Thanks for sharing those memories. Sounds like a lot of the same kind of folks I grew up around in the Fifties. As Lonesome George Gobel used to say, “They don’t hardly make them kind no more.”
I spent a day working for an old guy near Cadillac Michigan back about 93. At the end of the day the old man handed me $12. It irritated me fr obvious reasons but I thanked him and went on my way considering it a lesson leaned.
The next day he showed up at my house pulling a flatbed trailer stacked with aluminum siding and copper wire. He said that he had some guys tear down a couple of old house trailers but didn’t want the hassle of stripping the wire. I figured he couldn’t rip me off there so I told him I’d take it. A couple hours of stripping wire and I made more than $1500.
The next day I took his trailer back and he asked how much I made and said that it was about what he figured. It was then that I realized that he wasn’t being a jerk by paying me $12, it just happened to be all the cash he had in his pocket when he paid me.