I have been doing chores today, renewing the tabs on our car, walking to the grocery store, reviewing some homework, and most importantly, getting ready to apply for social security benefits. I’ve got plenty of time for that, nothing is due until early 2027, but I wanted to get all the essential paperwork lined up, and one of the things I have to present is my social security card. It was in my wallet. It’s always been in my wallet. Here it is:
I’m impressed. This is the original card I was issued in 1970, and it’s still holding up. My wallet is falling apart, I’m falling apart, but this scrap of paper is still intact, if a bit faded. What do they make these things out of?
I got that card in preparation for my first job. I guess I’ll tell you about that.
I was 13 years old, and in the summer of 1970, I landed a job in the Kent, Washington Parks and Rec department. I had an inside angle — my father at that time was working as a water meter reader* for the city, he knew a few people, pulled a few strings, and I was employed for the summer as a manual laborer, working on city parks. I was enthusiastic. It paid the minimum wage, $1.60/hour, but that was almost $13/day, and as someone who only got a few dollars a week mowing lawns, that was unimaginable wealth.
The work started early in the morning, when the team, about a half dozen young men, would climb into the bed of a dump truck and we’d go roaring up the hill, clinging to the sides. No seat belts. No seats. An accident would have terminated the flower of Kent’s youth, but regulations were a bit loose back then, I guess.
When we got to the work site, we’d all unload and grab our steel rakes and shovels, and rake all the rocks and small boulders out of the glacial soil of Dynamite Shack park and into neat piles. Then we’d fill up a shovel with 10-15 pounds of rock, lift it high, and hoist it over the side of the truck. We’d do that all day. I’d come home with every muscle and bone aching — I was the youngest and smallest and wimpiest of the group, but I tried to keep up, at the expense of muscle strain and nights spent motionless in bed, waiting for the pains to subside.
Now I realize that was brutal child labor, but I was blinded at the time by thoughts of filling my pockets with vast riches. Also, the crew boss was nice to me. After a few days of hard labor, he let me spend a morning shift picking up trash at Kent Memorial Park, walking around with a mesh bag over my shoulder and a pointy stick, picking up candy wrappers and bottles and unmentionable things under the bleachers…but we don’t talk about what we’d find under the bleachers. Then I was back on the rock shoveling crew.
One memorable morning I was standing by the truck, holding a shovelful of rocks over my head, poised to twist and throw my burden into the truck bed, when I felt a snap and an awful pain. I looked down and my leg was bent at an angle I didn’t think was possible, and my knee cap was jutting out weirdly to one side. It didn’t hurt, much, but I realized my rock-shoveling days were over. The crew boss helped me hop into the cab of the truck, and drove me to our family physician’s office.
The pain didn’t begin until Dr Dona hoisted me out of the truck and carried me into his office, with my leg flopping around wildly. I may have screamed for a while. But then he gave me a shot of ketamine, and I got distracted watching the ceiling of his office melting and flowing down the walls. While I was hallucinating, he straightened up my leg and wrapped it up thickly in a plaster cast from hip to ankle, and I spent the whole summer in that thing. I did not have a good time, especially since my family like to go to the beach. Sand and plaster casts are not the most comfortable of pairings.
In the end, I didn’t get rich. I did get a check for about $125, compensation for my workplace injury, but I didn’t get to spend it, since my parents used it to buy clothes for the coming school year.
And that’s why I support child labor laws.
*My dad was a water meter reader for a couple of years, which involved visiting every single house in town, introducing himself to everyone, getting to know their pets (especially the dogs), and learning where they worked, what kind of car they drove, where and when they were going to vacation this year. He acquired a preternatural knowledge of everyone, and just going to the grocery store with him was an adventure in which he knew everyone present. When I introduced my girlfriend a few years later, he already knew everything about her parents. It was weird to have a father who was a psychic wizard, and know that I would never be able to get away with anything.
You are still a young fellow Zachary…
You might start looking into health insurance, if you haven’t already. It’s a morass. Also keep in mind you can only start Medicare on the first of the month.
My first job was a weekend job. At 14 I worked as a builders labourer. Tossing or catching bricks 3 at a time and stacking them on scaffolding. The cement was the heavy part. Emptying 112 pound bags into a mixer and shovelling in the correct amount of sand and lime. That wasn’t too bad but emptying it inot a wheelbarrow and wheeling it to where it was used was tricky particularly when I had to wheel it up a painters plank onto the scaffolding. I certainly found muscles I didn’t know I had.
I’m long retired and receiving a pension from my government superannuation scheme. Most pension schemes are mixed employer/employee contribution schemes. Employers are required to make weekly or fortnightly contributions and it is a serious criminal offence if they don’t. Not for the government though. About 15 years before I retired the government realised it had a huge unfunded liability and decide to unilaterally scrap the scheme and replace it with one that paid a pittance. They hadn’t got around to destroying the union which took them to court and got a ruling that the pension scheme was a binding contract between the government and its employees and they couldn’t break it. To get around it the government offered a one off cash payment to switch to the new scheme. The amount offered was about one month’s pension payment. Nobody took it and they ended up having to start a third scheme for all new employees. No points for guessing which American political party they most closely resemble.
Hm. https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2025/09/16/still-falling-apart/
(No correlation?)
I was 13, too, when I got my first job. In the diet kitchen/steriization station of a remote island hospital. I was a patient at the time, but ambulatory. And my mom was the head nurse; that may have had something to do with it. And it was 1954, we were out in the boondocks, and Dad was the accountant. No pay, but still, it was a job and I took it very seriously.
I got to set out the trays for mid-morning and -afternoon snacks; apple juice, Digestive bisquits and Marias. And the washed thermometers lined up in a metal tray. And then the fun stuff; I had to boil all the syringes. Big, heavy glass things they were, with long, thick needles to wash out separately, First a thorough wash; some of the meds were thick and sticky and I had to pump water through the needles until I was sure nothing was left. Then everything had to be boiled for 10 minutes, needles in one pot, glass syringes in a larger one. With lids on. And then they were left for the nurses to pick up. With the lids on. A lifted lid meant another 10 minutes of boiling.
(I know now; 10 minutes was not enough. But this was a long time ago.)
I loved every minute of it, but eventually I was better and had to go back to school.
My first job, if it can be called that, was to deliver Fuller Brush catalogs to all the homes where the local salesman planned to visit a couple of weeks later. I got paid 5 cents each, usually about $8 per route. I was 11. At 13 I got a summer job at a local diner bussing tables and washing dishes. I was paid $1 per hour under the table and worked sometimes as much as much as 60 hours. And there were a few waitresses generous enough to share some of their tip money too. One week I cleared more than $100. That was in 1965 .
Another argument for exogamy …
I got my Social Security card in I think 1963. I went to the post office told them my name and date of birth (I don’t know if I had my birth certificate or not) and they gave it to me. Must have worked since it got me into the Air Force and I’m getting benefits today.
I got my Social Security card in I think 1963. I went to the post office told them my name and date of birth (I don’t know if I had my birth certificate or not) and they gave it to me. Must have worked since it got me into the Air Force and I’m getting benefits today.
I got paid $100 by my grandparents for picking cotton when I was 5 years old. I heard much later that I didn’t pick that much cotton. That’s probably true although I remember dragging the bag up the row, picking some cotton from the bowls, and putting it the bag.
My first job was literally in a strawberry field. While picking strawberries I consumed so many that I still don’t like them anymore.
4 @John Morales
Exactly. Such an injury sets one up for posttraumatic degenerative knee problems (osteoarthritis, tendon ruptures, meniscus damage).
“we’d all unload and grab our steel rakes and shovels” And surely implements of destruction?
Sounds like your dad could have had a lucrative sideline involving taking a cut from local burglars…
Laws regulating stuff for the benefit of common people ?
-Meet American economist Alvin Rabushka, a very prominent spokesperson for neo-liberalism aka trickle-down economy.
“What neoliberals really think about ordinary people”
(the lower 95 % don’t matter)
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=UMexSzz60t0