December 9, 2010
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Most of you have been informed that I have not been sending out Blogs here at LILAGCS for a while. We experienced a shutdown of our Internet from November 22 until a few days ago. I have been working at getting back on-line with my thoughts and answering some of your emails. I ended with my Memories from High School and will now start with writing memories from the many jobs I had. You will find that some of these will overlap, but I can’t think of any other way to write about them. You will also find that I will not include too many pictures in this section. It will be mostly narrative. I will include photos where I can.
Life and Jobs I had Before, During and after College
I am now going to go through the jobs I had. (This will take several Blogs) You might find that some of the material may overlap and some may be repeated so just bear with me.
The first job I had was working at the filling station where my dad headquartered his Mobile tank wagon truck waiting for customers to call requesting gas or fuel oil delivery.
Norm was the manager of the station. My very first responsibility and job was to keep the men’s and lady’s restrooms clean and washing the station’s windows.
You might say my first job I started at the bottom and worked my way up.
After doing a good job at that, I was allowed to come out and wash the car windshields that pulled up to get gas.
Back in the 50’s they still had “Full Service” which meant oil checked, windshields washed and tires checked. Then it eventually went to mostly all “Self Service” and you had to pay extra for the “Full Service” treatment. (Does that mean we were going forward or backward?)
I enjoyed the job and had some very interesting experiences working at that job. I think I earned 50 cents an hour.
One of the most embarrassing experiences happened during the 1955 Sac City Centennial celebration. Most all or the men had grown beards and many the ladies wore bonnets when they went out.
One day a car pulled up to the gas pumps to get gas. I was out to wash the windows right away. I noticed that the men in the front seat were wearing black suits and all had black hats and also had beards.
The ladies in the back seat all were dressed in colonial type dresses and wore bonnets. I glanced at the license plate and noticed they were from out of state. When the driver went in to pay for the gas, I made the comment “Oh! I see you are having a centennial too.”
He looked at me and smiled. I then went out and discovered the state they were from was Pennsylvania. They were Quakers, Mennonite or Amish people. I was embarrassed to say the least.
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Now the next real job I had was in the construction business.
Wilber Winchell Contractor
First Real Job
When I was still in high school about a Sophomore, we had moved to a new house on the corner of 13th and Gishwiller in Sac City.
The new house was built by a contractor that Mom and Dad had gotten acquainted with a year or two before.
After we were moved in to the new house, dad noticed that Wilber (that was the contractor’s first name) was in the process of building another house a few blocks north on 13th street and dad approached Wilber and asked him if he could use any additional help with the construction of the house.
Wilber said that he usually hired school age kids to help him but the one that had been working in the past was not home from college yet. He said that I could help him by painting the outside of the house so that is when I got my first job.
Wilber was an interesting man. He always had a pipe hanging out of his mouth so it was very difficult to understand him when he spoke. I always had to say “Huh?” To everything he said. That is why I formed a habit to say “huh” to anything anybody said and still do to this time.
I had not worked too long before the other boy finished his year at college and joined us. His name was Jerry and we got along very well.
After the painting was finished outside, Wilber had be try my hand at doing finishing work like cutting and applying the wood trim around the doors and the other placed that required wood trim on the inside of the house.
Before I knew it I was working everyday from about 6AM until dark which was sometimes as late as 9PM. I forgot how much I was paid, but it was around $1.50 and hour, I think. It was more than $20 a day usually.
After we finished the house I had started to work with, Wilber had already started another house. He did that all summer.
He would get the houses framed up and Jerry and I would usually take it from there. I got a lot of construction experience that would stay with me my entire life. We also shingled a lot of houses.
Wilber had one bad habit other than the fact that every other word that came out of his mouth was a swear word. We always had a pipe in his mouth.
It made it very hard for me to understand what he was saying and I would always say “huh?” to every thing he said. I got into such a habit that I still catch myself saying “huh?” to things that others say to me.
Wilber actually did everything except dig the hole for the house’s basement. He did the brick laying for the basement, the electrical work, the plumbing and yard finishing work.
I got a very good education working for Wilber.
The beginning of the third summer Wilber was very slow at contacting me to work for him. That is the summer I started painting signs.
My dad was president of the Sac City Little League Association. The Association had gathered funds to build a wooden outfield fence and planned to have advertising painted on the 4’ X 8’ plywood panels to help finance the fence.
They had hired a local sign painter, “Buzz” Corderman to paint the signs. They soon discovered he was not going very fast. He would paint one panel then disappear for a few days.
They soon learned about his love of wine and that was when Dad approached me and asked me to try painting the panels.
By then I was an art major at the University of South Dakota. That is when my sign painting business started and I will cover it in more detail when I write about the family business mom and I started in 1962...The Story of DaLe Monogramming & Signs. By the way I picked up the nick name of “Buzz” from my sign painting episode.
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