Jobs suitable for kids

When I was growing up in Palouse, I always had a job, or two. One of my early jobs wasn’t one of my best. In fact, it was often dangerous.

We had a small bowling alley, six lanes if I remember correctly. I set pins. We didn’t have any automation in those days. They painted a black circle and the task was to set the pins exactly in the circle. If you didn’t put them exactly in the circle, the good bowlers would get really angry with you and sometimes let go with a bowling ball before you were ready.

I was paid five cents a line. It was a crappy paying job.

We had to work fast and put the pins in place within the circle on the floor. You had to set the pins quickly and then get out of the way so you didn’t get hit.

If four were playing together it was worth 20 cents a line. Some of the kids were good enough and took two lanes. I could barely keep up with one lane. If you didn’t get the pins exactly in the painted circle it made it difficult for the action you needed when the ball struck the pins.

I mowed a lot of lawns when I was young. In addition to our own lawn, I weekly took care of two others. We had a push mower. You supplied the power.

Mowing our lawn produced my weekly allowance, which wasn’t much. I mowed my aunt’s lawn. It was my Dad’s sister, so I had to do an exceptionally good job.

My aunt was blind, but somehow knew everything that was going on. I mowed and then trimmed her entire lawn area with a hand trimmer. If I missed anything, somehow she knew it. For that job I was paid 45 cents. My aunt would get her coin purse out and feel the coins to take out 45 cents.

I had to push the mower past my neighbor’s place, so he stopped me one day and offered me a quarter to do his lawn. It was a small lawn so I figured it was a pretty good deal.

Then I had my paper route. I delivered the Moscow, Idaho paper to a good number of customers. It then was a five-day daily. At the end of the month, they would send me a bill and I had to go around and collect from the customers. Some of them put me off, so I had to carry them for extra days before getting paid.

One paper customer was an older gent who lived with his sister. He was rather gruff, but the sister would always be the one to pay me and would secretly press a nickel into my palm, as a tip, I guess. She would keep her brother from seeing the transaction.

These were the kind of jobs I started out with.

Later there were jobs for me fry cooking, working in a meat market, on the railroad, and grocery store.