Every
kid should work, even if he and she is studying like mad for an education.
Or
it may just be that I worked every year I was a small liberal arts college in
Iowa. I lived for my $17 Grinnell paycheck
from working 20 hours a week at $.85 an hour.
In fact, I was proud that I had the highest paying job on campus, 20
cents more than waiters got at the dining hall.
I washed pots and pans for a contracted food management service in the 1960s. This paid for my daily quota of coffees at
the student union and my 3.2 percent beers at the Rexall bar on the highway that
ran through town. (Iowa law prohibited
bars serving anything stronger than 3.2 percent beer. In fact, the nearest state liquor store was
in Newton, 20 miles away.)
When
there was an opening for another pot walloper, I invited my roomie, a nice guy
who had run away from Geneva, Switzerland, to join me. Fifty years later, after his retirement as a
professor of French at SUNY-Albany, he said, “Walt, that was the worst job I have ever had!” The work wasn’t that bad, except when the cook made scalloped potatoes. Then I needed a putty knife to clean pans of
baked-on food. If they’d given me
anything sharper, we’d have had a mortally wounded cook.
Kitchen
and dining room work might be infectious.
The summer I was 18, a college chum from Massachusetts said, “You’ve got
to see Martha’s Vineyard. C’mon up and
work there for the summer.” It was the
summer of Patti Page’s hit song, “Old Cape Cod.” You remember:
“If you're fond of sand dunes and salty air /
Quaint little villages here and there / You're sure to fall in love with old
Cape Cod.”
I
was hooked. The owner of a rambling old
wreck called the Wesley House in Oak Bluffs hired me to wear a hot, ugly green
uniform and serve three meals at day.
But when those days were over, oh boy!
All the summer workers were in their late teens. Best of all, I had a fake ID that said I was
21. I could buy beer for the beach
parties. I could dress sharp and hang
out at neat clubs in Edgartown. The
beaches were free and the girls were fantastic.
It
was the best job I ever had. There were
only two downsides to my temporary career: I came away that summer earning only $300. And when I went to get a haircut, the barber
would smell me and say, “You work in a restaurant, don’t you?”
