A few days ago I was talking with someone about weird jobs we’d had when we were quite young. That caused me to really think about some weird jobs I had myself. Some of my first jobs weren’t weird at all, others were a little different than the typical jobs young folks get.
I worked doing whatever I could do to make some money as soon as I figured out how to do that. I did the normal things you do when you are under 16 years of age and can’t legally get a job. I mowed lawns during the summer and shoveled sidewalks and driveways in the winter. I got really good at fixing bicycles and became the go-to guy in my neighborhood for other kids who couldn’t be bothered figuring that out. I would also ride my bike around and look for loose change that people had dropped in parking lots of shopping centers. You’d be amazed how many pennies, nickels, and dimes I’d find. I would ride my bike to Stapelton International Airport and go to all the payphone kiosks looking for the change in the change compartment of those phones. A good $2.50 to $3.00 bucks could be had with one sweep of the airport. I’d do this two or three times each week.
I also got creative. I bought these small clear marbles at the Five and Dime store for one penny a piece. I then “cooked them” in a cast iron skillet slowly heating them up until they cracked just a little bit in their centers. They were still intact marbles but looked like nothing you could buy anywhere. Being unique, I was able to sell them to other kids for 2 cents each (100% markup). I thought that was a neat trick but it also dates me. What kid has marbles anymore?
Another thing I figured out was that kids got tired of their toys pretty fast. This was back in the days when toys were not computer games and the like. Toys were just toys. What I’d do is trade some super cheap toy I had to another kid for the toy they’d gotten bored with that was clearly worth more. This worked because having some new toy to play with was valued more than whatever their parents had paid for the toy they’d become bored with and I got in exchange. I’d keep trading up until I finally had something worth some real money which I could then sell to an older kid who had money from getting an allowance. Once I traded up all the way to acquiring a “Rock’em Sock’en Robots” that was as good as new. These babies were an expensive toy if you bought them from a store. They cost $14.95 which was crazy expensive. Heck, you could buy a GE personal record player for $19.95 and Polaroid “Swinger” cameras for $19.95 as well. I sold that baby for $12 bucks to some kid. He was glad to get one for $3 bucks less than in the store and tax free to boot. For me, it was $12 bucks I made for simply trading toys...all profit. The toy I’d first traded to get the ball rolling was a wooden train that you pulled with a string. I got that when I was 4 years old. It was just a blue hunk of wood that was sort of shaped like a locomotive. I hadn’t played with it in years.
The first “job” I got was subbing for my oldest friend. He worked on the weekends doing dishes and cleaning a Jewish Delicatessen. We were both the same age...14 years old. Well, I'm 3 days older than he is. We're still friends and will be attending a Jethro Tull concert in Sacramento come June. The owners paid us cash as we were too young to legally have a job. The minimum wage was $1.60 back then. We were paid $1.25 in cash. That was a win-win. The owners didn’t have to deal with any paperwork and we likely ended up with more than we would have otherwise. It turned out I did a much better job than my friend so the owners wanted to fire him and have me do the weekend job. I declined. I wouldn’t do that to my friend.
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I had one job that resulted in rubbing up against a celebrity. During two summers when I was in high school, I was a caddy. It was a good job because I got to be outdoors. I’d have to ride my bike several miles to get to the golf course which was a country club. It no longer exists as the land became too valuable and was sold off to make way for McMansions to be built southeast of Denver proper. What I’d do is sit on a bench situated at the entrance. If a person wanted a caddy, they’d take the “next one in line.”
I realized there is a problem with the game of golf. Unlike games that are active, golf wasn’t. When you are playing an active game, say tennis or soccer, for instance, you are reacting to the ball moving around. You don’t have time to really think about it. You just react. In golf, the ball sits on the ground. People psyche themselves out because they have time to think about their swing. I’d hear a guy say to himself, “Don’t slice, don’t slice.” Then, of course, he’d slice the ball. Once I understood this, I could then make myself helpful (and thus get a better payout). I’d suggest a specific iron to use somewhere along the course. I knew nothing about golf. I’d never played the game. I’d tell some guy to use a 4-iron for their next shot. They’d look at me with a puzzled look. I told them, “trust me, you’ll see.” (I was totally bullshitting, btw). Sure enough, they’d hit a great ball. Why? Because they didn’t think about what club to use and didn’t psyche themselves out as much.
One day a group came through that included → Dick Clark and he chose me to be his caddy. I was thrilled! It was the summer of 1974. They played 18 holes which typically took anywhere from 4 to 4.5 hours. Dick Clark had the heaviest damned golf bag I’d ever lugged around. He had two of every club and a bunch of things stuffed in the pockets. He was super nice too. Back then he was called “the ageless one.” Guess what? It was crap. He had deep horizontal grooves in his forehead. He’d clearly spent a lot of time in the sun...probably playing golf and hanging out on beaches in the tropics. I could tell the Dick Clark I saw on TV was obviously covered in a bunch of makeup.
After a game of golf, the players head to the clubhouse for food and drinks. While they are doing that, their caddy cleans up their golf clubs meaning you’d polish the woods and soak the irons in a semi-caustic solution for a while to dissolve grass stains. You then placed them all back in their golf bags. Woods typically had little “socks” to cover them (wtf?).
Dick Clark is dead so now I can confess what I did to his golf clubs. You see, Dick Clark ended up paying me the least amount of money I ever got being a caddy. He was so nice but also a cheapskate. His golf bag was ridiculously heavy which meant I worked harder at lugging it around the course than any other I’d lugged before. I was annoyed he paid me so little. So I soaked his woods in the caustic solution used for the irons. I did it for spite. I didn’t leave them in long enough to do any damage. I took them out after a minute then dutifully polished them. It was just an exercise I did for myself to vent a little frustration for having been paid so little. But it was Dick Clark and I have a real story now about having been his caddy once.
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