This is my post for #memoirmonday how did you get your first job? week 24 hosted by @ericvancewalton
Starting at a very young age I had to work but I did not get paid. My first job was working the shrimp nets from my dad's dock, he had two framed nets that were 8 feet long and 4 feet high.
The nets were like the ones sticking up on Dad's boat, this picture was before he built the dock out further and he used his boat to catch the shrimp from. He tied them to the pilings on the dock and it was us kids job to pull them and sort the shrimp from the seagrass and junk fish that got caught in them. We caught a lot of eels, I hated them, they reminded me of snakes and were wanting to bite if you got your hands near them.
We did not want to leave the nets too long because they would get too heavy for us to pull and we had to get Dad to help, then we got lectured about pulling them sooner.
Another job we had was picking up the trash from the campsites. Dad drove his truck with a flatbed trailer and at each campsite was a 55 gallon metal drum, we had to put the drums on the trailer and put an empty one in its place. We also had to clean the bathrooms, that was the job that I hated the most.
People also shrimped from the dock.
My first paying job was in this store, its the same store that my Dad is standing in on the top photo, I was about the age I am in this picture, I am on the right holding the hand of one of my nephews. Dad paid me 20 dollars a week to work waiting on customers. I liked doing it but I also hated it because of my right eye. It has always been off, I would say can I help you and the customer would look around like I was talking to someone else. I had surgery to fix it when I was in second grade but it did not work. I would have to tell people that I was looking at them, for me it was embarrassing. So to answer the question on how I got my first job, I have to say because I was my Dad's daughter and I got old enough to count money.
We sold hamburgers and hotdogs and we always cooked the hotdogs in a pan of water until Dad bought a microwave oven, back then it was called a radar range. A man and woman came in and ordered 2 hotdogs, I cooked them in the radar range, and they swelled up and burst all the way down one side, the people questioned me about what happened to them, with all of the confidence in my cooking I told them that is how they are supposed to look and explained this new way of cooking things. I know now that I overcooked them.
I worked in the store until we left for Missouri, that is another story. When we left the inlet Dad had no idea where we would end up, he headed north camping at State parks until he found the land he wanted to buy, it took 3 months for him to find it.
I had saved one hundred dollars from my job working for Dad and when he bought the land in Missouri, I bought a horse, I am on the right, going to the left is my Mom, my little brother Hoss, my oldest brother Tommy, little sister Christine and youngest sister Kathy. Everyone in the family had a horse, there were 9 of us. Mom was visiting, she still lived in Florida.
In Missouri I worked for Emerson Electronics making motors like the ones that go in fans, I was an inspector and had to fix the ones that had a flaw in them, it was not a hard job, not physically like pulling shrimp nets or lifting garbage cans and the money was a lot better. I can not remember what I made but I think it was not much over a dollar an hour maybe something like 1.25 or 1.50, to me that was good pay. I worked the night shift.
photos are mine
