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Stumpage Reports
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Tuesday, July 29, 2003 :::
The First Job I Ever Had
Where I grew up, the only jobs you could get before you were sixteen years old was either a paper route or a job on the driving range picking up golf balls. Since there weren't many paper routes, you had to wait for someone to die or go to college to get one. I opted for picking up golf balls.
It was kind of a low-rent place. I think it was called the "Northwoods Driving Range." I was in the seventh or eighth grade when I got the job, about 13 or 14 years old. There was a big tractor that drove around the middle of the range to pick up the golf balls. Our job was to patrol the edges and adjacent lots, scooping the balls into little wire baskets, putting them into huge wire baskets, and then lugging them back to the office to run through the golf-ball-washing machine.
Of course the people on the driving range aimed at us. Our bosses provided yellow construction helmets that always reminded me of the ones you got with the higher-end Tonka trucks. Once I got hit by a direct shot into the helmet. The golf ball flew in one direction and my helmet in another. The only other hit I recieved was in the stomach. Even though the ball had bounced once before it hit me, I writhed on the ground in mortal agony.
For this we were paid the princely sum of $1.50 an hour. That's tall cotton when you're in the eighth grade and no else in your class has a real job.
I spent most of the money I earned at a local model store called The Squadron Shop.* Later jobs would see me spending money here, here, and here.
* A footnote on The Squadron Shop: This place now only does mail order. But back in the days, they had an actual store in Detroit and my brother and I were there at least once a week. My brother still attends military modeling conventions around the eastern U.S. and when he tells people he used to go to The Squadron Shop, they gaze at him with reverential awe that people of my ilk and generation usually reserve for someone that had seen Jimi Hendrix in concert.
::: posted by tom at 4:05 PM
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