When I was fourteen, a freshman in High School, my first job-for-pay was mowing the lawn on a neighbor's farm. I got two dollars for mowing a pretty big lawn. He asked me if I wanted to stay at his farm and do odd jobs for two dollars a day, plus room and board. I liked it there - I ate good and he had a nice farm. Better than ours, actually. 'Sides, I wouldn't have to milk cows, which I hated. He only had four and we had forty.
He let me ride one of his horses -- actually, I was doing him a favor, exercising it. But one day I dropped the reins while the horse was galloping and didn't get them back until he stopped. I told the farmer about it and he never let me ride any of his horses ever again. I didn't mind, as at that time in my life I didn't really like riding horses. One day he had me out cutting cockleburrs and my friends in town were getting fifty cents an hour for cutting cockleburrs, so I felt cheated and I loafed. I actually laid down in the middle of the corn rows, the corn being only a foot high. He was the kind of a guy that would own a pair of binoculars. Did he see me? I dunno, and I don't remember how it happened, but I never worked there again.
I cut cockleburrs with my friends once in a while. The very worst job I had was unloading coal from a railway car in the dead of winter. It was cold and the coal was too big to shovel easily and too small to pick up by hand. Took me and my fiend three days to get the damn thing unloaded.
Three of us also unloaded a boxcar full of bricks. We had these tools that had a handle that lifted up, with which you carried the bricks and also the handle was on a hinge that pulled the two ends together to grab seven bricks.
I got in a fight with my dad that night when I got home because we started working right after school and there was no way to tell anyone where I was. We didn't have a phone on the farm.
I figured my Mom worried my dad over it until he got worried and released it in anger when I got home. He told me I couldn't work there again and if I didn't like it, I could leave. I started to leave, and purposefully went toward the door he was standing near, and thankfully, he stopped me.
The next day my Mom told me it was all right for me to work there.
My next job was after we moved into town - Emmetsburg, Iowa. I worked in an old ladies garden -- pulling weeds, etc. She was nice, but it didn't seem like a real job and I was seventeen by then.
One day I walked into a grocery store and asked for a job and surprisingly, I got put to work right away. I had to dust every shelf and every can in the place. I would remove a bunch of cans, dust where they had been, and as I put the cans back, I would dust the cans. Not realizing it at the time, but after I finished doing that, if a customer asked me where something was, I knew.
There was one other box boy and a man and a woman cashier, and then the owner. The owner usually stayed in the back, candling eggs. Farmers sold their eggs to the grocery stores, the grocery stores sold the eggs to their customers. The eggs needed to be candled before being retailed in order to weed out rotten eggs, or those containing blood spots.
To candle an egg, you pass it in front of a hole in a box which contains a lighted bulb. You could see the interior of the egg in this way, much like an x-ray, only much clearer.
Once in a while I would candle eggs 'cause it was fun, but now that I'm older, I shouldn't have been doing that. I was never shown how to do it, I just learned from watching. I think I did it right, but I dunno, know what I mean? All I knew was to watch for cloudy eggs -- rotten, or dark spots -- blood. Anything else, I would have passed out of ignorance.
That reminds me, my friend's father came to the farm one day to spray the chicken coop for lice and my friend said, "See that chicken?" My dad's gonna kill it. I never did see what was different about that chicken, but sure enough, when his dad saw it, he picked it up and wrung its neck. I saw my grandmother do that to a chicken a few months later. I was not a very curious person in those days, so I never asked what was wrong with the chicken. I think it had something to do with not being a layer. No, it wasn't a rooster, Silly.
The man and woman who worked as cashiers up front would occasionally call out, "Carry out." I would rush up to do it 'cause it got me out doors. One day I went out and a car was parked and the horn was blaring nonstop. There was an old man in the driver's seat who evidently was deaf. People were knocking on the car door window, telling him his horn was honking. He just looked at them stupidly. Somebody finally got it stopped -- again, I don't remember how.
One day when one of the two cashiers called for a carry out and I rushed up there, they got on the other bag boy for not doing his share -- for always letting me do it. The man said that he was in charge of up front. The owner came up from the back to see what was going on and when he heard this, he said, "No, I'M the boss of up front and the back. It's my store. I'M the owner." The cashier quit a week later. I'm not sure, but I think the woman quit too. They married around that time..They were a nice-looking couple.
I always felt kinda guilty for being the cause of that whole brouhaha.
My brother worked for a construction gang building houses. He made a lot more money than I did, so I went there and asked for a job even though I was worried it would be too tough for me. I got the job and shortly was carrying wet concrete in a wheelbarrow and the boss was watching me to see if I could handle it. It was a little touch and go for a while, but in later days, after I had worked out a little more, it was a breeze. The first surprise with that job was that it was MUCH easier than working in a grocery store. Physically and mentally. And I didn't have to deal with customers.
I worked there a number of months during the summer until one day the boss came on the sight. Usually the seven of us (one was my chemistry teacher) worked without supervision. I worked hard, loved the physical labor, but when the boss arrived, we were working on the roof and when we ran out of boards we had to go down and carry a bunch back up. It seemed to me, and I'm sure I'm right, but everyone but me started working extra hard because the boss was there. One guy never went down to get boards until the boss showed up.
I hated being thought a hypocrite or a suck up, so although I had made several trips to get boards, when the boss showed up, I waited on the roof until somebody brought boards for me to nail. Naturally the boss saw this and thought me a slacker, so he took me with him and told me what to clean up, keeping tabs on me. I told him I wanted to quit and he said, "Yeah, I thought you might." I knew he thought I wanted to quit because he was working me, but it really was because I knew what he thought of me and I didn't want to be around him anymore. I always felt uncomfortable around him anyhow -- a father figure, I guess, and I never got along with my father. Hated my dad, actually, until about six months before he died.
I always thought -- or hoped, anyhow, that my chemistry teacher, who knew me and saw what a good worker I was when the boss wasn't around, would say something to that effect to the boss so the boss wouldn't think I was a loafer. I really doubt he ever did that, though. But still, I hoped.
My next job was with the Air force, the early years. The one year enlistment. I already told you about that. You gotta pay attention.
After I got out from my enlistment, I again went to where my brother worked -- in a packing plant. Killing beef.
First day, I went into the dressing room to put on some clothes I didn't mind getting bloody and dirty. I then walked out into the killing floor and hanging up by the hind feet, on a moving chain, were three black steers. Now, I knew I was going to be where beef were killed, but when I saw they actually did that, I was a bit shocked. I don't know what I expected -- cans of beef, maybe?
My brother told me he once saw a steer loose on the floor, and one day I saw it happen too. His climbed over the chute, mine somehow didn't get hooked up right and wasn't stunned enough. They hit them over the head with a sledge hammer. My brother told me that was once his job.
My job was to push the carcasses along to the cooler room after the beef were skinned and cut lengthwise. Also, whenever this buzzer sounded, I was to go over to the call tube -- like they use to have on ships so the captain could talk to the engine room? I would hear something like, "Jason (not his real name) has a cut on a hide." I would then relay this information to Jason, who would then proceed to chew me out like it was my call and I was insulting him. I hated it when the tube said his name. I cringed. My brother went up to him one day and told him to knock that shit off, and he did,
I quit after a few weeks, went to the horse kill, got fired after three days. I hated both those jobs. Don't know why I ever went there. Had no money and too much time, I guess.
Went to Emmetsburg Junior College a month after getting fired.
Now this is strange. False memory coming up. You see, I was sure I worked in construction as a senior in High School, but I didn't meet the Chemistry teacher at that job until I went to college. I must have worked at that grocery store through my Junior and Senior years in High School, went in the Air Force, got out, went to work on the killing floors, went to college, got a job building houses. Logically, that makes sense, but memory wise, it didn't happen like that.
But then I remember quitting the grocery store to go to work in construction. I did not work in the grocery store while going to college. I worked bottling milk.
What's the use of having a memory if the damn thing ain't going to work right?
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