What did do as a kid to earn money ?

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Most wouldn't believe the money I made between the age of 7 and 15..

I helped feed the world.
List of harvested food.

Apples
Cherries
Strawberries
Plums
Pears
Cucumbers
Tomatoes
Blue Berries
Yes, some people called use migrant workers, lived in camps (labor camps) 8 year.
Some people thought we where Gypsy''s , but they was wrong, I worked next to Spanish, Mexican, and African.
No school but well rounded.

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Picked rocks in the fields for the farmers. Idk if this other 1 counts. I worked at a gas station pumping gas and selling oil products and confectionery for all the junk food I could eat or drink. I’m sure this started me on the path to being a little over weight. Lol. I did get 5 gallons of gas once a month. Kim
 
Mowed acres of grass...pushed my 20" mower all over town!! One lady paid $3, another $3.50, one was $5. And the one I really liked paid $10!! Of course, it was 2 acres pushing that blasted mower! And that mower was my first hotrod too...had it apart many times. One time, didn't get the throttle adjusted so you could pull the lever back and shut it off. No worries, I'll be fast and just knock the plug wire off with my hand. We'll, you guessed it, I'm not so fast and the spark jumped from my leg back to the steel handle!!! Had to be at least a 3/4" arc!! Best high jump I ever did!! Think I may still have the scar on my leg...
In the winters, anytime it snowed, spent the whole day out going door to door shoveling snow. Then worked in a clothing store for a couple summers. BORING!
 
My first windfall! was at bout 15 before my grocery store job happened. Back in S W Ga I would ride a horse off looking for old farmhouse sites with some pecan trees after a good rain. I would take two burlap sacs and pickup nuts. This was quite a few miles and trips. I sorta helped myself as these would be a farm that wasn't part of the owners main farm. I got enough pecans to buy a new roping saddle thru a friend that got it for me wholesale. It was a lot of nut picking ,and hauling horseback for miles was a chore, but I was also young and full of piss and vinegar! I was so darn proud of myself. I guess I was a little thief maybe.
If anyone saw me, they probably felt sorry for me.
 
I was mowing the church lawn before I was 15 but once I turned 15 I got a work permit and rode my bike to the local Moose lodge to wash dishes. I think I made around $3 per hour
 
I'm glad you resurrected this thread !
Being a sentimental kind of person , and wanting to know and share how others became who they are seemed fun and interesting.
 
Walked beans, back then we had weeds in those rows that the tractor cultivator could not get to. 1.50 @ hour

Black-beans_field.jpg
 
That last pic jogged my memory!!

I remember my Dad taking me to pick cotton in the local fields. All day in the super hot sun (95 degrees) dragging a 8 ft long sack through the rows of cotton. Cutting my hands up on the cotton plants as I picked. At the age of 12 it was pretty hard unrewarding work. At the end of the first day I had picked maybe 30 lbs of cotton. It may not sound like much but when your dragging that long bag/sack for miles through the rows of cotton, all day long, it gets almost impossible to drag. Anyway, at the end of the day (late evening) they weighed my bag of cotton and I got 25 cents. I never felt so embarassed and humiliated in my life!!!
 
Emptied the bottle shuts at the bar at the gun club in my neighborhood, then got a job pulling and setting traps at the gun club.
 
Picking strawberries in the northwest was not far off.
They are the first ripe fruit here.
Early June as soon as school was out.
Cold wet bus would pick you up at 5 am.
It was like slave labor for not much wages.
But I think all those experiences were good.
You learn that living means working and it is not always fun, easy , or much reward.
Yet at the end of the day you know you earned your way and you can rest well at night knowing this.
 
After working at the gun club, I worked with a neighbor for Sears putting up fences and building those tin lawn sheds that almost everybody had.
 
Paper Route
Pump Gas Evenings and Weekends
Bale Hay Summer along with any other farm chores
Pick Sweet Corn
Construction site labor (family)
 
I would collect discarded pop bottles, mow lawns, rake leaves, shovel snow, scavenge golf balls on the local courses and sell them back to golfers. I also fixed friends bicycles, and sometimes help one of my friends with his Saturday paper route.
At 14 or 15 I started working with my dad's neighbor every 2nd weekend replacing hot water tanks, he was a great guy, paid me $6.00 per tank, bought me lunch and gave me cigarettes and the occasional beer. At 16 I was delivering pizzas for $2.70 an hour plus tips and working at a gas station one or 2 days a week, plus still in high school.
 
Farm work
Farm work for neighbors
Fix fence
Walk beans
Des Moines Sunday Register paper route
Trap lines in the fall
 
Mowed grass for a few neighbors.Delivered the afternoon paper for the Raleigh (NC) Times and the Sunday paper for the News and Observer.NOT FUN delivering Sunday papers on a bicycle. Back then they were Yuge!
Then I worked weekends and summers until I was 15 at the Wake County animal shelter scooping poop and bought my first car. 1973 Charger with a 400 for $500.
 
Yep, bowling alley. 2nd job was working in a gas station, and I stayed there 11 years.
 
Pulled weeds, house sat (watered plants/fed pets while owners on vacation), put new tips on cue sticks and cleaned pinball machines.
 
My youth was spent as a military brat so the opportunities were few & far between.... 67-68 Dad was in Vietnam, we were on a base in Central Kansas.... My brother & I would walk all over the base gathering soda bottles... Five cents apiece, movie tickets were forty five cents for kids at the base theater... Another quarter & you could have a drink...

68-69 Dad was home & transferred to Atwater California... Mowing lawns with an old reel type push mower & helping a neighbor fold & stuff papers for his paper route... About all I could find..

69-71 Madrid Spain.... Lived in a small town not on base.. Anything resembling work was done by locals... No work for young American boys....

71-73 Adana Turkey.... Lived on base... Again not much for a teenager to do... I did have a little gig going with fixing bicycles for lots of other kids.. Patching tires, adjusting derailleurs & brake calipers...

73-74 Las Vegas Nv... Again lived on base... Mowed lawns, more like sand with crabgrass.. Had a small paper route.. Fixed allot of dirt bikes, rarely got paid but got some seat time which was okay with me since my folks wouldn't hear of me buying one... I had the money & found plenty of broken bikes I could have picked up cheap... Fix it, ride it some & flip it... Nope!! You'll kill yourself!! Good thing they didn't know how often I was out in the desert hauling *** on friends bikes...
 
I'm afraid I have to take the 5th. I didn't straightened up until 17.
 
I helped my dad in his repair shop. (which I regret not taking it over). My brother and I helped our dad install water lines, the ditches had to be 36" deep which dad had a machine that did the digging. We took turns punching the holes through the basement wall with a hand held concrete bit and a 3# hammer. I've picked up bottles, aluminum cans, aluminum doors and lawn chairs, the doors and chairs brought the best money because they were not made from recycled aluminum back then. I would strip the chairs to the bare frame as that made them worth more money since they were considered clean by the recycling place. I had a paper route for a very short time because the clown that we worked for always tried to pay me with a hamburger and a soda.
 
We lived in a rural area so opportunities were not there like the Urban life. However I only remember cutting wood, gardening, and just everyday type work at the house. My parents came from a generation where you got food on the table and were vertical so that was your compensation lol...

But it all changed when I bought my first car to flip around age 14. It seemed simple enough- buy something for less than you sold it for. The rest is history.....
 
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