When I was an 11-year-old living in West Virginia, my best friend was a boy named Danny Pierce. He lived on the other side of the ratty old public golf course adjacent to my family’s house. Some “greens” on this course were made of sand, and a foulsmelling brown creek ran through the crabgrass-covered “fairways.” After Danny’s beagle had puppies, I’d rush over to his house after school to see the them. I really wanted one of those puppies, and so did my brother Tony. Danny’s father said we could each have a puppy for $5, but we had to earn the money ourselves to pay for them.

My brother had a paper route, so earning $5 was no problem for him. I decided to make potholders and sell them around the neighborhood. It was easy selling potholders to my mother’s friends, but not so easy selling them to strangers. After several weeks, I managed to earn my $5. So, one happy day we went over to Danny’s house and purchased our two lively puppies: Salt (Tony’s) and Pepper (mine). They were good investments; Salt lived for 15 years; Pepper lived for 12 years.

Thoughts of that experience sparked memories of my other youthful jobs:

Ice cream scooper: I spent one summer at the Charcoal Pit in Wilmington, Delaware making ice creams sundaes for $1/hour. Every high school in the area had a sundae named after its mascot (the “Green Knight,” the “Red Rocket,” etc.), so I scooped a lot of sundaes, especially on Friday nights. My arm and wrist got a real workout.

Howard Johnson’s bus boy: The pay was better ($1.25/hour) that summer, but the work was harder. My boss, a horn-rimmed glasses bald guy named Arnold, had no sense of humor, especially if a busboy (me) dropped a tray full of dishes (twice).

Refreshment stand cleaner: Three other college students and I got hired at $1.37/hour to clean refreshment stands at the Brandywine Raceway. The races ran at night; we cleaned up the stands the next day. Scrubbing greasy hot dog grills was the worst task, but cleaning popcorn poppers was no picnic either. When we finished our stands we’d spend the last hour or so playing cards in a women’s rest room, figuring (rightly) that no one would find us there.

Selling Collier’s encyclopedias door to door. The “boss,” a sleazeball supreme, dropped three of us off in the middle of a lower-middle class area in Providence, Rhode Island. We’d learned the sales schtick during orientation: “Tell ‘em you’re doing a television survey and want to ask them some questions. Ask them if they like their kids and want to do what’s best for them. When they say, ‘Yes,’ tell them you’re willing to place a set of encyclopedias in their house for free. All they have to do is agree to buy the $35 annual update every year for 10 years. Point out that that’s cheaper than a pack of cigarettes a day. After they agree, tell them they have to pay the $350 at the beginning to show good faith.” If we “placed” a set we got a check for $50, good money at the time. I almost “sold,” er, “placed” a set the second day, but I felt so guilty that I quit.

Cinder block mover: My shortest job, though, lasted just one day. I spent one whole day moving cinder blocks from Point A to Point B for a Manpower, Inc. job. More than my arm and wrist hurt after that gig.

Paper typer: As a Bowdoin student, I typed papers for other students for 25 cents a page. Not a bad way to earn beer money!

This eclectic array of jobs instilled good lessons:

1. There are good bosses and bad bosses. (Being your own boss is often best.)

2. There are some great — and not-so-great — people in every job. (Except, maybe, encyclopedia hustling.)

3. If you’ve worked hard to buy something, that something means more to you than if someone just gives it to you.

4. You’re lucky if you find a job (career) that you’re passionate about.

5. Ethics matter.

6. Education matters.

In my day, every high school or college kid worked every summer. That’s just the way it was. I may be wrong, but that doesn’t seem to be the case today, especially among the young people of well-to-do families. They’re off to Europe in the summer or doing “community service” somewhere to buff up their college applications or just kicking around the country club.

I was very proud of my grandson David IV when he went out and got his own lowlevel manual job for the city of Bellevue, Washington, even though his dad (my son) could buy him anything. I don’t know what he’s actually doing in that job, but I’m pretty sure it beats cleaning popcorn machines or hawking encyclopedias. And he’ll learn some valuable lessons in the process.

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David Treadwell, a Brunswick writer, welcomes comments or suggestions for future articles. dtreadw575@aol.com.