A PENNY EARNED

Again, I want to apologize for missing the last two weeks on my blog.  There are just some times that life gets in the way of good intentions and plans.  Lately this has been happening quite a lot, not only in my blogging.

We are currently putting our home here in Pennsylvania on the market, with intentions of going back south of the Mason-Dixon line.  Hopefully, this move will be made prior to the original time we set when we returned to our roots.  Meaning we hope to get a buyer quickly.  The call of family and grandchildren is a very powerful thing!

This means that things have to be done—mostly getting the hundred boxes, or so, that we moved up here with us gone through and seriously divided between keep, donate, and discard.  When we moved here, it was a pack-and-bring with high hopes of getting rid of a lot of the items by donating or marketing them.  And, yes, by disposing of them too.  But as with a lot of good plans and intentions, a lot of this gave way to actuality.  I have made a good start, with the help of our friends, and am determined to make a sizeable dent in this matter before the week is out.

However, this is not the topic for today’s blog.

Part of the reason for this blog is for you to get to know me better, as well as to compare living styles in my day to living styles now.  So today I thought I would share with you a little about the jobs I have had.  Not all of them have been wage earning, but they were instrumental in developing and shaping my future.  Each of them required faithfulness to the position as well as to the patronage.  After all, these are two qualities that make both a good employee and good business sense.

So I guess you could say the first “position” I held was at the age of thirteen as a Sunday school teacher in the Primary department of my church.  I probably would not have been selected for this occupation except for the fact that my mother was the superintendent of this area of church service.  I quickly learned that I had to be prepared weekly for the task that I held, and that I owed my best to not only my mother, but to the children I taught, and to my church.

The second job I set out to get was at the age of fifteen as a clerk in one of our local grocery stores.  There were originally three in our area when my family moved there; one at the top of the hill and two side-by-side at the bottom of the hill.  The one at the top of the hill closed first.  After a change in ownership of one of the two at the bottom of the hill, the other market closed.

The sole remaining market became a favorite spot for the kids attending the playground across the street who had a penny or two to spend.  It was also “the place” for those running grocery and milk errands for their mothers.  And it was sort of hang-out some of the older boys in the neighborhood, especially the corner that held the pin-ball machine.

Since I was officially under-aged for working, my suggestion I be hired was refused.  Even so, I felt that the owner had a problem in the pin-ball machine area.  On the wall he had a dirty, well-worn hand printed sign that said “Do not tilt” that was completely ignored.  I figured he needed a new sign, so I got some poster board, lettering stencils, and colored pencils and made him a nice sign to hang there. 

He was shocked when I gave it to him, and although he offered to pay me for it, I refused.  It wasn’t long after that he asked when I would be sixteen.  I told him in a couple of weeks.  He said to be sure to let him know and he would give me an application for a job.  I was quite surprised, but very happy.  So this was my first paying job.

My second job was as a swimming instruction at the local YMCA for the city swim program.  By that time I was married and our oldest child was about two years old.  And to be honest, I do not remember exactly how I came to know about the Y’s need or how I came to apply.  I think I had just finished taking a Life Saving course at the Y and one day when I was leaving, I overheard the manager talking about the need for an instructor for the summer swim program.  I told him I would be interested and he asked if I had any certification and experience.  I said no, but I wouldn’t mind getting certified.  That led to my taking a Red Cross Water Safety Instructor course (I already had my Red Cross training in first aid).  I taught that program for three years.

This job was followed by my working for the B.F. Goodrich company as a—are you ready for this?—golf ball winder!  We would wind the miles of elastic around the core rubber balls until they met the gauge and pressure required and then tie them off.  These would then be sent to Massachusetts to get their outer coating on.  I worked there until I was six or seven months pregnant with our second child, another boy.  When he was about nine months old, I returned there until he became sick, and then I quit.  I was asked to come back, which I did, until he had his second seizure, then I quit, period. 

My next job was that of an AVON lady.  It was quite interesting and lasted until the local B&O shops closed down.  I could not, with a clear conscience, go to those homes and ask them to buy cosmetics and perfume when they needed to put food on the table.  Also, the arthritis I had in my hip was making it difficult for me to walk my local route.  Besides, I became my own best customer—not of the make-up line, but of the cologne containers!

After I had hip replacement surgery, we moved to the Pensacola, Florida region so I could be out of the cold weather.  To support our family, which now consisted of three children, we purchased a hardware store and became merchants.  After two-and-a-half years of merchandising, we realized we were in trouble, and I got an outside job as a cashier at a grocery store.

We met some wonderful people at our store and by the time we closed the doors on a Subchapter S, one of our customers and a dear friend had gotten Jerry a job on the Navy base with a section of the Department of Navy (which eventually transferred to the Department of Defense) through the new handicapped program, while I became a sewer at Vanity Fair.

Before long, our friend got me into the Florida State handicapped unpaid work experience program and I was also placed at the Naval base.  I worked as secretary to the manager of the newly developed Handicapped Program for the Department of Navy.  At the end of my unpaid work experience term, I was picked up by DoN as a temporary worker trainee.  I transferred to another branch of DoN, also as a temporary employee but at a higher grade.  I soon transferred back to DoN personnel department when chosen as a permanent employee and continued working for the DoN thirteen more years.

I took an early retirement and set up my own business giving Federal Retirement Seminars attended by employees of several branches of the Federal Government in the Southeastern Region of the United States for the next twelve years, until I closed my business.

That is when I started writing in earnest, finally putting on paper some of the stories that had been playing in my mind for twenty years or more.  Both All Because of Chickens and A Girl Like You, came from that source.  My Lessons from the Sheepfold sprang from All Because of Chickens, as is my current work in progress, tentatively titled GREENER PASTURES.

Which job did I consider the most unusual?  Winding golf balls has got to be at the head of the list.  As I and the other fourteen winders on my shift making the specific balls we made (times three shifts making 45 winders) each making 5-600 balls a day for a total of 22,500 to 27,000 of these same balls a day six days a week (we had worked overtime for almost a year) and equaling between 135,000 and 162,000 a week, not to mention the winders of different gauged balls with different starting cores, I figured either golfing must be a tremendously popular sport or else there were an awful lot of lousy golfers out there who kept losing their balls.

Of all the jobs I’ve had, I find the most satisfying are being a wife, mother and grandmother.  I am looking forward to our move south so I can also add great-grandmother to the list.

What is the most unusual or favorite job you have ever had?