Posted on 07/18/2012 4:15:47 AM PDT by Kaslin
I started working at a little grocery store at the age of 9 and have worked ever since. Back then I worked for 25 cents per hour and later got a raise to 50 cents.....wow!
My first business was selling cold drinks to the construction workers building houses on my street. On hot summer afternoons they paid handsomely for a cold bottle of Nehi. My bicycle would carry enough to take care of those working on one or two houses. They would take their break when I arrived with the cold drinks.
As an 11 year old entrepreneur I did well. (I did have help. My mom drove on public roads to the store where I bought the drinks)
Harvesting Tobacco was my first job.
I worked on my fathers farm and after we got our crops in I hired out to the neighbors, for 5 dollars a day and lunch.I was 14 the first time I was hired.
I disagree. Politicians, particularly Democrats do get it. They want more unemployment and dependency while claiming they are helping people. Dependency on government programs guarantees a larger Rat power base. Why would they want a prosperous, independent and free voter base? They might vote Conservative.
I started my FIRST job in 1945 at age 10. At 77 I’m still at it, but I’m down to 50 hours a week. I’m a 4th generation watchmaker, taught by family, in a traditional apprenticeship. This country is woefully short of people of my trade, and the rules and regulations handed down by the governments is a large part of the problem.
I’ve always wanted to teach a youngster this trade, but with the exception of two young cousins, the 5th generation at the bench, I wouldn’t consider it. What a shame.
You could substitute any of dozens of vanishing trades for the word “watchmaker” and the reasons are the same.
It was awful.
And I was thinking the whole time about all my friends out having a ball while I was dying in that dark, dirty, noisy place.
Of course, the pay was great and I was able to buy my first car cash and get into college.
This can't be stressed enough. Many students coast through school without any real idea of the value of an education. Oh they say the right things, but when it comes to applying themselves toward getting an education (as opposed to getting good grades) they fail. And that failure continues through college where the expectations about that first "real job" veer off into fantasy-land. Lessons about word & education are better learned early.
Summer at age 14.
Mowed 4 peoples yards on a regular basis
Caddied 2-3 times a week at the local golf course.
Sold golf balls (recovered from fields) You would not believe the money this generated....
Dug a foundation ditch (helped) (shovel) for a person building a garage.
All cash jobs and I made GOOD money
I never forget, I was was watching a game show in 1967 and the host asked one of the contestants, who looked about 25 years old, what he was doing. The contestant replied he was a college student. So the host asked him what he wanted to do when he graduate. The contestant replied. I have no idea
I cropped tobacco , too. Eastern NC, started when I was 13, summer of ‘73. Also drove the tractor, loaded the curing barns, unloaded the barns, topped and suckered, you name it. Dad wasn’t a farmer, it was a friend of his I worked for. Dad worked at MCAS Cherry Point, but was raised on a tobacco farm. I come from a long line of NC tobacco farmers. Anyway, 10 hours a day, 5 days a week, pay was $2.00 an hour back then.
My first job was covering my High School’s varsity sports games for the local newspaper when I was a freshman. I was paid by the age so I learned about ‘padding’ quickly.
Washing walls.
I had TWO first jobs! I worked in a beauty shop cleaning hair brushes, sweeping hair, keeping the reception area organized and taking money (had to do the change in my head), during the week and on Sunday’s took care of the nursury at my church. Saturdays we had to first help daddy with the yard and then clean our room and whatever our weekly rotating area was. Ended up with a career in commercial property management- loved it most of the time.
When I think of all the people I KNOW who are getting government handouts it about makes me sick. The younger ones rely heavily on their parents when these don’t make ends meet. God get all the free money you can is their way of looking at life. Older ones who opted out of health insurance and their health faded, got on LONG TERM disablity or employee disability insurance programs where they worked. Some live a luxury life off government grants to give them expensive operations as they think they deserve them! Their health is finally somewhat important. I comment now to them that I am blessed by my GOD that I could live out my dad’s stern rule to us-—you cannot go without health insurance and have savings or insurance enough to bury yourself. We did without finer things in life for insurance-health, car, home, life—BUT, never did without love, respect and ethics in life as a family. My sisters and I carry that on as my nieces all have jobs that support them and/or their family and all have insurances. We have a situation going on now with preemie TWINS and if they had not had insurance would have cost the taxpayers a million dollars. Some of the preemies are uninsured and the cost is unbelievable. And, imagine after spending a full day in the hospital with these babies then going to a non-profit room nearby for emergency calls and hearing a banging headboard several times a night waking you up! True stories!
I also know of a case where a motorized wheelchair sits out front of a house because he lost the key to it. And, when I ask my senator what happens to them after the patient isn’t using the ones WE pay grandly for...no answer. Guess the family sells them on Craig’s list or e-bay.
UNLESS we fall into a hole financially as a nation or have a religious revival what will change this mentality?
My first job was shoveling hog manure on the farm.
Was always paid in my internships. Engineers usually are. Honestly, I don’t understand why you would work for free at one. That hints your field is not very good.
I picked radishes and green onions. On my knees. In the field. I was paid by the “twistie”.
People may not know this, but the green onions and radishes you buy at the store were bunched in those little twisty ties right where they were pulled out of the ground. By a human being.
When I turned 15 I sometimes would be paid by the hour to come up behind the other “bunchers” and put their piles of bunches in the wooden boxes and load ‘em onto the tractor, take it into the barn and wash it. Washing meant dunking each box into a big sink a couple of times and pulling it out and into a stack.
When I turned 16 I drove the truck load of veggies to the distribution centers for places like Safeway.
I think most of what I did is now illegal to allow young people to do. What a shame.
I had that job all through high school and college, from stoop labor to assistant farm manager. In fact during the amnesty of 1986 I had between 20 and 60 migrant workers through out the harvest. I only had 2 that that were illegal. We had immigration officials pay us a visit a couple times a month.
That job bought a moped, a '68 Camaro, payed for half my flying lessons and offset a great deal of college expenses.
There are more and more days I simply miss that job.
Babysitting. Then waitress in a diner. Then short order cook in a factory.
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