Posted on 03/05/2005 1:17:09 PM PST by flixxx
Here in Vermont we have a water-powered sawmill nearby, which has been restored but is only occasionally run.
But there are several folks with portable sawmills nearby that can be hitched up behind a truck or tractor. We had some of our cedars sawed up for lumber, and I'm planning to do the same thing with some white pine and hemlock. I have a portable planer I bought to smooth the planks off. It has paid for itself in almost no time when you look at the money saved on lumber.
My son had severe reading disabilities. So instead of pushing for college, I apprenticed him to an auto mechanic at age 14. Yes, a mechanics shop is a dangerous place but I had confidence in the owner.
My son spent the first year working part time as a tool "gopher" and couldn't wait to start doing brakes and such - the first jobs he was allowed to do. He started collecting his own tools at that age too. I remember the day he came home with his first $5 tip at age 15. He was thrilled.
He sat for and passed his ASE exams at age 18. (You are not allowed to take the exam without 2 years full time experience). At 20 he is an auto technician and the main mechanic in a private shop. He LOVES what he does. He has continued his auto education, taking seminars and getting certificates.
It's probably the best thing I ever did for him. But I hate to think of what could have happened if some liberal schoolteacher had spotted him out and reported us. They could have squashed the dream, all in the name of nanny state protection.
You got that right. Hell on earth, 90 pounds at a time.
I also did some logging as a teenager. Never again.
-ccm
I had to get up in the morning, at ten o'clock at night, half an hour before I went to bed, drink a cup of sulfuric acid, work twenty-nine hours a day down mill and pay millowner for permission to come to work, and when we got home, our mum and dad would kill us and dance about on our graves, singing Hallelujah!
I never was employed in a mill, but by 14 was proficient at operating a chain saw. You are correct about the importance of being taught how to safely use a tool or machine.
Some kids are capable of handling that responsibility. OTOH, some adults never will be.
You know it.
Three cuttings a year, during summer no less.
And folks wonder why I ran like hell to the big city.
\ The worse job was stacking the bales into the hay mow always hot always dusty.
The greenies foist environmental regulations that subsidize crappy harvesting abroad while torching our own forests into weed infested landslides. Then they bitch about water quality and endangered fish!
-ccm
Then I had to hike home uphill again through those now refilled 10' drifts to shovel the driveway so's my dad could drive to his cushy hospital administrators job with the chains I had to install on his corn green '53 Oldsmobile...
But even by waiting thirty minutes and taking another 10 to write this reply, I still haven't stopped laughing out loud at you excedingly honest and distraught reply!!!
Oh yes, hay bales are much worse than straw bales...and we detasseled corn in the summer too...I remember my first summer, we got $2.10 per hour and thought it was great...times have changed.
If you bought Nike sneakers, you support child labor. If you shop at Wal*mart, you support Child Labor. Corporations do not care who makes their products as long as their money keeps rolling in.
Man you had it tough, I had to throw green hay in bales that weighted over 120 lbs to the top of the hay Wagon in 105 degree heat,....that was hard.
Then I had to unload a big old dualie truck with 5 foot side boards filled with wheat into a grain bin when the auger quit working...it was 110 degrees that day,...took all day and 10 gallons of ice tea.... wore myself out going to the outhouse.
Nor do they care who buys their products. How are we able to do that with no one having a job? Are you one of the lucky ones with a job? Do you work for a corporation? Do you use anything made by corporations? Can you get from one place to the next without corporations? Most corporations are excellent corporate and patriotic citizens. You can't do without them so why slam them?
Buncha lazy, largely illegitimate smart/dumb a$$ trustfund babies!!! May a nest of sea hornets swarm their crotches on that there boatload of pantload babies!!!
"Three cuttings a year, during summer no less.
And folks wonder why I ran like hell to the big city."
You know it. My boss was about 60 and worked my teenage ass into the ground. August in eastern Washington - in the top of a metal barn - bails of wet peas... But at $3.00/hr I was making more than any of my buddies.
Child labor isn't all that bad.
The kids stay off the street and make their own cash to spend.
A child spending his/her own cash has more respect for the item they purchase than one spending Ma and Pa's money.
"If a young man or woman works to buy something they want a car etc.
They will drive the car with care because they do not want to hot rod it or wreck it because it is their responsibility."
I went to work plastering for my father when I was 14 so I would have a "car" on the day I turned 16. I knew it was against the law and just kept my mouth shut.
I spent the 2 years building y 40 Ford with a 3/8s x 3/8s flat head and had it ready for the day. I street raced nightly and 2 years later replaced the flathead with a big olds overhead and was going 129 in the quarter in 1953 which was pretty quick for a street coupe in those days.
I already had racing in my blood since I first drove a rail at Santa Ana when I was 12.
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