In the late 1940’s when my Mom got her first paying job, she took her first paycheck and purchased a nice set of Royal dishes with the blue Currier and Ives theme. She also bought a set of Insico silverware. She gave both of these things to her mother because their family didn’t have too many nice things since my Grandpa had died at a young age and they lived in an era where people fended for themselves with the help of their relatives, church, and neighbors. She wanted to give her Mom something nice to say thank you for all of her hard work in raising three children by herself. This is my Mom.
My Dad earned his first pay by working an entire summer with his brother constructing a new chicken coop for his Grandma who lived just down the road from them. For this nearly three month building endeavor, he and his brother each earned the princely sum of $1 which was paid in the form of a silver dollar coin which my Dad promptly lost on the way home. He allegedly wore out several pairs of pants as he spent the rest of the summer on his hands and knees covering the ground between the two houses many times. While he did eventually find the coin, it obviously took some effort. Whatever he spent this dollar on is unknown and he isn’t available to answer this question anymore, but we can safely assume it wasn’t anything of lasting significance.
My first paying job, sort of anyway, was acquired in my Natural Resources and Forestry class in High School. I was 14, I believe, and some guys came into our class and asked if anyone wanted to plant trees after school and get paid for it. My friend Andy wanted to do it and he asked me to join him. After school, we got picked up in a pickup and rode in the box out of town to a rural plot of land which was mostly woods and swamp with one open field. We worked pretty hard for three or four hours planting little evergreen trees with a group of rough men who turned out to be prisoners from some jail or another that had been trucked there, like us, to plant trees. Andy and I were dropped off at the school after dark with a thank you and we went home. My Dad asked me where I had been and I explained the situation. He asked me when I would get paid and how much. I didn’t know the answer to those questions. He said that I had gotten ripped off and I protested saying that it was arranged through the school and that I’m sure my teacher had the details. The next day I asked both Andy and the teacher and neither of them had any idea who the guys had been, where we had gone, or if we were going to get paid. Shockingly, we never got paid. This was my first lesson in employee/employer relations.
My next job was at Wild Mountain in Taylor’s Falls, MN which is a small ski resort in the winter and water park in the summer. This time, I did get paid and I didn’t lose the money on the way home.
What do you think that I bought with my very first paycheck? Was it something nice to give to my parents to thank them for the stellar job they were doing raising me in the 1980’s? No. Like my Dad, I purchased something of little significance. It was a single CD player with one CD. Genesis, Invisible Touch in case you were wondering. It cost around $200 in 1986 and I even had to borrow a little extra money from my Dad because I hadn’t yet learned about a concept called sales tax.
I think these tales illustrate something about the people in them. My Mom, at age 88, is still a thoughtful and giving person. Her purchases from the late 1940’s are sitting in my kitchen and are still used daily. They are high quality items that have lasted. My Dad was a master of letting money slip through his fingers and when he passed a few years ago, he left my Mom with very little tangible wealth other than some sketchy insurance policies which she and I partially figured out after metaphorically wearing out several pairs of pants as we crawled through the legal speak and rejection notices. And me, I’m caught in between those two genetic gravitational pulls while trying to do the best I can for my family.
How did you earn your first paycheck and what did you spend it on?
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