Jobs through High School
My first "real" job, after being a paperboy on Minot AFB ND was to be a stock boy at Robinsons five and dime. This was age 14 when I could first work, after getting my working papers from the Police Chief. That job lasted a short while until I was told "Go get a haircut or don't come back." I walked around the corner and got a job in a local bakery working 4AM to 9AM before school. I made bread, lots of bread. My school was on split sessions until the new high school was completed. We had the afternoon session.
The BOH informed the owner that he couldn't have anyone under age 16 running the machinery so I was "laid off."
Form there I went many places. I cleaned an ice cream store mornings, I made pizza dough in the early morning for a pizza place. I painted house, I banged nails, I also learned to pour pottery molds for a local potter. Then I landed a job as stock boy/general maintenance for an exclusive gift shop run by an eccentric man, Stan Goldman. Stan ended up being one of the first business men allowed into China after Nixon opened that door.
Banging nails was the most educational job I had and one that helped with summer jobs in college.
There's a brief synopsis. I did work with an attorney during my senior year in High School, bt just long enough to know that was not a career choice for me. I fell into surveying through my 9th grade shop teacher. He had us do a little topo at the New High School and I fell in love with the Profession. It doesn't hurt that my grandfather, A. H. Tompkins, was a Civil Engineer and Surveyor down GA way, or that my neighbors on both sides of our house on Cape Cod were surveyors, or that Thomas Jefferson (my early hero) was one, too!!
Dtp
