Readers recall their character-building first jobs — babysitting, worms, paper routes, dead chickens and all — and wonder about today’s work ethic.
When Crystal Savage was 13 years old, she hauled the daily papers both before school and after to put a few bucks in her pocket.
She did that for two years, until she could get a work permit, and then she went off to work at the Dairy Joy in Auburn. Eventually, Savage worked her way up to another job and then another after that.
It’s the same pattern of employment most of us followed as we tottered through our adolescence and into adulthood: You got a job and you stuck with it until something better came along. If you wanted any sort of financial independence, you had to work for it, and there were very few exceptions to this rule.
These days? Not so much. We’re in an age where three out of 10 young adults ages 18 to 34 are still living with their parents, after all. Good luck trying to convince your teenager to put his phone down and go look for a job.
Work ethic? What the heck is that?
It’s not just your imagination: Kids really do work less than they used to. According to the Bureau of Labor, the number of 16- to 19-year-olds with at least summer jobs fell from 55 percent (in the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s) to just 35 percent in in recent years.
“My son is 16 and does have a job,” says Savage, “but he complains about a four-hour shift. My daughter is 14 and thinks chores are a cruel and unusual punishment.”
We asked other readers what they thought of the situation. They responded at once, not only occasionally offering their thoughts on the slothful youth of the day, but also waxing poetic about their first tastes of the working world.
Dead chickens? Really?
Gerry Bell, Bethel
The encyclopedia salesman knocked on my parents’ door one evening in the fall of 1958 and said, “I’m responding to a request for information about the Encyclopedia Britannica that came from this address.” My mother, really irritated, said, “We certainly didn’t ask for any information about the Encyclopedia Britannica!”
But I, all of 11 years old, said, “No . . . I did.”
The guy spread all his brochures out on the coffee table, the living room floor, any flat surface. Twenty-four hard-bound gold-lettered volumes of the Encyclopedia Britannica, the pre-internet fount of all knowledge, plus a huge world atlas, plus the Book of the Year for the next 10 years, plus a walnut bookcase to hold everything. All for twenty-four monthly installments, no interest, of $15.20.
My parents agreed: “We can’t afford it.” I said, “I want it, and I’ll earn the money to pay for it.” They said, “How?” I said, “I’ll mow lawns in the summer, shovel sidewalks and driveways in the winter, rake leaves in the fall . . . and in the spring, I’ll think of something.”
“No, you’ll never be able to do it, or you’ll stop, and then it’ll fall on us.”
The encyclopedia salesman, on his knees on the living room rug with his brochures, looked at them with an amazed look on his face. I could see the thought balloon above his head: “Do you realize what you’ve got with this kid? Are you people crazy?”
They finally said yes. The deal was something akin to my first mortgage 15 years later. A monthly nut — in this case, $15.20 — and by God, you better not miss it. I didn’t. My parents’ yard and driveway, my grandparents’, my uncles’ and whoever on the street didn’t have a kid already in bondage. Minimum wage laws were a fantasy – it was piecework. My grandfather had the largest yard, mowing it was a couple hours’ work, and I got a buck a week from him.
But every month, I made the nut. When I went off to college years later, I took the Britannica with me, to save trips to the college library to look up some obscure factoid. My parents were irate.
“Aren’t you going to leave it for your brothers?”
“No – it’s mine. I bought it, I earned it, I paid for it and it’s mine!”
There are all kinds of lessons in there, I guess. The Encyclopedia Britannica is dust now, replaced by the internet. The 10 Books of the Year are gone, ’60 ancient history. The atlas is discarded, obsolete: half the nations have changed, including the United States, because Alaska and Hawaii are marked as territories.
But I still have the walnut bookcase, and every time I look at it, I remember the lesson I learned: You can do anything you set your mind to.
We should give kids today the same chance to discover that lesson. It’s illuminated my whole life, and it will theirs too.
Kelly Briggs, Auburn
My first job I held was a concession cashier at our local bowling alley in Lewiston back in the good ol’ days — you know . . . the early 2000s. I loved feeling like I was accomplishing something, whether it was filling what seemed like a million dressing cups to delivering pizza to a table for a kid’s birthday party. I’ll never forget the owner telling me that I was the best cashier they ever had. My favorite thing was to call out orders over the speaker in different accents and get a weird look when they picked up their french fries or what have you. Gotta have a little fun right? A first job is a very humbling experience. You realize how hard your family works to put a roof over your head and food on the table.
Tim Lajoie, Lewiston
I don’t ever remember not working.
I had a paper route at 9 or 10. Not much money it seems, maybe $5 bucks a week or so in tips, but in the 1970s it kept me in candy, baseball cards and concessions at the arena while public skating or seeing a hockey game. It could be cold in the winter, dragging around that hunter’s-orange shoulder paper bag, but I learned the value of working, punctuality AND good customer service. You had to personally collect back then (knock on the door and say in your most pleasant voice: “Collecting!”) and the right personality and smile always got you a good tip. The paper was $.75 a week then. I had 25 customers. You could usually get a buck from each house with a nice “Keep the change,” which meant $.25 times 25 houses. Christmas week collection was always nice. A good paperboy could haul in maybe $25 bucks and some toll house chocolate chip cookies. Funny, some of those people still live in those homes and I’m their city councilor. They’re much older now, of course, but I always get a kick out of that thought when I go through their neighborhoods.
At 15 my father got me a temporary job hammering out sheet metal cylinders – they were used to protect the lights on the scoreboard at the Lewiston Raceway and Scarborough Downs. I had to hammer out 5,000 of those things with a mallet and got 75 cents apiece for them, or about $385 bucks for the whole job. I remember what I bought with the money: my first boom box, a bunch of music cassettes, some trendy clothes for school. Again, never saw the curse in it. Money was freedom.
Bert Pare, Lewiston
Summer 1961: My first job was with a Pepsi truck driver, not the company. I had to get all the returnable bottles on the truck. No cans or plastic in those days, all thick heavy glass. They were stored in back rooms, sheds, cellars and even crawl spaces. Hot work in July and August. Monday and Thursday in Augusta. Tuesday and Friday in Brunswick. Wednesday in Rockland. 45- to 50-hour week for $10. On the plus side: no taxes, all cash money and all the free Pepsi I wanted to drink. Happy to see school start that fall.
Roger G. Philippon, dean of Public Affairs CMCC
My first real job was actually at the Sun Journal! It was the summer of ’72 and I was hired to work part-time in the mail room by my old Horton Street neighbor Bob Giguere. I think my hours were from 1-4 a.m., and my job was to grab bundles of papers as they came off the conveyor — and they came down that damn conveyor much too fast, I might add! How many times did I want to yell out “Stop the Press!” Also, I had to watch out for skunks while walking to work. And one time a moose-on-the loose on Bates Street scared the crap out of me.
Christine Grindle, Pownal
No, I don’t think kids should be required to have a job, but I do think they should be encouraged to do more than what is required, whether it’s extracurricular activities, volunteer work or an actual job.
When I was in high school, I participated in many extracurricular groups . . . maybe too many, which took up most of my time and was pretty exhausting in and of itself. However, there was a rule in my house that if you wanted something extra (be it a car, extra spending money, or in my case — a prom dress) you had to earn the money to pay for it yourself. So my junior year I got a part-time job working at the front counter at a laundromat, so that I would be able to pay for prom. It was tiring, but it was also a really educational experience and it felt good to be able to pay for my prom dress/ticket/etc., with my own money.
I spent that same junior year at a high school in Michigan and one thing I thought was really interesting about that school, which I think all high schools should adopt, is a requirement to complete a certain number of community volunteer hours before you’re allowed to graduate. I think you had to complete 50 volunteer hours over the course of the four years, which seemed really reasonable.
David Orino, Lewiston
Always made a couple bucks mowing, raking, shoveling. Memere paid in cookies, doughnuts and pie. Grampy paid in U.S. dollars.
The real fun started the summer I turned 11. The family had a camp on a lake where I liked to do a lot of fishing. When the price of night crawlers rose to a dollar a dozen, I discovered I could save some money by picking my own. Night crawlers, that is. My agent — AKA: Dad — got me a deal with the campground on our lake for 3 cents apiece and they would take all I could pick. I could go out just about any night and pick 50 or so in an hour. (Minimum wage back then was 70 cents an hour so $1.50 an hour wasn’t too shabby.) By age 13, I could pick with both hands simultaneously while holding the flashlight in my mouth. We did not have headlamps back then. On a good, rainy night, I would bike eight or nine miles round-trip to the local golf course, where I could snag close to a thousand slimy slitherers in three hours. Ten bucks an hour was nothing to sneeze at in 1970.
Marilyn Burgess, Leeds
My first job as a high school senior used skills that I had been taught at home. I was a young senior at 16 and lived seven or eight miles from Edward Little. We went to school from 7 a.m. to 1 p.m.
There was no bus transportation so I rode to school with a neighbor or my father when he went to work and waited until 5 p.m when he got out of work to ride home.
I suspect my parents were looking for a way to keep me out of trouble and earn some spending money to tide me over while I completed the nurses’ training they had in mind for me. In those days, you didn’t have to pay tuition, you worked in the hospital to pay for your education.
Sometimes people contacted the school looking for students for part-time jobs. Every afternoon after school, I walked about three-quarters of a mile to my employers’ and did housework. The lady of the house, a professional woman, was never home while I was there. She had told me what she wanted done and I still marvel at her trust. I did dishes, made beds, light cleaning and occasionally she would have ironing or some other chore set out. If I found myself at loose ends, I would find my own work, cleaning out drawers or straightening cupboards. Always an introvert, I was perfectly happy on my own.
My next “job,” which amounted to earning my nurses’ training, was much more difficult in every way and it was only by the grace of God that I accomplished it. Remember I am an introvert and I was put into the most intimate contact with people in a difficult spell of their life — every moment of my working day!
Nurses’ training was highly regimented, almost like being in the Army. We had to sign out every time we left the dorm, be in by 10 p.m., have parents’ permission to be out overnight and were occasionally “grounded” at the whim of the nursing school administrator. At 18 I was in charge of a ward at night, alone, with up to 30 patients. I went to school days and worked 11-7 for 17 straight days once. I found this strange mix of trust and rigid oversight irritating and I began to rebel against both parental control and what I perceived as the convent-like control by the nursing school.
I knew bedside nursing wasn’t going to be my life career fairly soon, but I was stubborn — that being both my strength and my weakness. I finished my training as valedictorian of my class in spite of being suspended twice. Although I wasn’t suited to bedside nursing, I had a talent for the medical field and went on to jobs that I not only liked but that provided a good living and very comfortable early retirement.
I would like to say to young folks: Get yourself a good cache of knowledge – you can always tweak it to suit yourself later.
Carolyn Tucker, Minot
My very first paid job was working for a neighbor picking up dead chickens. They had multiple barns and raised chickens for Hillcrest from chick ’til they were ready for slaughter. I got to pick up the ones that didn’t last that long. The important thing was to find them early, before they got really ripe.
Meredith Kendall, Lewiston
I babysat for a family with six kids. One night there was a knock on the door. It was the police! They had the youngest, in his feety jammies. They’d found him wandering down the middle of the street. I hadn’t even noticed he was missing. I quit babysitting after that and went back to being an unemployed kid.
Jim Palmer, New Auburn
I cheated! I started playing bass in rock ‘n’ roll bands when I was 13 years old making $16 a weekend at the Jacques Cartier Hall on the corner of Lisbon and Chestnut in Lewiston up on the third floor. Just think about how much $16 was worth in 1967! I only got my first REAL job in January of 1973 at Dory-Hannah Shoe, but have always retained my skills as a bassist to this very day still playing bass with various blues acts. Finally retired from BIW after 28 years!
Mary Graziano Richard
When I was younger, I started working at the age of 10; doing dishes. By the time I was 12, I started learning to cook. I used to beg my dad to let me come to work. I loved it. I think kids should have to learn to work young. I will miss having the restaurant to teach my young daughter.
Daniel Tanguay, Lewiston
Had a four-seasons business in a neighborhood of senior citizens, on top of my paper routes delivering the Lewiston Sun and Lewiston Journal (back when there were both). I shoveled driveways in the winter, swept the winter sands into piles in the spring, mowed lawns in the summer and raked and bagged leaves in the fall. My parents didn’t need to give me an allowance, I earned my own. Always had money to go to the arcade, plus cash to stuff my face with fried chicken and tater wedges at Andy’s (the local corner store that housed a little arcade plus made the best food). I even sorted returnable bottles for the store when they needed it.
Nowadays I see so many coddled kids not learning the value of a hard-earned buck. It’s sad that society has shifted in that direction. Children being handed things for doing nothing has brought about the lazy generation I see today. No, not all are lazy, but as a whole it seems to me that it is a lazy and ungrateful generation.
I truly believe that teaching kids the value of work is exactly what is needed. It isn’t child abuse or child labor, it is education of values, something that I find lacking in our youth today. I hope your article points that out to the young parents out there that didn’t get to learn those values themselves.
Sandy Cullinan, Norway
I obtained my teaching certificate in advanced first aid from the Red Cross . . . got a driving job for an ambulance service as I went on to get my advanced EMT license (then I sat in the back!)(the white coat that tied in the back came later) . . . did that through high school and college.
And yes . . . I think unless there’s a reason not to, all kids should do something, if for no other reason than to become “socialized” with other human beings.
Sally Townsend Theriault, Rumford
Age 12, babysitting for a drunk couple who were having marital problems. I think they needed babysitting more than the kids did. I didn’t get paid half the time. They taught me what NOT to do when I had kids of my own.
Ralph Johnson, Dixfield
About age 12 I started working summers for my father as a roofer, lugging shingles up the ladder while he and his crew nailed them on. I worked for him six summers learning the trade. Sometimes I miss it. Those days I could look over my shoulder and see how much I had accomplished. Now, as a manager, it is not as straight forward to have a daily since of accomplishment.
Nancy Townsend Johnson, Dixfield
My very first job was delivering the Lewiston Daily Sun in my neighborhood (Smithcrossing), starting when I was maybe 11. And of course babysitting for neighborhood families as I got older. I worked on the kitchen crew at Camp Waziyatah one summer too. My first job once I was living on my own was as a CNA at the Jewish Home for the Aged in Portland. I spent my first Christmas away from home there!
Bonny Gonya, Dixfield
Babysitting the neighbors’ kids at 14 years old. A summer job at Country Kitchen Bakery sorting burger rolls. The next summer I got to be away from home, working at a gift shop at the Sandcastle Inn at Old Orchard Beach, and what a great summer! Great tan, new friends, no parents hovering, and the pay was pretty good for a 17-year-old!
Bobbi Frechette, Auburn
My first real job was cook/manager of Uncle Moe’s Diner in Sabattus. I got the job so I could by my own school clothes (high-wasted jeans and a leather jacket!). It was the mid-’70s. I loved my job. It was then I found my passion for cooking for others! I worked six or seven days a week and went to school too!
Tracy Clark Gosselin, Lisbon
My first money-making endeavour was when I was 9. We lived in Presque Isle and had a home on the outskirts of town with no close neighbors. Babysitting was out. So, I grew pumpkins. I spent the summer weeding and watering, watching the tiny green blobs get bigger and turn orange. I harvested 907 pounds of pumpkins and sold them to the local Red & White grocery store for 9 cents per pound. Dad and I measured the pumpkins at a truck scale. I bought my winter coat that year.
Brenda Akers, Lewiston
My first job was at Dunkin Donuts in Westbrook, 1974, I was 17. Little pink dress. Made change without a computer, doing the math in my head. And I stopped eating doughnuts after a while. Oh, minimum wage for minors was $1.65 and when I turned 18, it went up to $1.85. I remember soon after when the minimum wage was over $2 an hour! And then, $3 by the time I joined the Army.
My youngest son is 17 and his first job was a teen catering training program with Lots To Gardens. He was paid $7.50 an hour.
Jonathan P. LaBonte, Auburn
I was carrier of the month once (for the Sun Journal) I totally dominated routes C0113 and C0125 in New Auburn!
Celeste Yakawonis, Turner
My first job was at St. Joseph’s Parish Rectory. I had to answer the phone and serve the evening meal to the three priests. They had about five courses and it was terrifying! So afraid I would spill something. And you were not supposed to speak to them. Actually they were just humans , but still scary.
Dot Chabot, Lewiston
Lewiston Journal delivery back when there were two editions. Drudgery, definitely.
Barbara Dupee Kazimer, Lisbon Falls
Lots and lots of babysitting in a development with many young families. I started at age 11. I loved it, but definitely earned my $.50 to $.75 an hour. Many adventures through my seven years with this kind of job, like the time I was talking on the phone with a friend and the long cord got wrapped around the bird cage, it toppled over and the bird flew out. After some intense time went by, the bird got returned to the cage. I also did some housecleaning for a week or so for an older couple.
All kids should work! Our sons started working at 16 and I think they’d both agree it was rewarding to work at that age, and not only in the monetary way.
Renee St. Jean, Farmingdale
I worked at Home Vision Video. It was the funnest job evah.
Tony Morin, Lewiston
Delivered papers seven days a week from the age of 11 until well into high school. Worked two summers after 8th grade and freshman year at Holy Cross school/church stripping and waxing the floors. Worked as a football equipment reconditioner throughout high school.
I loved having money. I would buy myself chocolate milk and a cruller at DD after my route. Sometimes in the summer I would buy myself a lobster and cook it up. Was great.
Diana Pratt, Rumford
From junior high I walked to my sister’s house and took care of her 2 1/2 and 6-month-old babies while she went to work. Her husband got home around 6 and I walked home. Never occurred to me that I should be paid! I did babysit at night for 50 cents an hour for neighbors at 13. First real job was as a waitress at Day’s tea room in Syracuse. At 16. Yes, kick the teens outdoors without their electronics. There is plenty to be done for elderly neighbors whether they get paid or not.
Melissa Long, Auburn
Started working at the age of 12 (with a work permit) at Farmer Whitings picking veggies. The kids of today are lazy. They need to get off their butts and get to work!
Betsy Way, Canton
My first job was at the local corner grocery store, Nick’s. Best job ever. Yes, it was liberating, and I do think kids should work. Lots of kids today have no clue. (I also had a crush on the boy next door who had a paper route — would go with him and then he would buy us a Cherry Coke.)
Lori A. Hallett, Auburn
I babysat a ton, starting at about 10 years old, but my first real job was at age 16, working at McDonald’s in Millinocket. Trust me, being a small town, that was a primo gig!
I had some favorite customers who would wait in line, just so I could wait on them, and I always packed extra fries in the containers (when the manager wasn’t looking) for my friends. I did have one manager that was a bit “high strung,” so sometimes my friends and I would go in and order one soda to share, just to wait for him to notice. . . . Mean, I know, but we were only 16 or 17! The only time it really sucked was after a basketball game – when I had the night off because I was a cheerleader – my friends, the team and I would go up to Mickey Dee’s, along with all the kids from the other school, so I’d end up being guilted into coming behind the counter to make fries or take orders. But there was an upside: I got to wear my jeans and shirt AND got free food. And just a little side note: This was WAY back in the day, 1979-1981, before the automated registers, so we had to add things up/multiply and figure out the tax, with paper menu choices and a pencil! (We got the cool, automated registers a few months before I got done.) Good times.
Sonny Grenier-Doustout, New Auburn
I delivered the morning newspaper, three streets in New Auburn. And I shoveled poop at Deltoso farm. Then the great one was Lacasse’s Bakery. You were told you couldn’t eat any pies unless they were broken. Broke a lot of pies. What a great job: $2.10 an hour. Great pies and I thought at 16 I was rich. Those were the days.
Lisa Poulin Brown, Auburn
Worked at McDonald’s when I was 15 to buy my own school clothes; bought my first pair of Levis!
Debbie Barker Reed, South Paris
My first job for an employer was stocking beer coolers on Friday and Saturday nights at a local gas station. I was 12
Steve Vurnakes, Auburn
I would do yard work in my neighborhood as a kid. At 14 I started busing tables, washed dishes, and even some cooking at my grandfather’s breakfast and lunch cafe in Petersburg, Virginia. It’s almost a right of passage as a Greek to work in the family restaurant. And believe me the pay did not match the labor, lol. But it instilled work ethic into me at a young age.
Bruce W. Grant, Auburn
First real job: cemetery grounds keeper at 15. Paid damn good, too.
“The encyclopedia salesman, on his knees on the living room rug with his brochures, looked at them with an amazed look on his face. I could see the thought balloon above his head: ‘Do you realize what you’ve got with this kid? Are you people crazy?'”
— Gerry Bell of Bethel
“By age 13, I could pick (night crawlers) with both hands simultaneously while holding the flashlight in my mouth. We did not have headlamps back then. On a good, rainy night, I would bike eight or nine miles round-trip to the local golf course, where I could snag close to a thousand slimy slitherers in three hours.”
— David Orino of Lewiston
“At 18 I was in charge of a (hospital) ward at night, alone, with up to 30 patients. I went to school days and worked 11-7 for 17 straight days once. I found this strange mix of trust and rigid oversight irritating and I began to rebel.”
— Marilyn Burgess of Leeds
“I babysat for a family with six kids. One night there was a knock on the door. It was the police! They had the youngest, in his feety jammies. They’d found him wandering down the middle of the street. I hadn’t even noticed he was missing.”
— Meredith Kendall, Lewiston
“My very first paid job was working for a neighbor picking up dead chickens.”
— Carolyn Tucker, Minot
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