My first opportunity to earn real money occurred while spending a week with my Aunt Elsie in Marion when I was 8. She, my cousins, and I got up early and walked all the way across town to a strawberry farm where we were paid .10 cents a quart to pick berries. That sounds like a lot of money to have paid a little kid in 1954, but the farmer was probably selling the berries for three times that amount. At any rate, the .90 cents I earned that day was as sweet as the berries I picked and gave me confidence to pursue other lines of work, which I did when we moved to town when I was 12.
In the spring I tilled small gardens for older neighbors with a spade that was nearly as tall as me. During the summer I mowed their lawns with an old rotary mower, and in the fall and winter I raked their leaves and shoveled snow from their walks and driveways. Apparently they considered my fees of .25 to .50 cents to be fair because I developed a regular clientele. This career lasted about three years, during which time I also tried my hand at selling greeting cards, religious plaques, and Grit newspapers, but I quickly learned I was not cut out to be a salesman.
I had neither the encouragement nor the self-discipline to save my hard earned money for something meaningful like a new bicycle. Instead, I spent every dime on such things as Superman comic books, Baby Ruth candy bars and fishing gear. And, of course, I went to the movies, mostly to see westerns at Schine’s Vernon Theater on the square in Mount Vernon where I would chow down on popcorn, cokes, and Whopper malted milk balls.
At 14 I graduated to the big time working as a barker for Moore’s Monkey show at the Knox County Fair. Mr. Moore was an unshaven, somewhat disheveled, cantankerous old man. He had a tent large enough to house half a dozen monkeys that he had taught to perform some simple tricks. I would sit on a tall stool out front and “bark” at people in a rhythmic tone as they passed by. “Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, come see the monkey show, only one thin dime for the thrill of a lifetime.” Once inside, patrons watched while poor old Mr. Moore had the monkeys perform their little tricks. He paid me .50 cents an hour, and I must have done well because he hired me again the next year. Looking back, I think being a carnival show barker helped prepare me to one day become a fast talking auctioneer.
As I shared in a recent column, while attending boarding high school at Mount Vernon Academy I worked 4 to 8 hours a day, 6 days a week to pay tuition, room, and board. I learned how to run the blister burning shirt presses in the laundry, as well as a number of other jobs, but the one I enjoyed most was working on the night cleanup crew at the Loma Linda soy milk plant. It was yucky work but enjoyable because – well, because, if you give garden hoses to half a dozen teenage boys, you can be sure they will put them to good use.
As the smallest guy on the crew, it was my job to clean the tight-quartered cooker in which the soy milk was boiled to a couple hundred degrees before it was pumped into huge stainless steel tanks to cool overnight in preparation for the canning line the next day. My job was to scrub and scour the scorched scum off the coils and walls of the cooker.
One night the other boys closed and locked the “submarine” hatch with me inside, then closed the drain valve at the bottom and wedged a hose down the vent hole at the top. The cooker quickly began filling with water, and just as quickly I climbed to the top coil, where, with my head pressed against the top of the cooker, I tried, but without success, to dislodge the hose. As the water neared my neck, one of the boys finally told our supervisor, Mr. Baldwin, and he hurriedly removed the hose and opened the drain valve. Most every night one of us was pranked in one way or another. That night just happened to be my turn.
In June, 1964, I caught a Greyhound bus to Columbia Union College in Takoma Park, Maryland, a suburb of Washington D. C. I literally did not have two nickels to rub together, but my older brother had arranged for a couple of his friends from India to take me in. Jake Moses and Farook Sait rented a small house off campus and allowed me to sleep on a mat on their living room floor. Within a couple of days I landed a job that had been posted on a bulletin board by an anthropologist who worked at the Smithsonian Institute.
Mary, never married, had returned from working in Africa to care for her frail, nearly deaf, Father, and her Mother who was physically strong but so afflicted with dementia that she would be frightened every time she saw me. Mary’s Dad followed her Mom around the house all day to make sure she didn’t wander off, and each time she shouted, “Help, there’s a strange man in the house”, he would shout back, “It’s okay, Mary hired him to work for us.” This went on all day long for the entire eight weeks I worked for Mary.
Mary and her parents lived five miles away from Takoma Park in Northeast Washington. Each morning I hiked to her home, worked seven or eight hours and then hiked back to my mat at Jake and Farook’s house. At the end of the first week Mary noticed I was walking because I didn’t want to spend money to ride the bus. She had an old bicycle and offered to let me ride it. After a trip to the bicycle shop for a “tune-up” and new tires I enjoyed riding the bike to and from her house for the remaining seven weeks.
During this time I painted every room in their majestic but rundown two story home, power sanded and painted the front porch, washed all of the six foot high windows of the house inside and out, restrung all of the venetian blinds, and completed a good number of other jobs. By fall I had paid the balance of my high school bill, and secured a job as a janitor at a local hospital, thereby earning enough money to enroll for a few college courses. The next spring I touted my vast experience as a painter to secure a job with a house painter and worked at this trade until I graduated four years later.
The lessons learned as I progressed from strawberry picker to painter remain with me today. The most important of which is this. If you put your mind to it, you can learn to do just about anything – maybe even become a fast talking auctioneer!
George Brown is a freelance writer. He lives in Jackson Township with his wife Yvonne.