32
By summer break between sixth and seventh grade, my mother told me I
had a new job on Sunday mornings: Mowing the meat cutter's yard. He
lived in the same town as the branch grocery store we worked at so I
was able to ride my bicycle to his place. It turned out being the
only meat cutter at a grocery store at that time was a well paying
job and he had a huge house for just himself and his wife, and it was
balanced by an even larger yard. When I say yard, I should probably
say field as the first visit I spent mowing much of the expanse
across the road from his house, it was effectively a hayfield taken
over by weeds. The following week he had me mow the field
surrounding the house itself and after this, he decided on keeping
just enough area around the house mowed that used-up four hours of my
time from eight till noon. Halfway through this time I was given a
break, which was a new experience for me, and his wife would provide
me a can of 'Tab' to cool off with. It tasted weird, but I didn't
want to offend anyone so I drank it down. By the end of the two
years I worked there I had actually come to like it, much
like the acquired taste for my paternal grandfather's 'Moxie'.
For my labor each week, I received a five dollar bill, this along
with the five I received for my time at the grocery store left me
rolling in dough and my bank account soon touched the triple digits.
I now suspect my mother 'found' this Sunday morning job for me
so she and Joe, the grocery store owner, could spend more time
'counting the money' for the branch store. On my bicycle ride back
to the apartment, the branch store was closed by Noon, but my mother
didn't get home until around two in the afternoon...
Yet despite having four less hours working at the branch store
itself, I did get more responsibility as I had reached the point that
it was decided I should be in charge of my own section of the grocery
store. It just became a question of finding an area of the store
that was small enough that I could maintain it with my two hours
after school each day and that lead Joe into choosing the beer case.
An open face chilled case about twelve feet long and six feet tall, I
would now be responsible for keeping the case filled, 'faced' when it
couldn't be filled from leftover stock, and once a week I would make
out an order for what was needed in the coming week. Facing
a shelf was when one pulled the remaining
stock at the back of the shelf forward to make the shelf look full
when it wasn't. I found this practice morally dishonest and hated
doing it until I came upon the notion that I was helping short armed
people reach what was left.
With the start of seventh grade Beth was now in sixth grade and thus
taking the bus with me to the Middle School. I made the mistake of
sitting with her on the bus ride and saying 'Hi' to her when passing
in the hallway, I soon learned it was like my old friend Peter: We
could be friends when no one was looking, but in school related
places and activities, we kept a distance. Still, as I had become
used to this with Pete the previous year, I was willing to do this
with Beth without concern. This gave me more time to visit with
Brad, my new friend from the new town, and Jonathan, my remaining
other childhood friend.
But it turned out Jonathan had a new friend himself, his name was
'Jonathan', too. For clarity I'll call him 'Van.' Van had moved to
a house near Jonathan's that Summer and they had come to know each
other. It turned out Van was in my 'Social Studies' class, so with a
friend in common we hung out together. As time would go on he would
become one of my remaining good friends through High School.
At the start of the school year, both new friends John down the
street from the apartment and Andrew the younger kid who had taken-up
tagging around with me at the apartment complex, moved away. In the
case of John, I had forewarning as he knew ahead of time his family
was leaving by the end of Summer. In the case of Andrew, I think he
only found out the week before. With Andrew's family, so went the
Friday night block parties at the apartment complex, apparently they
had been the key people to organize them. In my adult years I've
come to realize that all groups have key people with whom things can
happen and without them things don't happen. Often, these
people aren't the one's you'd think of at the time...
By the end of the calendar year, both Beth's family and Brad's family
were moving away with short notice, suddenly my two remaining friends
in town were gone. This would have been a good time to spend more
time with Mathew, but as we didn't have any classes in common in
Seventh grade, my out of sight out of mind problem kicked in
and it simply didn't occur to me.
My eldest brother, though, had a new friend: A college girl he'd come
across. On the rare occasions I'd see him, they now came as a pair,
but this just added interest as his somewhat quiet nature was
balance-out by her bubbly enthusiasm. And she, often with a beer can
in hand, offered me one as well during my visits. As with Tab, it
tasted kind of funny but I didn't want to offend by turning it down.
It was another acquired taste, though I never truly warmed up to it.
With my apartment town friends gone, I took up a new hobby by Winter.
For whatever reason, my mother got some cross country skies and
shoes. As she didn't use them much, I asked if I could and went
through the woods behind the apartment and discovered a cross country
ski trail system was in the woods just beyond the apartment complex.
This solitary activity took the place where time with local
friends would have been and given my interest, my mother got me
my own pair of cross country skies and shoes for Christmas... But
unlike hers, which had a special surface underneath to stop the
skies from sliding backward, mine didn't have that feature and it
gave me a harder time going up hills. Still, with me as a companion,
mother started to use her own skies more often as we would take the
trails behind the apartment and she began to find other trail systems
we could use for a change of pace. Much like the routine Saturday
trips for errands and shopping since moving to the apartment, this
became a second positive experience I could look forward to with her.
By the Spring of Nineteen Seventy-Seven, I arrived to the store and
my mother and Joe had to have a talk with me. I could no
longer be in charge of the beer case. The State Liquor Inspector had
come and saw me working there. At age twelve, that was illegal in
more ways than one. Joe had worked out a compromise where I could
continue working at the store just as long as I didn't help out with
the beer case. Later that night I was curious why my not working the
liquor case, but still working at the store, was a compromise
and asked my mother.
She said that there were child labor laws and it had always been
illegal for me to have been working at the branch grocery store. In
return for agreeing to not have me handle the beer case, the liquor
inspector had agreed not to report my working for the store to the
state's department of labor.
oh.
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