Rev. Erudite Redneck, B.S., B.S., M.A., M.Div.

When I was 14, my brother got me a part-time job at a grocery store. He thought it'd be good for me to spend the summer away from my folks, and it was. I earned enough money that summer to buy a 12-speed bicycle.

At 15, I just stole my father's change.

At 16, he caught me. So I spent my summer working as a laborer for a building contractor. Picking up crap, cleaning up here and there, hauling this and that. Not even sure I got paid minimum wage, but at the end of each week, the kindly gentleman paid me cash. Worked for me.
 

My first job (at 15) was stuffing advertsing inserts by hand into each and every issue of the East Oregonian. I imagine that most papers have a machine for that sort of thing, but not us. Or at least, not back then.
 

Oh, man, I scrubbed pots for about two weeks at a cafeteria when I was 16. Big-ass pots for mashed taters, big enough to stuff a body in. Big-ass pans with two inches of stuffing baked ON.

Dude. The first thing I did every afternoon when I got to work was light the sink.

Light. The. Sink.

Any other former pot scrubbers out there who know what I'm talkin' about?
 

Years 8-12, chopped weeds and hoed cotton at 50 cents an hour. Shot rabbits 10 cent each. Pulled bolls at 2 cents a pound.
Years 12-14, hauled irrigation pipe and plowed for 60 cent an hour.
Years 14-19 worked as an electrician, a swamper and flag man for a crop duster, and yes I stomped down cotton while it was being stripped into the back of a cotton trailer. A nasty job.
 

OK, this city dweller walked bean and corn fields to hand pull weeds for my grandfather. Got paid pretty will for what ever odd jobs he needed to have done for the two or three weeks I stayed with him. Other times, I delivered the Chi town Trib in the mornings, and mowed lawns, raked leaves, and other odd jobs when I could.

It was my bro's who did the hay.
 

I think anyone who has hoed or pulled weeds on a farm or a big garden is a better person for it!
 

One of my roomates in college was a lizardman on the kitchen detail and he used to joke about having to use all of his charm to "turn on the sink" every day. It apparently had an automatic pilot light and burner with a thermostat that kept the water in the sinks hot. Some of the really bad burned on stuff they used to simmer overnight. Is this the equivilent of "light the sink"?
 

You are correct sir! The one I used, you had to use a match to light every day.
 

That was one of two jobs I had as a lad working with people who were on their own, making their way in life -- and who didn't know, I guess because it never came up, that I was a kid still living at home. They were amazed when I declared, at each, that putting up with the jackass boss wasn't worth it, then quit.

The other place was a furniture store; the job was putting together prefabbed furniture; I was going to Connors State (juco); my boss laughed in my face when I told I had a radio job lined up and planned to go on to OSU and get a degree and work in the media. He didn't believe a word of it. Couldn't fathom it. I've been blessed.
 

At that grocery store the summer of my 14th year, I had a really cool store manager/owner/whatever he was. In his 30s, hot wife, told a young teenager about sex with said hot wife ...

He wasn't much for quality control in the store, though. My first week in the store the first week of June that year, the first task I had was to clean out the milk chest -- beings that I was to throw away the old milk cartons.

So there I was, loading up three -- yes, THREE -- grocery carts full of outdated milk. I was boogying them out to the dumpster when the assistant manager (I've got more on him later) said that I must dump the contents into a sink and rinse the containers out before tossing them in the trash or we'd have a stinky mess in the dumpster the rest of the summer.

Let me explain, too, that some of this milk was dated for removal in March. Yes, I said, MARCH! Curds.

Yes, I also threw up while working for $1.45 an hour.

The assistant manager of that store was a real gem. He was married to a second cousin of ours, and he thought his crap didn't stink. I'd be sweeping up the back room, and he'd sit back there eating sunflower seeds.

Not a big deal, mind you, unless the prick decides to spit the shells out on the floor that I'd just swept. Then he'd make me sweep the floor again and again and again.

My brother told me that I should tell said assistant manager to eff off. "He can't fire you, I promise." So the next time he pulled that crap, I took my 14-year-old body, summoned up all the courage I had and walked up to him and said, "I'm not cleaning that up. If you want me to clean it up, you better roll up your sleeves and commence to kickin' my ass."

I learned at that age that a worms wilter quickly. He was fired shortly after I left that summer job. He's still family, though.
 

Age 15-full time babysitter for the summer.
Age 16-full time college student, for advance credits. I stayed broke that summer.
Age 17-concert promoter. Yes, really. Three summers of that.
Age 18-lab assistant during college.
Age 19-bartender. They didn't ask my age.