My first real job with time cards, paychecks and such was when I was about 12 or 13 years old. It was in some greenhouses about a mile down the road owned by one of our neighbors. It was about 7 acres under glass growing everything from Roses to Mum's, pointsettas and various other flowers the owner decided to try to see if they were workable.
I did all manner of labor and worked with grown men and was expected to do the same work as any one else. In fact the older married guys had better jobs, better pay and more respect in general. We got the s#i! work. I had a Camillus sawcut delrin Barlow with the main blade missing maybe a third where someone tried prying with it. I found it at a construction site on the ground and got the pivots working again, and learned to sharpen on it. I sure didn't have money for knives and my parents would have laughed at the idea of buying me something and lectured me about wasting money ( which I didn't have to waste anyway). I used that knife to cut twine, rope, plant parts, open bags, tear down boxes, cut or trim plastic to "shade", as well as everything one typically needs a knife for. Even at that age I never pried or did things with it I shouldn't have. I had to take care of it at first as I needed a knife. By the time I could buy my own I didn't bother as that Barlow with the broken blade was bonded to me and it was all I needed. I had another large camping type knife I found as well, but it was like a 10 inch swiss army knife with full size fork and spoon. That's one of the few knives I don't know what happened to it. I still have most of my old ones.
I was o salary starting at $1.20 per hour or thereabouts. I was given a raise to $2.00 per hour after I worked there 2 years as about 4 or 5 of us threatened to quit unless we got raises.
25-35 hours on school weeks. Holidays and summer breaks was 45 to 65 hours per week. It was a lot of hours. By the time I left I was able to drive any vehicle, truck, forklift, various tractors, back hoes and a dozer. A small, old one. D3 or 4 maybe? Probably WW2 vintage.
When I was 13 I was doing things like picking up a 8 hp rototiller and putting it up onto an elevated bed, running it, adding more soil from 60 lb bags ( unloaded from a truck and carried to the greenhouse, dumped and mixed in with the tiller along with the right amount of "pearlite".
It was very hot in the summer, In addition to that we had to steam the soil between plantings which meant huge canvas unrolled with live steam pumped in to get the soil hot enough to sterilize. That would make it pretty bad on already hot days. It wasn't uncommon for us to need salt tabs because of the huge water intake. That was an important lesson learned and one I had to use again out west later in my life working on the Railroad in track maintenance.
It was a tough group. We were all strong from the hard work and all male work force certainly made for a talkative, mildly violent group of guys. It wasn't uncommon for us to go out back on our 15 minute break, fight, then go back to work. We were used to bleeding from work anyway. There was always something waiting to cut, slice, or tear or imbed in your skin. Due to my own negligence once stapled myself with a large industrial staple ( box making machine with the bronze staple material on a large coil). It went through the web between my finger and thumb fortunately because if it caught a bone it would have crushed it to powder, then stapled it back on. I broke a couple ribs when my boss/owner decided we weren't going fast enough putting soil up on some elevated rows. He had a front shovel on one of the tractors and we were supposed to stand there and hold the wheelbarrow while keeping the wheel, and our feet on an 6 inch board which kept us from falling through the rotting old wooden row. We also couldn't stand up as there were steel framework above the rows used to enclose the house with plastic to "shade" the flowers which meant we controlled the amount of light the plants get to fool them into thinking it was time to bloom.
As my drunk boss got on the tractor to show us how to do it faster after cussing us out he took the shovel and dumped it all at once onto the wheelbarrow. That caused it to fold up left with the impact causing the wheelbarrows handles to hit me. One low, one in the ribs. It threw me about 5 feet into a space between rows. My boss looked me in the eye after I was done clearing my head and figuring out what was damaged and he gave the tractor back to the original driver and took off not to be seen that day again. As I didn't have a compound fracture I just waited for it to heal and never bothered with a doctor. Heck, I never saw a doctor growing up except once when I needed a note for sports. My first real exam was when I joined the army. Things were different, as they say.
I had the opportunity to learn that old 1940's and 50's ford tractors ( 20 to 25 hp) did not have brakes that worked while going backwards powered or rolling down a hill. I almost rolled back into the greenhouses while learning that one. We were just expected to know these things by osmosis I suppose.
I worked there about 3 years until our family moved from Ohio to Michigan when the Federal government decided they wanted our farm as part of a national park. They decided what the fair price was and condemned the land. It worked out all right in the aspect of Michigan being beautiful and full of excellent, down to earth Midwestern girls. There was lots better fishing up there too.
Joe
). That experience really taught me a lot, things that stay with me to this day.
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