BS: Working Your Ass Off (as a youngster)

Subject: BS: Working Your Ass Off (as a youngster)
From: Beer
Date: 28 Aug 12 - 11:46 PM

Lived in a small community and walked the ditches as a child finding the odd pop bottle that could be bought back for a few pennies. But my number one income was from going door to door selling. Walked miles visiting every home asking if they were interested in ordering seeds for the spring planting. I Would also at a different time take orders for Christmas Cards,and Easter cards. Valentine cards were by far the best sales of all. Don't think this would be the case today. But maybe it would. Anyone out there ever done this or took orders from these children who were trying to make a few nickles for their work. I remember that it was hard at 11/14yrs.(1958/1961) but I did it. When i look back I can remember the the good spot's (house) to stop and hope they would order again.
This was not "Child Labor". It was just what it was.
I may have written about this in some long forgotten thread , and if I did I apologize for getting old.
Adrien

Subject: RE: BS: Working Your Ass Off (as a youngster)
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 29 Aug 12 - 02:29 AM

I was lucky.

Daddy had a business.

Family members in a small enough business are exempted from child labor laws.

Daddy's business was quite small.

I paid my first Social Security deduction at age 12, sorting, stacking, stocking, lugging, and occasionally even hammering/bending/welding sheetmetal. And continued at it, adding truck driving and a few other skills(?) by around age 16.5, until I turned 18 and left town.

It wasn't all hard labor, but one day when Daddy said "There's the truck. Unload it" I took 23,014 pounds of steel off the truck, sorted it and stacked it by hand, all in one afternoon after school.

(I was in better shape then.)

John

Subject: RE: BS: Working Your Ass Off (as a youngster)
From: Henry Krinkle
Date: 29 Aug 12 - 02:49 AM

Don't get me started.
(:-( 0)=

Subject: RE: BS: Working Your Ass Off (as a youngster)
From: Joe Offer
Date: 29 Aug 12 - 03:05 AM

I think I heard a Pete Seeger recording recently where Pete sang a song from menhaden fishermen, and he said "menhaden" is another name for "alewife."
Well, my research tells me that alewives are a species of herring, in the family clupidae. Menhaden are clupidae, too, so maybe Pete was at least part right.

Anyhow, my first real job other than babysitting and delivering newspapers as a substitute, was doing odd jobs on the lakefront estate of a Dr. Gillette on Wind Point outside Racine, Wisconsin. This must have been about 1964, when I was a sophomore or junior in high school. There was a big run of alewives on Lake Michigan that year, more than anyone had ever seen. The alewives all died and washed ashore. My job was to rake up all the maggot-ridden alewives from Dr. Gillette's beach, and then pour fuel oil on them and burn them.

Never in my life had I had a tougher or more disgusting job.

-Joe-

Subject: RE: BS: Working Your Ass Off (as a youngster)
From: Sandra in Sydney
Date: 29 Aug 12 - 05:04 AM

That must have been in the olden days, Joe!

Imagine pouring oil on smelly fish & burning them today! Pollution! Noxious smells! Fires!

Subject: RE: BS: Working Your Ass Off (as a youngster)
From: Allan C.
Date: 29 Aug 12 - 06:24 AM

I suppose my elementary schools may have gotten some sort of cut from practically forcing us kids to sell magazines. Sometimes we were to sell candy instead. I hated it all! The whole process of ringing some stranger's doorbell and trying to talk them into buying something was both scary and distasteful to me. I despised being put in that position. I'm sure now that it takes a very special kind of person to do face-to-face selling. I have a deep admiration for those who successfully do that. At the same time, I celebrate not being among them!

Subject: RE: BS: Working Your Ass Off (as a youngster)
From: Bobert
Date: 29 Aug 12 - 09:00 AM

My first real job was at the Northern Virgina Sun newspaper... They also printed advertisement and mailed them out to folks and had this machine called an addressograph which would take metal printing plates and print the names and addresses on the stuff to be mailed... I was 14 at the time and got 65 cents an hour to feed plates and printed material and then bundle the ads for mailing... Also worked at a riding stable saddling horses for other kids to ride... And mucked barns...

I never thought of it as anything but sho nuff was good to have a few bucks in my pocket...

B~

Subject: RE: BS: Working Your Ass Off (as a youngster)
From: gnu
Date: 29 Aug 12 - 02:56 PM

I started mowing lawns, trimming hedges, shovelling snow in the winter and horseshit in the spring, weeding gardens and whatever at 11. At 15, I got an underage work permit and worled 11PM to 8AM seven days a week at a gas station for a summer.

Nowadays, when the teenagers stand in the liquor store foyer with their hands out so they can fund a trip for their ball team to some place I can't afford to visit, I think to myself... yeah, raisin bums is a real fuckin good idea eh?

Yeah, that's right... I don't give them a penny. I give whatever change I have in my pocket if some guy looks like he needs it or he's playin and singin but the little bums who should be mowin 80 year old Mrs. Murphy's lawn??? Fuck em.

Subject: RE: BS: Working Your Ass Off (as a youngster)
From: Bill D
Date: 29 Aug 12 - 06:04 PM

I had a paper route at 12-14(1951-1953...delivered twice a day, before & after school, and collected 2-3 evenings a week. (I have delivered in 105F and -2F, and in flood waters over my ankles.)
   My brother & I shared a large route, and were able to buy a B&W TV before my parents could afford one. 21" RCA table model...a bit over $300

Then, grocery stores from 14 to 21 as carryout/bagger and checker(from $0.35 to $1.65 per hour) ....bought a 51 Chevy for $550 when I graduated for high school.

Subject: RE: BS: Working Your Ass Off (as a youngster)
From: gnu
Date: 29 Aug 12 - 06:29 PM

I did the paper thing morning and night too. Nowadays we got a grown man delivering the papers... kids are too frail too work so they bum at the liquor store. And the worst part of it is that a GROWN MAN has to deliver newspapers to make a living. WTF?

Subject: RE: BS: Working Your Ass Off (as a youngster)
From: Bee-dubya-ell
Date: 29 Aug 12 - 07:29 PM

The difference between alewives and menhaden is this:

Alewives are good bait for Spanish mackerel. Menhaden are too big for Spanish, but king mackerel will knock the shit out of 'em live on a float rig and big redfish love 'em dead on the bottom.

As to working as a child, sorry, but all I ever did was the usual household chores. Yeah... boring... I know.

Subject: RE: BS: Working Your Ass Off (as a youngster)
From: gnu
Date: 29 Aug 12 - 07:48 PM

I did chores too. I was cooking supper by the time I was 13.

Seriously, humans are made for gettin shit done. They don't need to be an adult to learn what will be expected of them WHEN they become an adult. I expect that it sometimes happens not at all... especially when they are taught to beg at the liquor and grocery stores. Hand me my grocery bag that the cashier packed and you want a donation so you can go to fuckin Japan with yer folks and play fuckin baseball? WTF???

Subject: RE: BS: Working Your Ass Off (as a youngster)
From: Henry Krinkle
Date: 29 Aug 12 - 07:52 PM

We have illegal immigrants to do all the work these days.
The kids can relax and panhandle.
(:-( ))=

Subject: RE: BS: Working Your Ass Off (as a youngster)
From: Bill D
Date: 29 Aug 12 - 08:04 PM

Who is 'we'?

Subject: RE: BS: Working Your Ass Off (as a youngster)
From: GUEST
Date: 29 Aug 12 - 08:23 PM

I worked selling all kinds of crap, i/e greeting cards, seeds, "Cloverine Salve" you name it. I shovelled snow in the winter, mowed grass in the summer, worked underage at a donut shop from 4 AM til 7 pm, making donuts and selling donuts and in the afternoon painting the new shop the guy was opening. He gave me $8 the first week (40 + hours) I thought he was just testing me so I worked even more and harder the second week. He gave me $12. I asked him how much he was paying me by the hour, he said, " you will never amount to a damn," and he fired me.

I have been gone from that town, Zanesville, Ohio, since 1970, but until the day he died I stopped each time I was in town, bought a donut and coffee and paid the son of a bitch with a hundred dollar bill.

Subject: RE: BS: Working Your Ass Off (as a youngster)
From: GUEST
Date: 29 Aug 12 - 08:41 PM

I am Guest!   jimmyt

Subject: RE: BS: Working Your Ass Off (as a youngster)
From: Sandy Mc Lean
Date: 29 Aug 12 - 09:29 PM

Adrien, it sounds like you were working from those ads that used to be in the Family Herald. Bin there; done that.

Subject: RE: BS: Working Your Ass Off (as a youngster)
From: Beer
Date: 29 Aug 12 - 09:55 PM

Good for you jimmyt. That was sticking it to him. You have a point there Henry Krinkle. But there are also many legal as well. If our own are to lazy (and definitely not all.)to work than thanks to the immigrants that the work is done.
You gt it Sandy.
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Subject: RE: BS: Working Your Ass Off (as a youngster)
From: Janie
Date: 29 Aug 12 - 10:16 PM

Other than babysitting I did not work when I was a kid except for household chores, and my parents discouraged me from finding a summer job between HS graduation and my first year of college. I did teach swimming classes at the Lake in summer for a very nominal fee, but that was it. My parents struggled financially and we did not have extras, but both of them had to work so hard from very young ages they felt they did not have a childhood, and did not want the same for us.

re: paperboys, the industry changed such that Newspapers no longer wanted or hired kids to deliver papers. Had nothing to do with kids being too lazy to do it. May have had to do with "nobody home" because people are on the go so much these days, so the paperboys weren't able to collect the fees. Also may have had to do with the breakdown of bonafide neighborhoods so that parents didn't feel like it was safe for their young ones to go door-to-door, not knowing their neighbors or communities with people moving so much. Same thing with lawn mowing, only in that instance, it is more like neighbors who don't know each other don't trust neighbor kids in the yard.

I dispute the generalization that kids are lazy these days, though they may often feel entitled. My local grocery is still well populated by high school and community college students bagging groceries. Within the low income populations with whom I have mostly worked, kids work and work hard. Unfortunately, many of them drop out of school to work, when they can find work.

Subject: RE: BS: Working Your Ass Off (as a youngster)
From: Rapparee
Date: 29 Aug 12 - 10:46 PM

I sold candy for the school, cards and wrapping paper for the Boy Scouts. From the time I was twelve to age 20 I sold "Grit" newspaper, delivered the local paper (3 or 4 miles, mostly walking), shoveled snow, cut grass, sold magazines outside of church on Sunday, picked strawberries from 6 am to noon for seven cents a quart box, redeemed deposit bottles (milk, soda, beer), washed dishes for high school tuition, worked int he HS library and stripped and cleaned the floors for the same, worked in the college library, sandblasted and set tombstones, worked as a maintenance clerk and then scrubbing floors in the local hospital (including surgery and labor&delivery), and served six months in the US Army prior to being in the National Guard to earn money.

My father died when I was 5, and I was the oldest of four kids. There wasn't much of an inheritance besides great breeding and upbringing.

Subject: RE: BS: Working Your Ass Off (as a youngster)
From: Rapparee
Date: 29 Aug 12 - 10:47 PM

That's what I did to earn money, it doesn't include chores around the house.

Oh, yeah, I also worked as a caddy at three different golf courses.

Subject: RE: BS: Working Your Ass Off (as a youngster)
From: Phil Cooper
Date: 29 Aug 12 - 11:47 PM

I washed my dad's cars for $.75 a car (2 cars). I wound up charging $.50 to vacuum them. Plus my allowance, I got money to buy records and my first sears silvertone guitar ($25.00). I also taught guitar lessons my last year in high school. I'd go to people's houses and teach their kids. $3.50 a half hour back in 1972 or so.

Subject: RE: BS: Working Your Ass Off (as a youngster)
From: Joe Offer
Date: 30 Aug 12 - 12:33 AM

I was going to ask if anyone here had ever sold Grit Magazine, and I see that Rapparee did. I remember the ads for Grit salesmen in Boys' Life Magazine from the Boy Scouts. It sounds as if I could become a real Mitt Romney if I would become a proud salesman for Grit. I didn't, which may be why I grew up to be a failure and a Democrat....\


-Joe-

Subject: RE: BS: Working Your Ass Off (as a youngster)
From: Bert
Date: 30 Aug 12 - 01:12 AM

At 12 or 13 I helped with a milk round. Up early, cold really hard work for half a crown a week. I really got to appreciate those housewives who washed out their bottles before leaving them on the step.

At sixteen I started as an apprentice boilermaker at two pounds four and six a week.

I built my first road tanker at that age. It was only a small one but I was quite proud of myself.

Subject: RE: BS: Working Your Ass Off (as a youngster)
From: akenaton
Date: 30 Aug 12 - 02:59 AM

Hah! I'm still working my ass off!

Fixing roofs that bigger firms wont touch.
Concreting, building blocks, stonework.
Not as fit as i was at 30 but hope to die with my boots on.

Subject: RE: BS: Working Your Ass Off (as a youngster)
From: Henry Krinkle
Date: 30 Aug 12 - 03:38 AM

Me too. Chainsawing, bush hogging, hauling, grading yards, plowing up gardens, etc.
As a kid I shined shoes, brushed pool hall tables, worked at a car wash, shoveled busted asphalt into dump trucks, cut and split wood hauled rocks and sand and cement, mixed cement, wore a sandwich board sign and rang a bell, sold doughnuts,
Worked in a TV repair shop. Went into the army and learned heavy equipment operation.
(:-( ))=

Subject: RE: BS: Working Your Ass Off (as a youngster)
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 30 Aug 12 - 06:48 AM

Magazine sales by schoolkids have been pretty much foreclosed in many parts of the US due to "scams" that operate much like door to door encyclopedia sales - with the exception that after sufficient down payment you did get (some of) the encyclopedias while the magazines very often (nearly always?) never come.

Police and Consumer advisors in my locale have issued recent warnings that people NOT PURCHASE/ORDER anything from "saleskids" unless they

1. know that the kids are from their own nearby area

2. know that the school (or another known organization) is sponsoring the sales effort

Since the only kid sales that can be verified are those where the proceeds go to some school/church/club it pretty well shuts the kids out of earning money for themselves that way.

It's sad that it should be thus, but that's how it is.

John

Subject: RE: BS: Working Your Ass Off (as a youngster)
From: Beer
Date: 30 Aug 12 - 07:00 AM

Bert, milk delivery question. Did you do this by horse and cart? Serious.

Use to set up Pins at a bowling ally. Got 10cent's a string. That was tough.
After school the bus driver would drop me off near a swamp and I would check my trap line. Caught many muskrat and the odd mink. Sold the pelts to the Hudson Bay Company.

Rap. Love your closing line. "There wasn't much of an inheritance besides great breeding and upbringing". How true.
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Subject: RE: BS: Working Your Ass Off (as a youngster)
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 30 Aug 12 - 01:12 PM

Shouldn't ignore the fact that for some of us paid work would have been a welcome break from the hard grind of hours of school homework every night.

Subject: RE: BS: Working Your Ass Off (as a youngster)
From: GUEST,999
Date: 30 Aug 12 - 03:00 PM

My first official job was when I was eight. I went with my little red wagon and hauled people's groceries from the Dominion store at the corner of Laurendeau and de Biencourt every Saturday for about three years. Usually got a dime if it was within a five block radius of the store.

However, sometimes I'd go with my grandfather to the Drake Tavern and earn a dime to watch for various people's wives. If I saw them coming I'd give the man the high sign and he'd take off to the bathroom until the coast was clear. But I was six then and grampy would slip me a glass of draft, some pickled onion, pickled egg and pickled tongue. That's when I learned that passing gas could get ya noticed by the clientelle, and since that was good for business I--well, I'm sure no one is interested in that so I'll move on.

Two morning paper routes of approximately 55 papers each at different times, one when I was about 10 and 11, and another when I was 12-14 or so. Made about $4.50 a week. I got to keep $.50 as allowance/spending money for the week and my ma held on to the rest and some of it went to food or rent. After 4 years I was able to go to a summer gymnastic camp on a part scholarship. In those days ya got a penny a paper from the newspaper company and reliable delivery got ya good tips. The best tipper on the first route was a couple who always gave me a quarter. That was big bucks back then. Wednesday or Thursday papers were a sob to haul because they were about 2 1/2 times the weight of the regular papers due to advertising supplements.

Snow shoveling was lucrative also. I did that from the time I was about seven. I got a talking to from my gran for accepting money from the lady downstairs--I had to return the nickle. Hers was supposed to be done gratis and it was from then on. She was a very nice lady who'd come to Montreal from Russia (I think) and she would make me a cup of tea and give me a few cookies. That was cool because I usually had to warm up after doing about a half dozen places on the street (meaning the block I lived on). The market crashed when I was about 9 or so. I would still do that lady's walkway and I did until she passed away when I was about 13 or so.

I always watched out for cleaning jobs or painting work. A downstairs neighbour paid me $.50 an hour to paint the shed and stairs out back on the building we moved to a block away. Big job and I needed help with the scaffolding.

Much of my spare time was taken with baseball and football. After I discovered guitar and actually had my Stella, which I painted with white enamel paint so it would look cool, I became a lazy layabout except for the paper route because music meant more to me than money, and I spent my first year learning chords and songs to sing. I was 13.

That's about it.

Subject: RE: BS: Working Your Ass Off (as a youngster)
From: Bettynh
Date: 30 Aug 12 - 04:08 PM

What, no mention of Girl Scout cookies? They were an easy sell when I was a kid, but I see they're setting up tables in the local malls these days. I suppose door-to-door sales (and future return with the product) doesn't work any more.

Subject: RE: BS: Working Your Ass Off (as a youngster)
From: Beer
Date: 30 Aug 12 - 05:26 PM

You forgot to mention 9 that back then shovelling snow was shovelling snow. We had winters where by the cars were completely burried. Not like today.

McGrath, I agree what you mentioned of homework. But I think you will find that the children today have just as much homework if not more then we did.
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Subject: RE: BS: Working Your Ass Off (as a youngster)
From: SINSULL
Date: 30 Aug 12 - 06:33 PM

Not much girls could do - no paper routes that's for sure. But at 11 years of age I had regular baby sitting jobs at $.50/hour and $1 after midnight. Word got out and I could actually turn away the sillies who paid by check three weeks later.
At 13 I had my first full time summer job as a receptionist at the Woolworth Building in Manhattan. I loved that job. And by 15 they used me as substitute on the 14th Floor Executive level. High places for me.
I remained in that summer job through three years of college and got $5/hr raise every year until the new head od HR discovered that I (and my brother) were making more than the permanent staff. We were both liked.
Money tight and I always took any job available - spent a day once folding mailings for the State police only to have a NY detective pull a gun on me and my friends in our car - turned out the mailings were political in nature. Should have had his ass for that.
I can't say I ever worked my ass of - I loved every job I got and was thrilled to have my own money. We didn't get money for chores. Allowance was to cover car fare to and from school.
I think kids today miss out on the satisfaction of a job well done when they are handed everything.
This next group will probably learn things the way we did- money is tight even for the wealthier folks these days.

Subject: RE: BS: Working Your Ass Off (as a youngster)
From: Sandy Mc Lean
Date: 30 Aug 12 - 06:41 PM

As a youngster I considered homework to be an infringement on my time. I done my 5 hours or so inside the schoolhouse walls and felt that was quite enough. Homework often went undone or poorly done at best I was not a good student but I credit some great teachers for seeing me through!

Subject: RE: BS: Working Your Ass Off (as a youngster)
From: gnu
Date: 30 Aug 12 - 07:22 PM

Beer... snow... yeah. I recall shovelling it twice or more. At least once to make a place to put the snow that needed to be moved.

As fer homework, it had to be done because a poor grade at school was NOT acceptable. That meant you had to give up yer jobs and that meant no money from those jobs for the family or for anything your heart desired. And, one would feel worthless... a terrible fate for any lad with a strip of pride.

Back then, a trip to Japan to play ball was not heard of... yeah, I know I keep harpin on that but it pisses me off that these little spoiled brats say "Have a nice day." when I don't grease their undeserving greedy little palms. Mrs. McCarthy's lawn needs to be mowed ya little bastards!

Subject: RE: BS: Working Your Ass Off (as a youngster)
From: GUEST,Dani
Date: 30 Aug 12 - 10:05 PM

I don't THINK I'm a youngster, but I'm still, somehow, working my ass off. Guess I'm glad to be doing it : )

First 'real' job was at 15 waiting tables for CASH TIPS! Never really looked back from that business. I used to LOVE when it snowed, I could go shovel like crazy and come home with pockets full of money. Never slowed down, really, except for those couple of years 'only' being a mom and working part time. That seems blissful now, looking back.

I do think that many kids these days have not had to learn to hustle. Though my kids work hard when they need to, or want something badly enough, for the most part they're too well-fed, though they're starting to catch on.

And when I look around, there's a pretty good mix of hard workers, and plenty of kids perfectly happy to have their good life paid for.

Joe, that story explains a lot about you : ) Not sure what, but it's a lot of it.


Dani

Subject: RE: BS: Working Your Ass Off (as a youngster)
From: Amos
Date: 30 Aug 12 - 10:25 PM

I shoveled manure for the boarding school and spread it by tractor afterewards; I worked as a soda jerk and grocery boy, I sliced meat, toted cases of Coke in bottles, and made sundaes and sodas. Killed my feet, but I made minimum wage--$.25 an hour!!

A

Subject: RE: BS: Working Your Ass Off (as a youngster)
From: Beer
Date: 30 Aug 12 - 11:32 PM

1964 I painted a steeple of our church for $.50 an hour while the priest (God rest his soul,became a life long friend.)hollered up to me. "If you fall I will bury you for nothing". Nice guy eh!

Dani, thanks for bringing up "Joe's" name. I meant to respond but forgot.
Joe, you should have sold those lovely species as fertilizer. We grew great gardens with them.

This thread idea came to me from a movie I watched two nights ago called " A Home of Our Own". Watched it on "Netflix".
Got choked up often as it brought me back to memories long forgotten. There are some really great lines in this movie. One that stands out is "When your really really poor, everything you see you can't have"
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Subject: RE: BS: Working Your Ass Off (as a youngster)
From: Rapparee
Date: 31 Aug 12 - 10:32 AM

I forgot about helping a neighbor deliver milk and about setting pins at the bowling alley. The last was a dangerous job and didn't last long, because my friends would do their best to see if they could get a pin to bounce up and hit me.

Subject: RE: BS: Working Your Ass Off (as a youngster)
From: GUEST,Dani
Date: 31 Aug 12 - 01:03 PM

"If you fall I will bury you for nothing" will make me laugh for a very long time : )

Dani

Subject: RE: BS: Working Your Ass Off (as a youngster)
From: Bonzo3legs
Date: 31 Aug 12 - 01:30 PM

I work my ass off as a young oldster!!

Subject: RE: BS: Working Your Ass Off (as a youngster)
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 31 Aug 12 - 01:57 PM

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

Subject: RE: BS: Working Your Ass Off (as a youngster)
From: fat B****rd
Date: 31 Aug 12 - 03:02 PM

I started holiday work as a change boy and "mechanic" in the arcades -Wonderland mainly - on Cleethorpes prom in 1961.
I didn't know that grown-ups swore or that you shouldn't annoy the regular carnival workers with their earrings and tattoos.
I got a pound a day, plus all the real copper pennies I could steal withut my trousers falling down. Cheap chips at the caff as well.

Subject: RE: BS: Working Your Ass Off (as a youngster)
From: Beer
Date: 31 Aug 12 - 04:59 PM

Really enjoyed reading your story Dave.
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Subject: RE: BS: Working Your Ass Off (as a youngster)
From: Bev and Jerry
Date: 31 Aug 12 - 07:39 PM

At age eight I became financially independent (stopped begging my parents for pocket change) by doing my older brother's paper route one day a week for 35 cents. Next year I took the route over and kept it until I was 13 when I got a job in clothing store earning $7 for an eight hour day. Kept that job until I graduated from college and worked my way up to $9 a day.

In Junior High School I got a job in the cafeteria taking out the garbage. It was excellent training for my adult life. In exchange, I got a free lunch three days a week. When I went to High School, I continued my "food services" career and, by eleventh grade, I was promoted to head dish washer. Worked 20 minutes a day running an automatic dish washer and got free lunch in exchange. Each day I fed more than a thousand dishes and trays into the gaping maw of the beast.

In college I delivered mail two summers and worked three evenings a week sorting mail during the school year. But, the last summer I was in college, I couldn't find a job anywhere until, on the day of my last final exam, God intervened. A very brief (less than half an hour) but extremely heavy rainfall caused there to be eight feet of water in the first floor of the Electrical Engineering building. Voila! - a summer job. Spent the first two weeks slogging through the mud hauling stuff out of the building. After that, the fire department came in and hosed the place down and I spent the rest of the summer repairing all sorts of electrical equipment.

Jerry

Bev and Jerry

Subject: RE: BS: Working Your Ass Off (as a youngster)
From: Bert
Date: 31 Aug 12 - 07:47 PM

Nah, Beer, it was a regular Ford van. I do remember milkmen with a horse and cart though. After our milk round was over we used to go and help out at the bottling plant, washing bottles. I think that is when I learned to swear, when some bozo returned a bottle half full of paraffin.

Subject: RE: BS: Working Your Ass Off (as a youngster)
From: gnu
Date: 31 Aug 12 - 07:56 PM

Dave... cool. What Beer said.

I am enjoying all of these stories.

Subject: RE: BS: Working Your Ass Off (as a youngster)
From: Bobert
Date: 31 Aug 12 - 08:30 PM

Wow...

Lotta us did more as kids than kids these days will do in their entire lives....

I had forgotten shoveling snow and mowing lawns... I had about 10 regular lawn mowing customers... I had the coolest mower... It was like a push mower with an engine on top and was self propelled... It was from the mid 50s and was temperamental but the finished product was real nice... Much better than those rotary mowers... But working on it and my dad's rotary I learned how to fix mowers so made a few bucks fixing people's mowers....

Wish I still had that mower...

B~

Subject: RE: BS: Working Your Ass Off (as a youngster)
From: Beer
Date: 31 Aug 12 - 10:24 PM

Something like this Bobert?
ad.

http://wd4eui.com/old_lawn_mower.html

Subject: RE: BS: Working Your Ass Off (as a youngster)
From: Beer
Date: 31 Aug 12 - 10:33 PM

Bert,the reason I asked was because of the following I wish to share.
Lyrcs to "Old Ned" by Brendan Nolan.
http://www.brendannolan.com/lyrics/oldned.html

Hope this works.
Adrien

http://www.soundclick.com/player/single_player.cfm?songid=339935&q=hi&newref=1


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