grayfingers
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Post by grayfingers on Nov 29, 2013 19:11:38 GMT -5
My first real 'paying' job was picking rocks out of a field for 50 cents an hour. I was eight years old and thought that was good money. When I got tired there was a lot of crushed fingernails. . . I was saving up for a spider monkey, only $14.95! Turns out my mom had been around a monkey that would do nasty things, so she put the kibosh on my monkey plans. . .
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Nov 29, 2013 20:04:45 GMT -5
I had the same monkey want. For me the problem was growing up on a farm where I worked for my food and shelter. Oh yea, and at the beginning of school I got two pair of pants and two shirts to wear to school. I had no choice in the matter and received corduroy pants which I hated because all the other kids wore jeans and teased me about my pants. I did get spending money when I got into high school though.
One winter I got up and fed 200 head of cattle before school then fed them again when I got home from school. My dad had back surgery and was laid up all winter. You just did what had to be done. No questions asked.
waa waa waa Jim
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jamesp
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Post by jamesp on Nov 29, 2013 21:17:02 GMT -5
I'll take you two for friends.
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Post by 1dave on Nov 30, 2013 8:46:33 GMT -5
My first job was blacking tires for ten cents an hour at Gene Johnson's Service station a half block from our home. Later tried mowing lawns at twenty five cents per yard. After two yards, I drank up all the profits in pop from the same service station, trying to cool down. Then I discovered the fish ponds (now filled in) at the State Capitol Building (Austin Texas) four blocks away. Night, swim suit, and more money than anyone could ever spend!
With fifty cents in my pocket, who could possibly want any more?
Remember the song about the gambler "And I don't give a damn about a green back dollar, spend it fast as I can."
Teen years I worked at Jarvis's A & W root beer stand by Dish Field for twenty five cents an hour plus tips.
I've weeded vegetables, dug miles of potatoes by hand, topped and loaded sugar beets, branded and dehorned cattle, built barbed wire fences, insulated hot steam pipes in narrow tunnels, and glad to do it!
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grayfingers
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Member since November 2007
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Post by grayfingers on Nov 30, 2013 9:04:17 GMT -5
Good stories, guys. Kids back a few years ago realized the value of everything better than now. Dad was putting himself through college while working as a mechanic and a Carpenter. Mom had a total household budget of $60 / month for a family of four. She baked all the bread, canned vegetables and meats, which came from the woods and streams. She made most of our shirts too.
I was a little scrounger, all wood for building rabbit hutches was collected from alleys, old nails taken out and straightened against the curb to re-use. Also kept my eye out for car batteries, I would go get my red wagon and tow them all the way to the recyclers a mile away. They got a big kick out of watching me come in with my wagon, and barely able to lift the battery out. They were paying 75 cents, and that was some serious funds.
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jamesp
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Post by jamesp on Nov 30, 2013 9:08:58 GMT -5
As many of us old guys that have our hard work stories an equal amount on young tell an opposite upbringing. hmmm
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Sabre52
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Me and my gal, Rosie
Member since August 2005
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Post by Sabre52 on Nov 30, 2013 9:34:58 GMT -5
Unfortunately, almost half our population does not give a damn as long as they get their freebies. They neither understand what is at risk, nor do they care. They have no moral compass. They care only for themselves. They do not care for the state of the nation or our freedoms. They simply sell their vote to the highest bidder and allow themselves to be wrapped by more and more chains. They are too damn stupid to realize that the more they take from the government, the more they become a slave of the government because they are always in fear of having their free stuff taken away. What they fail to realize is what's being taken away, is their freedom. Dumbasses!.....Mel
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grayfingers
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Member since November 2007
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Post by grayfingers on Nov 30, 2013 9:52:25 GMT -5
James, funny part is, I don't remember feeling at all put out over having to work for a few coins. I enjoyed figuring out what I could do. When aluminum beer cans came out I was running the back alleys of the bars on Sunday mornings before church. I drug home a big appliance box to keep them in. Then it was a few hours of stomping cans down enough to transport them to the recycler in newspaper bags on my bike. PBR cans sucked, they had steel bottoms. When I was 12, I started a trapline. I would ride my bike to the foothills at the edge of town and hike my line. I got a red fox and a big (56lb.) prime pelt beaver my first year.
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grayfingers
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Member since November 2007
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Post by grayfingers on Nov 30, 2013 10:30:40 GMT -5
One more story. Growing up in the 'old ways' was valuable in a way that lasts a lifetime. Even as a child one learns compassion, sympathy and empathy long before they knew those words. I also shoveled sidewalks before school (in the dark).
There was this one place I shoveled, and next to it was a tiny little house. I noticed there seemed to be quite a build up on the little walks. I finished up and went and knocked on the door, but no answer. The next time I was there, same deal, no one had shoveled and it was pretty bad. I thought I saw a curtain move in that house, so again I knocked with no answer.
Then the lady I was shoveling for told me an old man lived there and he didn't talk to anybody. I went back over and shoveled his walk, even thought it was bad from build up it went fast enough to still make it to school. The next time, I figured I would just do it since it was a tiny bit of sidewalk and a strip to the door. As I was doing this, the door opened and out he comes. He was frail and looked to me to be at least a hundred. He says, "I can't pay you for that!", all gruff-like. I told him that was okay, it was only another five minutes. He looked at me funny and went back inside. I continued this until late that winter. One morning, he opened the door and asked me in. His place was like a pack-rats nest. I saw a old photo of a pretty lady next to his chair. He fumbled around for a bit in the other room and soon came back with a little canvas sack. He handed it to me and said "I want you to have this." I could see how poor he was, and tried to refuse, whatever it was.
He looked at me with a mix of frustration and approval, and insisted. He said something about how much it meant to him that I had done him this kindness, and I thought his voice cracked and his eyes seemed to shimmer... I took the little bag, thanked him and left. I looked in the bag under the next street light. It was his collection of silver dollars. I felt rich and sad. I shoveled for him several more times that winter, then it didn't snow for a couple weeks, when I went back I found out he had died. I learned the real meaning of several things from that experience, and tear up to this day when I think about it. I then would barter with elderly folks, they didn't have much money, but they had cool stuff to trade for my work. They were happy to as they liked to pay their way too, and were thrilled to see my happiness over whatever they offered me.
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Post by 1dave on Nov 30, 2013 11:28:53 GMT -5
grayfingers, Amazing how the direction of a post changes over time. You reminded me of my time in Boston where you paid five cents deposit on each aluminum can. I stomped a lot of them and brought them in for recycling. No Way! "We don't pay for disfigured cans. They have to be in prime condition!"They are going to crush and melt them anyway. Boston = Progressive. It doesn't have to make sense.
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jamesp
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Post by jamesp on Nov 30, 2013 11:43:02 GMT -5
It is obvious that pride of accomplishment has deep meanings and rich satisfaction.
Good drug to be addicted too.
Seen lots a silver spooners. they so often live a cursed life. Go figure. Oddly, they often can be 'sensed' in seconds. Seems discriminatory.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Nov 30, 2013 14:44:24 GMT -5
haha - 1dave, they wanted your cans for free. More profit! Makes sense?? My first job was with the city parks and recreation. I entertained grade schoolers until their parents came home. We played games, football, baseball, basketball, ping pong in the rain. We worked in pairs one male and one female. That made for some cozy times after work. lol Minimum wage in Cali at the time? $1.90 - I started at 2.62!! Before that I did also recycle bottles (cans? what's that?) and car batteries. My first route for batteries was walking on the walls between the homes in our suburban neighborhood. Checking behind garages it was easy to find 10-12 the first week. After that it got harder. Carrying a 40# battery while walking on a 5 ft block wall for 400-500 yards got tiring. Lucky in my neighborhood all homes had block walls and I could go east to the main street then south a half mile on a block wall checking for batteries. Once I got all the way to that end, there were four side streets with about a 1/4 mile of wall. All in all I could check the backyards of 150'ish homes without leaving the block wall highway. Car batteries then? $3ea 'core charge'. Also made for finding empty pools in my skateboard days quite easy!
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Post by 1dave on Nov 30, 2013 14:58:13 GMT -5
@shotgunner, no walking the walls in South America. They are all at least 8' tall and capped with sharp shards of glass!
It seems skateboarding in empty pools would make it easy for the cops to arrest you for trespassing?
How did any of us kids ever survive?
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jamesp
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Post by jamesp on Dec 1, 2013 5:21:18 GMT -5
Noticed in the mirror recently that i survived childhood but it took it's toll.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Dec 1, 2013 13:49:52 GMT -5
@shotgunner, no walking the walls in South America. They are all at least 8' tall and capped with sharp shards of glass! It seems skateboarding in empty pools would make it easy for the cops to arrest you for trespassing? How did any of us kids ever survive? How did we survive? You mean before seat belts or baby seats? You mean when kids walked to school? Or rode bikes without helmets? Or had bonfires on the beach at night?Or burned metal stemmed sparklers (even in 1968 we weren't allowed firecrackers in Cali) on the fourth of July? Or did you mean way back when our parents did not get arrested for allowing us to go to the pizza parlor ALONE?................................................................................ I could go on. Our society has become ridiculous. Sad really. Kids can't just be kids anymore.
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Post by 1dave on Dec 1, 2013 14:27:09 GMT -5
@shotgunner, no walking the walls in South America. They are all at least 8' tall and capped with sharp shards of glass! It seems skateboarding in empty pools would make it easy for the cops to arrest you for trespassing? How did any of us kids ever survive? How did we survive? You mean before seat belts or baby seats? You mean when kids walked to school? Or rode bikes without helmets? Or had bonfires on the beach at night?Or burned metal stemmed sparklers (even in 1968 we weren't allowed firecrackers in Cali) on the fourth of July? Or did you mean way back when our parents did not get arrested for allowing us to go to the pizza parlor ALONE?................................................................................ I could go on. Our society has become ridiculous. Sad really. Kids can't just be kids anymore. My friends were doing the same stupid stuff I was: laying lit candles flat, then placing bullets on them to see what would happen. The casings become shrapnel if you really want to know. Scaling the State Capitol Building walls to catch bats, we discovered the second floor senators cloak room where they had an ice filled container full of "soda water" AKA pop. What was good for senators was good for us. They got wise and put a chain around the case. We still were able to fish the bottles out. They bought a new case with tracks you had to slide the bottle around to the opening, put a nickle in and pull it out. WE climbed up, saw what they had done, climbed back down, ran home and got a bottle opener and straws and drank the bottles dry in their tracks. Using a 2X4 ladder we found as a bobsled to slide down the first snow in 8 years on 19th St hill and into the busy traffic on Lamar Boulevard. Playing "Follow the Leader" running on top of 2X4's of concrete forms. 1 miss nearly tore my knee cap off. Jumping off the roof of a new two story apartment building into an 8' high sand pile that diminished to 2" as the masons did their work. Catching pollywogs barefoot in Red River Creek, cutting foot on broken glass, leaving bloody footprints all the way home where I passed out from loss of blood. Using a sheet as a parachute while jumping off various buildings - Perhaps if I were higher . . . Wiring steel bed rails to fence posts, then a cross wire to become a tight wire walker. Uh, the bed rail ripped loose just as I stepped on the wire. Down I went with the bed rail splitting my head open. My friends and I kept our family doctors busy!
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jamesp
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Post by jamesp on Dec 1, 2013 14:51:39 GMT -5
I will say the modern day skateboarders, aerial bicyclists and building jumpers command attention.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Dec 1, 2013 17:44:13 GMT -5
I will say the modern day skateboarders, aerial bicyclists and building jumpers command attention. I was there for much of the beginning of what you see today. I skated with Tony Hawk when he was a little kid. He kicked my ass!! He was a prodigy. Naturally just stronger than everyone else. Just a natural born athlete. If you have seen any of the "Dog Town" or other old skateboard movies; I skated with Tony Alva, Stacy Peralta, the Alba brothers........... I could just hold my own, those guys were giants.
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jamesp
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Post by jamesp on Dec 1, 2013 18:08:16 GMT -5
Well you must have been right in the hood that was doing all that. Get any good injuries with internal jewelry(metal plates/screws/ball joints/titanium that we could remove on a rock hunting trip. Like take it to the scrap yard. I can get some novacaine before removal.
Kryptonite!
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Dec 1, 2013 20:09:28 GMT -5
Well you must have been right in the hood that was doing all that. Get any good injuries with internal jewelry(metal plates/screws/ball joints/titanium that we could remove on a rock hunting trip. Like take it to the scrap yard. I can get some novacaine before removal. Kryptonite! Sprained ankles and a busted collarbone is all I got. I wasn't strong enough to really hurt myself. My hood was called "frogtown" 'cuz I caught a bucket of frogs and fed them to my buddy's fish the day we named it! After that we travelled all over SoCal visiting skate parks and competitions. We wore hand scrawled "frogtown" shirts that one of us made. Three of us, three skateboards, three packs for lunch, all in a 1957 Karmann Ghia. The only thing that fit under the hood was the lunches. Bring hot food in summer, naturally warmed by the sun. 5 years of fun, then came along beer and girls.................... in that order..........................
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