As a girl growing up in the '50s and early '60s in a small Chicago suburb, I
did quite a bit of babysitting after about the age of 12. At about that same
age, my mother got me an unofficial "job" at the newspaper where she had
started working part-time. It was published on Thursdays, so after school on
Tuesdays & Wednesdays I came in to type featured stories into a machine that
produced a sort of ticker tape. When the tape was run back, it produced a
fully-formatted camera-ready copy. I can't remember what the machine was
called, but it seemed very high tech at the time!
Several of you folks have mentioned growing up in the country, so I'm surprised
I haven't heard of anyone earning money in the late summer by "de-tassling"
corn (which is what it was called around here). I was never an outdoor kind of
girl, but when my 3-years-younger sister turned 15 she jumped at the chance to
get into the surrounding cornfields. That was a very coveted summer job, as it
paid very well for a relatively short portion of the summer and it was a really
sociable experience. The kids all met up very early in the mornings at the high
school, where buses were waiting to take them out to the farms that had
contracted for their labor. They'd work for most of the day, I think 'til
mid-afternoon, then the buses would return them to the school. I remember my
sister would still have time before dinner to go to the local swimming pool for
a few hours, so she considered that summer job to be the best imaginable!
HistoryBuff
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