The month of June and the ending of another school year never passes without some consideration of what I used to do as a kid this time of year — find a summer job.
I grew up in Leelanau County so any examination of the Rob-Ford-summer-job resume is as much a tour of the county as it is a peek into my past.
Picking cherries was my first job. I might have been 11, maybe 12 years old but I really can’t remember. What I do remember was being given a ride out into the local orchard in the back of a pickup truck driven by our boss.
Another job was bagging groceries at the Empire Air Force base commissary. My brothers had originated the “work for tips” bagger position before outgrowing it. I inherited it and may have been the last of that small grocery store’s unpaid employees given that the base was mothballed shortly after my time there was over.
Washing dishes at a small restaurant in Burdickville was my first job that included a paycheck. Getting paid $2.50 an hour may seem pathetic now, but at the time it was fully 50 cents over minimum wage. Paycheck aside, it was a fun job with fun coworkers and I learned so much about being part of a team. To this day, my respect for those that “dive for pearls” remains intact.
The most obscure summer job I ever took involved broadcasting crystallized copper sulfate into Big Glen Lake as part of the local lake association’s battle with swimmers itch. My 50-years-later grasp of the food chain is hazy, but it seems that a certain bug that burrows into swimmers skin was pooped out by ducks and eaten by snails. Killing the snail interrupted the sequence and, presumably, kept a waterfront property itch-free. I never dwelt on the details, just schlepped bags of chemicals, navigated an old wooden boat, and kept an eye out for girls in swimsuits.
My first job that really put me in charge of something was as a night auditor out at the Homestead in Glen Arbor. I was between freshman and sophomore years of college at the time and that job was to be my first in a professional type of setting. That first night working alone and really being “in charge” of the place is a memory I’ll carry forever. This job foreshadowed the first job I’d have coming out of college and it also foreshadowed my crazy affection for those that work the night shift. Much of what I am today was forged out of middle-of-the-night conversations, confrontations and conflicts that occurred during night audit shifts.
My last summer job was pumping gas and checking oil at a little Amoco station at the intersection of M-22 and M-72 in Empire. Oddly, much of what I did there, pump gas and give travel directions, are jobs that no longer even exist. The advent of self-service gas pumps and the invention of Google Maps effectively eliminated 90 percent of what I did each day. Like every other summer job I had, this one came with the good fortune of working with people that expected employees to show up and work. Not to mention that the cast of characters that frequented this small-town gas station has provided this writer with material that I have mined for decades.
If you don’t have a summer job this year, enjoy the time off.
To those that have summer jobs this year, enjoy them and seize the opportunity for growth and savor the memories for years to come.