Posted on 09/06/2015 6:35:43 PM PDT by blueunicorn6
In honor of Labor Day, tell us a little bit about your first job.
Cleaned toilets in unimaginably filthy women’s restrooms.
Done that too...at a huge waterfront disco in the South End.
Also scraped gum off a 800 sq foot lit up dance floor.
I have a 730 diesel.Most of the mechanical work is done,this winter I hope to get the new paint on.
My Mom’s dad was a grain elevator exterminator in the Palouse in Idaho. When we visited the grandparents on family trips, dad and I would tag along with Grandpa. Riding the continuous man lift in those old elevators really made a 13 year old suburban kid feel grown up. I heard all the danger and horrow stories about grain and augur accidents...scared me half to death. Those manlifts were dangerous as can be, too. Back in the pre-OSHA days you could do those things and not give it a moment’s thought.
Sonic Drive In, Pueblo, CO
We stripped out the various grades (bright, dark, tips) after the tobacco had cured, bundled the leaves, and packed the bundles in the 4 X 4 baskets to send to auction.
The stalks went back into the fields via a manure spreader.
We kids got as much of the tips as we could strip--good money for a youngster.
The fender mounted radio era made a giant leap in technology when we started using headsets. You could actually hear the songs with both ears, over the blast of the (aftermarket M&W turbocharger boosted) engine.
Setting pins in a bowling alley.
No AUTO, No SEMI-AUTO, 10 pegs come up from deck, place pins over pegs take foot off treadle and HOPE all the pins were ‘balanced’ ...
Jump through ‘gate’ do same to other alley.
Double alley, double shift 6 bucks per night, 30 per week.
Not bad for a 15 yo in 1954.
Throw in sports, high school etc and I had a ‘full plate’.
Today at 15 would be lucky to be let in building ....
Picking potatoes on a farm in Ft. Fairfield, Maine, age 7, 1957. Earned $15.00 in three dawn to dusk days, with which I bought a pair of cowboy boots from either the local Sears or Montgomery Ward catalog store.
Air-cured and flue-cured are handled very differently. I recall some of the local farmers would make a little extra money for the year going up to Canada to help out with the bedding plants and planting after finishing their own, but beyond that the similarity ends.
A dime! We only got two cents in upstate NY in the early 60s. We roamed every house under construction in the neighborhood to collect every empty we could find. Made some pretty good money that went to Estes rockets. Used to find the occasional dime in the phone booth coin return thingy. That was jackpot city when we scored that dime. Once the guys at the local gas station called the phone as I was retrieving the dime and told me the phone company was onto me and I better put that dime back OR ELSE. Can’t recall if I took it or not, but the guys in the lift bay were laughing their heads off.
I worked on a dairy farm.
Six days a week, all summer, for a farmer who rarely ever wore his teeth.
Combine no teeth with his thick, machine gun fast speaking style and a thick Maine accent I rarely ever understood what he was saying.
I made 2.00 an hour the first year. 2.10 the next and all following years.
Every time I hear some twit twenty something girl going on about owning and operating a farm I wish I could ship her off to where I worked.
It was not fun.
See # 79. If you can’t laugh at that comment, you ain’t got a funny bone
Great place to learn a work ethic.
We had to practice so we could get the cone within 1/4 ounce of the right weight
Any we messed up the manager’s wife ate
My ride for “making hay while the sun shines” was a ‘54 Farmall. I used to drive it downtown to the soda fountain and get a tuna sandwich.
My very first job was singing blues & Joni Mitchell songs at a little snack bar kind of thing, attached to Arnold Hall, at Lackland AFB. About once a month, they sent me a contract & a few weeks after the gig, they sent me a check for $30. I was 16 & continued until I was a senior in high school.
Was that the toro that had three reels up front, and you could fold up the outer two?
1962, age 7, picking Marion berries at 25 cents per gallon bucket.
LOL...I did that too, but out on Boston Common.
Sang Joni Mitchell songs “For Free”.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.