Last month, I wrote about my adventures babysitting a toddler named Chuck and asked readers to share stories about their first jobs.
Kelly Kelly bypassed babysitting in favor of employment at a drive-in theater in Boise, Idaho. While she didn’t take care of a sticky toddler, the situation in which she found herself one night was considerably stickier.
“My cousin and I worked at the snack counter. We wore paper hats and striped button-ups to serve popcorn and Coca-Cola,” she wrote.
Kelly, just 14 at the time, lived in nearby Meridian. Uber didn’t exist in 1977, so she often hitchhiked to and from work.
In the 70s, the 15 miles from Meridian to Boise was a long, empty stretch with nothing but farmland and horses. Late one rainy night, she set out for home, hoping to hitch a ride, but no cars passed.
Finally, she saw a police car approaching. Hitchhiking was illegal, but she was so happy to see it, she stuck out her thumb.
To her shock, the officer drove on by.
“I have no memory of how I got home, yet the memory of that cop car driving by is as fresh as if it didn’t happen almost 50 years ago,” Kelly said. “I never went back to the drive-in and still wonder what kind of person leaves a little girl in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night with their thumb out.”
Like me, Maggie Sullivan’s first babysitting gig proved memorable.
She was 15, and her responsibilities extended over a New Year’s weekend in the late 50s. The parents, eager to escape, offered no instructions other than to take care of a massive pile of dirty laundry in the living room.
“The 12-year-old was well-behaved, but not helpful, the 5-year-old frequently ran through the house yelling ‘diarrhea!’ and I didn’t understand the toddler’s babbling at all,” she recalled.
With little in the cupboards or fridge, she fed the kids cereal and sandwiches for seven meals.
“The worst episode was the toddler running barefoot through the dining room and suddenly screaming and turning red,” Sullivan wrote. “He eventually pointed down, where I found a thumbtack embedded in his foot.”
Her experience worsened when the parents came home drunk, and the dad tried to kiss her when he drove her home.
“Without apologizing, he dug out some bills from his pocket for 50 hours of my work and time. The amount? $6.”
Linda Carroll saw strawberry fields forever at 13. It was 1962, and her family was planning to visit the World’s Fair in Seattle.
Her parents didn’t have a lot, and her mother told her that if she wanted spending money, she’d have to earn it.
She got a job picking strawberries, waking up at 4:15 a.m. to gulp down breakfast so that she could reach the fields near Havana St. and Marietta Ave. by 5 a.m. Her back-breaking efforts netted her $1.25 per flat.
Carroll doesn’t recall how much she made in total, but she does know she spent some of it at the Crescent to buy the latest fashion, a skort – shorts with a short, flared skirt over them.
“The one I chose had narrow strips in a rainbow of colors, and the skirt had tiny crystal pleats,” she wrote. “The perfect item to wear to the Fair in July.”
Walt Pulliam’s first job was a busboy in the Seattle Center food court just a few years after that World’s Fair.
In addition to clearing tables, he was responsible for giving breaks to the young women who operated the Bubbleator.
The Bubbleator was a large, bubble-shaped hydraulic elevator with transparent acrylic glass walls operated from an elevated chair. It was built for the 1962 World’s Fair.
“I sat in a space-age looking captain’s chair with a large panel in front of me that epitomized something out of the worst science fiction movie sets,” he recalled. “Lots of toggles, buttons and switches.”
Of course, none of them actually did anything except for the one that operated the door and the button for the three floors of the building.
However, those switches provided ample opportunity for Pulliam to mess with obnoxious kids.
“I’d direct them to a toggle or button to hold down for closing the door while I operated the actual control,” he said. “Invariably, I would let up on the control just before the door finished closing, which would cause the door to reopen. Everyone would look at the kid and blame him for not being able to simply hold a button down.”
Nicki Boures’ first job was at The Spokesman-Review.
“I started as a ‘foot messenger’ delivering newspaper display ad proofs to the downtown businesses in the morning,” she wrote. “Typically, I’d return to the businesses in the afternoon to retrieve the proofs with any corrections before being printed. Tear sheets of these ads, once printed, were also a part of our delivery day.”
Eventually, she worked as a clerk in the advertising department.
“I probably would have retired from the Spokesman had I not accepted a job in Anchorage, Alaska, at the Anchorage Times.”
Our first jobs teach us valuable life lessons. We learn how to get up early and show up on time. We problem-solve on dark roads, in strawberry fields or in a glass-enclosed elevator.
Those experiences shape our work ethic and give us a glimpse of what the future might hold.
Fourteen years after my debut babysitting gig, I gave birth to the first of four wild boys. At one time or another, every single one of them was just as sticky as Chuck.
Cindy Hval 