PLEASE SHARE Clint Buehler – PRAIRIE BOY #3 Very Odd Jobs 1 – July 8, 2014 Growing up on a prairie farm, work was not an abstract concept. As soon as we were able, we were assigned chores according to our ability to handle them, beginning with feeding chickens and gathering eggs, drying dishes and weeding the garden. By the time I was eight I was driving the tractor and teams of horses, and by the time I was ten, I was milking cows (with a machine). While there was never a shortage of work to do on the farm, the real challenge was finding ways to make extra money away from the farm. Even at a very early age, my younger brother Don and I grabbed every opportunity even if we didn’t fully understand the challenge it represented or know in advance how to do it. Some were easy, some not so much. The summer we were eight and six we made a few cents a day using magnets to gather the nails that scattered as a crew tore down the old school so they could build a new one on the site. That was fun. When we contracted to clean the manure from the horse barn at the school for $20 when we were eight and ten years old, the vision of so much money blinded us to the reality of what it would take to earn it. Since the barn was only cleaned once a year, eight months of horse manure had accumulated, packed down by the horses’ hooves even as they made further deposits. By the time we opened the barn door to survey the challenge we had accepted there was a tightly packed collection of manure three feet deep. Every bit of it had to be chopped out with a pickaxe, shovelled onto a wheelbarrow and hauled some distance away. It took us weeks, but we did it, and we cherished every cent of that $20. A much more enjoyable job was as a salesman for Veribest Greeting Cards, starting when I was 10. The company provided an inventory of cards, notions and other products. Saturday mornings I would climb aboard my trusty old mare, Babe, and head off to peddle my wares from farm to farm. I could always expect a warm welcome, the sale of something to encourage my initiative and hot chocolate and cookies. And I would have many more very odd jobs in the years ahead. Copyright © Clint Buehler, 2014 (You can go to my Facebook page to see all of my posts in this series.)
Posted on: Tue, 08 Jul 2014 23:03:26 +0000
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