Jobs I've Had

I was reflecting at various times of this beautiful day about different types of jobs I've had since I first needed a nickel in my pocket. This excludes the time when I was seven and Dad said he'd give me a quarter if I mowed our yard. It was a corner lot. I jumped at the chance and quit about a tenth of the way through. We had a push mower, no motor, a 'real' push mower. I got suckered on that one.
My buddy, Dick, and I made lots of cash as kids shoveling sidewalks. Seems to me the snow was a lot higher in those days. Maybe it was that we didn't have global warming. Or, it could be that we were only 5'4" tall and the drifts seemed higher. We did Mr. Neighbors walk and he gave us 50 cents---apiece. That was big money. We'd spend our snow money at the bakery and then buy Pepsi's and unload a bag of Planters peanuts in the bottle. That was heaven. We did old lady Barnes sidewalk but only once. Stupid us. She told us to shovel it then she'd pay. The old crow shelled out a measley 15 cents. I think my Grandpa walked over to her place and chewed her out.
Dick and I had another job that didn't last too long; not even one day. We detassled corn on the Roswell Garst farm. You might remember Garst. He became good friends with Nikita Khrushchev back in the 50's. Anyway, we had this cruel slave master who cursed at us all day for being so slow so he eliminated our water breaks. You could do that in those days. It was hot in the corn rows with stalks above our heads. The corn leaves were like razor blades when they came in contact with our arms. Simon Legree had his own water bucket and we decided to put some black, loamy Iowa dirt in it. He found out who did it when some goody goody snitched on us. We were fired on the spot but didn't care. It was a wash since he lost his water. Whatever swear words I didn't know Simon finished the job for me.
I sold ice cream the summer of 1960. I was fourteen. I had a bicycle with a freezer attached on the front. For every dollar I sold I kept ten cents. That job came to an abrupt end when David Hellwege(I can use his name since he's deceased)slammed the ice cream door on my hand as I was getting his fudge bar so I hit him. I knew I was in trouble when I saw two knuckles on my right hand an inch closer to my wrist. My broken bone file at the Boone Co. hospital is as thick as the Bible.
I didn't have another job until the spring of my junior year in high school. The only reason I took it was so I wouldn't have to go out for track. I worked 40 hours a week at fifty cents an hour and took home, after taxes, $18.50. I did miss out on one thing. A girl who worked there was more than good looking. I sweat bullets sneaking peeks at her and if I had to talk it took five minutes to untie the knots in my tongue. Her name was Lindsay and she wanted me to ask her out but I was, how do I say it, Dumbo shy and, aw schucks, afraid of girls. Lindsay tried to teach me how to make a DQ cone with the curly top. It was---an impossibility. The end result was that it looked like a log. The job just happened to end the same day as track season. What a coincidence.
During college I had all types of employment; mostly for beer money but also to snag food on the run. I did have a great one between my junior and senior years. I started out as a gandy dancer on the railroad i.e. I laid RR ties and track. I've never been in such great shape in my life. Even better, I moved up to being a brakeman on that railroad, the FTDDM&So.RR. I'd explain it to you but it's out of business so who cares.
Sad to say, but I had the most jobs when I was teaching and coaching; liquor store stocker, bartender, unloading turkeys at a processing plant, school janitor in summers, golf driving range manager: I had kids and I had to put food on the table.
I'd say the most interesting job I had in my life was as a private investigator. We didn't do the domestic cases. They are toooooooooo dangerous. There is nothing worse than getting in the way of an adulterer or adulteress when they've been found out.
Regardless, I investigated people who claimed work injury then were out doing other jobs to double dip or lie on their backs while the checks came in. I was involved in some fascinating and challenging cases and the adrenalin started pumping when one of these guys was nailed. For your information, and if I haven't put you to sleep, the best, most lucrative case involved a former employee of Phillips Petroleum in Bartlesville, Oklahoma. He tried to 'off' his former boss with a .45 but missed. For some reason the judge let the dude out on bail and he was allowed to go back to Iowa, his place of origin. Phillips wanted our company to keep tabs on him. Since he lived a quarter mile from my home I was picked to drive by his house at 7 am on my way to teach school then drive by again at 9 pm. Purpose: just to see if his car was in the driveway and he wasn't back in the Okie state. For this I was paid $50 a day, seven days a week. That's a pretty good gig for 1982. Gosh, that'd be a winner for 2010. Too bad it lasted only three months.
I think I've missed out on some part time jobs in this post but it gave me a chance to think about some people I haven't thought about in a very long time; the good ones and the bad ones.