My exercise teacher Helen Hansen who is a spry chicken in
her eighties shared this experience from her youth with our class. I asked her
to write it down. Helen recalls her first job: The University of Minnesota
experimental farm was looking for teenage summer help the summer of 1946. They
were paying 50 cents/hour, which sounded like a fortune to me. My friends and I
were 14 years old and required work permits to be considered for employment. We
were hired to pick fruit, strawberries, hoe weeds in the fields and pick sweet
corm.
We all had visions of fat paychecks and a shopping trip to Minneapolis for
school clothes as our reward. What we didn’t foresee was what a wonderfully fun
and memorable experience it would be. The farm was 15 miles from home. So,
transportation was a problem. The father of one in our group solved it by
buying, an old used Packard, which comfortably seated the six of us. Our
chariot the Packard awaited, but there was only one designated driver. My brother
Bob, age 16 with newly acquired driver’s license was voted in unanimously. So
off we went five days a week waving goodbye to relieved parents happy to see
some of their teenagers gainfully employed for the summer.
The Packard with
running boards was both a blessing and a curse. It seemed to be a reliable car
in the mornings delivering us to the farm. It often proved reluctant on our
trips home with its habit of stopping without warning. Then the five of
us would get out and push that huge old car down the road in an attempt to get
it started. My brother at the wheel steering and trying to get it started was
his part. Our favorite spot on the road was the
crest of a gentle hill where we could launch the car so it could roll down that
hill under its own power. The five of us chasing that car, laughing and
shrieking, trying to hop on its running boards must have been a sight to
behold. My brother nobly steered that car to a gentle stop at a gas station
conveniently located at the bottom. The owner became our good friend that
summer and always cured whatever ailed the Packard, but only for the
moment.
Do you have a fun story from your youth to share with us? NEXT TIME: Lessons Learned.
Do you have a fun story from your youth to share with us? NEXT TIME: Lessons Learned.