My first experience with money

[illflem]

All this talk of dog bites and trains has brought back old memories, they say that your brains stores everything you experience but as you get older you lose the brain path to those memories until something triggers the path open again. This why old people can sometimes remember childhood experiences better when they are old than when they just happened.



It was a hot summer day and my dad asked if I'd mow the lawn for a quarter. I jumped at it, my first chance for some real money. After sweating my way though that lawn with a push mower my dad gave me my first quarter(cheap skate). I jumped on my bicycle and started cruising town looking for a place to spend my new found wealth, till I found it, the Coke machine at the gas station. Coke was in glass bottles then and only cost 10¢. I put my new quarter in then watched in horror as it came out the coin return and into the hole for the bottle caps, lost forever. I was bummed, maybe that's why I hate mowing the lawn, haven't drank Coke till this day and am a tightwad.

 

[Power Wagon]

Boy... that's almost slave labor! 25 cents for mowing the lawn? I couldn't even get away with that. It costs more than that for the kids to play pool at the local pizza joint.

 

[Doc Tinker]

That's too bad, illflem. I see it's affected you for your whole life. Now that you mention it, I think Dad paid us 40¢ an hour in the 60s. I don't know what he was paying in the 50s, I can't remember that far back. It took us three hours to mow our lawn, with a garden tractor.



I didn't have a bad experience with my first money, but I remember doing some really stupid stuff, like riding my bike to a country store with my whole life savings and buying all kinds of candy. I ate until I was sick and couldn't ride my bike back home. I think I had about five bucks.



I can sit and relive days from memory. I try to get my brothers to go through a "visit" to the past, but they won't do it. I think they only remember crappy stuff. I can remember it all, but life was pretty good for me, so I don't want to forget it.



Doc

 

[Wayne M.]

I really do believe one needs to stretch out the wrinkles in the brain and remember the past, it is something that is too easily lost for what seems like forever. I have real vivid childhood memories from as far back as preschool and maybe before. I'm not too old (33) but I hope I can keep those memories forever. I do remember my first big purchase, it was a Genuine Sony walkman (when they came on the scene in the early '80's) for $35. 00. I think I saved my weekly allowance until I could get it. Boy it was great!

I do think lessons like that did teach me to be thrifty and humble, though when I went to work full time as a Mechanic, the money went to my head until I regained control, moved out and got married!

 

[wrward]

I have noticed that when I talk to my family members about the shared past, I keep wondering why It differs so much with my memory. They all seem to remember being so innocent, and pure,

and me so bad. ?!

 

[klenger]

illflem



Send me your address and I'll mail you the quarter.



ken

 

[illflem]

Ken, so you're the one who got it!

 

[EMDDIESEL]

I heard all the stories from my dad about "you could get a burger, fries and a drink for 5cents, and a movie was 10cents" Now a movie is $9. 50 here and that same burger combo is about $4. 80. Things sure have changed

 

[Doc Tinker]

LMAO@klenger



Any of you guys remember the AM pocket radios? My first radio was one of those, and I got it at a Sinclair Gas Station. What ever happened to the Sinclair Stations? Remember their mascot, the dinasour?



Doc

 

[Archive]

I remember the dinosaur and the pocket AM radios.



My dad never paid me for work... my first real job was picking strawberries... I hated crawling down the rows in the mud. Made 70 cents a flat. I think I ate more than I turned in for money, tho.

 

[Skydiver]

Hey Bill

I'LL bet that push mower did not have an engine.

Reel type or not?

Tim

 

[illflem]

Tim, It was a no engine reel type but had a grass catcher I had to empty on about every pass. I continued mowing the lawn for quite some time with that POS mower for a quarter till we went on vacation for two weeks. When we returned the grass was about a foot high, I told my dad no way was I going to mow it. He went out a bought an engine type reel mower with drive wheels, I was in heaven. He threatened to lower my wage to 10¢ to help pay for the new mower but relented. You've got to remember gasoline was about 13¢-17¢ a gallon, diesel went for 9¢, a quarter went a long way. How'd you like to fill up your Dodge for $3. 50?!!!

 

[merryman]

Good God, illflem, us old farts could bore the socks off these kids with old time/money stories. Brings to mind 1942, I was eight years old, Dad was real sick, ( I heard adults wispering that he couldn't last much longer), Mom with no job skills was trying to keep food on the table making and selling bonnets door to door, my two brothers and I would go down to the rail yards in Phoenix Az, liberate what ever vegies were in season, load them on a wagon and sell them door to door--taking home some for the table----then the house burned, with no insurance, so the table was in a tent. Honest to god guys, thats the way it was.

I came out of with one overwhelming determination;



A couple years later, just befor christmas, I was helping Dad try to build an adobe house (he could work only a few minutes at a time don't know the real problem, but he was 6 feet and just 100 pounds), when some do-gooder bunch showed up with a bag of groceries. I took off running and crying to my "fort" a block or so away in a wooded area. When I came back all Dad said was. "boy, make something of yourself so you don't have to put up with such as this!"

I took that admonition to heart and worked my butt off chasing success. Still don't know whether a Judgeship by age 34 qualifies as success, but I have never had any use for charities as I have allway considered that humiliation one of the worst experiences in my life!, I'd rather gone hungry, and I know Dad would have too, but he couldn't refuse because of the kids .



See what ya caused by bringing up old times/money??



Vaughn

 

[illflem]

Forgot to mention here at my new job in Montana part of my duties besides mechanic and farmer is to mow four acres of lawn. Have a John Deere riding mower, 5 foot cut, mulching blades(no bags to dump) 0° turning radius. Takes four hours which I break up into three days. Have a helper who could mow the lawn but I enjoy it, it's comfortable, fast and mostly in the shade of 100 year old trees. Mower cost 48,000 quarters new.

 

[Doc Tinker]

merryman - Now you've gone an made me depressed, thinking about life's hardships. On the lighter side though, it's kind of funny how life's crossroads affect where you end up.



illflem - Those trees must have gotten their start about the time you were born. Ever wonder what those trees looked like fifty years ago?



Doc

 

[Skydiver]

People

Interesting.

Had to start keeping up 5 rental houses for our landlord in 1973. I was 13. Did everything except roof. Pay $16 per week. Have not stop working since.

Dad past away in Jan 1984,he always said"I'll crawl on the ground before I take 1 dime of welfare"He also said"I felt sorry for myself because I had no shoes until I saw a man that had no feet". True story.

Tim

 

[Straight6Jeff]

When i was about 8, is saw an ad on TV for the SSG, or superSonicGlider. It was a giant (4') airplane, made out of space age material (styrofoam). Well, I wanted one real bad, so my dad said "work and Save for it" Took me 6 months to come up with $8. 95 (plus $2 for shipping). Since then, My Dad has filled me with much knowledge regarding work and stuff. One thing he would always say was "there is no job that is beneath you, ... , and don't let a carrer close doors on good jobs"

 

[Archive]

Originally posted by Wayne M.



I do think lessons like that did teach me to be thrifty and humble, though when I went to work full time as a Mechanic, the money went to my head until I regained control, moved out and got married!

Bunches of us have been there, and bunches still are...

 

[Gary - K7GLD]

GEE - don't get me started on morality and personal values...



Remember the "rich kids" back in high school, whose parents bought them that fancy NEW car to drive to school? Remember how those kids didn't have much appreciation for those cars - and beat them to death - while those who WORKED for their cars were VERY careful and appreciateive of THEIR older and shabbier transportation that THEY had WORKED for...



"A thing EASILY OBTAINED is LIGHTLY REGARDED"!



Maybe that's why an earlier poll of this group showed that most here are in the "older", mature category - and maybe that is ALSO why as a group, we appreciate and care more for our chosen trucks?



NAHHHh - DON'T get ME started on morality and personal values...

 

[Ramboy]

When I was 15 living in a farming community in California's central valley, my buddy's grandfather gave him a '29 Ford Model A. It was so cool I had to have one. I found a '31 for sale for $60. I asked my dad how I could go about getting it. He said I could pick cotton at $3 per 100#. Had to pick 2100# of cotton to buy that Model A. The extra 100# was to pay for my cotton sack. I'll say one thing though. I sure did appreciate that car.

Phil