vintage snapshot from Dave Gelinas’ collection
I was fifteen in the fall of 1968 and heard that the older brother of my friend was quitting his Saturday job at the Sunoco station on York Road in Towson because he was drafted. I walked there to talk to the owner, who also had a small fleet of taxis (Adams Cab) that he parked and serviced there. I told him I wanted the job. He looked me over and said, “OK, be here on Saturday morning at seven”. I’m quite certain he never asked how old I was (I was tall for my age).
My job was to open the station on Saturday mornings, and I was the only employee there all day. The owner dropped by on some Saturdays for a couple of minutes the first few weeks. I pumped gas, checked oil, air and water. I was responsible for the till and closing up at night; in other words, I was managing this station by myself on Saturdays. In between customers, I sat in the office listening to “Crimson and Clover” (over and over) on the radio, because it was only an AM unit and couldn’t get the new underground FM station I preferred. Kids would come by on their bikes to get air. And the two brothers who worked there during the week would drop by with their ’57 Chevy 2-door sedan hot rod, to tweak the engine a bit.
This was not a popular station, and I’d get maybe 15-25 customers all day.
Because it was a Sunoco station that sold the super-high octane 260 gas, a disproportionate number of customers drove high performance cars. I got a close-up and personal look at quite a few hemis and high-performance Corvettes, whose engines were typically crackling-hot as I checked the oil. One fuel-injected Corvette driver tipped me a five dollar bill after I carefully attended to his steed. That was as much as I made in several hours of wages.
Although I was fifteen, I would actually get up extra early to be there a half hour early. Why? I would take out one of the Dodge Coronet taxis sitting in back for a little exercise run around Towson so as to keep up my illicit driving skills. There were several tired ’65s with the slant six, but there was a ’67 with the new LA 318 V8. That became my early morning steed of choice, and I became convinced that the new LA 318 was noticeably peppier than the old “poly” 318 in our ’65 Coronet wagon. I had plenty of opportunity on those early saturday mornings before opening the station to reinforce that impression.
So what was your first job?
My first “job” was working as a puesdo tour guide at the Albuquerque Zoo and Aquarium. My mom had got me an interesting push scooter that you pumped with a handle that stuck out the back with your foot, driven by a chain. I would ride it 1 mile to the bus stop, take the bus to the main terminal, and take that bus to the Zoo, riding another mile to the front gates. Needles to say, I rode the heck out of that scooter and one day, the chain snapped and drug behind me as l tried to ride. I had to break it off with a rock and keep going.
Also in a gas station school holidays though, the local GM dealership VAuxhall, Chevrolet Bedford Holden Massey Ferguson tractors Mercury outboards and Morrison brand bicycles and mowers, I did the gas pumps when that guy went for lunch office works and tractor and mower spares, Also I registered new cars pre delivery to customers delivered and collected parts from the bus depot, I think general dogsbody would have been my title, Work steed was a pair of CA Bedford vans though occasionally one of the trade in cars unwanted on the used lot, off brands, but I got to drive some now interesting cars, One holidays I got moved to pre delivery cleaning of new cars HC Vauxhall Vivas and HQ series Holdens this included collecting them from the nearest rail station and driving them back, that was fun.
I used to skulk off quietly when asked this question, but in light of the hype and wave (pun intended) of nostalgia that has swept across the web in the Facebook age I’ve come to see it as a badge of courage. My first job at 15 and throughout my high school years was as a ride attendant and lifeguard at this place: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Action_Park
There’s a ton of over-the-top sensationalized “reportage” all over the web, but Wikipedia’s handling of it is actually among the most fair and accurate. It was pretty friggin’ fun, I have to admit.
I come from NJ, though further south, and heard lots of advertising about Action Park, and, soon enough, word of the safety issues.
It was too far away, and my parents, likely due to finances and the stories in the news about dead and maimed customers, never took us there, but I remember wanting to go, and because of my teenage belief in my own invincibility and immortality, the horror stories stoked my desire.
Some friends in high school got jobs manning rides at the Wildwood boardwalk, but I was never drawn to that.
The tennis ball tanks were the best. My dad did the loop tube waterslide before they shut it down. I used to fly down the alpine slide as fast as possible and invariably slam into the person in front of me, pulling up on the stick and applying full brakes…
Dishwasher. Taught me the value of working hard and quickly, but glamorous it wasn’t.
I was also a dishwasher. The pay wasn’t the best, but I got along well with the cooks and ate like a king, and many of the waitresses were very charming!
Surf shop, was 15 and did every little job that came by there. Cleaning, re-stocking, all things required to keep a shop running.
I grew up on Long Island and spent the summers working on our family dairy in South Carolina, so I guess technically, that was my first job. The suburban kids I went to school with in New York had no idea how hard farm work is, but I digress. My first actual ‘job’ that I had to show up for at an actual time and place and get a paycheck for was at a t-shirt shop in a mall late my freshman year. I did that for a year and a half until my junior year, where I also got a job at a local full-service Mobil gas station. I started out pumping gas and fixing flats, and by the time I was a senior, I was doing minor mechanical work on the weekends that the full time mechanics couldn’t get to during the week like tune ups, brakes, a water pump here and there, etc., plus the owner would let me work on whatever car I had at the time after hours. I did my first engine swap there on my ’77 Grand Prix when I pulled the original 350 and replaced it with a 455, which I then swapped into an ’80 Firebird a few months later. I worked at the gas station until I joined the military right after I graduated high school.
It depends on meaning of “first job”. I drove all over the north side of Fort Wayne applying to be a car dealer lot boy. I got hired at Collins Oldsmobile (where my mother had bought her 72 Cutlass several years earlier). I showed up for my first after-school shift and met with the service manager. He was very nervous and apologetic but told me that his boss had actually hired someone without telling him. It was my first job, but I never actually worked there.
The first job I actually worked and got paid at? Burger King. I worked there for 3 weeks until another opportunity came my way that paid better and offered more hours. I could not eat a hamburger for 6 months (and I love hamburgers). It was a miserable job.
At age 16 I had a summer job working as a groundskeeper at a lakeside estate owned by the Belk family, who were the founders of a major regional chain of department stores. If you live in the southeastern US I’m sure you’ve heard of them. The family didn’t live there, but would sometimes come stay there on weekends/holidays, and they had a full time caretaker who lived on the property and maintained it. So another boy and I would show up every day during the summer and help the caretaker with mowing, weed eating, leaf blowing, etc. The somewhat odd thing was that the elder member of the family liked to keep the woods around the property looking clean, meaning no branches or pine cones or anything on the ground, just pine needles. So much of out time was spent picking up the offending sticks and pine cones from the ground and hauling them to the dump in a 1988 Isuzu pickup (to make this post somewhat car related).
We also had a pair of Cushman electric utility carts that we used to drive around the property. Sometimes the other kid and I would drag race them. 🙂 Or go “off roading” in them. Other equipment included a small Snapper tractor — besides the department stores someone in the family also owned a Snapper dealership, so we had this tractor that was as I understand was something that was sent to dealers as a demo, but was never put into full production. And also a zero-turning-radius mower.
Oh, and one of the big perks of working there was the occasional free gas. When the caretaker went out to fill up all the gas cans we used to fuel our equipment, we got to come along in our own cars and fill them up, too, all of which got charged to Belk’s credit card.
My 1st job was at Publix Supermarkets, Inc. when I was 16 in the summer of 1989. I bagged groceries and took them out to the customers car. I believe it paid $3.35 an hour. I’m still good at bagging groceries.
That was my first job as well (bagger/stocker at a grocery store) and also my wage. I spent an entire summer cleaning out the walk-in freezer and the ones out on the sales floor, so I felt like I missed all the heat that summer… Oh and to keep it (somewhat) car related, I got my first car (73 Pontiac Ventura) to get back and forth to work, I was tired of riding my bike the 4-5 miles from my parents house in all weather. I never actually drove this to work (it broke in half before I could) but I did use the money I made working there to buy my next vehicle (80 Pontiac Sunbird)
Also car related, I carried lots of groceries to people’s cars. One regular customer had a Fiero. There was only enough room behind the engine for a couple bags of groceries, and the owner said his ice cream would melt back there if he drove long enough.
The car broke in half? That’s rough! I didn’t mind working at a grocery store; everyone needs to buy food so there was always something to do. And our Publix was usually busy. I remember it was Store #23 and its address was 6790 Forest Hill Blvd.
Car-related note: When my folks returned from their mini-vacation in Ormond Beach, FL they brought a car back with them on a trailer and hauled it to the Publix parking lot while I was nearing the end of my shift. With my shift over I was then presented with a vehicular gift: The 1964 Ford Falcon I still have today. August was nearing its end and my folks thought I’d be happier driving to school for my junior year in HS which was to start in early September. Shortly thereafter I took driving lessons and obtained my FL Drivers License on Sept. 11, 1989. (I ~was~ happy to now be able to avoid riding on that horrid school bus).
My first job pretty much mirrors yours Paul, working weekends at a Sunoco station on Long Island, New York. Got to work on my car in the bay during slow times. Got pretty busy in the summer with people returning from Jones Beach and the Hamptons. Best part was standing up on the pump islands gazing down upon the girls with their bathing suits or short skirts!!
At fifteen I worked down the road as a farmhand. Since there were gaps in time whereI wasn’t needed, my Dad put me to work in his body shop. This was 1982. I still remember the smell of lacquer paint.
Usher, go-fer, rowdy child nemesis, Avalon Theater, East 79th Street Chicago Ill. Age 16, 1955. Rainbow beach in the morning to chase girls, the theater in the afternoon.
http://www.architecture.org/learn/resources/buildings-of-chicago/building/new-regal-theater/
https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=south+shore+chicago+rainbow+beach&qpvt=south+shore+chicago+rainbow+beach&FORM=IGRE
What was it like working in Chicago as a kid in 1955? That was the year of the Peterson-Schuessler murders in which Chicago went into panic mode and I am sure most kids were locked up in their homes due to the fear.
The Avalon probably stood out like a sore thumb when it was built as there was this Moorish Mosque looking building that just seemed to be plopped in the middle of conventional looking buildings.
Sound like great memories! Those old theatres were amazing.
After school in my high school years I worked in the equipment repair shop in the back of a hardware store. We repaired gasoline powered lawn equipment, rototillers, chain saws, etc. We also got our share of vacuum cleaners, bicycles, minibikes, gocarts, whatever. We also rescreened window/door screens. I LOVED it!!!!! The boss first only allowed me to assist him, but once he realized I knew what I was doing, he left me alone. I was paid $4.65/hr (1984) and the shop billed my labor at $23.50/hr…so the boss loved me!
When I can afford to retire, I would love to take a job like that again to keep busy. My other fantasy job is to work the maintenance crew at an amusement park…repairing roller coasters and Mary-Go-Rounds.
In 1965, when I was 9, my dad and some buddies opened a commercial slot car racing facility (right at the peak of the slot racing boom of the era). They hand-built three, huge 8-lane tracks; a Sebring road course, a high banked Daytona tri-oval, and a Daytona Continental road course. All were fairly accurate facsimiles and most of the racers were adults, literally rocket engineers and scientists from nearby Cape Canaveral. My real awakening to the world of cars was thus formed by the sights of 1/24 scale Chaparrals, Ford GTs, Ferraris, Lolas and McLarens flying around the road courses. Saturday nights were filled with for-real good ol’ southern boys racing stock cars on the Daytona tri-oval. I worked there after school starting at age 10, standing on a box to operate the cash register, vacuuming the tracks, sweeping floors, etc. It was a dream job for a little kid, which I appreciate even more now than then, since I learned a lot about dealing with people at a really early age. Later I was a lot boy at Jim Rathmann Chevy-Cadillac, where I parked my ratty Sunbeam Alpine amongst all the bloated American iron.
I detassled corn.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detasseling
For a couple of summers when I was 15 & 16 I got shipped off to work on a seed corn farm with my cousins.
It was tough work. Every morning my aunt would cook us bacon and fried eggs with the egg cooked in the bacon grease because we needed all the calories we could get. The crew would get dropped off at one end of these enormous cornfields, it would be wet and cold for the first hour, we would shiver and then the sun would get high enough for it to be blazing hot for the rest of the day. It would take all day to make two laps of the field. I still hate the smell of wet corn in the morning.
The farm we worked at was quite prosperous, the family restored cars during the winter as a hobby. The farmer had a Model T, and a beautiful late 30’s Packard roadster. The sons had a 66 Ford Galaxie convertible, and 68 Mustang fastback respectively.
Every kid in the Midwest detassled corn, I’m beginning to think. A friend of mine used to go stay with his grandparents in Illinois ever summer, where he detassled corn. And I’m pretty sure I remember once hearing an interview with Cindy Crawford in which she mentioned detassling corn as a teenager.
Our local paper always has ads seeking detasseling workers that always emphasize how fun it will be!
Somewhat similar first job, but here in central Calif we call it “working in the fields”. I was 13. Chopping weeds in cotton fields. It sucked.
Only fun thing about it was putting coins on the train tracks to flatten them.
First paying job other than mowing lawns and doing garage cleanouts when I was 14 was a few years later in 1981. Similar to Paul, I pumped gas at Center Isle Exxon on Route 22 at the Springfield/Union NJ border. Owner was rarely around but his wife would stop by in her new Caddy for fill ups all the time. Stunning pearl white Firemist Coupe DeVille. We had a steady stream of salesmen run through from the local new car dealers to get $2 worth of regular. Many were from Dodgeland in new Aries sedans. Shining moment for me was when I added oil to a 70’s Caddy with the 500 cube V8 and dumped a full quart on the intake manifold. Driver was a little pissed but very understanding. Handled a lot of cash and was always honest but lost a few bucks when I ran a charge card wrong ( boss took it right out of my pay!)
Looks like the Sunoco I worked at on State St. in Fremont, Ohio! “Norm’s Sunoco” was a popular station-not the biggest-but Norm was a well-respected mechanic and businessman.
I worked there in ’73-74 when the first Arab Oil Embargo was driving up prices, and when Sunoco used the advertising slogan: “I Can Be Very Friendly…Yes I Can!”
Good memories of bygone days…and of a teenager’s job that hardly exists anymore!
My first “real” paying job was delivering city directories all over the Janesville, WI area. I was able to strap 3 of the LARGE directories at a time on the small carrying rack on my nifty thrifty Honda Cub 50! It took a long day of riding to deliver the required number each day; talk about a “Iron Butt” riding experience!!
I did make some decent $ for doing what I liked best: RIDING my first (little) bike. 🙂 DFO
My first paying “job” was playing sax in a local bar band when I was 16 – this was around the turn of the ’70s. My parents didn’t forbid me but I’m sure they were concerned that I would be exposed to “bad” elements.
We’ll have to compare notes sometime Paul, I lived in W. Towson – Piccadilly Rd, off Chestnut Ave – from 1952 to August 1968, graduating from Towson HS June of ’68. My first girlfriend lived on Alabama Ct, closer to York Rd. and Towsontown Blvd. My sledding hill and bicycle hang out was at Loyola HS, just down the street at the corner of Chas. St Ave., we lived 1 block W of the original Charles St. 1 blk S of Jpppa.
My first job was in Fells Point, summer 1967 at Dockside Furniture, on an old floating barge towed down from NY and tied to the foot of Broadway. The owner, Art Tittle lived across the street from us and needed summer help to work out of his row-house warehouse around Aliceanna St and deliver the Scandinavian modern furniture to usually quite upscale residences in Pikesville and N Baltimore, by and large. He bought a new Econolne for that purpose, but it got driven by the other, full-time, employee. He was from E BAlto somewhere, and his name escapes me but I remember his brand new lt green GTO very well! It was hot sweaty work in the Baltimore summer, but I got to ride down and back every day in Art’s gorgeous white w/ black top Seden de Ville, and one pleasant memory is how that Caddy just floated over the horrible city roads that Mimi DiPietro, the local Fells Point politician, never seemed to be able to get fixed! Bethlehem Steel moved Dad to N Carolina at the end of the summer of ’68 at the same time that I went away to college in Westminster, thus ending our 16 yrs of Pleasant Living in Towson.
Hi former neighbor! We moved to Colonial Ct. (very near to Alabama Ct.) in ’65. Went to Loyola for two years before bombing out for not ever doing any homework, so I know your neighborhood well. I was just there in August, visiting my mom who lives at Pickersgill on Chestnut. I did my second two years of HS at Towson High. Left home (and the Balto. area) right after I turned 18, in Feb. ’71.
Fells Point was a very interesting place back then; I’d never seen anything like it before. 🙂
Small world Paul! I was in college in Westminster by the time you left Towson. We lived at the intersection of Trafagar and Piccadilly and could see the Pickersgill grounds behind the houses across the street. I remember when the old frame house at Pickersgill was torn down in the late ’50s and they had a huge bonfire of the remains right before the brick main building was built. In May of ’68 I took the daughter of Dr Levay, who was medical director there, to my THS prom! Our next door neighbor Mrs Linn Anderson (no relation, can you imagine the mail mix-ups having the same last name?) retired to Pickersgill when in her late ’70s, over 20 yrs ago, I think she’s probably passed on by now. It’s always been a very nice facility.
If you were at THS I’m sure we must have shared some teachers,by chance did you take Driver’s Ed from Mr Adkins? I can tell some funny stories about that and the ’67 BelAir that was donated by Marsden Chevy, the first car that I legally drove.
Was your gas station on the E. side of York Rd. about where the “new” library is now (not the old one up behind Stebbins-Anderson)? We went there a few times. The taxi-cab place I remember was called “Jimmy’s Cab”, they had blue cabs at the triangle intersection of Joppa, York, and Allegheny Aves, I think it was an Atlantic Richfield station, just down the hill from Brooks Buick (another favorite haunt!). My brother once flew out of an unlocked ’50 Chevy when going around that corner, landing in the middle of the street, but lived to tell the tale – no seatbelts back then!
This little two-pump gas station was on the west side, just north of Smetana’s deli. Jimmy’s taxi is the other company, and still around. Back then there were two, Adams being the one that kept its cabs here.
Somewhat surprisingly, this gas station was still standing (but boarded up) just a few years back (maybe 5-6 years) when I was there once. But it’s since been razed, and there’s undoubtedly a new building there now.
On the east side there was an Amoco that my dad went to for many years. Maybe another one too.
I drove a new ’70 Impala from Marsden for my first legal drive.
I’ve written about other experiences from my Towson years. I worked at Towson Ford: https://www.curbsideclassic.com/auto-biography/getting-paid-to-break-in-new-1971-fords-auto-biography-part-11/
Here’s one about my high school years: https://www.curbsideclassic.com/curbside-classics-asian/curbside-classicautobiography-1972-toyota-corona-coupe-fortieth-high-school-reunion/
There’s others in my Auto-Biography, which can be accessed via the archives on the right side.
PS: our gas station was the one at the corner of Bosley and York, across from what became the VW dealer and just down from Marsden Chevrolet and the other side from Towson Ford, where Dad bought his 62 Fairlane in Chestnut Brown. My Jr High was right behind it and amny times I wolked over to look at and sit in the cars in their back lot! Been years since I was there, I doubt I’d recognize it anymore
Driving! Perfect for a 16 year old with a new Illinois license.
Some afternoons after school, all day Saturday, early Sunday morning until around noon or so. Flower delivery around town.
The vehicles changed over the years of high school and early college. The shop was the largest one in town so more than one vehicle was used. To start: a ’65 Dodge Coronet wagon in black with red interior and a ’65 Dodge A100 van. Then for the ’67 model year a switch to Fords: two ’67 Ford Country Sedans (highland green metallic and black) and a corresponding Econoline van. Then ’69 Ford wagons (blue and black) and the usual van. The owner of the shop got a ’67 Mustang coupe as a personal car when the ’67 Fords arrived.
What a fun job for a new driver. It did involve long hours and cold, wet days in the winter in northern Illinois. But I learned how to navigate using maps – a skill I still use over any car nav system.
Delivering the South Bend Tribune, 1979-1984. But I was a subcontractor to two other boys who owned those routes. So my first job where I had to fill out actual paperwork was as an usher in a movie theater.
My first real job was at my dad’s BP station. Pumping gas and as time went on stocking shelves in the store.
My first PAYING job came at sixteen when I could drive and do basically the same job at a gas station by high school.
The old man worked on the philosophy that I feed you and put a roof over your head AND you want money too?😠
He was not amused when I “defected”😱
Painting goose decoys.
My high school Spanish teacher and her husband owned a huge farm in Ware (Where? Ware), Illinois alongside their goose hunting business – and both businesses were doing quite well.
About that same time I was mowing lawns for a few widows in town plus the post office. At one point a cousin who was post-master would give me the keys to her 1986 Buick Park Avenue and I’d drive across town for two sodas from my great-aunt’s store.
My first job with an actual work schedule was at the Burger Chef at the mall in Cape Girardeau, MO. I earned $3.35 per hour and was soon promoted to an assistant manager, earning a whopping $0.10 per hour raise – which is why I quit soon thereafter.
Paper round for me, I think I did it one afternoon after school because it was a local weekly paper.
My first job was, oddly enough, somewhat car related. When I was 13, my dad bought a used Mercedes from a local custom furniture and cabinet maker. It was a small, 3 man operation. Somehow it came up in conversation that I wanted an after school job, and they needed someone to clean up around the shop, so I was hired. I rode my bike to their shop 2 or 3 days a week and scrubbed the toilets, cleaned the kitchen, and emptied all the shopvacs/sawdust collectors. I had to go down to the county health department to get a special permit to work, since I wasn’t 15.
Then, one of their wives was head of their condo association, so it morphed into a summer job the next couple of years helping with the grounds crew.
I ran a “dirty water” hot dog cart at the community pool and I can still smell the greasy water.
My first job was working as a rodman for the Wallace Surveying Corporation. It was hard and unforgiving work where the sun would lash out fiery bands of heat day in and day out. My boss was also a royal pain. He loved to use me as his whipping boy, his scapegoat, whenever things didn’t go exactly to plan. However, it was a good experience and I made good money ($12 per hour), so I am happy with it all things considered.
Other than paper routes, first job was stock boy in a shoe store. Started at $1.00 per hour. Got a raise to $1.10.
2nd job was similar to Paul’s. Sole employee weekends in a Shell station around the corner from where I lived. Gas was 29.9 (higher than most other places). Although located on a main road, it basically served just the neighborhood, not the traveling public. So not all that busy. The hospital was a half block away and the ambulance crew made a point of keeping the ambulance always topped up. One time, the bill came to a whopping $0.35.
The owner was an operator. He had his eye on a ’53 Chrysler convertible that occasionally stopped in. Low on trans fluid, he pretended it needed a full overhaul and offered to buy it (cheap). The poor woman sold. (He was a lady’s man). After topping up the trans he used it to haul his Chris Craft.
I learned a lot on that job!
Kingsland Discount Gas and Auto Parts in Calgary, Ab. Fall, 1979 – started there just before I turned 15. Was a two island full-service station on a busy corner lot, and it also sold a variety of common auto parts in the former service bays, converted to retail space. I made $3/hr, which was about .15 cents more than minimum wage at the time, and my teenage friends mostly worked in nearby fast food joints; I wasn’t interested in that. There were an motley cast of customers and employees at that place I recall, and I enjoyed the experience.
My first real job was when I was 14, unpacking and assembling Miller welders for a local welding supply store. It was cool.
Gas station, 1978.
My first paying job was driving prototypes and test mules from Chrysler. It seemed pretty cool for a first job but they were, and still are paying only the minimum wage.
And job requirement was, and still is simple: over 19, with a valid driver’s license in the US. I know it sounds overly simple coming to driving prototype vehicles driving.
Because they are prototypes, often the calibrations are way off so they don’t function quite right occasionally.
First “real” job was selling hardware, paint and marine supplies in Hermosa Beach, CA, 1972. I was already out of high school. Worked nights at a Shell station for a while. The boss got a contract with the city to fuel police cars when the city yard was closed, so we were open all night. Learned about crooked and incompetent mechanics at that job. Sometimes our tow truck wouldn’t run. My goal, achieved, was to never work in a food establishment.
Lot rat at Floyd Hauhe Auto Auction. In the western St. Louis Suburb of Bridgeton. Summer of 67. right as I got my drivers license at age 16 and my first car.. The same friend of my fathers, who sold dad his new Pontiacs told me about the job and I drove there, just a few miles away and was given the job. I was the only longhair (for the period) in a nest of good ol’ boys. But we bonded over good country music and even a few Beatles tunes. And of course, cars. They liked my Cutlass. I learned to drive a manual….The 64 Ford Fairlane ( Not a Thunderbolt, sigh) I learned on likely still hates me, but I did learn fast. A good job, but the start of school limited me to Friday afternoons and Saturday, Until the following Summer, when I worked full time again. I left employment there in my Senior year of HS.
I got my first paper route when I was 12. I wasn’t very good. But I usually juggled a couple of those until 16, in 1987, when I got McDonald’s. I wasn’t very good. Made the ice cream cones too big. Got a food discount. Was soon basically supporting myself food-wise and was soon very sick of McDonald’s. Thankfully I was a twig and barely gained a pound. Had a Honda Express scooter that ran badly and McD was 10 miles from my house. Sometimes it rained. Or snowed. I did eventually become a good employee but it took a while. I felt very lame in that uniform, especially when kids from school dropped in. But they were never mean. Did get my first car from that money. A 1982 Mustang GL hatchback. Bronze-ish color. Should have kept the Honda! By then I worked at Service Merchandise, a Midwestern chain of jewelry and small appliances. Customers would order stuff on a form and and it would arrive on a conveyor. I was in the back and worked cashier also. I was there until closing one night and a very pretty jewelry associate who was way way way out of my league was waiting for a ride. I snuck away and took her to her home. When I got back (they noticed!) I was on course let go. Never saw the young lady again. To this day I don’t regret my decision… But I should have at least asked for a number!
It doesn’t sound like you had any trouble with phone book snipers at your job.
These cans are defective!
As mentioned before, it depends what one defines as work. I had a paper route at age 10, and did lots of snow shoveling as a youngster and always got my $2.00 for it, too.
When my family relocated to Vancouver Island I was twelve years old. It wasn’t long and I was working on the local farms doing chores and bringing in the hay. It was hot, hard work, but the farmers were usually very fair and they provided the meals we needed to do the heavy work.
At age fifteen, I decided I wanted a “real job” and applied to McDonalds. I was a fry cook for all of $2.35 an hour, or about half of what I got doing farm stuff. I did that for three months and went back to farm work. Paid better and more respect from the boss! In fact, all the farmers for whom I worked over the years were just lovely people.
In grade 10, there was a Stagecraft course offered in my high school. I took it and ended up being a theatre tech out of it. That was a great part time job for a young guy who was used to heavy labour.
Now that I think of it, I have had paid work every day of my life that I have wanted it, since age ten. That is way more days than I didn’t work.
If you can find the Sept. 1971 issue of Car and Driver, Jean Shepherd wrote about his recollections of working at an Esso station on Rt. 41 in Indiana one summer in his youth. It’s one of the funniest essays I’ve ever read. Turn to page 16, continued pages 21-22.
My first job was working at the local McDonalds starting at 15 and staying till I started college.
I then worked at Bob Evens
I did not make a lot of money but those were fun times.
The first paying job I remember (besides occasionally baby-sitting for a neighbor) was as a locksmith. My Dad ran the vocational education wing of my high school and hired me one summer (1978, IIRC) to re-key every door in the school (~1,800 students, to give an idea of size).
He taught me how to cut keys and pull and rebuild the lock cylinders. I still have the lock picking kit I used that summer (can’t pick a lock anymore, though). My workstation was set up in a storage closet that A) had a spare LP turntable on which I’d listen to the Star Wars soundtrack over and over, and B) a ladder and roof exit hatch. I’d sometimes leave it unlocked and return via the roof from some of the more remote corners of the school.
I was also given the job of stocking all the drink machines during the school year – found more than a few “slugs” in the coin baskets.
We moved to South Carolina the summer before my Senior year, and I got a job as a bag boy at a local grocery store. The store manager boasted that we had the cleanest store in town, and that meant mopping the entire store every night and waxing once a week. My very first day on the job, I managed to spill two mop buckets full of dirty water, right in front of the manager both times (I had never used a mop bucket before). He thankfully didn’t fire me on the spot…
My first job was as a busboy at a Howard Johnson’s restaurant in my hometown. I made all of 75 cents per hour (this was the summer of 1968), plus a couple of bucks from each of the waitresses from their tip money. I made up for the paltry wages in food consumed; I made it a point to be friendly to the cooks and it paid off in them preparing meals for me to eat.
One of my duties as a busboy was to go downstairs to the basement and bring ice up to the front. For some reason the cooler where the reserve beer was stored was right by the basement stairs and it was not locked. It was a simple matter to snag a beer or two on the way to the ice machine and then bury them in the ice bin. On a good evening we would have 8/10/12 beers for after work cruising. It must have dawned on management what was happening because right before I left the beer cooler received a padlock.
First job – January 1966 aged 15 – apprentice coppersmith in a torpedo factory.
Count me in as one of those what do you consider a job.
I did the paper boy thing twice as we moved and I put my name in for a route and waited for someone to “retire”.
Next came my first business. We moved to a new development that was out in the woods with “horse acre” lots that were not landscaped at all by the developers. So I made up flyers offering my services. I didn’t do mowing, I did things like clearing out the under brush, smoothing it out and grading it to put down bark or gravel, building sand boxes and raised beds. For the bigger jobs I had a couple of friends that I’d hire and yes I paid them less for their labor than I charged the customer.
My first of what many would consider a regular job was as a dishwasher at a quite fancy and expensive restaurant. I eventually worked my way up to a prep and then line cook. A few other restaurant jobs followed.
I did do time in a 1-man gas station, Texaco branded, but that was not until college and actually was after I worked at a tire store/garage. The interesting thing is that the owner of that tire store/garage was the person who was the original operator of that station under the Arco banner and he and Arco made a fatal flaw in designing it with the doors to the 2 bays on the back of the building. He had told me years before that the repair business at that location was terrible because of it and that played out while I worked there. But hey I had access to a lift and other equipment to work on my own cars and because it was usually pretty slow I could work on them while I was on the clock.
The top pic brings this to mind.
2-Lane Blacktop: The Early Days
Not counting paper routes, my first job was the summer I was 16. I worked in a fibreglass plant in Mahone Bay, NS, making fibreglass ductwork for the then-under-construction Montreal subway system. The heat and the smell were strong in the summer (no respirators in 1966), and the fibreglass got into your arms and itched like crazy by the end of the week. The itch would be gone by Sunday night, just in time for Monday morning. 🙂
But the paper route was the job that made the biggest impression. It was a morning paper, which meant being out of the house before 7 in order to be home by 8 for breakfast. We lived in a town of 3000 people and had a Labrador. Because dogs could run free, this was a highlight of his day, and his nose was usually in my face as soon as the alarm went off. Being out in the empty streets before sunrise in the winter, with snow crunching underfoot and a few kitchen lights on in some of the otherwise dark houses, is a beautiful memory.
Another McDonalds alumnus, class of ’87.
My first job involving cars was 2 years later at the local Olds/Buick/Pontiac/Cadillac/GMC dealer running parts and shuttling customer’s cars. It was a fun job, but after about 6 months I was “laid off” ostensibly due to “budget cuts”. Since they were advertising for my job less than a month later I think the real reason was for being caught one too many times doing burnouts in somebody’s new Coupe Deville or Firebird.
My first job was working at my family’s “Surplus” store when I was 14 on weekends. My main job the first year was to measure and tag the used pants and shirts we sold by the truckload. People bought them to do really nasty jobs in and then they would either wash them and wear them again, or they would toss them in the trash. A pair of pants was a buck and a shirt was 50 cents. My fingers were getting poked all the time by the price tags when I put them on, and I really really hated it. The smell of the lye soap they used to degrease them annoyed me greatly, and it was just so damn boring. After a year or so, I started mostly working in hardware and fishing/hunting, and sometimes in mens clothing and shoes. I liked working in hardware and the hunt/fish, but damn, the clothes and shoes were boring as hell. My second job was working in a pizza place. I was the best employee, since I hate cheese and tomatoes and the only thing I snacked on was pepperoni. I didn’t work at a gas station until I was 19.
I like to say that my first job was that I was an “auto wrecker” but I’m not really sure just what you would call it. I was hired to work at the county dump to prepare cars to be crushed. This was in the 1970s and they had never done any kind of recycling before. They hired a company to come in and crush the cars which were then hauled away. I suppose they were shipped to Japan where they were ground up and/or melted down and their metal was reused. Specifically what I did was to remove the seat cushions before crushing. I think that the seat cushions gave off bad fumes at some point in the process and they didn’t want that.
The seat cushions in old Ramblers were the easiest and they would just pop right out. On the other hand, the seat cushions in Cadillacs were the worst. The Cadillac seats were usually power and they stayed bolted to the floor. Instead of removing the cushions we used crowbars to just rip through the upholstery and then pull away the cushioning. I remember one in particular that had a whole bunch of buttons sewn in and it was terrible having to pull the cushioning away from around each button. Those buttons were really sewn down tight.
The job lasted for a couple of months until all of the cars were crushed and hauled away. Before they did this, as kids,we’d go to the dump on our bicycles and pry chrome ornaments and lettering off of old cars and take them home. Good times.
My first paid job was digging a trench alongside a railway outside a big farm machinery factory in Güstrow, then-East Germany (VEB Landmaschinenbau Güstrow), during a week in the summer of 1984. I was 16 and got paid 180 Ostmark. Never thought of it before but, yes, my first salary ever was in Commie money. At least the local cars were fun to look at (Trabants galore, 3-cylinder Wartburgs, old Skodas and mysterious rolling objects from Poland).
Later at 18 I sold sandwiches in Boston’s Prudential Center. First and last time I ever sat down in an Oldsmobile Cutlass. I can still hear the friendly rumble of its big V8. I still have the many National Geographic maps I bought at a second-hand bookstore outside Harvard. Oh, and that was the first time I got fired. Live and learn, as they say.
My first summer job at age 16 was at a local Panera Bread. They said I was too young to be on the cash register, so I cleaned tables, washed dishes, made coffee, mopped floors, took out the trash, and worst of all cleaned the bathrooms.
It taught me honest hard work but I absolutely hated it. It was then that I told myself that when I became and adult, I’d do everything I could to find a job/career I liked and one I could support myself with. Oh, and I also developed a severe aversion to food from Panera. 🙂
My first job started when I was 16 (gads! nearly 50 years ago!) and I became the assistant organist at our church. In an arrangement with the Catholic high school I attended, that paid my tuition there. Eventually I became the regular organist, and went on to various organist positions over the years. I went from playing a Hammond Concert Model (its big distinction was having a 32-note pedalboard, like real organs) to now playing a 59-rank pipe organ that does almost everything I could wish for.
One church I played for had a delightful small pipe organ in just the right size room, with just the right acoustics. It sounded wonderful. Years later, that church closed, and we were in the right place at the right time to get that little organ. It sits in our living room now, just the right size for the room, and not too loud. I can do a lot of practicing without having to go to the church!
Nothing connected with cars, although I think pipe organs rival cars in their complexity!
There are few things as thrilling as a big pipe organ in the hands (and feet?) of someone who can really open her up and let her sing.
+1! Ideally playing J S Bach’s “The Really Loud Parts”
Aside from delivering the Sunday ad circular “newspaper” and cutting lawns…
I worked in the warehouse of the area beer and wine distributor. My uncle, who’s only 4 years older than I am and practically a brother, worked there when he was in high school and put in the good word for me. So, the summer before I turned 16, my mom signed the forms that said I could work and I started packing orders to go out, loading/unloading trucks, the weekly cleaning of the trucks and warehouse, and helping deliver and stock for our bigger clients.
What this meant was that from the time I turned 16, I got a lot of seat time and parallel parking experience with large Chevy cargo vans and box trucks. Legally, I wasn’t meant to drive them if they were loaded with product, nor was I meant to deliver (I was only there as a helper), but it worked out plenty of times where I was tasked with loading up a supplemental order and delivering it, especially for our grocery store clients around Christmas.
Besides learning to parallel park giant vans with delivery bulkheads preventing any rear view aside from the side mirrors, I also picked up some bad driving habits from my bosses. They both always drove like they had somewhere to be, especially the one that had lost some of his feet from diabetes. He’d often have me drive for Saturday deliveries, especially if they were in the next county, and he’d bitch at me for wasting time and going too slow if I was observing the speed limit.
Driving a fully-loaded box truck 20 over the limit on the highway at age 16 gave me a healthy respect for paying attention to what I was doing!
Some of you had such cool first jobs.
At the end of grade 9 my buddy whose family owned a busy and profitable brickyard, needed grunt work to chip mortar off bricks. The use of old bricks in exterior house trim was becoming a thing. They paid $20 a pallet and I don’t recall how many layers of bricks a pallet had, but if the mortar chipped off easily a skinny kid like me could make a pallet in a day.
For the first few days my wrists ached from swinging that hammer. But I made good money for a 14 year old and lived the life of luxury that summer!
My first measurement task was collecting landing fees and administering the flying school at Cambridge Airport (UK), and asking the Chairman of Rolls-Royce Aeroengines to pay up when his HS125 dropped him off and flew off without coming into the office.
Happy days
My first job was as a dishwasher at a family-owned restaurant in our town. I remember riding in the owner’s Dodge A-100 van (can’t remember the exact year, but it was one of the 1964-70 generation) to pick up supplies for the restaurant.
As a teenager, I used to do odd jobs for neighbors, some of which was car related – washing, errands, simple repairs. I remember polishing a ’72 Buick Electra, delivering a ’75 Nova from Niagara Falls to Brooklyn and replacing a broken grille on a ’73 Dart.
Ace hardware at the Happy Canyon shopping center in southeast suburban Denver, when I was about 14 or so. I was a junior scutworker. That was no official job title or anything, I’m just using it now to mean I got to stock shelves and tidy up after customers, break down boxes and lug them out to the dumpster, assemble lawnmowers and barbecues, clean the bathroom (and clean it again after the sadistic-jerk owner went in there to smoke cigarettes and make as big a mess of it as he possibly could, deliberately right after I’d finished cleaning it), help customers find things, and do other menial tasks, but wasn’t allowed to touch the cash register. Rode to work on my Raleigh. Got fired for ugly reasons.
Then came a stint as a pressman’s assistant in a print shop, then as a cater-waiter.
And then came the wrecking yard job.
Every so often I’m rewarded for lollygagging at work on a Friday afternoon. I’da probably never gotten back to re-reading that Wrecking Yard post had I not been scrolling back a few days worth of CC posts this afternoon out of sheer desperation for anything other than work-related drivel. Great post. Fun stories. I’m sure I read it when it was originally posted, but somehow never acknowledged it. One of my CC favorites now.
»doffs cap« Thankya, sir!
The first paying job I had was a very part-time one on Saturdays at the Schwinn bicycle store in Findlay, Ohio. My dad’s business partner Jim Richards paid me 50 cents per new bicycle I put together from the shipping box. The year was 1964. I was 8.
After that, I did the same kind of thing at my dad’s store when it opened in 1965.
I had my first job when I was 13 years old. For two summers I had what would be described today as a “mobile car detailing” business. I went out into the neighborhood, scouted out luxury cars and offered the owners weekly exterior and interior cleaning. They had to supply water and a vacuum cleaner, and I supplied everything else (basically everything I could carry while riding my bike). The two cars I can remember off-hand were a dark green 1968 Olds 98 4-door and a white 1967 Cadillac Eldorado.
Pizza Pete’s in Glendale, Ca. Lasted about 9 months, wrecked my first car (1966 Beetle) while on company time picking up a 50 lb sack of flower from another store. Both car parts and flower were all over the street afterwards. Lost job when my car insurance went after the Pizza stores owner. Didn’t miss those hot brick ovens in August one bit. Did miss the free Dagwood style sandwiches!
I worked at Delp’s Gulf gas station on the Austin Highway across the street from the Frontier Drive-In in San Antonio in the early 60’s. After school and weekends it was a great place for a car nut to work. I learned a lot from SGT Delp (he was a retired military motor pool sergeant) from adjusting drum brakes, changing rear pinion seals, adjusting points and general tuneups. And I got paid for doing this! There I was putting expensive Cadillacs on the lift for oil changes and lubes. I never thought it as work, jst having fun with cars.
My first job was at a car wash in 1967. I was to clean the interior windows as the car exited (or should I say bolted, depending on the car) from the wash. It lasted two weekends.
Then I got a job in a shop repairing TVs. Much easier on the body. And better pay, too.
I lied on my age, said I was 13, so I could start deliver newspapers, as a summer temp for people going on vacations. Had many different routes.
They didnt discover it until end of summer when it was paytime, i purposefully “forgot” to deliver the income tax card for the first monthly pay period. I was only 11.
Paul,
1963 at the Gino’s in Towson…I remember the Sunoco station!