My Golden Jobs of Yesteryear

by Pa Rock

Reminiscer

Someone posted a query on Twitter two nights ago asking how much people were paid for their first jobs.  I responded back, almost automatically, that my first job paid 25 cents and hour, and I added that it was for working in a greenhouse.   Although I don't remember the exact time frame, it was a short-lived job in the spring, undoubtedly in the very early 1960's.

The greenhouse was next door to the school that I attended.  We had an open campus policy for lunch, which meant that students could leave and go home for lunch, or even to the drug store in town if they didn't want to eat in the cafeteria.  Meals in the cafeteria were twenty-five cents a day or $1.25 for the week - and an "extra" carton of milk was two cents, or a dime a week.  One day, after the school lunch but still within the allotted "lunch hour," I walked up the hill to the greenhouse and asked about a job.   A young couple had just bought the business from a family that had owned it for years, and the man surprised me by saying that they would try me out of Saturday for 25 cents an hour.

I only worked a few Saturdays, but I remember liking the work but not the environment.  It could be a warm day outside, but if it was cloudy, it would be cold inside of the greenhouse, and if it was sunny, though cool, outside, it would be sweltering inside under the glass roof.  The jobs that I did were always glamorous, like shoveling a big pile of dirt from one spot to another, and one Saturday I spent an entire day placing hundreds of little begonias into little pots.

But I was feeling some independence and making pocket change - barely!

I had been mowing lawns even before that, probably starting around the age of ten, and almost always for my parents.  When I was twelve or so a retired couple moved in across the highway from the cabin court that my parents owned.  The cabin court had a very large yard that kept me busy, but one day the retired lady, Mrs. Kratville, walked over and asked if I would mow their yard.  I agreed without talking money.  Their yard was not big or difficult, and when I finished the first mowing she handed me six dollars!  I was suddenly stinking rich!

I don't remember Mrs. Kratville's first name, if I ever knew it to begin with, but her husband was Milo and he called her Mama.  They had a large fur ball of a brown collie named "Mickey."  The family had moved to our area from someplace else just to retire and be near a river where they could fish whenever they wanted.  I didn't realize it at the time, but our family was their only friends in the area.  Milo died a year or so after my parents sold the cabin court and we moved to town.  I had never been to a funeral, and I told my parents that I wanted to attend his.  It was at the funeral parlor in my hometown, and my parents and I were the only ones there besides Mama Kratville.  She cried and hugged us and thanked us for coming.  My dad said later that if he had known no one would show up, he would have dragged some of his buddies in off of the street to attend - and they would have because Noel, Missouri, back then was that type of town.

Mama Kratville had been naturally upset when Milo passed away, but I heard that she was absolutely inconsolable when Mickey died not long afterwards.

The other memorable job that I had during my high school years was as the projectionist at the Ozark Theatre in Noel.  The theatre had five showings a week, usually a single feature and a cartoon that ran on Friday night, Saturday afternoon and night, and Sunday afternoon and night.  Not only did that job place me at the absolute center of the town's weekend social activity, it also paid an astounding $2.50 per shift.  After deductions I still made somewhere north of twenty-two dollars every two weeks.  That was serious money for this kid - and I got to see all of the movies free!

And now I'm retired - and back to making about a quarter an hour!