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.
I worked at Hot-Watt (manufactured the heating element in Mr. Coffee machines)
Brad Delp, lead singer for Boston, was the company handiman.
Those were the days!
I delivered on base housing at Vandenberg AFB. Murray bike and bags on the handlebars. I had a route that supported a couple of hundred subscribers. Small local newspaper (Lompoc Record) but it put a little spending money in my pocket and provided me an early education in work ethic, being responsible and dealing with customers. Pretty heady stuff for a 10 year old at the time.
I was such a runt, that after easing the clutch lever forward to start moving, I would have to throw my weight against it to snap it over center. Changing gears sometimes involved kicking it in and out of gear, if I couldn’t get by hand.
Bamberger’s at Oxford Valley Mall was the first but my absolute favorite was mucking out stalls.
No, single reel with a Briggs & Stratton engine mounted on top of the reel platform. It was really hard to sharpen the reel edges and get them properly aligned to the cutting bar. It it wasn’t razor sharp and precisely aligned, the grass would get ashed between the reel edge and the cutter bar edge, creating a real mess.
Paperboy, then laborer at a steel fabrication shop
Ain't that the truth.
I had to back a manure spreader behind a Farmall H between the milking parlor and the loafing shed.
That talent was utilized to good effect when I was in the Army loading towed artillery onto railroad cars. The city boys just couldn't figure it out.
Both me and my brother delivered the Pittsburg (Calif.) Post-Dispatch with canvas bags full of rolled papers slung over the handlebars of our bikes. I remember vividly the day Kennedy was assassinated and giving several minutes to read the front page of the paper before rolling and packing the papers for delivery that afternoon.
Collection days were the hardest part. We canvassed the neighborhood and often had to return to be able to collect our due for the newspaper. I think our cut was 25 cents per customer per month. Both Charlie and I had about 70 customers apiece. By 1968 I had transitioned to the Heights Car Wash for an actual wage which I recall was about $2.25 per hour.
:-) That’s one of my favorites.
The first job I was paid for was operating a 1935 Caterpillar Diesel 40 on the family farm. Graduated to the D-7 when I was 12.
Ok, I think I get it, you are talking about a push mower. I was talking about a ride-on.
It was one of mine too.
I do music for a living now, a half century later.
Fried was awesome.
I was a “laborer” at a desolate oil-tank farm out in the mosquito-infested marsh, where a pipeline was being laid. Summertime, with head-indeces virtually always over 100-degrees. I dug ditches, and spread asphalt. Part of the job was getting down deep in the ditches that the backhow dug, and ‘tarring’ and wrapping the pipe weldings, often with mud up to my knees. Smelly, oily mud... and heat that took your breath away.
It helped pay my way through college, though.
LOL You have my sympathy & I certainly admire your patience.
My first job was after college. First day of the job my boss gave me a broom and told me to sweep the floor. I told him I was a college graduate. He said, “Oh, I’m sorry. Here, let me show you how to use a broom.”
Keeping books for a lady after school when I was fourteen.
One summer I ran a jack-hammer. I was about 17. They would drop me off with the compressor and air hoses at a gas station. We’d have pre-cut lines in the asphalt and concrete of the pump islands the day before with the diamond blade saw. I’d break up the asphalt and concrete (w/ re-bar) all day into manageable chunks that we could throw into the dump truck. We were installing “vapor recovery manifolds” for Sunoco. So there was a lot of hand digging under the island to lay pipes up to the pumps. Then there was digging across the yard and down to expose the top of the in ground tank. We had to tie in our piping to the top of the tank. Well the boss and the big boys were stuck. They couldn’t loosen the 6inch diameter plug on top of the tank. I’m a kid. I says, everyone get out of the way. I scrambled down into the ditch and stood on top of the tank with my jack-hammer. I switched the flat blade for the “pointer”. I got right to work on the stuck plug with the Jack-hammer. As soon as everyone saw what I was trying to do they panicked and ran. But, it worked just fine. Soon I emerged out of the hole holding that plug in my hand. Grown men were brought to tears.
Scranton, PA - Pickle Factory *shiver*
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.