Bron-Yr-Aur

In 1982, I was all of seven years old, and faced with a big ordeal:  My mom wanted me to learn piano, and my grandfather wanted me to start working on the farm.  I still have no idea how the truce was worked out, because after only one piano lesson it was decided that I was a better fit for the violin.  I also worked every summer for my grandfather, doing the very dignified work of trash picker.  

My first paying job, as a buzz cut seven year old kid in Columbus, OH was picking the trash up that everyone felt good to leave behind on Watkins Road, from Alum Creek Bridge to Winchester Pike.  Look it up.  Regardless of my Grandfather saying otherwise, I did both sides regardless of houses there.  It was the right thing to do, and that's how I was raised.

I was paid $2.25/hr.  This was the standard rate, and the lowest you could go for farm wages at the time.  I was seven (7!) years old.  Who was I to complain?

I set off with two garbage bags, came back with both full.  This is what I discovered about people:  we like to discard crap, we like to discard crap before it's finished, and more importantly, we like to throw out full packs of cigarettes and half full bottles of vodka. 

This, however, is not that story.  In fact, there really is no story there.  I tended to always dump the alcohol, and just throw the smokes into the bag (they were girls smokes more than 90% of the time anyway...Misty?  Capri?  F.U.C.K. that shit.  I read enough "grown up" magazines to know just from the ads that real guys smoked Marlboro, Camel, and Winston [in my case, Winston Lights]).

I feel that was deserving of a DFW footnote but whatever.  

*

I walked, up and down Watkins Road, hit the bridge, turn back on the other side.  Hit the market on the other end, other side.  My first real paycheck, all $7.23, was punched out by Smith while I was berated for not knowing my Social Security Number.  

My mom had me memorize it the entire trip back home.

Smith punched it out.  I was sweating, beet-red, my mom in the room (added embarrassment, but we covered that), I remember looking at the safe in the corner repeatedly.  It was huge.  At seven years of age, I could fit inside it easily.  I'd never seen it closed, and the paint on it, even to this day, makes me wonder if it would close.

My grandfather, the only grandfather I would ever know but never actually call grandfather, he punched out the check.  My mother was proud, which, back then, I was proud of as well.  We Had Done A Good Job.  But I'm still kicking myself to this day about what he told me:

"If you're smart, George, you won't cash this.  You'll get a frame and put it in there and admire it for years."

I wasn't smart.  My Grandfather also called all grandchildren, regardless of gender, "George".  I'd get into the particulars of this if it was pertinent to the story, but it isn't.  I didn't get a frame, I didn't hold onto the check just because it was the first real money I ever earned.  I honestly have no idea what I did with that money, aside from getting a banking lesson from my dad in how to deposit a check into my newly established account at County Savings (soon to be Society Bank).

Smith never asked me about it, that first check.  I worked on and off at the farm until I was 15, but by then I was too ensconced in music, church, and the random family vacation for it to matter.  Years later, we sat side by side in Washington state and contemplated grape growth in the Pacific Northwest and my role in successfully burning down a few unused acres of his farm, as well as a few beehives.

But that's also for another time.  The genesis of a work ethic that I'm not quite living up to these days is haunting me, for lack of a better phrase.