By the time I was 16 I was done with skool and had a full time job. The three or four summers prior to that were a lot of fun, but cash was hard to come by. Some of the things we (the Cash boys) use to do for spending money were pretty creative.
I had my first paper route at 12. I retired at 18 as the "assistant" station manager. This was a mainstay of my fiscal structure almost my entire "teen" years.
Stop by the paint store and nab a free yardstick. Proceed to the Wash-O-Matic Laundromat and rake dimes and quarters out from under the machines. Sometimes a good haul, but don't let anybody see you. Your patented gold mine might be compromised.
It was always S.O.P. to check every coin return on every pay phone and coin operated anything.
We use to haul hay for various friends and relatives. I think the going rate was a nickel or dime a bale after it wound up in the hay barn. The take was generally divided amongst five or six of us. Good money, but sporadic. The logistics of us all getting to the countryside always required an adult.
Ernie at the Deep Rock gas station would let us pump gas for soda-pop change if he was tied up under a hood. Sometimes he'd give us a quarter for breaking down tires off rims. The tire stand looked similar to today's pneumatic affairs, but it was the "Armstrong" variety. It required a crow bar, a sledge and a tire spoon. The stand was on the west side of the station with no shade...this was morning work, for sure.
There was an old 9 hole golf course within riding distance. If the water traps were low we'd wade the mud flats and dig up orphaned golf-balls. The guy that ran the shop would give us a quarter a basket full...after we had washed them.
And of course the old standard stand by...picking up pop bottles. In my career I watched them skyrocket from 2 or 3 cents apiece to a nickel or higher. This was usually our pin-ball money.
And as much as I hate to admit it..the Cash boys (Cole, Holden and myself) often found ourselves on the other side of the law when it came to digging up bank.
The old wire cage newspaper holders were an easy hit, with a crew. Just pick them up, turn them upside down and shake the crap out of them. Nickels and dimes would rain to pavement below. This was a crime of opportunity however. You couldn't let anybody see you. Finding a mark that was hidden from sight was usually the challenge.
And the crowning glory of my "felon-in-training" days...the automated car wash.
This was a con that required the services of Darla Adams, one of the kids form the 'hood. Darla was as daring as the rest of us AND she had physical attributes that would make grown men stare.
When some fella would start to wash his car he would place a handful of quarters on top of the coin-slot switch box. As he washed and proceeded around the opposite side of his car Darla would appear, in cut-offs and tight t-shirt. With hands in her back pockets and her best country bumpkin smile she would sashay and engage the schmuck in "innocent" conversation. Her knowledge of cars was her hook. The victim never saw us reach around and nab his pile of quarters...he was too fixed on other things.
I'm sure there were other things we did that have conveniently slipped my memory. Any of you other folks out there remember any creative money making you did when you were a kid?
Let's hear 'em.
Now, Paden
Did you deliberately leave out the armed robberies?
'Cause I'm not copping to it until you do.
Don
I didn't have a lot of typical teen jobs. Mowed a few lawns.
Mostly I worked on the home farm (I hated putting in hay in 100 degree weather) and then Dad started being a scrap dealer. We spent the summers of the 1960's going around the county buying the old horse-drawn machinery that had been abandoned along the fence rows in the prior decade, dragging it out of the weeds, and making pieces we could load into the pickup truck. I'm a world-class expert in taking such things apart, or breaking them apart when necessary. I look at an antique piece of farm machinery and immediately remember where to hit to break the cast iron.
Twice a year a bunch of us worked for a neighbor who raised turkeys. There was vaccination time, and load-out time. You had to drive them into a pen, into a chute and ramp, and then catch them by the legs to either hold them on the table for vaccination or toss them into the coops on the truck. The wings beat at you and a loose leg could do a lot of damage. You wore gloves and long sleeves but still wound up with scratched arms, and everything you might imagine rubbed into the scratches. I'm surprised I didn't come down with some serious disease. It convinced me the only good turkey was a roasted and sliced turkey.
> And as much as I hate to admit it..the Cash boys (Cole, Holden and myself) often found ourselves on the other side of the law when it came to digging up bank.
Years later, however, the light came on when young Mr. Cash realized that there was a class of people walking the Earth who merely wrote letters to clients requesting certain sums of money and then let the US Postal Service do the legwork. "Professionals" he learned. Then and there, he vowed to sell the General Lee and head straight for the nearest profession. The rest is history.
Kent
> he vowed to sell the General Lee and head straight for the nearest profession. The rest is history.
Now that's hilarious! And I have to agree that fleecing the masses with an invoice IS my favorite pastime nowadays.
I actually came into the industry as a legacy. Pops Cash was a surveyor. The reason no surveying stories made it into my list was merely because he made us work for free!
I really hated surveying. I had been tail-chaining since I was old enough to make it over a fence. I bet I'm the only one here that could throw a chain at age seven.
I had an interest in astronomy. Sometimes my father would let me grab the K&E from the station wagon (that was before vans and trucks served as survey chariots) and observe the celestial display. But he was a hard-ass. I couldn't just look through the gun...I had to set it up, level and over a point...with the circle zeroed. No story tellin'...es verdad. I can't remember a time that I didn't know a circle had 360 degrees, and a degree had 60 minutes, and a minute had 60 seconds.
My "interest" in surveying was kindled by the need of a steady job. After I procured a position as grunt, all the discipline the old man had instilled in me shot me straight to I-man. My cunning reasoning, super powers and x-ray vision helped me dethrone a PC. I really didn't want the responsibility...but the job came with company truck privileges. Now that is REALLY the rest of the story.;-)
BTW Kent, I've always wondered how a true Renaissance Man like yourself wound up in this godforsaken profession. Bend our ears, please.
Kent
> BTW Kent, I've always wondered how a true Renaissance Man like yourself wound up in this godforsaken profession. Bend our ears, please.
I did not set out to become a surveyor. I began with the idea of taking a degree in mathematics, but after a couple of semesters it dawned on me that unless I wanted a job teaching mathematics at the college level, it wasn't likely to provide much of a livelihood. What did I know? It was an intuition only.
I did, however, know that architects got to live in cool houses and work in interesting offices in the course of improving society one client's building at a time. The sample size on that was n=1, the father of a friend. I transferred to the Architecture School which was a five year program and never doubted that I'd improved my lot over becoming a professional mathematician.
When I got out of UT, I wanted to stay in Austin, but quickly discovered the effect of the boom and bust cycle in the building economy meant that the principals of the firms to which I applied had let their surplus staff go in the bust that then prevailed and were not tremendously keen on hiring someone right out of school with no practical experience. It made perfect sense to me, so I decided to see if I could get a temporary job as a draftsman/technician with a civil engineer until the local architects were in the market for help again, the idea being that I would learn something useful while drawing the stupendous sum of $4.00 per hour.
That was when I discovered that there was this semi-organized activity known as surveying that required only the most rudimentary knowledge of mathematics, some drafting skills, and a tolerance for work outdoors. The engineer into whose office I arrived was a colorful character, intelligent and folksy in a way that I later learned had taken years to cultivate, overcoming the multiple disadvantages of having been raised by cultured parents with some social standing. However, his folksy knowledge of surveying had definite limits that seemed to have been fixed in a classroom in the Engineering School back when surveying was part of the curriculum, and in later work as a project engineer for one of the major construction companies. So, I relied more upon reading surveying texts and law books than upon mentoring as a way to learn more about surveying.
One of the first things I learned about surveying was that all of the procedures described in surveying texts were impossible to actually perform in that real world into which the survey party disappeared ever day, dragging back grimy notes of what had been possible to do before beer-thirty arrived. It took me several years before I finally realized that there was in fact no good reason why the procedures described in the surveying texts couldn't be used and that it was, in fact, much easier to do things properly than to expect someone in the office to sort out the odd stuff that came back from the field according to the worst practices of the day in the circuses by whom the party chief had been earlier employed. This was not universally true as a characterization, but was more true than not.
So, after a few years of sitting in the office making calculations, scratching head, drawing maps, and writing metes and bounds descriptions, I got involved in the field work, too. At that point, I did not have the definite idea that I wanted to spend a career as a surveyor. That epiphany found me in the middle of a ranch in far West Texas that had some of the largest stands of catclaw on it I have ever seen. The idea that a person might make a living working outdoors in a beautiful setting solving very large puzzles that had been around for at least a century, struck me as much more interesting than anything that might happen in the office of an architect or engineer. I was hooked and twenty-nine years ago got a license to send members of the public letters requesting sums of money that they had agreed to pay for professional surveying.
Since that time, I have worked on much more difficult and engaging projects, but have never lost my interest in the essential task, which is solving very old puzzles by thorough investigation, careful measurement, thoughtful judgment, and attempting to leave a record that will satisfactorily explain it all should another surveyor ever arrive.
Kent
:good: :good:
Kent
it was, in fact, much easier to do things properly than to expect someone in the office to sort out the odd stuff that came back from the field according to the worst practices of the day
That most certainly sounds like a "light on" moment.
:star:
Kent
> I did not set out to become a surveyor.
This is so true with so many of us. I guess it's like surveying found us, instead of us finding surveying.
PS - Kent, we're glad you didn't make it to be an architect. :snarky:
Kent
> > I did not set out to become a surveyor.
> PS - Kent, we're glad you didn't make it to be an architect. :snarky:
Paden, we're glad you did not turnout to be a pimp, hustling the lil hussy Darla through the car washes of OK. :-O
Kent
>...hustling the lil hussy Darla through the car washes of OK. :-O
Great story, Kent.
My beginnings were in civil engineering. I got my degree from MSU in 1980, and my first boss said that I needed to go out with the survey crew to see what they do and how it is done. I had a good mentor, and I learned a lot of field techniques in surveying. I could throw a chain and run a transit, so I learned several jobs as a crew member including party chief, chain man, cutting line, front prism man, pin finder with an old schondstedt and shovel, and records research. I could draft, so I did office work, too, including computations and COGO. I became a PLS one year before I became a PE, and I spent 15 years of my career doing both civil engineering and land surveying. I taught at community college for 18 years and life presented me an opportunity to be self employed. I now do primarily property boundary survey work, and I really enjoy it.
Early years were spent sweeping floors in the family lumber and hardware store, eventually moving into customer sales and delivery. I learned how to drive flatbed delivery trucks with a clutch and stick shift by age 11. My interest in engineering was piqued in the Boy Scouts, learning about the outdoors and skills that have served me well through the years. I earned the rank of Eagle Scout, and have been pleasantly surprised at how many of them I have met in positions of higher authority in all walks of life. I do not ever remember idle times. I have worked all my life, either for money or doing things that needed to be done at home, for family or at our church. I never had time to get into trouble, which, in retrospect, was a good thing. Many of the guys I knew in high school were experienced in drugs, women, and consumption of alcohol. I could build a fire, operate a magnetic compass, perform basic first aid and a lot of other useful things they thought was either weird or funny. Karma is a wonderful thing.
Both of my sons are college educated, have good jobs, and married wonderful wives, and I will soon have Grandkid #4. I have passed on my genes as well as my love for the outdoors, and I am nearing retirement. However, I think I will keep on surveying, picking and choosing the jobs I want to do instead of having to do.
Time to get back to work. Ya'll be careful out there. B-)
With the exception of two (well 1 1/2) summers when I turned 15 and then 16, I have always worked at the survey office (summer wise). The 1 1/2 summers of bliss were spent as a life guard at the city pool. I made $4/hour and loved ever second of it. I didn't have to be at work until noon (except for swimming lessons once a week) and the pool shut down at 8 p.m. Then we had private parties until midnight. If I wasn't scheduled for a party, it was party time anyway until midnight. The days ran together and I didn't care if it was Sunday or Thursday. Amazing job.
Otherwise, I began my surveying career in 1989 at the ripe age of 12. I ran a gun by 14 and chiefed at 19. SIT at 21 and license at 25.
I did have a brief stint working during school at an abstract company micro-filming deed books with an am radio for a companion that only picked up classic elevator music (ugh). For a few months when I got married and was in college, I worked at a warehouse loading groceries and on my days off, worked at the survey office since I was the sole support of my new family at 20 years of age.
I never did much illegal other than drive fast or drink underage.
Man I miss that job at the pool. 🙂
Darla
Darla was actually the age of my older brother, Holden. As for pimpin' Darla..you'd have an easier time playing "tickle-that-tumtum" with a bobcat.
The neatest thing I remember about Darla was her father had an adjustable flywheel puller that she would get for us. A most coveted tool when trying to keep single cylinder engines running.
She smelled good, too.
When I was 7 years old, I had a red wagon.
I would walk around looking for pop bottles, three different prices
- short bottles
- regular bottles
- large bottles
One day when taking a hard found haul to the general store I realized that when I sold the bottles they would take them to the rear of the store and set them outside.
I realized it was much easier to fill the wagon back there instead of having to walk around looking in ditches and side of the road.
_______________________________________________________________________
The first beer I ever drank was from a old coke machine in one of my grannies down the street neighbors who had an old machine in their backyard that he stored his beer in...
At first he would leave change in the change return, once he quit doing that we figured out how to fool the machine with washers
Awful yes, but at 10 years old it was an adventure.
Darla
Darla = hot 😉
tig ole biddies
Kent
:good:
That boy can write...good story.
> The old wire cage newspaper holders were an easy hit, with a crew. Just pick them up, turn them upside down and shake the crap out of them. Nickels and dimes would rain to pavement below. This was a crime of opportunity however. You couldn't let anybody see you. Finding a mark that was hidden from sight was usually the challenge.
That one reminded me of one of the guys I hung out with that would scrounge up a nickel, open the newspaper box, and take out all of the papers. He would then go down the street downtown selling the papers he took out (@ a nickel apiece of course). I didn't have the "guts" to follow suit. Just too innocent (or chicken as the case may be).
Summertime memories
When I was old enough to work, at age 11.5, I went to work with my dad in the summertime. I wanted to go at 10 but wasn't big enough yet. My dad is a surveyor. I toted, sighted, fetched and generally stopped acting like a little kid or I'd be left at home with mum.
I cut grass and hedges, not for any neighbors, but at home...for my keep.
I had school time and surveying time. I was supposed to get a week off to enjoy the summer but that usually turned out to be school clothes shopping day.
Darla et al
All this mention of Darla and your shenanigans has me thinking of "Our Gang" and the Little Rascals". Would've made for a good plot line. I think the original Darla actress even came from OK maybe your friend was named after her.
