Helping out as a child....

uncle Alan

uncle Alan

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Jul 11, 2004
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During WW II i helped mom by doing many chores.We were living on $50 a month & our house payment was $18. I trapped rabbits & got 35 cents on the hoof. Cleaned ones brought 50 cents but it was messy & time consuming. I milked goats & was paid with 2 quarts a week. I chopped blackjack oak. [hard work with a dull ax . No files available. ]

Making lye soap wasn't too bad since Chipso was 39 cents a box. Neopreme just came out. Wartime shoes had a thin sand sole over cardboard. Neopreme made shoe soles .I had several lasts & became a young shoe repairer.

Nylons weren't available [ parachutes ] & I bought a repair needle. You'd pick up a run & weave it back to the knee & tie it off. The device looked like a cant hook & it really worked. I cut lightwood & bundled it with innertube bands. Store paid me 15 cents & sold it for a quarter.


It gave me a feeling of accomplishment & bettered our standard of life.


Uncle Alan A country lad:)
 
dericdesmond said:
I often wish that I had been born around such an honorable era, cheers to Uncle Alan.
Click to expand...

I too wish this. I feel that the world has lost its innocence and its only gonna get worse. No one has respect anymore..for anyone or anything. Everyone cares about material things and we trust in science and money in stead of God and faith...it's sad and yet we don't want to change, not just as a nation but as an entire race. Their have been incredible advances within the past few years as far as medical and other areas but yet our children are hungry. Hard working men and women cannot be paid but others of us live like a king. We give to Japan, and New Zeland and Hatii but cannot give to our neighbors.
Everyone has lost touch with whats important and whats not. Back then you were happy to have what little to had but now "thank you" is not the answer " but I want that" IS.
Thank you for posting this and I commend you on doing your part for the War effort at home. God Speed.
 
Leather and Denim, today its nothing but fashion crap, thin shitty useless work dodging outerwear these days created by American fads idealism and Hollywood. I dont envy the image you shared with us Alan, infact I think you'd be disgusted had you grown up in the cities during that period.
 
Memories. Memories.

I was a bit over a month old when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. All I remember was that a few years later I would sit in my grandmother's lap while we listened to the "fireside chats".

We had it pretty good. My dad was too old to be drafted, but was in the Army Reserves anyway. He was an auto mechanic and worked in the motor pool on weekends. He got extra gas rations and other stuff.
 
Cheesum crow, Uncle Al!!

Thanks for keepin the work ethic strong and pavin' the way for me and the rest of the Baby Boomers! :thumbup: My Dad ran away at 15 to fight in the Pacific duing WWII. Many folks today can't relate to sacrifice and dedication of you and my Dad's generation. Guess we had it too good growing up.

As a spoiled Boomer, I came late to the job force starting out at the old age of 11 years. (Not counting the year prior lost delivering the San Jose Mercury News on my bicycle - up at the butt-crack of dawn to fold, stuff, carry, and sling 120+ papers from the AMF Roadmaster's mounted dual shopping cart sized baskets. (Hated the fvckwads that refused to pony up the $2.75 and would sic their dogs on me come monthly collection time!) Worked the fields picking apricots, walnuts, prunes, snap beans, cucumbers, tomatos, and occassionally lettuce and strawberries over the hill in Watsonville. Pay rate was usually 10 - 25 cents a lug, basket, or 5 gallon bucket - quite a fortune compared to the San Josey M-News or Uncle Alan wages! The bracero program was still going strong at the time so had some fierce job hunting competition from the migrant horde. I also remember the shacks these seasonal workers lived in.

1297011427_bracero-program.jpg


These wooden-walled babies were far sturdier than the tar-paper shacks I remember some of my friends (and their whole families) lived in. Talk about a work ethic - most of the children often worked with Mom and Dad in the same fields.

Then I moved up and got a monster raise when I started cuttin' 'cots at $.45 for a 4' x 8' tray. On your feet 9 - 10 hours a day with dull knives halving fruit and thumbing pits for the sulfer ovens. Lost a lot of platelets and plasma helping to feed America. Made nearly $100 in one season but don't remember seeing too many of these babes at the Pedrizetti's orchard.

cuttingcots.jpg

No time to make time anyway - the owner's son was a modern day slave driver on the cutting floor.

I cleaned offices when the family moved to Oakland. But got lucky with the Youth Opportunity Program when I worked part-time at the Oakland Post Office. All of my $3.00/hour went to pay for tuition and clothes/uniforms at the Catholic HS I went to.

Got the big break when I joined the Air Force in '71. All of that $140.00/month was mine...Mine....MINE! (And all I had to do was help defend my Country!)

Things have sure changed......

Thanks for bringin' back the memories Uncle Alan, :)


j - just a semi-city slicker with country roots
 
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My dad's told me several times that growing up in the late 40s and 50s was like living on another planet compared to now.
True from the 70s, even, for me. We had responsibility even as children. We put up our own stuff when we were 3. I babysat my brother and changed diapers when I was 5, and was expected to do all the yard work by 11. I've had several very physical jobs, and never let another man outwork me, but still have a canceled check from when my grandfather offered to pay me a little bit for helping him for a day when I was a teenager. I thought I'd worked hard, but he was not happy. At the bottom of the check it says "for doing nothing".
'Course he was missing school to work in the fields, and had a side job unloading wagons when he was 12. Apparently our ideas of "hard work" were two very different things.
Now it's 2011, and my neighbor has 3 teenage sons, but cuts his own grass:rolleyes:
 
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