Work

There are obviously a lot of differences between the way the world is now and the way it was when I was a kid. Some things are as different as night and day. One of those differences is in what was expected of us. Today we push our kids and grandkids to succeed, to get ahead. Forty years ago, a Bachelor’s Degree was the exception, now it’s the rule. To set themselves apart from everyone else they have to get at least a Master’s or have a specialized degree. Forty years ago, interests were still more basic – like, how to live. It was still acceptable to quit school as soon as you were 16 so you could “go to work” and either set out on your own or supplement the family income. I came close to doing just that.

I started working for a wage at 14, and I was far from being the only one. There were at least a dozen guys on nearly every work crew I was on, and they were in the same situation as me. Before that it was whatever I could find and wherever I could find it. We weren’t starving, but there were no extras. If you wanted anything special, you worked for it.  Later on, I would work to pay my way through high school.

As a small kid, you could run errands for some of the store owners downtown. Rarely did you get money; you got a treat instead. But at that age, an ice cream cone or cherry coke was always welcome. Around the same time, my older brother got me to help him sell newspapers. So on Sunday morning we stood beside Tic Toc’s, trying to sell the Knoxville paper to people traveling through on Highway 11, and they would usually buy their paper from the smallest kid, so my brother knew what he was doing.  For my 3 or 4 hours of work, he gave me a whole 50 cents.

After you got older you tried to get your own paper route, but there were only couple in the entire town and they were taken, so you turned to mowing yards. There were two situations here, either they would provide the mower or you had to find a way to get one to use. Heaven forbid you got one that was hard to crank. After about half an hour of trying to start it, you gave up. For a normal sized yard you could get 75 cents to a dollar. If it was a really big yard, you could actually get 5 dollars, but it took you all day to do the one yard.

Next, you kept your ear open for any farmers who might be looking for help, especially around hay baling time. It was hard, hard work. I wasn’t all that big and it was all I could do to get a bail up to the wagon. I would grab it with my hands and then use my right thigh to push it up to the wagon. I went through a pair of jeans one year doing that.

Next, came a real job. It was called the Neighborhood Youth Corp.  I think we started out at $1.25 an hour or something like that. During the school year, we worked at school. During the summer, we worked for the City Department. Mostly I cleared weeds and brush from ditches and river banks, and got to be a terror with a swing sicle or a briar scythe.  I also worked the garbage truck for awhile and worked on the paving crew for a time, too. I helped build the road that runs beside the high school. It wasn’t much help, but I like to think I had a hand in it.

Then I jumped all the way to Maremont. That was really good money. I was finally making a grown up’s wage. It lasted until November, 1970 when the draft convinced me to join the Air Force. I made about half as much starting out in there as I made at Maremont.

If I have any regret, it is the time I missed socializing in high school. It’s not a regret I can’t live with and it has never really cost me any sleep, but it would have been nice to have had a few more memories of that “growing up” time of my life.