Holding Three Horses Wasn’t Hard Work

I spent Labor Day thinking about Mrs. Boaz’s walnut tree. She gave me my first ever paying job. I was six years old. I picked up walnuts one afternoon for 17 straight hours. It seems like there were maybe eight thousand walnuts spread out all over that big yard….

I worked as hard and as fast as I could till there wasn’t one walnut showing on the ground.

She paid me a dime.

One lousy dime! My back hurt. My fingers were permanently bent in a circular shape. And it took 30 cents worth of lye soap to get SOME of the stain off my hands. The rest of it wore off about the time I started into the third grade.

I determined very early in life that this work thing was something a fellow ought to figure on before he jumped into it.

Our school back in the early 1950’s would start in August and then close for two weeks in September for cotton picking. To the town students it was a holiday. Me, Leon, and David Mark walked over to Mr. Brooks’ field and picked cotton from very early till one of us passed out, and the other two had to tote him home.

I have told you many times about dragging that big sack along, bleeding from every finger on both hands, back breaking with every step, knees hurting when I had to crawl, taking shots from dirt clods Leon was throwing at me from two rows over….

It is, to this very day, the hardest job I’ve ever had. We got paid a penny-a-pound for going through that ordeal. I’m sure you realize how little cotton shirts weigh. I could pick from daylight till Leon fainted around 3:30 in the afternoon and wouldn’t have 20 pounds.

It would send you back to school with a whole new appreciation for education….and all you could avoid by gaining one!

My first “hourly” wage gig was at the local swimming pool. Miss Belle Alexander paid me a quarter an hour to sell candy and cold drinks out of the pool store. I was confined in a small room with no view as I passed Snicker Bars and NuGrape Sodas over the counter and collected the cash. It could be a bit boring.

But my fingers were not bleeding and no one was flinging dirt clods at my head!

I grew into the lifeguard position. And the pay was raised to 50 cents an hour. That doesn’t sound like much today. But most weeks over the next three summers I walked out on payday with 35 dollars in my pocket.

I will be forever grateful for Mr. and Mrs. Alexander, and the help they gave me along my working career.

I pumped gas at Tommy Hill’s DX station after the pool closed. I unloaded lumber out of railroad box cars. I hauled hay for different farmers on Saturdays in the fall. I was a clerk for Colonel James T. (Birddog) Reed. He was an auctioneer working at house estate sales. I learned to write down what he sold, and to whom, and the amount, as quickly as he “auctioneered” it away.

I waited tables in college for money. And refereed intramural basketball games. And washed cars when I had time at Mr. Terrill’s Texaco station.

The best job I ever had was working at the world-famous Grand Ole Opry in Nashville, Tennessee. I have worn you guys out telling stories about all those great country music artists I got to see up close and personal.

I taught school and coached a few years. Worked at a radio station. And once took a low paying job telling stories in the newspapers about growing up back home.

If you people think I can spin a yarn, you should have heard Leon expounding on how rapidly the congregation VACATED the Fall River Pentecostal Church when he and Tommy Thompson pulled those heavy log chains across the rafters just about the time Pastor Huntley got to the part where Heaven was a lot nearer than you think….

Now, listen, I know you are not interested in my work history. And that is not the purpose of this little blurb. But I thought if I told you about picking up walnuts in Mrs. Boaz’s backyard, it might rekindle a memory of your first paying job.

Our picking cotton days might recall the worst job you ever had. The Alexanders’ monetary touch on my young life might put you in mind of someone who helped you in a like manner along the way.

The Grand Ole Opry should, hopefully, remind you of the one great job you ran across in your working past.

I try to always make this about the reader.

Except for the Fall River Church part. I just needed a smile this morning. And, hear me plainly, I was not up in the rafters with Leon and Tommy when they were “creating” a word from on high. I had better upbringing than that!

I was semi hidden under two willow trees next to the back fence of Bud Smith’s dairy farm, holding the getaway horses….

Respectfully,
Kes