I recalled today my first “real” job where I was paid an hourly wage. I’ll not say when it was or what the wage was, but at minimum wage, my part time, after school job brought me enough to buy my first car, a new musical, pretty darned pricey instrument and to save enough to take me all the way through my senior year in high school. In today’s dollar, my hourly wage was over $9.00 and hour, simply because a dollar had that much more purchasing power in that economy.
The car wasn’t much to look at. A used 1953 Chevy 4 door with worn front seat covers, a cloumn three-speed and a six cylinder engine that ate up everything I could throw at it. (It took my brother, several years later when I was on the road touring with a group, to kill that car by simply refusing to ever check the oil. Oh, well. What are brothers for anyway, right? *sigh*) But it was a dependable ride that was mine, bought and paid for with the sweat of my own brow.
The musical instrument, which I still own and still play from time to time when the house is quiet, cost almost twice what the car did, and was worth every dime. It’s not my fav instrument–that I got much later for only $75 in much devalued currency, but that’s another memory–but I still enjoy it.
No computers. Rotary dial phone–by the time I was in high school we had TWO phones in the house! and one of ’em wasn’t a rotary phone!–but no longer on party lines. I knew what a typewriter looked like, but since I didn’t plan on becoming a secretary, I didn’t learn how to type. *heh* My sophomore year in high school, my older sister won a color tv in an essay contest with the subject, “Why I Am Proud to Be an American”. The black and white TV, complete with rabbit ears and tin foil, went to my parents’ bedroom (for my brother to shoot the glass out of with a BB gun later–yeh, that brother–but it was OK, because it was just the flat piece of glass covering the TV tube that he shot out… )
Memories are funny that way. I started off having a memory of my first hourly job–there were more on through college–and that spurred all kindsa anciliary things. Olde Pharte Syndrome, eh?
Well, there ya go. Another trip (and stumble? 🙂 ) down memory lane.