A Crowded Field and Childhood Work

The headline of my local paper yesterday read: Field Crowded with Republicans. This immediately caused a vision in my head of the local sports complex in the town where I grew up. It was called: Sargeant Field.. and in my vision, I saw it filled with a lot of people who looked just like President Bush, Cheney, Rumfeld and Limbaugh, smiling, and congratulating each other on their importance to the people of the world.

When I was ten years old, I began to work at Sargeant Field, selling peanuts and popcorn at the ball games, and helping at the booths for circuses and carnivals. I was a good peanut salesman.. in fact, I was so good that I got 10 cents per $1 sale, while the other kids only got 5 cents. And when I helped in setting up or closing down a circus, the bosses always let me stand in the payment line twice and get 2 50 cent pieces instead of the normal one. This was a lot of money for a kid in the 1940's. Whenever I made any money, of course, I had to bring some home to my family. We were very poor in those days and anything I could earn made a big difference in how we ate.

Another way to get income at the time was accosting some of the many sailors in town and begging for a dime to see a movie. Usually the sailors would give in, especially when they were trying to impress a girl. (One of our "gang" would pay the price of a movie at the Empire Theater and then sneak down the emergency exit stairs and open the door to let all of the rest of us in. We could then watch the movies over and over for hours, stuffing ourselves on candy bought with the money we didn't have to spend to get in.)

Other income was the few coins we retrieved from the polluted water around the Navy ships at the State Pier. Sailors would throw coins into the murky, oil-slicked water and laugh at us kids diving in and finding them among the broken bottles and beer cans.

But, we did have other, more legitimate ways to make money: Mowing grass, shoveling snow, running errands, sweeping store floors, delivering groceries. I also had a very large paper route. I also got up at 4 am for a year to deliver milk door to door. (Even though I never had enough sleep, I did get to drink all the healthful milk I wanted.)

We did do a lot of things that we did not get paid for during World War II. We collected paper and cardboard (lots and lots of it!) for the War Effort. We also took our wagons around to businesses and collected bottle caps, also for the War Effort. And, of course, we took our "fat cans" somewhere, also for the War Effort. (that was the fat from cooking.. it was poured into empty tin cans, where it hardened.) We also shopped for our families, using ration stamps and tokens.

What do the kids today do???