Early Employment!

Did I ever give you a run-down of my early employment history?

I got to thinking about this tonight and thought, hey, now there's a topic I don't think I've ever written anything about. Is it?

Anyway, my very first job, after graduating from high school, lasted I think 4 maybe 5 days and that was waitressing at the counter in the drug store in Philipsburg! The old Cowderick's drug store had a little lunch counter as well as some booths and me being untrained for any type of gainful employment, I managed to get hired there.

I liked it well enough -but after my first day on the job, that night when I went to sleep, I had nightmares about people sitting down at the counter and every last one of 'em was ordering a large cherry coke. I don't know why that turned into being a nightmare because it wasn't something intrinsically difficult to serve, but that's what happened anyway.

Now, that nightmare isn't why I gave the job up though. It was because I didn't have my driver's license (because my Mom wouldn't sign for me to get my permit so I had to wait till I was 18 and could get it on my own) so my Mom had to drive me to work and then, come back several hours later and pick me up then too. There was a bus that came through here back then but unfortunately, it only came through early-early in the a.m. to pick up folks who worked in town, at the various factories there, and then, returned about 4 or 4:30 p.m. after their shifts ended. But for a job like the one I had, with shifts scheduled at all different hours, if you didn't have a ride or your own vehicle, you pretty much were sunk.

My second job -also in Philipsburg too -lasted a bit longer but man, I hated it!

It was factory work and I was able to ride with a couple other folks from town who also worked there and they manufactured Cigars! (Robert Burns Cigarillos and Tiparillos, to be precise.)

I was a "packer" and my job was to sort cigars by color on trays and then, pack them into crates which were then taken to the department where they were then fed by machines into the little boxes and thus, ready for sale then.

I'm not color blind but let me tell you, trying to differentiate between what the floor lady claimed to me were purples, greens and yellows on those cigars was beyond my meager visual capabilities, for sure. '

It sure as heck did help me decide though that I needed to find something in the way of some type of schooling so I could get a job that A) didn't require standing for 8 hours a day; B) that didn't make your clothes and your hair stink like cigars; and C) was at least somewhat intellectually stimulating!

I did enroll after 8 months at the cigar factory in a school, located in St. Louis, MO to learn a computer skill -called Tab Wiring -a skill and training which I was never able to find a job in that field I think because by that time, that particular job had already gone by the wayside in the fast changing but still relatively infant time of computers!

Just thought I'd do a bit of a change of pace tonight with this post and who knows, maybe eventually I'll tell you all about all the other really exciting jobs I had over the years!