The traveling part of the summer vacation is over, Old Settlers and the 4^th of July are just cotton candy memories. Half of the summer still lies ahead of us and now my 10-year-old is looking for summer work. She had heard, from a cousin who helped Grandpa with some irrigation pipe, that she could make a couple of dollars if she volunteered to go with Grandpa the next time he needed some help. One would think that 10 is young for that sort of monetary consideration but we’re dealing with a farm-kid-slightly-removed, here and the calculation of dollars per hour x number of hours is one of the first math lessons we tend to set to memory, for some reason.

Her eagerness to earn had me reminiscing: as kids we had so many summer jobs, like everyone else here in farm country, and we started just as early, if not earlier. We started young by helping Mom in the garden; weeding and gathering various vegetables, most memorable was that of picking peas and shelling them. We three girls used to sit in the kitchen with the 5-gallon buckets, full of peas from the garden, and we were tasked with shelling them. I’m sure we ate more than ever ended up in the bowl. We picked eggs in the morning, going to war on a regular basis with the hens who weren’t so willing to give up their unborn, then we washed them and helped put them in the cartons for selling. A major summer project happened every year in August when generations came to the farm to help butcher chickens; my first taste of assembly line work. The birds came to our table freshly deceased, ready to be dipped in boiling water and plucked clean by our small, nimble fingers. Once we finished with them, they were waved over the lit plate of alcohol to get the pin feathers, and then my favorite part: the removing of the innards. I used to love to watch over Grandma’s shoulder as she made quick work with her skilled hands and sharpened, butcher knife. One swift cut, her hand went in and came out with the chicken’s innards, the neck, the heart and gizzard (Czech: pupecny or “pupec” for short) went to the side to be returned to the empty cavity in the bird once they were cleaned and the rest into the waste bin. I often think that my choice of livelihood and my fascination with forensics and the human body began at those marathon sessions with family all around, preparing those several hundred birds for sale.

My fondest, and absolute earliest job memory, plays out in the milk barn at the age of five or so. The “job: entailed carrying the crushed corn from the granary room around the cows’ backsides, past the stanchions that locked their heads in line, and pouring it in front of their cool, prickly yet velvety, soft, wet noses while business was being conducted on the other end. I remember how much easier the cows were to pet, once you fed them. The most interesting job was “the moving of the manure”; although that isn’t quite the term we used at the time. Basically, you took a scraper to the cement and walked along behind it until you got to the end of the slab, then you flicked the feces into the pen. It was linear work, design and imagination were allowed as long as you got the job done. As you can imagine, it wasn’t a social job that had everyone around you talking your ear off; if you weren’t tasked with it, you stayed far away, so there was time to ponder life and I have always appreciated that sort of work.

Eventually, we moved into the new milk barn at the top of the hill and that was cleaner and shinier but way more complicated and high tech, still there was always manure to be moved, and even with a high-pressure hose it smelled as sweet. Milking was a consistent job during our teenage years, all year ’round. There were names on the calendar in schedule-like fashion and you had better been up there by 5 pm on your turn or there were some anxious bovines in the pen mooing and there was no hiding the fact that you were off dawdling somewhere. Those cows taught us that there are certain things in life that just can’t wait.

I’ll bet everyone remembers walking beans the old-fashioned way, with the hoe or the corn knife? It doesn’t seem like that long ago but talking with my younger brothers who experienced things differently; they rode the “bean buggy” instead, it has been a quite a few years since that “Round-up Ready” era came into being. We walked beans with our folks when we were so small that the only way they could find us in the rows was by the white glow coming off of our blond heads. I can’t recall at what point we actually became responsible for our own rows but we walked right alongside them until we could tell the difference between a weed and a bean and we were big enough to get the better of them when we attempted to pull those “plants whose virtues have not yet been discovered” according to Ralph Waldo Emerson. Sure, at times, we were allowed to screw around in the end rows but that usually ended up in fighting and loud screaming about one thing or another between the four of us and we were sentenced to the perpetual walking once again.

When we got older, we worked on “bean crews” with kids from school and that was a blast. We worked hard but we played harder. As you can imagine, with a crew of adolescent, teen-aged boys and girls in tank tops and shorts, left all day on their own to talk and fool around while working a fairly monotonous job…the pranks got pretty imaginative. I learned that a young boy’s obsession with a girl wearing a tube top can be never-ending. We were constantly pulling rocks, seed pods, and my favorite: young, tad-pole-tailed, frogs out of our tube tops because that sort of joke just never lost it’s luster out in the fields. In turn we often “pantsed” the boys and somehow we girls didn’t get the same lasting joy as they seemed to get from the tube top fun.

It was either too hot or bone-chilling, cold and wet. You might have started out in the morning, donning the most stylish of garbage bag wear; worn up-side-down with a large hole for your head and two others for your arms to help keep you dry. Later in the summer, it was hot even at sunrise as you rode to the fields and you knew then, that it was going to be a long day. I remember wishing for clouds to accumulate and throw some lightening. We all knew, just a tiny flicker, was cause for an extra break because you couldn’t be in the field if there was a chance of electrocution….rules are rules after all. Most days though, there wasn’t a cloud in the sky and it was scorching hot and somehow I don’t remember anyone worrying about sunscreen; we were all tanned dark for the summer, back then.

Bean walking was the big money maker but there were other jobs. Most of us had a steady babysitting job, work on our folks’ farms was always available, irrigation assistance was always needed, I even did perms for boys with mullets in the basement of our house. After a quick lesson in perm application I became an expert and am embarrassed to say that I was an instrumental part of perpetuating that ’80s fad in this area. Then, of course the Rawhide in the evenings. I started busing tables there when I was 14, when we were old enough we waited tables. I worked in the kitchen on the salad side, washed dishes, washed floors, and I even cleaned the hood over the stoves a couple of summers. The Rawhide Steakhouse, for me, was a wealth of employment opportunity and I imagine it still is if you are willing to work in the evenings.

A willingness to work: I guess that’s the key to any summer job and I’m trying to pass that on to my daughter as I am starting to see the trademark dollar signs in her eyes when she talks to me so eagerly about going to Grandpa’s to “work”. I explained that she has to put all of her effort into what ever he wants her to do, she has to stay and finish the job, and she has to pay attention and listen because, unless he’s a changed man; “I’m only going to show you this once and then I expect you to do it the same way each time” was always his way, at least since I’ve come to know him. I’m the same way with her and she does a heck of a job putting dishes away, sweeping, vacuuming the rugs, dusting, and folding clothes to help me out, for nothing! Well, so far for nothing. I think she’s ready for Grandpa and I know she’ll make me proud when she’s working along with him just like we used to do, when we were those farm kids, daydreaming about all of the things we would buy with our earnings; like school clothes and gas for the cars we bought on our own.