In 78-79, you couldn't swing a dead cat without hitting a kid with a snow shovel walking down the street. I know, I was one of 'em.

All joking aside, I'd pay fair coin for some youngster to shovel my driveway. 

First job I ever took off the farm was during the summer of 1989 between my junior and senior year of high school 16 years old working for my local county weed board spraying noxious weeds for $8.50 / hr. worked mon-thurs 32 hours a week for about 6 weeks and still had time to go home and work on the farm some more yet and have never worked for less than that my entire career.

Edited February 23, 201411 yr by Wild and Free

...man, I dunno how to even digest that.

 

 

A while back, I seen signs at McDonald's that said, "hiring, must be 18 or older".

 

:banghead:

 

I would'nt be where I'am today if they did not hire me as a minor! I got hired by them at 17.

 

I've ran into the same problem. I've filled out several job applications, and get to the end and it says, "must be 18 or older."

First job I ever took off the farm was during the summer of 1989 between my junior and senior year of high school 16 years old working for my local county weed board spraying noxious weeds for $8.50 / hr. worked mon-thurs 32 hours a week for about 6 weeks and still had time to go home and work on the farm some more yet and have never worked for less than that my entire career.

 

 

 

Noxious weeds??!!!  

Leafy spurge to be exact, extremely invasive in our parts, take over all grasslands with a vengeance and nothing eats it except the flea beetle and some goats as a last resort.

Problem with the flea beetle is that it feeds on nothing but spurge and once an area is killed off the beetles die off as the spurge is gone but the seeds can stay dormant fore a long time and after the beetles are gone the spurge comes right back again.

Got my first job at Western Auto when I was 14. Made a whopping $1.10 and hour, minimum wage at that time. Used to help the man in charge with changing tires. Was not allowed to run the tire changer or the impact, but was rather good with the 4 way lug wrench.

First job I ever took off the farm was during the summer of 1989 between my junior and senior year of high school 16 years old working for my local county weed board spraying noxious weeds for $8.50 / hr. worked mon-thurs 32 hours a week for about 6 weeks and still had time to go home and work on the farm some more yet and have never worked for less than that my entire career.

 

 

 

 

 

My grandfather in Wyoming retired and sold his 1000+acre ranch and moved to the other side of the state (closer to family). Retirement didn't suit him well and he also got a job for the weed and pest control. What started out as a summer job turned into being elected as the shop foreman, and he averages 50+ hours a week. Not too shabby for 78 years young.

 

I spent every summer in Boulder, WY working the ranch with him. I was either 12 or 13 when I first started going up there and continued until I graduated high school. If we werent working the ranch we were riding horseback or fishing for trout or shooting at coyotes.  Also did alot of back country hiking/camping as I got older and met a few people my age up there. Either way we were up before the sun and was often 10 or 11 at night before we wound down for the night. this was how I was taught to work, and took a work ethic that I thought was normal on to later jobs I had. Alot of my highschool friends thought I was nuts for wanting to spend my summers in such a desolate place. I felt like I was in heaven, some of my best memories growing up were right there on that ranch.

 

Edited February 25, 201411 yr by diesel4life

I have always liked this wisdom piece so I added it to my signature as well.

 

Your story reminded me of it.

 

"The hunter's horn sounds early for some, later for others. For some unfortunates, prisoned by city sidewalks and sentenced to a cement jungle more horrifying than anything to be found in Tanganyika, the horn of the hunter never sounds at all. But deep in the guts of most men is buried the involuntary response to the hunter's horn, a prickle of the nape hairs, an acceleration of the pulse, an atavistic memory of his fathers, who killed first with stone, and then with club, and then with spear, and then with bow, and then with gun, and finally with formulae. How meek the man is of no importance; somewhere in the pigeon chest of the clerk is still the vestigial remnant of the hunter's heart; somewhere in his nostrils the half-forgotten smell of blood."

- Robert Ruark

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived…………..Thoreau

 

 

 

 

In many aspects of my life…………………I believe in that above quote.

Edited February 28, 201411 yr by dorkweed

Like myself I'm constantly looking around me for different opportunities into different jobs. Like I'm considering now hoping back into computer support again with Linux machines being more and more popular with people around me locally have started considering the Linux operating system over Windows. I'm not going to put a bunch of hope into it working but it seems to be another void I can fill.

 

Then with Ed Grafton with the high idle kits well he's got other things cooking on the stove and keeping me hoping with secret squirrel jobs and chours.