Yes, I’m a “Baby Boomer.” My time on this earth began in May 1952. Most younger folks aren’t interested in what we old guys write. In fact, later generations are sick and tired of our comments of “when we were young, we....” They just don’t care.
I can’t blame them much. We existed without cell phones, computers, video games, and all the other marvels that this technological world has introduced. Our phones were on tables in living rooms or on walls in the kitchen. Televisions weighed a ton, as did stereos, and no one had earphones for personal listening.
Al Gore had not yet created the Internet. Communications with long distance friends and neighbors required writing letters or making expensive long-distance phone calls. Instead of texting with friends, we met face-to-face and talked, argued, or fought, whatever the situation demanded. Bullying was done in person; no shaming took place by typing mean messages on a small screen.
I was obsessed with television as a child. Daddy didn’t have the money to buy a special antenna, so our viewing was limited to NBC and ABC. Programming ended after the “Late Show.” The profile of an Indian chief appeared on the screen after the “Star Spangled Banner” played. Eventually, the profile disappeared in a blizzard of “snow,” and the screen stayed blank until the next morning.
My brother Jim and I played outside whenever we could. Our yard was large, and boys in the neighborhood came to play baseball and football games. We played tackle without pads and shared bats and gloves. Most every game was interrupted by a fight. When fists stopped swinging, play resumed. Those contests ended either when darkness came or supper was on the table. Then, boys would hop on their bikes and pedal home.
We rode miles on those bikes. One friend lived in Hardin Valley, a rural community a few miles down the road. On the trip to his house, we might encounter a couple of cars, but most of the obstacles during the ride were in the form of dead skunks and chasing dogs. Those bikes had no gears. Their speed was determined by how fast we could pedal. We learned to zigzag when biking up a hill and to coast safely down the other side.
Mother and Daddy assigned tasks around the house. Each Saturday, she would cook pancakes, and after breakfast, we divided up the rooms of the house and began cleaning. Vacuuming and dusting were required, and Mother would have us redo areas that hadn’t met her approval. We turned on the stereo, that was a huge piece of furniture with a record player inside. The volume was cranked up so we could hear artists, such as The Diamonds, The Four Tops, The Temptations, Perry Como, and Tennessee Ernie Ford, over the roar of the vacuum.
Daddy always had my older brother “Dal Gene” mow the yard. As I said, the area was more than an acre, and he had to cut the grass with a push mower that was weighty. Jim and I were never allowed to use the mower. Our parents feared we were too rambunctious to complete the job without cutting a foot off. Instead, we were handed pairs of hand shears and instructed to cut the grass around the foundation of the house, flower beds, and driveway. At other times, we raked grass with a short-tooth rake. When truckloads of dirt were brought to level the area we called the “lower lot,” Jim and I spent hours raking locks out of the red clay dirt.
Mother stayed home until Jim and I began school, and then she worked as a teacher. Daddy worked at a paper mill and ran blenders that turned wood into cardboard. His was dirty work that used poisonous chemicals that later made Daddy sick. On the first day of our eighth-grade year, August 31, Daddy died of lung cancer. Life changed in so many ways on that day.
Money was tighter that before. We were a lower-middle class family before Daddy passed, and then we were maybe even close to poverty. I don’t really know, and I wonder how my mother made ends meet on a teacher’s salary and social security. Somehow, she did, and she made sure her three sons went college and earned degrees, something that was so important to our Daddy whose own education ended after the sixth grade so that he could help parents bring in enough money to survive.
What we learned from our parents at an early age is that work is necessary to have even the basics of life. The three of us began working early in life, and we were better for it. The work was often hard with long hours, sunburns, and blistered hands, but we pitched in as much as possible to pay for our own entertainment and education.
This book is a look at the side jobs I’ve held during my lifetime. To this day, I’m still working a part-time job. So is Jim. It is my hope that recalling the things that took place at these jobs might bring back memories for some readers and explain things to others. Some things are funny; some are unbelievable, but I promise that all is true to the best of my ability to accurately recall.
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