My first job ever was pulling dandelions for my mom. If I remember correctly, I got paid a penny for each one that came out with the entire root. No root, no penny. I even had a wicked, snake-tongued implement to drive down into the Kansas soil, to make sure I got every last stinking cell of the evil weeds.
At some point, I think I got a raise to two cents each. But by then I had grown jaded with this particular career path, and didn't really invest much enthusiasm into it.
Now, bagworms...that's a different story. Our juniper bushes would get infested with these nasty little parasites called bagworms -- so named because they metamorphed from grub to multi-legged stage within little bags they constructed around their bodies. Not nice fluffy cocoons, like friendly, fuzzy caterpillars, but deceptive little sacs covered with juniper cutting to camaflouge them from their enemies...namely me. Now, you may wonder why I enjoyed this task more than pulling "dandylines", especially since these critters were slimy and disgusting in every way. Well, the answer is gasoline, my friends. Sweet, golden gasoline.
I was probably 10 years old, and hadn't yet experienced the pleasure of Boy Scout campouts, where I could light fires and burn wood to my heart's content. Until the bagworm project, I had no outlet for every boy's natural tendency toward pyromania. But because simply removing the sac from the tree didn't end the vile creature's life, we were allowed to resort to extreme measures: burning.
My parents would supervise, of course. We deposit all the bugs we'd harvested from the bushes into a ceramic coated steel pan, and then my mom or dad would pour in enough gas to cover the little buggers completely. Then came the fun part; the match toss.
Yeah, I know, there is no way anyone would do this in today's world. But back then, no one thought anything at all about filling a pan with gas in the middle of the yard and telling their 10-year-old to heave a lit match at it. Whoomph! A nice big noise, and then some nice big flames. PETA would crucify us for this, but my brother and I actually made little bug voices and accompanied the flames with cries of "Oooh. Don't burn me! Augghhh! I'm melting..." and so forth. It was great fun.
I don't remember if we got paid for toasting the bagworms. Probably did, but as long as I got to make fire, I'd surely have done it for free.
Somewhere around this same time, I also began to sell Christmas cards. Herbie Bevan and I would bug all our relatives and most of our neighbors until they'd agree to buy these personalized greeting cards. You could choose from several designs—some featured Santa, some Jesus, and a few were more Currier & Ives-ish with snow and candles and stuff. For $2.50 you'd get a pack of a dozen or so cards with your name printed on them in black block letters. Nobody actually wanted these printed cards, but they weren't much more expensive than unadorned cards, and everybody wanted to support our entrepreneurship.
We got some pretty impressive swag for these efforts. I got an honest-to-goodness "pup" tent (sleeps one, uncomfortably), and a real brass bugle! I used that bugle a few years later to call my fellow Scouts to assembly or mess...and I think my dad still has it hanging above his stairwell. Very cool.
But I gave up the greeting card business for lawn mowing. My brother and I would take turns doing a few yards in the neighborhood, and we began to get paid for doing our own as well. I think we charged $2 per yard, $2.50 if it was a big one.
We pooled the money from these small jobs in with what we'd saved from allowance, and eventually had enough to buy the Radio Shack Rock Starter Kit, which included an amp, a microphone, and an electric guitar, all for $88. Yes, my friends, back then you could rely on Radio Shack for all your band instruments and musical accessories.
I probably don't need to mention this, but the guitar was a complete piece of crap. Of course, I didn't know it at the time, I just hooked it up and played the opening to "Secret Agent Man" over and over and over again. But the story of my pursuit of guitar godhood will be covered elsewhere. The point here was to cover the minor income opportunities I had as a youth. In other installments, we'll explore my career as "Terrific Terry", the awesome magician, and my first exposure to mass media when I worked with the local newspaper. Stay tuned!
