Last updated on 1/29/2023
When I was about 12 or 13, the way that I spent my summers suddenly changed. Instead of swimming lessons and bicycle racing and peanut butter sandwiches in the shade, I found myself put to work.
Now my mornings were wasted crawling down a scratchy row of strawberry plants, searching for berries that would pass for ripe and dodging the rotten artillery launched by my fellow laborers. For this I was paid 10 cents for each quart of berries that I picked. On a good day in peak season I could pick 20 or 30 quarts by noon. Early in the season, or worst of all, at the tail end towards July when when it was sticky hot and only family was willing to work, I might spend 4 hours and end up with only $1.20 to show. But no one could beat my big sister Linda. Her record still stands — 56 quarts in one morning. She would zoom down the rows in her big straw hat, skipping not a single strawberry, never stooping to such simple tricks as putting stones in the bottom of the basket to fill it faster. By noon, she’d be WAYYY down there at the far end of the field when the rest of us were begging for water.
After strawberry season was over, my parents and uncles and grandfather began casting about for other ways to keep me out of the devil’s idle hands. It was just a fact of life in our family that children who had become big enough to work were to be put to work and kept at work. The task at hand was irrelevant. This was the way my parents had moved from childhood to adulthood, and so it was that I became responsible for painting my grandfather’s house one summer.
I was not indentured — the deal was that I would get $150 when I finished the job to my grandfather’s hawk-eyed satisfaction. This was more money than I’d ever thought about at the age of 13. Modern economists can retro-apply the CPI index (1968 or so) and figure out what that’d be worth in today’s dollars. My guess is about $600. For $600, I might take a week off and go paint that house again — it’s still there and my aunt still lives in it.
I was a skinny kid, so my dad had to help me put up the ladders and scaffolding. After that I was on my own. Every morning I’d crawl up the ladder and step onto the rubbery old barn plank. When I got my sea legs, I patiently chipped off the old paint one sweaty flake at a time. An exceptionally exciting morning might find me fending off yellowjackets or crawling around on top of a dormer. But most days were just spent scraping til my arms got sore or swiping the big brush across the siding til I emerged thoroughly spattered with latex paint. My grandmother would hand a glass of lemonade out a second story window so I didn’t have to waste time climbing up and down the ladder.
I finally finished, and I must have gotten paid. Wouldn’t you think that’d be a big moment in my life that I’d remember forever? Can’t picture a single thing about it. Neither can I remember after all these years what I wasted the money on, though I was a weirdly thrifty youth and would have put some of it in the bank. Following this, I was transferred to to orchard work, pruning trees and picking apples and mowing the ever-present field grass.
I’m reminded of all this recently because my own son is 13 and at loose ends this summer. Not a big sports fan, not interested in going to camp…. hmmm, what to do with him? Maybe he could benefit from a genuine summer work experience! So drawing on my experience of the past, I offered him $50 a side to paint our old crooked garage. After a little training session, he is doing a great job and is almost ready for his first payday. He’s not spilling any paint, he gets up on his own and works without prodding, even had an unscheduled stinging insect episode… I am so proud of him.
It used to really piss me off when I’d bust myself all day long and my dad would come out with this big grin on his face and say, “Sam, you do BEAUTIFUL work!” Like he knew how hard it was, I’d think. Now I get to say this to Ben, and I can tell it bugs him a little bit too. The wheel just keeps on turning.
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