the Army! Let's try the hospitals!" I should point out, this was in Rochester, Minnesota, where the Mayo Clinic is, plus four hospitals, in a 60,000 population small city.

We tried at the Worrall Hospital. The Hospital Manager (desperate for manpower), asked, "What do your parents say about it?" I gave him a blank look. I'd never had an idea that my mother might have anything to say at all about my getting a job. "Don't you think you ought to call her, and find out?" "Okay."

I called my mother at work. "If that's what you want to do, David." I should point out that she was the world's champion hands-off mom.

So I got the job as a busboy in the hospital's kitchen, working 48 hours a week, for 32 cents an hour. I was rich! Take-home pay was, as I recall, $24.70 every two weeks.

When school resumed at the end of the summer, the hospital needed full time employees. So back to peddling papers. Drag.

Coming up to the next summer, I applied to another hospital in town, which occupied part of the same building as the biggest hotel in town. My 48-hour job was in the hotel's supply room, sort of the private grocery store for the hotel's kitchen and restaurants. Handling crates of oranges, lettuce, and eggs, gallon cans of vegetables, and lots of other stuff; pretty heavy work for a 14 year old, but I did all right, and enjoyed it, sort of. I was making 35 cents an hour now, I think.

At the end of the summer, the same news: They couldn't use me as an after-school employee, but "I think the Dietitian in the Hospital's kitchen needs someone, and your hours can be worked out."

So for the rest of my time in high school I worked 36 hours a week during the school year, and 48 hours a week in the summers. As a graduating senior I finished up as a hospital orderly, at the lordly wage of 78 cents an hour! Wow!

In the latter part of my senior year I totaled up my school-related time (including band, rifle club, amateur radio club, and drama club), time for grab-it-and-git meals, and my work commitments of 36 hours a week, and I found that from the time I arose at 5:30 until I hit the hay at about 11:20 or so I had a grand total of 35 minutes "free time", spotted here and there during my waking hours, that wasn't in my schedule in advance from cock-crow to beddy-bye.

"But Dave, didn't that schedule just KILL your grades?" National Honor Society, so maybe not.

Dave Oesterreich