From the time of about 1945/46 perhaps I was around 4 or 5. There were 3 of us sleeping in the same bed, Mother was a former professional stage singer turned housewife, Dad was home from WW2 and starting his own garage and Chevy dealership, working 16 hours a day and I had no money. A next door neighbor kid told me if I had 10 cents I could get into the theater and watch the matinee and the vaudeville show with money left over to buy popcorn. So off I went to see how I could get it and he suggested that I walk the RR tracks and pick up the glass milk and drink bottles and sell them to the local store for 2 cents apiece. I think I walked all the way to Boston that day, found around 10 bottles, turned them in but missed the show and instead bought a fudgecycle for my Mother for 5 cents. That was the beginning of my working life. From that time on I learned what it was to survive, to work and do it without help, without welfare and sometimes without fun or games. From that time on I sold seed packages door to door making 5 cents a pack, sold newspapers, shovelled snow, mowed lawns, swept stairs and walks and when I turned 8 I made 50 cents a day at the family nursery in the summertime for 12 hours a day, weeding, watering, helping customers and working with my grandfather on his landscaping jobs and plantings. My first real job was to help my aunt run a restaurant, 12 hours a day 7 days a week, 35 cents and hour and got to keep the tips. she ran the kitchen, I ran the front. I was 12. At the end of the summer I had saved enough to buy all my clothes for school. When I returned home I got a job after school at a pharmacy as a soda jerk and dishwasher of a typical pharmacy ice cream parlor. That lasted for a short while until a new and the first grocery supermarket in the state of Maine opened and I was hired on a a bag boy, working into cashier and learned the art of produce and meatcutter, stock clerk and sweeper. Going from 35 cents an hour to now 50 cents an hour, I had the feeling of becoming rich and helping to support the family as Dad now worked 2 jobs as he had done since his WW2 friends had helped him into backruptcy not paying for fuel or services he allowed them to charge. In the mid 50s til I graduated from HS and took my first college course, it was a variety of occupations, supermarkets, house building, manager trainee with Montgomery Wards. All this time giving half to help with the family, I had no time to play sports and of course no status to join clubs. I always volunteered for work on the Holidays or Sundays since my time off didnt seem to mean anything and I had to keep busy, had to strive to learn even if it werent acedemically. At 19 Vietnam was starting to heat up with some forgotten message and lots of buddies were being called in. When I received the call and before the letter was opened I jumped into the Air Force thinking I might get a chance for some education helpful for the future. For the next 4 years I went to school on every subject and program I could find. This was beyond my duties in sitting on radar scopes and teaching part time. A few of the courses I took I shouldnt have as they qualified me to be available for 2 more years after I left the AF, but looking at it today, it was the most pleasureable and long lasting memory Ive ever had except for my relationship of 50 years with my wife. I never had the chance to play or participate in sports or the money to go on dates, get a car as a kid. To survive, to eat, to have clothes and to help, I guess it was worth it. What the Bolivians are doing to child labor is not wrong, it is realistic. Unless you are willing to completely share your wealth and give complete care to bring others not so fortunate up to your way of life with your privaleges, learn about the other side. Give them the opportunity to do it themselves. Unless you want to be responsible for the kids on the sreet corner or in gangs or breaking into your home. Leave them alone and allow them to survive.
Posted on: Fri, 18 Jul 2014 17:50:27 +0000
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