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Benefits Of Summer Job

I can still hear the clink of those water glasses as my high school friend tidied up her “station” at the Fort Henry Motel restaurant counter. Several of us were there to pick her up to go out on a girls’ night on the town, but we had to wait until she changed out of the waitress uniform complete with apron.

The lunch counter kind of had the look of  “Mel’s Diner,” that funny TV show from the 1970s. In fact, the waitress uniforms looked a bit like those worn by Flo. That motel and restaurant are long gone.

Nearly everyone in my group of friends had jobs while in high school. We were retail clerks at Stone and Thomas, Hornes of Wheeling, L.S. Good and Co. Others sold records at the record shop in town or helped out at one of several bakeries in Wheeling. Some worked after school shifts at restaurants including Elby’s and Burger Chef and Rax. In the summertime, some of us worked at Wheeling and Oglebay parks.

I had a stint one summer at Oglebay’s outdoor swimming pool where I checked in and out baskets of swimmers’ clothing. I would file the baskets under a matching number as the pin and that’s how we kept track of who belonged to what. There were no lockers like at Wheeling Park. It was a simple system that worked well. The good thing about a job like that is you could fit in some reading time. Everyone in high school had a summer reading list and no one liked to leave that task for the end of summer. Best to get in the reading between jobs and going out on the town. I did have one boss who didn’t approve of my nose being in a book while waiting for the next customer at the pool. I couldn’t understand that because she was a teacher.

Babysitting was another popular job for some of us. Imagine getting paid 50 cents an hour to watch two or three kids, sometimes including an infant! It wasn’t bad money when gasoline was 27 cents a gallon and Teen Beat magazine was less than $2. Earning a few extra dollars meant a bus trip to town on Saturday mornings and maybe buying a new outfit at Lerner’s for less than $20.

Those  after-school and summer jobs paid little but it was spending money our parents didn’t have to shell out for us. Having a paycheck of my own since I was 14 or 15 just felt right. I’ve never looked back and have never been without a job since. I guess I am one of the lucky ones.

Hard work was something that my generation took for granted. We watched fathers and mothers work shifts around the clock and put in overtime to pay for some of the extras in life.

Our teenage-year jobs gave us strong legs to help us one day stand on our own. They gave us a sense of pride in the ability to earn a buck or two and not have to go to our parents for everything. There have been plenty of songs written about the “lazy, hazy days of summer, when the living was easy.” I don’t remember too many lazy summers of my youth but life was pretty good at the end of a working day.

Heather Ziegler can be reached via email at hziegler@theintelligencer.net.

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