My First Job
I wasn’t sure where to place this Blog since it actually started while I was in high school. After great consideration I decided that I could place it at the end of my High School Years and add this explanation. This job came before I started college which will be my next section.
Job with Wilber Winchell in 1957
I had worked in the summertime for the individual contractor that had built our house that we moved into during my sophomore year of High School. I need to insert this job here so here it is.
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 man’s first name) was in the process of building another house a few blocks north on 13th street and 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. Wilber 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 I 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.
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.
Wilber actually did everything except dig the hole for the house’s basement. He did the brick laying, 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 top 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 in art 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.
See the complete DaLe story later in this book writing.
We shingled a lot of houses during my experience working with Wilber!
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