This one promises to run awhile. l intend to start at the very beginning of my working life (a little before, actually) and follow my personal work history all the way up to today, "Why ?", you ask? Well, l really don't intend to bore and l'll try to include all of the interesting parts,and to include every single position held. And, the first interesting part is just how many positions. l've produced a few resumes, but from very early-on they couldn't all be mentioned and l've never (before now) enumerated them, but the total number, at this point is sure to be between forty and fifty.
There are a few reasons that there were so many. Chief among them was my favorite step-dad, whom l called Dad. He and my mom married the month before my third birthday (in 1941) and we became fast friends.He liked to take me to work with him and l loved to go. He had some great jobs, some in which he was self-employed. For starters, he was a conductor on Southern Pacific's
crack streamliners "The City of SanFrancisco" and "The City of Los Angeles" after working his way up from his first position with S.P. as section hand or ghandi dancer. (Laying track). Some months before before my mom and l joined him, he had become a regional distributor for Shell Oil Co.,and a few months later he opened his first Shell Service Station. At that point, he was in both wholesale and retail businesses and was employed full time on the railroad. He was also a self-taught mechanic, not just on cars and trucks, but on plumbing and electrical jobs and carpentry. All of that came in handy on the ranch that he and his partner, Ross owned and operated just outside town. He always has plenty to do and l always wanted to go with him and help him if possible. At first he was just letting me play: l remember sitting on his lap while steering the fuel-delivery truck as he made the rounds serving his customers.
He never stopped expanding. When l was about six, he opened a hardware store/ appliance store, which did very good, owing to the availability just after WWll of modern, low-cost automatic washers and dryers and mangles and refri gerators and ranges, to say nothing of the smaller appliances and power tools that appeared beginning just after the war and that had been developed from knowledge gained producing weapons and other tools of war.
While l was in first grade the service station burned in an accidental fire and Dad made plans to erect a new service station adjacent to the new route of the transcontinental highway which would open about two years later. By the time the new station opened, it was accompanied by two new lube bays, two new tire service bays and a coffee shop/cafe with a customer capacity of sixty-eight. The slot machines: two nickles, two dimes, two quarters and two dollars.
So, growing up, l was given work when it was thought l could do it. l was still in first grade when l could put gas in a customer's car and could steer the trucks some distance but was a bit big to ride on Dad's lap then. At eight years old l could totally drive all of our vehicles and, much of the time l did, but not unless a licensed driver was with me.
When l was twelve, Dad put me on the payroll and got me a social security number. At first, l worked three or four hours after school, sometimes at the service station, sometimes the coffee shop or the appliance store and sometimes the ranch. Come summer vacation that year l worked in the coffee shop; eight hours a day, five or six days a week. Washing dishes and pots and pans,sweeping and mopping floors and managing the slot machines (clean the machines and their stands, empty proceeds, fill jackpots and count and package and store the coins from the proceeds container.)
During that summer, and most, if not all summers l witnessed there, l and later my two younger brothers worked on the ranch, harvesting hauling and stacking the hay crop. It was the hardest work to be found among any of Dad's enterprises and everybody involved was very happy when the job was complete. l, probably more than the others. ln fact, over the years l managed to bug out on the harvest a few times when problems elsewhere in the empire took precedence. When l could, l'd avoid most of the opportunities for ranch work but l never missed the fall round-up: seven or eight guys, astride horses among the sage and the jack brush on the steppe of northeastern Nevada.
Spending the day on the back of a horse is less delightful than one might think but it beats pitching forksfull of hay from the ground to the top of the pile on the wagon. Over and over and over again.
Until the summer after the tenth grade (1953) l had worked for Dad almost exclusively. There were a few times (during the school year) that l took part in class fund-raisers, usually selling un-suspecting citizens their favorite magazines for exorbitant prices and, in the 5th thru the 7th grades l had a couple of newspaper routes. together they required a little more than two hours to deliver,daily. (a small town, one a morning paper, the other an
evening paper.) That summer, just a couple of the days into the break, l'm
at my job at my Dad's service station when my good buddy Nathan stops in to tell me that the US DEPT of INTERIOR is hiring laborers for the summer to work on improvements at Ruby Lake Nat'l Wildlife Refuge. lt turned out that
Nathan's dad, who was also the Chevy dealer in our town, was friends with the director of the refuge. Nathan and l, and two of our mutual friends (and schoolmates) were selected for the open positions and started work the next day. This job was my very first actually outside the family businesses. lt was a great job and a good omen. And it paid well: ($48.20 per week, net)for a summer kids job. we enjoyed the hell out of it too: hard heavy constructive
work, building concrete water routing in the Ruby marshes, miles of deer fences along refuge roads, painting exteriors of half the buildings on the refuge
and clearing brush from a large area soon to be providing lawn to areas between and around the main buildings of the refuge.
Work hard, play hard. 's what they say; We did that. At the Overland bar, the Star Hotel bar, theD&D, The Classie lnn,Mona's and a few others whose names escape me at the moment all helped
