My Career as a Wage-Slave (start)

I started wage-slaving at the age of 10. My dad took me with him as his ‘go-for’ in his plumbing and heating business. He later branched out into remodeling and roofing too, which I also learned and worked at off and on in hard times throughout my working career. He was paying me $10 a week by the time I started high school, that is, summers, and weekends during the school year.

He was a perfectionist. Needless to say, he was never happy with anything that I did, so once I turned 18, I got a job at a fast-food franchise, Sandy’s, a McDonald’s knockoff, as grill and fry man. Yes, I started out as a server on the takeout windows. That paid minimum wage, which was $1.10/hr at the time, 1965. I worked there for two years, then moved on to better paying endeavors, between stints at community college and trying to discover who I was.

Prior to Sandy’s, early in my high school years, when dad didn’t have anything for me to do, or just didn’t want me around, he got me a job working after school and weekends as a busboy/dishwasher at a local restaurant, owned by one of his friends. That one paid 75 cents/hr. Needless to say, I quit that one even before I turned 18. No, dad was not happy with me…

Once I wasn’t working for dad anymore, mom started charging me $10/week for room and board, so by June of ‘67, I’d moved out and was living in a single closet sized room at the YMCA in Elyria for that same $10/week, and working across the square in a camera shop as a stock boy (minimum wage – $1.25/hr)… but I had my ‘freedom’… That coincided with the incident that I’ve already described, where dad gave me the ultimatum to shave my beard or move out (I did not shave it).

To be Continued…

–LE